Parkinson’s Destiny

More about the Essenes

By Bardo Mountjoy, for The Bardo Mountjoy Saga

28 Feb. 2009

(These are mostly quoted passages from Barbara G. Walker’s The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 1983, pp. 283-85. Naturally enough, I have chosen these for their bearing on “The Kundalini Kid.” To what extent did these beliefs and practices shape that former life of mine?)

• The Essenes were a monastic brotherhood of Jews living in Palestine from the second century BCE to the second century CE.
• “Based on sun-worshipping Persian anchorites…and from Jain yogis professing to work miracles by living apart from the world and practicing extreme self-denial.”
• “Jesus, John the Baptist, and Simon Majus were said to have been trained in Essenic communities.”
• “An Essenic hierarchy included a chief priest called Christos (Anointed one)”
• “There were ordinary priests called ‘sons of Aaron.’”
• “Another functionary known as the Messiah of Israel….[or] as the Teacher of Righteousness was singled out.  ‘He suffered physical abuse in atonement for the sins of the entire community, enduring vindictiveness, sentences of scourging, and the terrors of painful sickness, and vengeance on his fleshly body’ (according to Rudolph Augstein, qtd. in Walker, 283).
•  According to Josephus, the Jewish historian of the first century CE, the Essenes “reject pleasures as an evil….They neglect wedlock, but choose out other persons’ children, while they are pliable and fit for learning; and esteem them to be of their kindred, and form them according to their own manners” (qtd. in Walker, 284).
• “The harsh anchorites imposed cruel sentences for the least infraction of the rules, partial starvation being the most common punishment.”
• “The doctrines were startlingly similar to those of early Christianity.”
• “[They taught] that immortal souls belonged in heaven, but were drawn down to earth and entrapped in corruptible flesh by the ‘natural enticement’ of sex” (Charles F. Pfeifer, qtd in Walker 284).
• “The soul’s purity might be recovered by ascetic techniques such as mortification of the flesh, fasting, renunciation of sensual pleasures, and by solitary meditation in the wilderness, like the voluntary exiles of John and Jesus.”
• “Essenes called themselves Therapeutae, “healers,” claiming their austere lifestyle gave them power to cast out demons of sickness, even to restore life to the dead.”
• “Much of their training as exorcists consisted of learning lists of spirits’ names, and the holy names that would expel them.”
• “Essenes preached giving away all one’s worldly goods upon joining the sect, which meant those who joined gave away everything they owned to their superiors. Dire punishments were meted out to those who lied about their possessions in order to hold something back for themselves or their families.”
• “Despite their vows of poverty, the Essenes were strangely obsessed with visions of wealth and power coming to them after Armageddon, ‘The War of

      the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness.’ Sons of Light of course were

      the Essenes, and all others outside their brotherhood were Sons of Darkness,

      otherwise called ‘men of the Pit.’”

Analysis of “The Kundalini Kid” as an Emblematic Former Life

By Bardo Mountjoy, for The Bardo Mountjoy Saga

2 March 2009

In Chapter 10, the final chapter, of Roger Woolger’s seminal book on the benefits of looking at one’s former lives, Other Lives, Other Selves (1978), Woolger reports on a client’s similar spiritual martyrdom as the one I related in “The Kundalini Kid” that happened to me around the time of Jesus.  This person, Woolger calls him Saul, like Jesus, is a former Essene who leaves the community, becomes a wandering teacher and healer, attracts followers, and is eventually seized and ritually killed by a group acting on orders from the local chieftain.  The person has his hands and feet cut off, and then is beheaded.  His “spirit” separates from his body at death, looks down in horror at the body below, then begins to ascend upward.  When the martyred man’s “spirit” has the “thought” of “Why did this happen to me?” he receives an “answer” from what he intuits are spiritual masters who are present nearby:

They cut off  your hands because you were out of touch.

They cut off your feet because you walked above the ground.

They cut off your head because it was too full of lofty ideas.

I share this because the “lessons” of our lives, and our former lives, are seldom pleasant, easy to decipher, or perfect cause-and-effect consequences of the Law of Karma.

I feel the former life I relate as “The Kundalini Kid” shares remarkable themes and patterns with my current life—themes and patterns that are resolving themselves as Parkinson’s disease (PD).  Thus I consider the “kundalini kid” life (as psychic M.H. called it) as emblematic of my current life, an important “overlay” of it—one can see the former life as providing a pattern or structure for this one.

