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.
Now that covid is well behind me and the lingering cough it left is completely gone or almost so (perhaps due in part to channel visualizations I've been doing to address the possibility that the virus blocked the energy flow through certain channels), I'm pretty sure my brain/body is returning to a state that will allow me more easily to turn off pause.
One indication is how I felt a few mornings ago. During the first half of my regular morning session I was focused a bit more than usual on the first two auxiliary exercises. At some point, while focusing on the energy running through the head/midbrain portion of the Du channel, I noticed something unusual. A high level of energy at Yin Tang, and more generally in my forehead, was persisting regardless of where I was focused. Similarly, a feeling of heart expansion was strong, though I had not consciously activated it. I felt, as well, a sense of increased lung capacity. But the biggest surprise came when i said something out loud. My voice was suddenly back to full strength rather than its usual pause-softened character.
In July I had a bout of covid, a breakthrough infection. I'm still dealing with a bit of a lingering cough. My hope is that when that's gone I'll be better able to turn off pause again.
A while back I wrote a post touching on the Taoist concept of “wu wei” which refers, more or less, to going with the natural flow of life. That has obvious relevance to the idea of surrender which has come up here frequently. I stumbled on this bit of audio from the late spiritual teacher Wayne Dyer while surfing YouTube. To my mind, he does a good job of explaining wu wei. Give it a listen!