Fighting Parkinson’s, and the Recipe in-depth 2015, part 14

I intend to take each part of the Recipe, physical, mental, and spiritual, and explain why it is in the Recipe and what it is doing for you in your recovery, deeply drilling down to the how and why it is helping you recover from Parkinson’s. Today is the fourteenth part: reconnecting with the soul and opening the heart for dopamine flow, second part.

For those of you new to the blog, when I say “the Recipe,” I am talking about the Parkinson’s Recipe for Recovery®. Click here to review the full version of the Recipe.

Yesterday, in the first part of reconnecting with the soul and opening the heart for dopamine flow, I stressed the importance of:

Faith and Acceptance. Close the door to the past.
Faith and Fear. Close the door to the future.
Faith and Joy. Living your life in the present moment from your heart.

Today, in the second part of reconnecting with the soul and opening the heart for dopamine flow, I will discuss how I closed the door to the past, helping me transform from my judgmental mind into my compassionate heart.

Compassion.

You begin with compassion for yourself.

You are not your body. Your body has Parkinson’s physical symptoms.
You are not your mind. You mind has Parkinson’s stress, anxiety, anger, frustration, worries and fears.
You are your soul, your essence, your spot of grace (whatever you call the “something” inside you that powers the rest of you and makes you uniquely you). This part of you is untouched by Parkinson’s. It is just covered up by the toxins of your body and mind.

Let’s say you go to the store and buy a shining silver teapot. You take the teapot home and put it on the sideboard to admire it. And then, you get busy with life and you do not spend any time with the teapot for the next six months. When you return to the sideboard, you are horrified to see that your teapot is covered in tarnish.

At first you think, “Oh no, what have I done. I have neglected my teapot and it is ruined.” Then, somebody points out to you that if you get silver polish, you can remove the tarnish. So, you get the silver polish, grab the teapot, and head to the kitchen sink.

You moisten the sponge, dip it in the silver polish, and you begin to rub the teapot. The first thing you notice is that it begins to look worse than when you started — there is black and gray pasty junk and it smells bad. In this moment of “cleaning crisis,” you think, “I have faith that the silver polish will work,” and you press forward.

Eventually, you have cleaned the entire teapot, washed it, dried it, and shined it. It looks like a brand new teapot. However, in that moment of admiring your “brand new teapot,” it occurs to you that you are admiring the original, beautiful teapot you brought home from the store six months ago. And you realize that although the teapot had been covered in tarnish, the tarnish did not damage the teapot at all.

The original shining silver teapot was under there all along, unblemished by the tarnish. When somebody comes over to your house, they say, “That is a beautiful new teapot you got to replace the old tarnished one.” And you smile and say “thank you” because deep down you know they are staring at the original teapot, and it shines.

Original you, your soul, your essence, your spot of grace (whatever you call the “something” inside you that powers the rest of you and makes you uniquely you)…he or she is in there. Right now, you are just covered up with a tarnish called Parkinson’s. The Recipe is your tarnish remover.

The Recipe helps bring your life back into balance by healing your soul, mind, and body. It helps you remove the toxins in your body so your organs are clean and functioning well. It helps you clean the toxins in your mind by calming your mind so your stress, anxiety, anger, frustration, worries and fears leave you and do not return. And, finally, it helps you to not be afraid to be the real you by opening your heart to yourself and the world fearlessly…and then your dopamine flows…and then your soul shines again.

Be compassionate to yourself by being the real you…new you/original you. To others who have known the old you, you will appear to be a completely new person. However, you will know that what they are seeing is the original you, the real you, and you will shine.

Compassion.

Heal the soul, have compassion for yourself, and have compassion for others.

I have written before that Dr. Sha says: First you heal the soul, and the mind and the body will follow.

Healing the soul. I see this primarily as a four-step process:
1. Learning to love yourself.
2. Practicing Forgiveness.
3. Closing the door to the past.
4. Protecting your soul going forward.
(I am using the term soul. Please feel free to substitute for “soul” “your essence,” “your spot of grace” or whatever you call the “something” inside you that powers the rest of you and makes you uniquely you).

1. Learning to love yourself. Click the links below for a refresher:
Fighting Parkinson’s, and learning to love…yourself, part 1.
Fighting Parkinson’s, and learning to love…yourself, part 2.
Fighting Parkinson’s, and learning to love…yourself, part 3.
Fighting Parkinson’s, and learning to love…yourself, part 4.

