Those seriously involved in the JH practice may have some interest in comparing their daily musings about the practice with those of others. And so I have culled from my daily notes of the last couple of months a representative selection of thoughts about, and prompted by, this process. The material here is lightly edited for clarity, presented roughly in chronological order as it appeared in my notes. Added commentary appears in brackets. How do these thoughts compare with the daily thoughts you have about your own practice? Are they similar to or different from the kinds of things you think about? Contact me to let me know!
Here are two videos related to the idea of surrender, always an important topic in the JH practice. The first is from spiritual teacher Angelo Dilullo, and packs quite a number of nuanced insights about surrender into just a few minutes. The second, from Alan Watts, provides very lucid commentary on the closely related subject of trusting the universe.
“Brain research shows that having a silent conversation with someone loving and trusted, or even thinking about communicating with someone or something who is loving and trusted, stimulates activity in the striatum – a brain area that is electrically inhibited in people on either type of pause.”
On p. 67 she adds that activity in the pericardium is thereby increased as well.
Put simply, some of the key effects of communicating with your Friend can be had even by just thinking about doing so. Why does that matter? Well, in my own case, I've found I can stay connected with my friend more continuously by including “just thinking about communicating” in the equation.
Often I consider that my recovery would likely speed up enormously if only I could immerse myself completely and almost full-time in the connection and dialogue with my Friend. Of course I've made plenty of incremental progress in that regard, but the continuity of connection remains inconsistent.
For others who struggle with this I offer something I sent out to the email group a couple of months ago:
In RFP JH talks about different meanings of surrender in her approach, and the need to surrender to the dialogue with your invisible friend (see p. 204). And in my ongoing quest to more consistently stay connected with my invisible friend, I recently had a thought that may be helping me stay oriented in the right direction. Here's what I wrote in my off-and-on journal:
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.)
Three different quotes from three different spiritual teachers:
“When you know how to listen, everybody is the guru.”
~ Ram Dass
“Whatever arises, love that.”
~ Matt Khan
“May it serve awakening.”
~ Tara Brach
Different in detail, doesn't it seem those three quotes are all nevertheless saying something similar? To my mind they're saying we can grow and profit from whoever or whatever comes along.
“You are never alone or helpless. The force that guides the stars, guides you too.”
~ Shrii Shrii Anandamurti
I recently exchanged a couple of emails with JH. My main question for her was essentially, “I've been stuck back on pause for many months now. What might be the problem?” JH offered several ideas to help with identifying and/or overcoming the problem. Here I want to highlight (with permission) just three comments, as together I see them offering one particular path to pursue. Here are those comments:
I found it contained worthwhile nuggets to consider in my own efforts to feel more joy. Why is that important? Well, those of us on pause have difficulty fully feeling joy. On the other side of the coin, feelings of joy, or a much deeper level of joy, are a common feature of pause turning off. We might ask then whether making some effort to cultivate joy will make it easier to turn off pause.
I haven't been writing here as much recently as I've been extra-focused on my process in the protocol. But during this extended period back on pause I've naturally done a lot of thinking and exploring with the aim of getting back off pause. One result is a small backlog of ideas for posts that haven't seen the light of day. So here's the first of these ideas in the hope that it may provide some food for thought. I'll provide others in subsequent posts, and will of course report on any significant developments along the way...
Having spent most of my adult life as an analytical sort, I naturally brought that to my work in the JH protocol. On the plus side, all that analysis has produced helpful insights with regard to recovery. At times, though, it's been a hindrance as I've overthought or overcomplicated things that derive much of their potency from their very simplicity. (It makes sense that such overthinking would be a common feature of the Parkinson's personality. For a couple of examples see RFP, 2020, p. 328; SOP, 2022, p. 183.) Let me try to break down where detailed analysis has proved helpful and where it can become overthinking.
The nature of recovery from Parkinson's is not what most people would assume. One major way in which that's the case involves what is and is not visible to an outside observer. Most people, including doctors, assume that to assess the progress of someone trying to recover they need only look at changes in visible motor symptoms. (Of course nearly all doctors hold fast to the medical establishment dogma that any effort toward recovery is in vain.) Yet those are barely the tip of the iceberg. For someone actually navigating recovery the great bulk of recovery goes on inside, invisible to an outside observer. Visible motor symptoms may not change much over a given period despite great strides in progress happening internally.