Page 257 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

H EaltH , HEa l in g , H um an i ty , a nd HE a rt - c En t ErEd Kn o w i n
H uma n ExP Er i E ncE s: HE a l t H , HE a l in g , a n d C a r i t a s N ur s iN g g
Thus, the emerging models no longer adhere to a conventional “phys-
icalistic” orientation to health, to illness, to life, to death.
Health and wholeness and illness and disease can operate simul-
taneously. Each can be experienced as an opportunity to return home
to one’s core essence and center, to what is most important for one’s
being and learning through the illness, to gain energy and balance
from one’s source and inner center, to return/repattern to the healing
and wholeness awaiting as a vibrating possibility for self/other, open
to unknowns, the mystery, the miracles.
Within this emerging awareness of a deeper, more meaningful
approach to life and healing and wholeness, beyond disease per se,
nursing and health care professionals are challenged from within and
without to respond to a higher/deeper dimension of caring and heal-
ing that draws upon the richest sources of their own humanity. Thus,
nursing is experiencing a crossroads of awakening to a new order
for a new era of human health history. Nurses are now challenged
to bring their full self, their human presence of caring and healing,
into moments with others. Nurses in this model of Caritas Nursing
are invited and expected to engage in self-care practices that elevate
their consciousness, that open their hearts and higher chakra fields of
energy whereby they realize that they are the field, they are the envi-
ronment, they are affecting the entire energetic field that radiates out
to the larger universe, they are affecting the totality of health care. The
universal, infinite field of energy of Cosmic Love (Levinas 1969) and
nursing’s access to this field for self and other have profound implica-
tions for the future of nursing and human health care worldwide.

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