Here we go….let me start with themes, traits, and characteristics I share with the Kundalini Kid (KK):

1.      Being fascinated and intrigued by energy and light—especially in the body—from phosphenes (the light we see when our eyes are closed), to tingles and energy currents felt in the body, to the colors and energy associated with chakras, to the energy of healing, to seeing (and understanding) “the secret alphabet of light.” The Kundalini Kid (KK) learns much more about light and energy than I presently know (unless this knowledge is buried deep inside my unconscious as a kind of “deep wisdom.” KK learns about light and energy from seeing the “root language” script of the Torah as golden flashes of light, from his communion with God, from his inner kundalini experience (but note it was backward—normally kundalini flows from sacrum up to crown—the opposite happened to KK), from his time in the Essenic community, from his wandering life as healer, and, finally, from his experience of death (with its transcendent component). I long for and get little glimpses of these experiences now—but my impaired spine (cervical damage, curvature, spondylosthesis at L2-L3, and locked sacrum)—has largely blocked any big stuff—like kundalini current.

2.      Being partially initiated into esoteric knowledge and lore.  KK was initiated by his own direct encounter with God, by the Essenes, and by his own his own calling as wandering ascetic healer. I am considered to be deeply wise, a “solar initiate,” and have always been attracted to secret lore which I take in and understand with relative ease.  These days I am learning energy alchemy with Jim Self, more about astrology, more about earth changes and “ascension,” more about the importance of indigenous traditions as explicated by spiritual “walk-ins” like Drunvalo Melchizedek, shamanism, and many forms of healing work, just to name some of the esoteric lore that attracts me.

3.      Being a loner, an outcast destined (doomed) to wander the earth, not fitting in, misunderstood, exiled, aloof, feeling shame. KK was exiled from his family, his community, the Essenes, and from society as a whole.  I was “set apart” in my family and worked hard to bring love and light in and to “burn” ancestral karma. My several “nervous breakdowns” set me apart from university life and, to some extent, from a career in society. I have always felt apart, belonging nowhere, feeling little security, working hard (in my mind) to hold on.  Parkinson’s, of course, absolutely sets me apart—I struggle along like an unhealed infant or an escaped psycho from some ward or a torture victim in his last throes. PD makes you feel so alone you pray just to die (ask any PDer.)

4.      Being paranoid, feeling that people are “out to get you” in some ways. KK, of course, lost his family, left his spiritual brotherhood, wandered alone in the desert, and was martyred—he earned his paranoia!  I was diagnosed several times at age 18 and 19 as “paranoid” in the psychiatric care I received.  I continue to feel frozen and awkward in social situations that call for dancing and singing (I intuit that I was tortured in a former life in the presence of dancing / dancers).   
          At the root I am lost from my own lack of self-love, which arises from my samskaras (karma at birth that follows you into your life and must be dealt with), birth trauma, infancy trauma, parental mental abuse, pain taken on from my mother, and ancestral darkness going back six or seven generations.  Every day I stay alive I feel like I am burning karma for my soul and for my ancestors—since this process is such a great mystery it only fuels my paranoia.  My PD makes me feel like an ogre—more paranoia!

5.      Being someone with a special relationship with God. This certainly applies to KK—his whole life proceeded from his divine communion / connection to God starting at age 13. In my case I have always sought out a personal, spiritual connection to God—not an institutional one. This personal, spiritual connection has taken the form of retreats into nature, love affairs (in Goethe’s famous pronouncement—“woman is that which guides us upward”), searching for that perfect commune of like-minded (hippy) spirits, special practices like yoga and meditation and Breathwork, a library of books that try to explain how and why we are one with God.  I view PD as slow-motion death that clearly points to having a special understanding of God—sadly, though, my assurance on this point is subject to an almost manic-depressive moodiness!

6.       Being ashamed.  In KK’s story I intuit that he felt shame from his deafness, his exile, and his aloneness.  In Breathwork I have relived a few moments of this when KK is near death—he is trying to flee from the crowd of his tormentors, hobbling on his left leg that is missing its foot, leaving a trail of blood in the dirt, feeling hopeless pain, humiliation, and shame.  For me now, as my walking is worsening into more of a hobble (my left foot lacks feeling and is getting “deader and deader”), I feel more and more ashamed to be in public—shaking and hobbling like some torture victim on his “last legs.”

