PD Revelation

[Note: If references to “turning off pause,” found below, are new to you, you might want to read this introductory post for clarification.]

Suppose mainstream medical research finally came up with a “cure” for Parkinson's. Let's say it was a pill you could take one time, and it would permanently eliminate all well known Parkinson's symptoms. The only catch being that, as with current medications, it precluded pursuing efforts to turn off pause. Would you take the pill?

If you have PD, there's a good chance you will at some point experience troubling anxiety. Whether that's because PD lifts the lid on buried anxiety or generates anxiety directly is worth considering. (But I will say I subscribe to the idea that there is always some thought trigger for anxiety. That is, I am skeptical of the notion of true free-floating anxiety.) In any event it can become essential to have one or more effective methods of quelling that anxiety. Having recently gone through a period of more than the usual anxiety, I've had the chance to test several anti-anxiety techniques. Here's what I found.

I decided to revisit the writings of 17th-century French monk Brother Lawrence who championed “practicing the presence of God.” His Spiritual Maxims are reprinted in the back of SOP (2022). I'm thankful for that, as it turns out they were not included in the copy of Brother Lawrence's writings I had downloaded from some free book site. In reading through the maxims I was struck by how perfectly they applied to what those of us following the JH practice are doing, and how they validated some of my experiences. Let's take a look.

In recent months I've twice had to learn a simple lesson: You can't force this process. Two examples illustrate.

Sent to the email group:

My wife's book group was reading the Tara Brach book Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha (2003, 2023). She came upon this passage relevant to what many of us are doing, and passed it along to me. (Thanks, N!) Right on target, I'd say.

In a prior post I talked about the need to push past the medical establishment dogma that holds Parkinson's to be incurable. I offered a quote from JH that makes clear what a powerful impediment that dogma can be for someone trying to recover. And I mentioned that it can also shape the doubts of those around us. This too can fuel doubts of our own, interfering with our recovery.

It's been a while! I've actually written a portion of a more process oriented post. That's coming soon. But i wanted first to make this small point. You may have observed that my recovery will be one of those that's measured in years. While that might influence some readers to dismiss the JH practice as taking too long to be worth the bother, that would be a mistake! Here are two reasons:

[Updated 11/8/23]

I've written here frequently about maintaining the connection with your Friend. But what if you feel you're maintaining it but not getting the results you would hope for? My experience suggests it may be possible you're not, in fact, connecting with your Friend.

So what's going on? Well, in your efforts to communicate with your Friend your talking may have become mechanical such that you're now talking, in essence, to no one, to the void, if you will. Or you may have drifted, without realizing it, into talking more to yourself than to your Friend. I believe that at times I've experienced both of these diversions. [Update – 11/8/23: For some related discussion from JH see RFP (2020, p. 127) under the heading Talking by rote or requirement.]

When talking with my Friend, I aim for a connection that feels the same as if I were talking with some flesh and blood friend right there in the room with me. When I have that feeling I know I'm connecting directly with my Friend. (I also get feelings of energy in the head portion of the Du channel.) But sometimes I don't get that feeling. So how to fix this? I find a helpful technique lies in the use of the word “you.”

A few months ago I began writing a post about my increasing focus on letting my Friend guide me as completely as possible. It wasn't long, though, before I realized I still had so much more to learn about that process that I would do better to wait a while before writing about it.

When I woke up this morning the song below was going through my mind. I'll take that as a good sign! :–)