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A recent post contained these words, bringing back fresh memories: "..........you are so right. We really are all victims with this > terrible > disease." We have every right to experience the world as we choose, and all of our attitudes are good teachers. Most of my life I have viewed the world as a difficult place to be. PD has given me a helping hand in approaching my spiritual goal of peace and joy through unity with God and others. I would like to share a post I sent to a friend in pain. This was not, I hasten to add, intended as a come on as I am 59 and coming up on anniversary 42, and the recipient was a young lady I know face to face from meetings we both attend. She is younger than my daughters. She shared in a post to me about very painful and depressing events in her life, then concluded her post with a question that promted my response. ,She asked this question: "Share with me what you have learned about abundance through time?" This was my answer: I have learned that illness, financial problems, lost loved ones, and anger which seems directed at me, can all be turned into opportunities to gently allow my ego to rant and rave at the world and my misfortune in it, while the Love part of me chuckles with gentle compassion before returning to focus upon its need for expression. Last year Parkinson's came along and in the aftermath of final diagnosis it said, "Guess what, pal, you thought with all that healthy eating and running you could feel good forever. Well I've got news for you. Here I am, your worst nightmare, a disease that has never been stopped in its progression in all the annals of medical literature. You see that fellow in the wheel chair with no facial expression, well that's you in a few years." I experience months of numbing depression, isolating emotionally and drifting in my work and other commitments. I think it was my wife's vasculitis attack and her months of treatment that started me back to the light. I might well still be wallowing in reaction the diagnosis, thinking frequently of ending my life before my term life insurance policy runs its course in a few more years. For months I believed (as people in depression do), that she would be better off that way, unburdened by caretaking me, with the bonus of being financially secure. I was breathing air that should have been going to someone more deserving. Somewhere along the line I opened my eyes once again to the presence of love, in me, around me, everywhere, the awakening born of such mental pain that it forced me to finally stopped talking, thinking about, and discussing living in the now as I have done for 15 years on the spiritual path, and to really began to live in the NOW. And guess what? All I found in NOW was Love. Right NOW I am thinking about you and nothing else. I'm recounting my recent pain in order to reach out and touch your pain. And in this moment I see that you are not some ancient image you have of yourself, or a shadow in my vision born of fear, you are Love responding to an unconditional invitation from my Love to join together in a dance that can only grow more beautiful in its rhythm. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Well, unless we can move fearlessly we will inevitably have moments where we seem to step on each other's toes in anxious self consciousness. I have learned that in awakening to the presence of Love, the dance is all that is real, and it is so perfect that we will be ultimately unmindful of our clumsy steps along the way. So you can see the gift that Parkinson's has given me, for, as it slowly takes away the passions of my body, I am left me with a final and priceless message; in the world of time every moment is precious. Parkinson's wakes me every morning with physical reminders that I can only be happy when I stay out of the marathons of yesterday and the wheel chairs of tomorrow. It teaches me, finally, that I can love without limit in any moment I chose to let go of fear, and no moment is so cheap that I should casually waste a single one on resentments and self pity. Can a stay focused on loving in the now every moment? No, I slip frequentlyb, but not for long, and not long enough to touch my gratitude to Parkinson's for introducing me to Now. Love Chuck