In my last two blog posts, I have written a lot about acceptance, surrender, and gratitude. Yesterday, I was explaining to a person that I viewed a big part of my acceptance, surrender, and gratitude spiritual healing in the same way I viewed cultivating Sally and my gardens. Today, I will explain.
I saw my soul as the seed of God inside me that needed nurturing. As I nurtured the seed, my soul, it grew and pushed away the toxicity of my mind and body, ultimately leading to my full recovery.
Fighting Parkinson’s is a lot like cultivating our garden. To begin, we plant the seeds in the soil. The seeds are pushed down a few inches into the soil and then covered up by the soil. This is how I saw my soul…deep inside me, and covered up by the toxicity of my body and my mind.
Every day, we water the soil where we planted the seeds with the faith that all of the things happening under the soil are happening the way they are supposed to happen. We do this watering day after day after day with little or no sign of progress on the surface. Sounds a lot like Parkinson’s recovery, doesn’t it? If you are doing the Parkinson’s Recipe for Recovery®, then you know exactly what I mean.
I am going to digress for a moment. Let’s talk about weeds. Weeds are like Parkinson’s disease. They grow under the surface and build strong root systems. We do not need to water them or care for them or fertilize them…in fact, it seems the more we ignore our garden, the happier the weeds are to invade the garden.
And, every now and again we see a weed and think, “I really don’t feel like dealing with that weed today.” Then another weed pops up, and another and another and another. And suddenly we think, “Oh, no! Now I have to deal with these weeds taking over my garden.”
Initially, we just want to cut them at surface level because then our garden looks pretty again. However, by cutting the weeds at the surface and thinking, “Oh, I have a pretty garden, and I am happy those weeds are gone,” we are fooling ourselves. We have not solved the weed problem…we actually have enhanced it. While the weeds are “out of sight, out of mind” they are growing more roots under the soil, and when they break the surface, they are bigger and stronger than before.
And what are these weeds doing below the surface? They are overtaking the seeds and root systems of our garden. If we let this go on long enough, our garden is overcome by weeds, and our flowers and vegetable plants will not grow because they have been strangled by the weeds. We heal our garden by digging up and pulling out the weeds at their roots from deep under the soil, and we nurture our flower and vegetable seeds into plants, into blossoms, into flowers, into vegetables.
You heal yourself from Parkinson’s in the same manner, with the same determination, the same patience, the same faith, and the same nurturing. Parkinson’s recovery starts from deep within…it is where the disease, like the weeds, festered and grew undetected (and later ignored for a while), and it is deep within you where it has spread and negatively impacted your organs.
So, where do you go from here? Start pulling the weeds and nurturing the seeds, or, in Parkinson’s terms, get on your path to recovery by doing the Recipe. The physical part of the Recipe heals and cleanses your organs. The mental part of the Recipe calms your mind and heals negative emotions.
These two parts of the Recipe prepare the soil and help eradicate some of the weeds to make room for the plants to grow. However, it is the spiritual healing that nurtures the seeds, devours the weeds, pushes the rest of the soil out of the way, and grows the plants, the flowers, and the vegetables to fruition…the releasing of your dopamine and the expression of the full radiance of your soul…the expression of the fully recovered authentic you!
When my children were young, they were disappointed the day after we planted the seeds because they would run outside with the excited expectation of seeing vegetable plants…all they saw was moist soil from the day before. Obviously, as adults, we all know that their expectations were unreasonable because a seed will not grow into a plant and produce vegetables overnight. It is the same for Parkinson’s recovery.
However, what my children did learn is that if we went outside every day with no expectation of seeing plants that day, but instead, with the understanding and faith that if we watered the spots and continued to pull the weeds that occasionally poked their heads out of the soil, that eventually we would see vegetable plants break through the soil.
And then, we needed to continue to have love and patience and faith as we nurtured the plants and secured them to stakes and watched them blossom, and ultimately saw them provide us with vegetables.
This took weeks and months, not days. This is Parkinson’s recovery. You are the garden. Go and look in the mirror at the garden you are today, and then envision in your heart the garden you want to be.
Okay, now take the Recipe and start cultivating your garden…you need to give yourself the same love, patience, hope, and faith that you would give the seeds in the garden outside, and you need to nurture yourself on the path to recovery.
Happy Gardening! You can do this!
You are worth!!!
All my best,
Howard
Thanks Howard , great message, very encouraging, thank you .
Absolutely perfect!
Well done Howard…. as always you are a legend.
thankyou
What a great and positive analogy. Thank you for all your encouragement.Happy Valentine to you and Sally
Thanks Howard,
I have been ignoring my garden lately. So today is a beautiful day to be and work in my garden.
Love you all,
Sylvia
Respected Howard sir,
What perfect example! Seeds of recovery are planted in soul, just like seeds of vegetation in soil. I am watering the soil-soul by recipe as advised by an expert gardener, our beloved Howard sir. We will keep faith and wait for fruits in form of recovery. Let’s all keep faith and wait for the healthy life without Parkinson’s disease. Thanks Howard sir for being there. Regards Mona
There is another lesson here about finding joy in the work, perhaps. Thanks for a beautiful analogy. Thanks for the encouragement. Bless you
What an analogy, great thinking. Thank you HOWARD, your words are truly inspiring!
Hi Howard brilliant ! Love the analogy. You are a gift that keeps on giving. Bless your beautiful heart. 💞
Big love to all Warriiors
Karen xx 💞
Thank you Howard, a timely reminder, Jan x
I do plant vegetables in my garden and I like the garden analogy for the Parkinson’s Recovery.
Howard you have the gift of putting recovery in simple terms for us all to understand and appreciate the concept of recovery.
Really inspirational.
Thank you
Unique Howard, very practical and helpful!!
Thank you for supporting us in a such inspiring way🙏🙏!!
Thank you Howard for another good faith lesson. I’ll extend your analogy by saying that it also takes good soil to grow healthy fruitful plants. The weeds are like the PD symptoms that have an outward appearance rooted in our depleted soul, mind, body soil. Medicating PD is like cutting the weeds off at the surface. The soil is unchanged and the PD roots grow stronger. The Parkinson’s Recipe for Recovery goes after the roots of PD and enriches the soil along the way. We must have faith in the proven process. We must learn to find joy in the midst of digging through our soul, mind, body soil to remove the roots of PD. We must also love and nurture our soul, mind, body soil back to the healthy authentic person we were meant to be.
Glad to be on the faith, joy and love track with my fellow warriors here.
Blessings,
Bob
Beautiful spoken Bob!
I found this blog post a bit of a tearjerker, with Howard’s tender portrayal of nurturing a garden and nurturing a soul. Patience needed, yes, and humility. The incessant watering without obvious reward is a good analogy for doing the Recipe. But this week, for the first time, I was able to turn my hands so they were facing away from me during the qigong exercise for clearing liver wind. So at least my weeds have produced a daisy, and I’m hoping for a big, blowzy peony one day. Love to all …
Thank you Howard!
Since reading your posting I switched my focus in the morning, during the day and in the evening lol! from looking if my seed sprouted (symptoms disappeared) to how can I remove more weeds (improve my recovery) by attending to the physical, the mental, and the spiritual.
Much love,
Ola
Thank you Howard. You are the best!