7.      Being someone who bears the unbearable.  KK was filled with the connection to God that his Kundalini moment provided him, but his life after that was hard by anyone’s standards and ended in an agonizing death.  Similarly, this life for me has provided great pain—nervous breakdowns, cluster headaches, isolating paranoia—and is now being capped with PD with its random assortment of tremors, stiffness, loss of bodily control, slow physical incapacitation, slow mental incapacitation—I try to “bear up” under what is increasingly unbearable (ask anyone with PD!). 

8.      Being someone afraid to fall.  KK began his challenging life of Godly service in the late Piscean Age with a momentous fall backwards off his chair at age 13—he did fall.  PDers spend their time while up and moving around trying NOT to fall—this, for me, worsens nearly daily.

9.      Being someone tortured and ignored.  No one rallied to save KK as he was tortured to death.  He—and his life—were ignored. As I’ve said, PD is like slow torture—and the usual response by both its victim and its onlooker is (stoic, embarrassed, unfathomable) denial.

10.   Being someone so in his head that his body can’t move.  In KK’s case, his religious connection to God led to the murder of his body by a presumably enraged, misunderstanding mob.  In PD “freezing” is the ultimate trajectory for the loss of dopamine—this occurs when the body doesn’t respond at all to the mind’s lead—one is frozen amid-step or wherever one is (ask anyone with advanced PD!).  (So far I have only experienced twinges of this—but it’s in the general forecast.)

11.  Being someone dedicated to Love and its power. Once KK had his communion with God, he was forever thereafter charged with the grandeur of Love and its message of transcendental power.  For me PD in all its horror is a process that teaches Love in all its Power!

12.  Being someone who was once an Essene.  KK leaves the Essenes, but has absorbed much of their teachings and practices (see “More about the Essenes”).  He was a celibate monastic who remained alone (and no doubt celibate) in his wandering life.  He “mortified his flesh” in his harsh, solitary asceticism. He was a “Therapeuta”—a healer in the Essene tradition. And like the Essene community member known as the “Messiah of Israel” or “Teacher of Righteousness,” he “suffered physical abuse [and death] in atonement for the sins of the entire community” (again, see “More on the Essenes).

So, there you have at least 12 big themes, traits, and characteristics that parallel the KK life and my own.  For me, then, the KK life becomes an emblematic narrative that goes a long way to explaining my current “process” with PD.  That life is still in my cellular memory.  Its issues—and especially its trauma—are “up” for me now to “integrate,” to make conscious, to “release” in this life. 

We are now (officially) in the Aquarian Age—where soul progress no longer requires physical suffering here on earth (hooray!).  Probably the disease of PD is the “shadow work” required to integrate the lessons of the KK life (and, of course, other former lives—which I shall also speak about in later pieces).

Here, then, is a list of the “personality archetypes” that I see emerging from the “emblematic” KK life:

1.      Spiritual Martyr—one killed for his spiritual beliefs

2.      “Wrecna” (Old English for “wretched one”)—a community outcast

3.      Desert Hermit—a loner searching for his own path to God

4.      The “Hanged Man” (of the Tarot)—one who martyrs his body in pursuit of spiritual knowledge

5.      Chiron—the Wounded Healer

6.      The Initiate—one chosen to learn spiritual truths from a community of adepts

7.      The Celibate—one cut off (for varied reasons) from natural communion with the opposite sex

8.      The Scapegoat—one “ritually killed” for the supposed betterment of the community

No doubt, there are other archetypes, too.

In closing, I refer back to the opening on this piece—no doubt, there is harsh and often hard to comprehend justice to our sojourns in “earth school” where we learn to Love in the “great mystery” of our lives.

(the end)

The Kundalini Kid—A Former Life that Overlays this One

By Bardo Mountjoy, for The Bardo Mountjoy Saga

28 February 2009

Note: This is a short narrative of a former life of mine that occurred around the time of Christ.  It provides all the detail given to me by the two psychic healers, J. M. and M. H., who related it to me. In moments of emotional-release work I have had some recall of this life as well. In the analysis piece that accompanies this I provide a listing of ways that I view this former life as significant to understanding and emblematic of my current life issues with Parkinson’s disease.

