Jul 01, 2015

Pondering’s

 

Alzheimer’s Disease

 

I have spent some time over the years thinking about the severity of memory loss and loss of motor control that this dreaded disease brings, watching my beloved sister-in-law apparently dwindle as time marched on, before ending her physical life after years have gone by. Maureen’s story is repeated thousands of time in our communities as life is extended, and Maureen was one of the fortunate ones to be able to remain physically close to her family and receive excellent home 24-hour care to prevent common problems like bedsores, etc., and to receive daily love from her beloved family. This physical connection eases the pain on the family and permits close response at those times when some lucidity is present, easing all involved, including the person with this disease.

 

 

But there may be another side to this story that if thought about carefully, could ease some of the pain suffered by the observers of the disease, watching their beloved one ‘vanish’ before their eyes into a vacant stare and seemingly lost state that precedes the passing of the person from this physical life.

 

When I have studied the human life, and what makes us different from all other life on this planet, I have come to appreciate more and more the expression of Teilhard de Chardin: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. We are first and foremost a spiritual being, a direct expression of God, made in the “Image of God“, (Genesis 1:27) a being whose foremost characteristic is to express ourselves and to know that we are unique in the universe. Can the loss of the use of our body, even if the body remains but the brain stops most communication with the body, prevent the spiritual side of our being, that part that makes each of us unique in the universe from being expressed and free?

 

I believe that the body can not hold back the spiritual side of very being, and that if we look carefully at the three parts of our being, 1) the body and brain, 2) the mind and consciousness, and 3) the soul, we can see how the spiritual side of our creation has far greater influence on our internal state of being than does the state of the body.

 

Transitioning from this life

 

The Course in Miracles, a 365-day work designed to bring one to be aware of God in our every day life over the period of a year, which both Eileen and I follow, stated the case beautifully on the day of Maureen’s funeral: Day 163, June 12: “There is no death. The Daughter of God is free“. This placement is not an accident, but a synchronicity of events, caused by the Spirit of Maureen and the world around her. This crossing of the stars, so to speak, brought me to the understanding deep in my heart that death and life are one continuous stream, never ending. Maureen passed and we celebrated her resurrection in freedom with the words: There is no death. The daughter of God is Free. But what about those many months, years, when it was only her body that held onto life, with the spirit and soul seemingly constrained by the physical body’s refusal to let go. Is the spirit constrained by what could be considered this unjust connection to the physical body? Can the physical body prevent the spirit, the soul, the consciousness, from moving on and joining with those beyond our physical awareness?

 

Or is it possible that as the body loses control of the connection between the body, mind, and spirit (the mind and the soul, which together create the conscious being I call “Me”, that is our consciousness) that more freedom is granted the various levels of spirit to interact more freely?

 

Body, (Brain), Mind, (Consciousness), Soul

 

As stated previously, Teilhard de Chardin put it clearly: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” This deep insight shifts the force of what occurs in our limited four dimensional universe in a bone-wrenching way: We are first and foremost a spiritual being, made in the infinite image of our God, and secondly a limited physical being, able to sense only a small portion of what is ours if we can find a way to see. I want to look briefly at the major components that comprise the makeup of the living, thinking , human being, that is first the body, second the brain, third the mind, then, fourth, that strange thing that we call consciousness, and finally the ultimate reality of our being, the soul.

 

The Body

 

The body is the vehicle built to nourish, protect, and carry the brain, and to be able to respond to what the brain and mind are deciding should be done. It has no other task, and we can see how helpless the body is when the brain ceases to communicate with the body in the disease of Alzheimer’s. The body is an input/output vehicle only; it provides nourishment (taste), provides data (sight, sound, touch), but by itself is unable to react to any of the surroundings. The body van be finely honed; it can be the vehicle whereby love and feelings can be expressed, it can be the vehicle by which future generations are created, it can do marvelous things indeed, but only in response to directions from the brain, mind and soul. To most of us, the body seems like the primary purpose of our existence, and we, in general, too often judge another by the appearance of the body.

