PD Revelation

Sometimes when someone asks me what this thing I'm doing to address Parkinson's entails I sum it up with, “It's kind of like a form of meditation.” Indeed, it has often seemed to me that endeavoring to spend as much time as possible in connection with and dialoguing with my invisible friend shares elements in common with meditation.

Perhaps the first place this occurred to me was in the frequent need to gently pull myself back from distracting thoughts to return to connection with my Friend. (Ideally you might get past this by surrendering to the dialogue. I'm still working on that.:–) This is much the same as what I've been taught about pulling yourself back from distraction to return to, say, following your breath in a common form of mindfulness meditation. You observe the distracting thought without judgment, then pull your attention back or allow it to return naturally to your breath. My current favorite way of doing this in the JH practice is to ask my Friend to alert me and call me back to connection with her when I get distracted. (See here and here for helpful instructions on mindful breathing meditation.)

The second place I noticed a possible commonality between this process and meditation (in search of enlightenment) came after I first turned off pause. It was so profound and transformative, such a break from my usual state of being that I had to wonder, “Wow, is this something like enlightenment or a spiritual awakening?” JH does not equate turning off pause to enlightenment. Nor do I. It does sound similar in some ways to some descriptions of enlightenment, not so much others. Mostly I'm guessing the intensity of the feeling of breakthrough may, in some cases, approach a similar level.

A third similarity between this practice and meditation aiming for enlightenment appears to be their paradoxical nature. Just as with enlightenment, if you stay narrowly focused on the goal of turning off pause you probably won't reach that goal. You won't get anywhere chasing the experience. But if you trust the process and engage sufficiently in the practice (talk with your Friend... feel your Friend's presence...) you'll likely get there, sooner or later. Here's this idea expressed in the context of focusing on the process in meditation: “All you can do is continue your spiritual work here and now. And the freer this work is of expectations for enlightenment, the simpler you will find it to transform and grow.”

Another aspect of this paradox is that what seems so elusive and distant, be it enlightenment or turning off pause, turns out instead to be so close to us. Indeed, it is an integral part of us. On some of the occasions when I've turned off pause I've immediately had the thought, “It was right there!”, a recognition that the off-pause state, which had seemed so far off, was right there within my grasp all along. It seems it's precisely the fact that it is so close that makes it so elusive. It's too close for us to see as we look here and there and out there, missing what was right here with us all along.

This video featuring spiritual teacher Rupert Spira speaks to this last point with regard to enlightenment:

Of course this raises a question: What does it mean that this approach to addressing pause shares these key elements with meditation? At this point I don't have enough of a handle on the question to say much, so will reserve that as a possibility for a future post.

Have you noticed other similarities between meditation and your practice aiming to turn off pause? Let me know!