The companionable silence
[Updated – 10/5/20]
I'm still early in my reading of the new edition of Recovery from Parkinson's. And I can already tell it will inspire topics for new posts. In the meantime here's an idea for which I've been considering a post for some time.
As I've written previously, for some of us one of the most difficult challenges in following the Janice Walton-Hadlock (JWH) protocol lies in keeping consistently in touch with the dialogue with the “other.” In a prior post, including a number of updates, I offer some ideas that might help in this process. Some of those updates could have been their own posts. One, especially, has proven helpful enough that I think it's worth a new post. That is what might be called the “companionable silence.”
In the updates to that post I described it this way:
Given that the “other” is always with you, hearing your every thought, try clicking into connection with “him” (or “her/them/etc.”) by imagining him located, for instance, vaguely over your shoulder, receptive and listening. See if you can experience a sort of companionable silence. For me this has been one of the most useful techniques of all, allowing me reliably to click into the desired mode, even triggering some of the tingles I feel when asking to feel the “other's” presence. It's a short step from that mode to continued dialoguing with the “other.”
To elaborate, consider this quote from JWH in Recovery from Parkinson's (2020):
Those who stuck with it, teaching themselves to constantly direct their thoughts and questions to loving, invisible friends, slowly found themselves feeling safer. They were gradually learning to keep themselves constantly – and I mean constantly – as if in the presence of someone or something that loved them...” (emphasis added)
So while talking with the other is crucial, I believe keeping yourself “as if in the presence” of the “other” has value in itself. For me this seems easiest to accomplish through the companionable silence. At the very least, it can serve as a natural bridge into either the dialogue or the requests of the second of the “new exercises.” And I want to emphasize that JWH makes clear that the idea is to talk, to engage in a conversation with the other. So the companionable silence should not be seen as a replacement for the dialogue, though it might be fair see it as a kind of foundation for the process.
A subtly different way to enter the companionable silence involves simply tuning into whatever feelings you experience when you ask to feel the presence of the “other.” In my case, since I feel subtle tingles, I am able to turn my attention directly to those tingles, thinking of them as an indication of the “other's” presence, beginning to feel them a bit without yet talking with him. Put differently, I increasingly feel I am in the presence of the “other,” as indicated by the ease with which I can feel those tingles whenever I tune into them. For you of course it may not be tingles. It could be a slight warmth, a subtle feeling of pressure, a feeling of expansion in your heart, or simply a feeling of increased safety or comfort, among many possibilities. But this option may not be available to you at first. It took months before I was able to tune into that feeling at will. So give it time; the companionable silence is easily enough attained through the first method I described.
In the updates to that prior post I also mentioned a simple heart-opening technique that may function as another way of putting yourself in the presence of the “other.” I'll leave it to you read about that there.
So consider giving the companionable silence a try. And please contact me with any ideas or techniques you may have come up with to keep the dialogue going or to help stay in the presence of the other!
Update – 10/5/20: Clear support for the value of the companionable silence, for simply being “in the presence” of the “other,” appears in Recovery from Parkinson's (2020) in this comment in the section about the new exercises: “Even during spoken conversation with some tangible human, with someone other than the friend, the person should assume that the invisible friend is in on the conversation.”
“Be afraid of nothing. Hating none, giving love to all, feeling the love of God, seeing His presence in everyone, and having but one desire – for His constant presence in the temple of your consciousness – that is the way to live in this world.”
~ Paramhansa Yogananda