I am a 13-year-old Jewish boy studying for my Bar Mitzvah at the beginning of the common era some 2,000 years ago.  I am dazzled by the shapes of the “root language” Hebrew script before me—they appear as strokes of golden light right before my eyes. Startled, I fall straight back out of my chair and hit the back of my head.  I feel an incredible lightning jolt of kundalini energy shoot down my spine from my head to my sacrum.  I am taken out of myself into the presence of God. I feel one with all of creation.  I am clothed in the glorious light of God—beyond all knowing, feeling, and description.

Vaguely, in time, I come to realize that I am suspended between the glorious power of this feeling and the call of my human life.  I want only to stay with God.  Every cell cries out: “Dear God! Oh, God! Dear God!” I become aware that I am to choose human life. Slowly, the Kundalini current weakens and recedes.  I find myself back in my body, alone, sprawled across the floor.

As I strive to recover my senses, I realize I am changed forever.  This is the beginning of what I will come to know as “the split between heaven and earth” which will manifest itself in my body (I write about this in a separate piece). One effect is that I can no longer speak—I can utter groans and cries—but not human language.  Another change is that my hands can transmit strong healing energy.  There is new palpable feeling of love in my heart and a fierce fire in my eyes. I will come to learn that, to an extent, I can “read” people’s hearts and think their thoughts.

Soon after this, my parents see that I can no longer fit in to society, so they take me to the community of the Essenes who are living in the Qumran caves by the Dead Sea. This is an ascetic community of very spiritually minded, “holier than thou” men.  These men do not marry but do take in and raise certain children.  Here there is a strong feeling of men whose hearts, like mine, long for God. It is a rigid community, though, bound by harsh “flesh denying” laws and beliefs. (See more on the Essenes in a separate piece.) 

In time, I leave and begin a life as a wandering, desert-dwelling healer.  Life is hard for me, but people largely tolerate such loners and, for the most part, respect the wild look of God-connection in my eyes. I wander from well to well on the arid, rocky plains and hills of Palestine, avoiding settlements.  I live on very little except the occasional handout for my healings.  In my way I am holy, serving God.  My heart radiates love to those who can feel it. I know there are times when I am desperately lonely–especially for a female companion.

Eventually, though, while still a young man, I die as a spiritual martyr—killed by a mob who hang me up by my feet and then beat me with rocks and sticks.  It is agonizing.  I feel deeply shamed.  Many parts of my body are mangled—the top right part of my head, the back of my neck, my left arm, my lower back, my left hip, and my left foot.  I feel no grudge against my assailants—just the wish that there were more love in the world.  As one psychic, J. M., put it, “You died teaching a higher spiritual law that most people were not ready for.”  And as I die the light I keep seeing is connecting me back to that kundalini current.  (the end)

THINKING OF PD AS

THE DESPERATE NEED TO RELEASE TRAUMA

(16 Notes on 22 Nov 2008—dedicated to B. H. who made these thoughts crystallize)

1.     In one’s life before PD one exhausts oneself trying to be “good,” thoughtful, useful.  Ultimately, this “trumps” or wins over the ability to feel (anything)—especially, and most importantly, happiness.

2.     In PD thinking itself exacerbates the thinker.  The PDer does not seek a release from stressful thinking but rather release from thinking itself—through feeling the suppressed trauma in the body.

3.     If you spend time with those in advanced states of PD, you will see people who are like lost, lonely, largely expressionless, exhausted, numb children (infants). 
Advanced PDers are “adrift” like so many of the mentally ill homeless—as if cut off from human nurture, or incapable of receiving it. This is the tragedy—along with the role that PD drugs play in this process.

4.     Growing up with the dictum “Don’t you dare express your feelings!” (which has a complicated origin), the PDer has lived 90% of the time in the head.  This is in order not to not feel the (unhealed) traumas stored in the body—often going back to birth and even former lifetimes.  These traumas, though, now scream for release—making the PDer’s body a minefield of both rigidity (the trauma on hold) and pain (the trauma breaking through).

5.     Yes, the PDer is hugely needy—what may have been a drive for sex may be (should be / could be) replaced by a drive for releasing trauma. 

