Page 226 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

fr om carative fa c to r 10 t o C ar it as ProC e s s 10
other. This is the noble work for humanity itself within an ancient
and noble profession; it aligns nursing with its true mission of sustain-
ing humanity from within and without the medical system. This new
evolved form of nursing can be considered Caritas Nursing, Energy
Nursing, Transpersonal Nursing, Holistic Nursing, Contemplative
Nursing, and so on. Whatever it is named, it goes beyond ordinary
nursing and sets a new and higher standard of excellence for caring,
healing, and peace in the world.
Lee Kaiser, a health futurist and visionary, has said that “nurses of
the future will be hired because of their caring consciousness” (Kaiser
personal communication, 1989). The level of development of Caritas
Nursing described in this book gives new meaning to his projections.
Whatever this evolved nurse/nursing is called, it offers a hopeful
paradigm and vision for humanity, for health, for humans and all liv-
ing things, for a living planet and universe in which we are co-creating
our own destiny and future. This is the ultimate future for nurses’ full
contribution to society. As nursing enters this new, deep transforma-
tive field of Caritas practices, we each enter an entirely different new
world for the new millennium unfolding before us.
This Caritas Consciousness evolution also requires a new language:
an alchemical, transformative, nonmedical, nonclinical language.
Caring/Love/Caritas is not sentimental but taps into our connection
with the infinite field of healing Love. It is not that we dismiss the
overt outer world and its empirical, clinical, technical language; it is
that we realize that the two different language systems vibrate at a dif-
ferent level. We are at a point in our human and disciplinary maturity
that we can admit and embrace new languages of beauty, poise, grace,
charm, mercy, miracles, mystery, and so on. We need language and
discourses that vibrate at a higher frequency, that stretch us into new
depths of meaning, new evocative understandings, metaphors, myths,
stories, and wise images that conventional, outer technical worlds and
words cannot convey but that are needed to touch the deeply human
dimensions of our world.
The word “Nurse” may be one such word with paradoxical vibra-
tions. It operates in both the overt and subtle energetic worlds and
words. It is more established and developed in the overt material model

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