Page 63 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

Carita s ProC esses: e xT e n si o n of Ca r aT iv e f a CT o r s
fullest universal infinite sense developed in the philosophy of Levinas
(1969) and explored in my 2005 text Caring Science as Sacred Science.
Bringing Love and Caring together this way invites a form of deep
transpersonal caring. The relationship between Love and Caring cre-
ates an opening/alignment and access for inner healing for self and
others. While health may be considered to represent expanding con-
sciousness, Love is the highest level of consciousness and the great-
est source of all healing in the world. This connection with Love as a
source for healing extends from the individual self to nature and the
larger universe, which is evolving and unfolding. This cosmology and
worldview of Caring and Love—Caritas—is both grounded and meta-
physical; it is immanent and transcendent with the co-evolving human
in the universe (Watson 1999, 2004a).
It is when we include and bring together Caring and Love in our
work and our lives that we discover and affirm that nursing, like teach-
ing, is more than a job. It is a life-giving and life-receiving career for a
lifetime of growth and learning. It is maturing in an awakening and an
awareness that nursing has much more to offer humankind than sim-
ply being an extension of an outdated model of medicine and medical-
techno-cure science. Nursing helps sustain human dignity and human-
ity itself while contributing to the evolution of human consciousness,
helping to move toward a more humane and caring moral community
and civilization.
As nursing more publicly and professionally asserts these positions
from a Caring Science context for its theories, ethics, and practices,
we are invited to relocate ourselves and our profession away from a
dominant medical science mind-set. Further, we are asked to recon-
nect nursing’s disciplinary source to its noble heritage, within both an
ancient and an emerging cosmology—a cosmology that invites and
welcomes the energy of universal caring and love back into our lives
and world. Such thinking calls forth a sense of reverence and sacred-
ness with regard to our work, our lives, and all living things. It incorpo-
rates art, science, and spirituality as they are being redefined.
As we enter into a maturing of Caring Science and evolved Caritas
Processes as a professional-theoretical map and guide, we are simulta-
neously challenged to relocate ourselves in these emerging ideals and

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