6.     This releasing trauma activity results in the real feeling of having been nurtured / heard / understood—even if a little bit—and offers connection to another person, to nature, to another dimension, to God.

7.     How is this releasing trauma activity achieved?  First and foremost, by the “foot holding” activity that Janice Walton-Hadlock so capably, wisely, and generously explains (for free) in her two books at www.pdrecovery.org.  She calls this yin tui na which she translates from the Chinese as “Forceless Spontaneous Release” (FSR).  This is a must for ALL PDers to experience one, two, or three times a week!

8.     Any other hurting body area can be gently held between both hands of a caregiver—like Reiki or many other systems of energetic healing.  Hands can be put on both ears to access the substantia nigra (which is inflamed in a PDer), or above and below the stomach (which is “hard” in PDers).  Allow the hands to remain in these areas (and others) for an hour: a lot happens, including trauma release, a sensation of being nurtured, warmth, well-being, and a deep healing sleep. 

9.     PD, as Janice W-H claims, can be healed—with energy, not with drugs.  This is especially true if the PDer HAS TAKEN NO PD DRUGS.  If the PDer HAS taken the drugs, so what—the benefits still need to be felt and explored.

10.                          I take carbidopa-levodopa, by the way, a low dose.  I am in more and more pain—daily.

11.                         A related point is that I fear abandonment—and will also cleverly deny it by being / living / acting alone. (This speaks to the core of how screwed up I am by PD.)

12.                         A seemingly less-related thought (but which is, in fact, connected) is that I enjoy meeting people at their places of greatest pain—the “letting go” point—because I can relate.

13.                         At issue is that thinking can block feeling.  Feeling, to me, is more important than thinking.  I’m sick of / from thinking.

14.                          I am doing my best.  Do your best, too, dear reader!

15.                          Love, finally, is all there is.  It can’t be denied.  (Thank you, John Lennon, for being the first to point this out to me.)

16.                          And, thank you, B.H., again, for re-introducing to me The Work by Byron Katie (www.thework.com) which leads to freedom (it’s nice to do it with your foot being held!).

26 (Spiritual) Practices for Those with Parkinson’s Disease

(And for Those Without)

By Bardo Mountjoy

29 September 2008

1.     Love yourself fully and deeply.  Be the love you need. Only you can feel your own connection to Love.

2.     Find your Beloved.  Love your Beloved with all your heart.

3.     Love your friends with generosity and joy.

4.     Make new friends all the time.

5.     Spend at least two hours outside a day (preferably with as much skin exposure as possible and in as natural a setting as possible).

6.     Drink lots of good water—lots.

7.     Learn to love breathing. Breathe fully to relax and let yourself go. Develop a daily conscious breathing practice of connected, even breaths—pull on the inhale and let go on the exhale. Preferably spend an hour in the morning and the evening doing this.  (Notice how shallow your breathing is “normally” when you are absorbed in a task such as reading, speaking, or concentrating.)

8.     Develop a morning and evening personal, private “spiritual” practice.  Cultivate energy in your body, experience the subtler “levels” of your being; realize you are a spiritual being having a “seemingly physical” experience here now on earth.

9.     Retire from your full-time job if you can to give yourself the time / space / energy to heal.

10.                         Give and receive as much “energy work” as you can—such as massage, Reiki, Integrative Manual Therapy, Rolfing, Trigger Point Therapy, acupuncture, Tui Na, Deep Tissue Massage, and many others.

11.                         Open up your heart in every way you can conceive.

12.                         Laugh. Laugh.  Laugh.

13.                         Give yourself as much Joy as you can.  Only you can feel your own joy.

14.                          Ask for help.

15.                          Take a warm bath morning and evening—and breathe.

16.                          Give yourself plenty of sleep.  Deep sleep heals.

17.                          Search for therapies that put you into deep sleep—the “still point” of deep healing.

18.                          Pray as often and deeply as you can.

19.                          Learn to sun gaze–look safely at the rising and setting sun.

20.                          Do ritual to honor your life, this planet, all beings, divine oneness; to honor the ceaseless opportunities to love, to feel joy, to find “the starry connection to the heavenly dynamo” (as poet Allen Ginsburg put it).

