Page 267 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

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
Part of this meaning-making quest for a greater depth of life-
death and our place within it is related to an awakening: awakening
to the fact that we are Spirit made whole in physical manifestation.
As Teilhard de Chardin noted, we are not just physical beings having
a spiritual experience; rather we are spiritual beings having a physi-
cal experience. This perspective now converges with language such as
manifest and non-manifest field of existence. This view of awakening
seeks to honor the unknown, the unseen as much as the seen, often
realizing the illusion of what we think we know and see of the physi-
cal plane to not be true reality. Just as in exploring deeper dimensions
of suffering, we learn that what we perceive as suffering, at one level,
is our own congealing and freezing of the divine flow of life energy; in
other words, not being in flow with natural laws of nature and natural
timeless rhythm of all things in the universe; the seasons, the tides, the
cycles of time and existence; the coming-into-being of living creatures
and the passing-out-of-being on physical plane existence, be it human
or other living things. Everything is constantly changing and deepen-
ing our understanding of this mystery of life, coming and going in our
midst, including our own.

prepariNg for our owN deatH

When you see and accept the impermanent nature of all life forms,
A strange sense of peace comes upon you.
tollE (2003:105)

Another final human task we all share, which intersects with the
nature of caring-healing work, is coming face-to-face in preparing
for our own death. As the sages say, without honoring death, we are
not fully alive. Indeed, in the cosmic sense again, we are dying every
moment, in that with each breath we experience the miracle of life
and the precious, yet delicate, nature of how we are held in the hands
of that which is greater than us. And at a deeper metaphysical or met-
aphorical level or within Native American cosmology or any indig-
enous belief system, death is not the end, it is a continuation of the
sacred wheel of life. And as the expression goes: Who is to say that life
is not death, and death is not life. And we certainly glimpse situations

239