2. Practicing forgiveness. Please click the links below for a refresher:
Fighting Parkinson’s, and practicing forgiveness.
Fighting Parkinson’s, and practicing forgiveness, part 2.

3. Closing the door to the past. Once you have worked out the earlier life issues and learned to love yourself, and then you have forgiven everybody, including yourself, there is one more critical step to moving forward in a healthy manner — closing the door to the past.

“I accept that everything that has happened in my life right up until now has had to happen exactly how it happened for me to be where I am right now.” For a more in-depth discussion, please click here.

Okay! With learning to love yourself, practicing forgiveness, and this new level of acceptance, you have closed the door to the past. That’s it! Closed the door to the past — no more would have, should have, wish I had, no self-criticisms, no judgment of yourself and others…the door to the past is closed. Now, you look forward only, and you say, “Where do I go from here?”

4. Protecting your soul going forward. After you close the door to the past and realize that your soul is just as pure as the day you were born, your shining teapot, don’t you want to work extra hard to keep the toxins away and not have tarnish cover up your beautiful soul again? Of course you do! Here’s how:

Get control of your mind so you can stay in your heart. This would cause you to not worry or be fearful, to not have stress or anxiety, to not have things anger or frustrate you…why? Because you want to proceed forward in your life through your heart and soul, and these are toxins that tarnish your soul. First heal the soul this way, and your mind and body will have no choice but to follow.

This will free your mind: The mind says, “worry.” You say to yourself, “Worrying is a toxic thought about the future that may not ever take place and it tarnishes my beautiful soul and hurts my recovery in the present moment. I need to decide not to worry. If the thing I was going to worry about ever actually occurs, I will deal with it in the moment when it occurs. I choose to not worry.”

This will free your mind: The mind says, “That person insulted you, you need to be angry and ‘let him have it.'” You say to yourself, “This anger is a habitual reaction to life’s events and it fills me with toxins that tarnish my beautiful soul and hurt my recovery. I will view the other person from my heart and realize that somebody who would utter such insults must be suffering, and suffering beings need my compassion, not my anger. My anger hurts both of us, and my compassion is healthy for both of us. I choose compassion.”

As you can see, negative emotions surface as part of life, but you can choose to transform them into something positive. It takes a constant conversation with yourself to undo old habits and old ways of thinking and responding to life. This is what protects your soul from getting covered by all of the toxins and tarnish of life. Over time, this gets control of your mind, which is why: First you heal your soul, and the mind and the body will follow.

Once you reach the point where your mind is following your heart and soul, your mind does not interfere with your body…your mind is so under control that it stops telling your body, “you are not getting better, Parkinson’s is not curable, more tremors is a sign you are getting worse and not a sign you are getting better from increased energy, etc.” And, with your mind not being so negative to your body, your body says, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, for removing all of that negative chatter from my recovery, I can finish recovering now.” First you heal the soul, and the mind and the body will follow.

The Parkinson’s Recipe for Recovery® is your road map for your soul, mind, and body recovery.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

I say, “Close the door to the past, treat your soul as pure, and protect your soul from toxins and tarnish going forward so you can be the recovery now you wish to see in the future.”

1. Learn to love yourself.
2. Practice Forgiveness.
3. Close the door to the past.
4. Protect your soul going forward.

Be you, the real you, the you-that-you-have-been-so-afraid-is-not-good-enough-and-that-nobody-will-like-or-love-or-approve-of-you. BE HIM OR HER!!! Fearlessly be the real you, and radiate your essence so the world can share in your magnificent luminosity! It is the compassionate thing to do for yourself, and it is the compassionate thing to do for all of the others.

That’s it.

You are worth it!!!

I will be back soon.

All my best,

Howard

For those of you who may have missed my previous post about the fifth person to have recovered doing the Recipe, click here to read the details of “Fighting Parkinson’s, and Helen Gill in Australia is symptom free!!!”

Please note: I will be posting a post per day for the remainder of the year. If you subscribe to receive email notifications when I post new blog posts and you would prefer to not receive those daily email notifications, simply send me an email at howard@fightingparkinsonsdrugfree.com, and let me know that you do not wish to receive a daily email with a link to each post. I will remove you from the list for the rest of the year, and add your email back to the list at the beginning of 2016. However, I still would recommend you checking the blog on a regular basis as it will contain very useful information for understanding and doing the Recipe more effectively.