Days 304-305 - States of Consciousness

"Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream?" - John Keats

   Long before Keats wrote the above line, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle all posed the notion that all of life is a dream. After all, how can we truly tell whether we are awake or asleep or in some other state of consciousness if, in each state, we think we are living in reality?

   Caregivers have more of an opportunity to observe this than perhaps any other group. Patients enter hospitals, hospices and nursing homes with widely different states of consciousness. The experience of institutionalization is likely to send them through an even wider ranging journey. 

   Drugs that relieve pain also bend our perceptions. Pain itself fogs the lens through which we view the world. Patients nearing death frequently describe seeing people who "aren't there."

   The power of this point for caregivers is the need to respect these varying states of consciousness and to honor them as true for each patient. Unfortunately, many are frightened by the unusual states exhibited by people in altered states. Their fear may cause them to ridicule the schizophrenic hearing voices and to demean the demented.

   Perhaps the most crucial gift of the caregiver is to honor the continuing humanity of the patient in their care, regardless of that patient's state of consciousness. When the patient is degraded, so is the caregiver. When the patient is honored and respected, so is the caregiver.

   There are way too many times in my long career when I have failed to follow my own advice. I have caught myself sitting in judgment on a man suffering from alcoholism or a four hundred pound patient struggling to move in her hospital bed. As children, we grow up in environments where being different is ridiculed. 

   It takes God's Love to remind us that we are all children of Love. It takes this same Love to help us understand that life may, in fact, be a dream. 

   All of us will arrive in a different consciousness tonight as we enter sleep. For all we know, we may wake up in a hospital bed with a stroke, suddenly shaping a prayer that the person caring for us will appreciate that we may have lost our speech, but not our humanity. 

-Rev. Erie Chapman 

Comments

[Edwin Loftin]

Thank You.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1369037609]

How beautifully said; we don't know the state we will be in when we become ill and I hope that I receive a caregiver with an open mind, and heart...

[~liz Wessel]

Upon reading today’s meditation, two thoughts come to my mind… the first is compassion, the deep abiding compassion that flows so lovingly through these lines. The second is threshold… I am reminded of the many thresholds we cross between our waking hours and sleep, work and personal life, life and death.
What counts most is how we cross. Are our hearts awakened or desensitized in complacency? Do we cross with reverence for the sacredness of life or cross deadened to what is real? Do we recognize and affirm our common bond of humanity or do we shrink away in the illusion that we are separate and alone?
How we cross matters. A good friend of mine has a loved one who is on a threshold between life and death. I expressed to her my feelings, for me this is an excruciatingly difficult time. The waiting, and the agonizing pain of watching our loved one slowly slip away…Yet in these painful times I have felt a Love force so strong and beautiful, it was palpable and beyond all doubt.

P.S. I like the vivid colors of the painting, fascinating.

[erie chapman]

Thank you Edwin, Victoria and Liz. You three are examples of God's Love in this world.

[Karen York]

We are so stuck in the "literal reality" of deadlines, paper, computers, traffic, blah..blah...blah... we fail to open ourselves to these levels of consciousness in ourselves and others. I have been thinking about this meditation for two days and fall short of anything to add, except that I am in utter awe at the complexities of the human spirit.

[Diana Gallaher]

I love that you are reminding us to respect others in all circumstances.

My mother has dementia and her sleep is often interrupted at night. One night this week, she would call for me by calling for "Elizabeth." Her name is Elizabeth. My mother calling for me by calling out her own name has struck me in a way that I cannot describe. It is sad at one level, humorous at another. But I think mostly it makes me feel so deeply connected to my mother - at some level she and I are one.

[Marianna]

This posting for me was touching and beautiful. It is so often that I take care of the patients described in this posting…the alcoholic who comes to the hospital to get sober, but yet leaves the next day to get drunk again, the homeless patient who yells at me to get him/her another blanket. Yet through all of these situations it is a poem like this that helps remind me that we are never to judge another human being for the choices they have made or the way they decide to act at that very moment.
Like it says in the posting we need to respect these varying states of consciousness and not be frightened, because this may in fact cause us to ridicule and judge.