 

The body is the first thing we see of another, even though with today’s means of communication that statement is not as accurate as it once was. But the appearance of the body, the outer shell of another, forms much of our opinion of another, and when a flaw appears in the body, including aging, our opinion and feelings towards the other shifts too often in the negative direction. This occurs despite the minimum impact the body has (or should have, if we respect ourselves) on the person who dwells in that body. Thus when we see the debilitated body of the person with dementia, unless we knew that person well before the illness, our opinion of the person is too often quite negative and we find ourselves repulsed by the appearance of the person. And too often only with our memory of the glory of that person can we overlook the outward effect of the illness on the body and see the glory of God that exists in this person. We forget that this person is created “In the Likeness of the Creator,” as stated in Genesis. Yes, even now, this person is in the “Likeness of the Creator“.

 

Something to Ponder.

 

The Brain

 

Ah, the brain. That three pound mass of interwoven cells that form the means of controlling the body, and the interface with our mind that moves us into the spheres of God, and together can create, with the aid of the body, works like Shakespeare wrote, or the beauty that Michelangelo wrought. What wonders this body of ours can create, when guided by this brain to perform actions unheard of before these events.

 

The brain has all the mechanisms to perform works of wonder, and when given the thought process of the mind forms the most formidable processing capability in the world. Wikipedia puts it this way: “In a typical human, the cerebral cortex (the largest part) is estimated to contain 15-33 billion (15,000,000,000 to 33,000,000,000) neurons, each connected by synapses to several thousand neurons”. This capability creates a truly massive parallel processing capability, operating in ways still not understood. Science understands quite well how the motion drivers and other mechanical parts of the brain operate through studies of the brain, but, despite all the claims, when pressed will admit that we do not have a clue how the brain operates in creating abstract thought, which includes such strong emotions as love, compassion, abstract mathematics, etc. etc.

 

The mind

 

The mind, as I define it here, is the mediator between the brain with it’s incredible reference capability, and our consciousness, that part which is in direct connection with the soul, and provides us with the exotic sensations that we are capable of reaching. The mind is thought of as having no particular location, but occupies the body as a whole. Those scientist who study the brain, and noting that areas of the brain show increased activity when presented by a person with a strong relationship appears, claim that only the brain is responsible for all that we do or think, but neurological specialists strongly disagree, since we do not understand what makes one person so capable of abstract thought, and another having other great strengths, say in the arts, with the same general areas of the brain showing increased activity in both cases. We have no idea how the feeling of joy and comfort arise when viewing a wonderful rainbow, or why such a feeling should even exist. After all, such abstract beauty does not bring in food or any physical result, other than pleasing the overall being, whatever that means.

 

The mind uses the brain to conduct its processing of the received data, and it is the brain that operates on the data that the mind furnishes that results in a given action, and any action beyond the “fight or flight” processes is determined by the mind operating through the brain into the body. It is the mind that decides whether to play ball with the kids, attend a meeting and getting involved in a project, read a book or watch television.

 

It is the mind that projects our aura, that shade of light that surrounds us at all times that some are able to see, and that sends off the ‘vibes’ that we sense when a person walks into a room or engages us in conversation. And it is our mind that senses that aura or ‘vibes’ of another that attract or repels us when meeting, whether we consciously know it or not. It is the power of the mind/brain that enables the wonder of thought alone providing the means for a paralyzed person to move, as has been recently demonstrated.

 

Consciousness

 

Consciousness: that spooky term that makes a Shakespeare, a saint, or just someone we love, despite all their apparent flaws. Consciousness, even more than the mind as I have defined it, makes a human, human. It is that creative spark in all of us, that ability for each of us to draw our separate conclusions even when given the same data. It is our consciousness that links us with our soul, enables us to communicate with our God, that lifts our beings with joy, that sees the good of God in our world, that delights in the sunset or the smile of the baby. It is with our consciousness we commune with our beings to others, that creates “love”, affection, and all the myriad delights of life that we experience.