21.                          Allow animals such as pets to teach you the art of relaxing, letting go, and being fearless.

22.                          Give yourself the gift of nature every day—walk in it, explore it, breathe it in, study it, commune with it, be at one.

23.                          Keep your body alkaline.

24.                          Eschew caffeine.

25.                          If you’ve never taken PD drugs, go to www.pdrecovery.org and learn about healing PD energetically with “yin tui na” (Forceless Spontaneous Release).

26.                          If you take PD drugs, stick to the minimum.

First Posting—24 (possible) Causes of Parkinson’s Disease

Welcome to Parkinson’s Destiny wherein I hope to share my experiences, hopes, and fears living with this difficult dis-ease frequency from deep within the brain. 

Call me Bardo Mountjoy—not my real name—so that I can rail at neurologists, the mainstream beliefs about Parkinson’s Disease (PD or pd), and even Fate (not a good idea) with an Internet disguise.

I was diagnosed in January 2005 at the tender of (for PD) of 54.  I am now almost 58 as I start this enterprise.  There is so much to “discuss”—especially my notions of PD’s origins, causes, and spiritual underpinnings.

When I can I will keep my points brief, using lists as much as practical.   

I support the theories, findings, and energetic healing method (called Forceless Spontaneous Release or FSR—this is also called yin tui na)  of Janice Walton-Hadlock and her PD Recovery team at Five Branches Traditional Asian Medicine Clinic in Santa Cruz, California (read the two free downloadable books at www.pdrecovery.org).

However, I have taken too many PD drugs (although I put up a campaign of resistance!) to go to Janice’s program in Santa Cruz.  In February of 2008, I made email overtures to the program—having read the two books—but they have amended their policy and no longer accept PDers who have taken any anti-PD meds (so called Dopamine-Enhancing Drugs—DEDs) for more than three weeks. 

This posting will list some of my thoughts about what mainstream neurological medicine claims to be mystified about: causes of PD.

For me, the foot injury that Janice W-H asserts is the root cause of a person’s PD (Yes, this sounds  strange—but READ THE BOOKS!!) probably happened to me at birth by sloppy handling by the obstetrician—thus I want to consider birth trauma as a cause of pd.  (More on this in coming posts.)

Here, then, is a partial list of some sources (I think) of my PD—these are ideas I will take up in future postings:

1.     unhealed foot injury

2.     toxic womb (alcohol and cigarettes)

3.     birth trauma

4.     lack of maternal nurturing—especially breast feeding, skin-to-skin contact, rhythmic activities such as rocking and singing, isolation

5.     emotional abuse in infancy (first three years of life)—which put the right and left amygdalas (important brain centers) on overload and prevented the proper growth of connective nerves in the corpus callosum

6.     “karma” from former lives

7.     unresolved traumatic deaths in former lives

8.     great fear and hurt in my mother (absorbed by me)

9.     being an “emotional empath”—absorbing others’ pain without good boundaries

10.                        ancestral problems passed down on both father and mother lines

11.                         wearing out my sympathetic nervous system (adrenaline based)—stuck in fight-or-flight

12.                         weakness in the limbic system

13.                         reversed stomach meridian (see Janice W-H’s work)

14.                         impaired gall bladder meridian putting the parasympathetic nervous system out of action (switching off the substantia nigra brain nucleus that makes dopamine—again see Janice W-H’s work)

15.                         habits of self-stimulation and self-isolation that lead to joylessness

16.                         other physical trauma to my body—head, jaw, neck, organ injuries

17.                         a dangerous lower back condition called a spondylosthesis (a gap between Lumbar 2 and 3 vertebrae) which occurred at birth—again from that sloppy obstetrician!

18.                         A lifetime of medical issues—“nervous breakdowns,” cluster headaches, a “bad back,” one kidney stone, polyp surgery to remove a large benign polyp from my sigmoid colon

19.                         dental mercury (a lot—now removed—but did its removal put mercury in my brain?)

20.                         other heavy metal toxicity

21.                         other exposure to environmental toxins

22.                         feeling and acting inhibited all my life—living in my head, being a “good boy,” finding it hard to be rhythmic

23.                         having a closed off heart (see the work of Janice W-H)

24.                         other causes I am discovering day by day…

I think that’s enough for now, dear reader, thanks

Bardo Mountjoy