 

Our consciousness separates us, even more than our mind, from all that exists in our world, that makes “me”, “Me”. Our consciousness brings us to see the world in a different way, it is the part of us that enables an Einstein to understand the universe in a new way, and makes us say, “I think, therefore I am”.

 

The Soul

 

The soul, or I should say the Soul, is that portion that is the “Image of God“, as stated in Genesis, and as stated being an image: an image is, by the dictionary, the “same as” or “equal” to the original, meaning that in some way we are equal to the Infinity that is God, is that part of us that is God within, or as Jesus put it, “The Kingdom of God that dwells within“. The soul forms our identity, “the me that is ME”, that link with God that expands us eternally, indeed that makes us eternal. Our soul has no physical boundary, expanding out infinitely in space without bound, linking with all other souls in ways most profound. Truly the soul is boundless in space and time, but in this physical incarnation is limited in what we can sense by the linkages described above: the soul communes with consciousness which communes with the mind which communes with brain which communes with the body.

 

Thus the body, which has a limited existence in time, forms the final link from our soul to what we can express to other incarnations of souls around us in this time frame, the narrow band of vibrations that we call our universe.

 

Alzheimer’s Disease

 

Dementia, that form of aging that destroys the brain bit by bit and breaks the bond between the mind and the body, destroys bit by bit that linkage that we, from the outside of the person, define as that person, breaking the forms of recognition and existence that we had come to know and love through many years of closeness.

 

But what about the linkages between the mind and the soul, our consciousness? Can any means weaken those linkages outside of our body? We know that when the body transits in what we call death, that the linkage between our body and brain to the rest of our being is broken, but the linkages that make me “me” that are with the mind (consciousness) and the soul continues, and we are released from the confines of the physical universe into the wonders of the infinite universe that we call God. But what happens when that linkage is frayed, weakened, and in most part destroyed by dementia or similar disease, but still has a tenuous foothold on the body? This weakness does not weaken our spiritual side, that is, our mind, our consciousness, and our soul; but releases the spiritual side from the binding of the confines of the physical body.

 

We are Free!

 

What I am stating here, is that the soul, the conscious part of our being, is released during this time to experience the bliss and the wonders of the “kingdom of God that lies within“, as Jesus stated. For my sister-in-law Maureen, it would mean uniting with her beloved soul mate, Tommy, and then with Bernadette when she passed into that existence. At the same time, her spirit is alive and aware of the love showered upon her by her family and friends when there is no outward sign of this awareness.

 

Thus I am saying that to the person in the long and slow transition stages that is part of Alzheimer’s is actually a period of awakening to the bliss of God, in a manner that is both painless and joyful. Maureen was aware of her beloved, her family and friends that had preceded her; all were present with her during this time, and it was but a small move from the final stage of letting the body go to full bliss of the kingdom of God.

 

Therefore we can look at this period of time as a long transition, one that usually happens in but moments but here in Alzheimer’s disease takes years, as a blessed chance to witness the crossing of existence from the limited world of physicality to the infinite world of the spirit. This is painful for us left in the physical world to watch, but perhaps not so painful to the one experiencing this event, as they move between the existence in the physical world to more and more existence in the world of the spirit, their (and our) true home for eternity.

 

Meditation

 

Eternal Creator, we give thanks for the life of Maureen, who showed us by the dignity and spirit that filled the presence of her life, what true humanity is supposed to represent. She was one who gave without thought, loved without limits, and showed us how to live a life beyond oneself. I believe that these past years when we have watched her mind and spirit withdraw from us that You were showing us how Love overcomes all events, and that her spirit joined with You, her Creator and her very Being, into a loving example of Life for all. We thank you for this rare example of Love that has been our privilege to know and love, and we ask but to be able to follow her example of acceptance and grace in life, wherever that leads. We are grateful for the privilege of knowing Maureen as a grace to our lives, and we are grateful for understanding that life has meaning in each moment, no matter what outside situations occur in health or life.