Patients
The Division Between Mind and Body
The greatest delusion of the human race is the division between mind and body.
How a person thinks about their body is a direct reflection of how they think and feel about themselves.
This is because the body is in itself the whole person, but the mind thinks in terms of “my body” as though there are two of us. This is the root cause of all destructive and unnatural behaviour.
The body craves exact foods to nurture and sustain life. The displaced and unfeeling state called mind, craves the substances that damage the body, increasing numbness and further mind from body displacement. The displaced or detached mind causes this same havoc and perversion in all the simplest acts of living.
To think from a displaced mind, towards the secondary object “our body,” creates a numbing in the body and a further displacement between what we have imagined to be “these two parts of us.” Without feeling the effects of this destructive, unnatural thinking from within ourselves as a body, we lack the essential felt response required to stop it and so the behaviour continues.
The greatest delusion of the human race is this displaced sense of ourselves as an entity separate from the reality of the living, breathing, feeling and thinking organism. Only this displaced mechanism of thought can think or act destructively. The body has no natural function that is destructive. It operates from an alert felt sensitivity rather than a restricted thought sensitivity. This inherent natural intelligence renders it incapable of destructive behaviour.
The function of feeling is the bodies’ alone. Displaced thought is numb to the body and therefore numb to feeling. The impact one must feel to promote change is beyond the capabilities of thought alone. Change is an organic occurrence within the living organism.
Change occurs as a response to the impact the “whole being feels” when behaviour, at any level, is displaced and is therefore destructive and unnatural. It is this, the total act of feeling and not the partial act of willful thinking that promotes change. Change is by nature spontaneous and requires the total act of feeling to come about. This is real meditation.
Two aspects of thinking
Incorrect thinking
When thought is born of memories it is not born of fact, the reality of life today. It is born of old stories, of other thoughts in fact. There is a total separation or disassociation from the facts of life as it is: therefore there is no possibility of recognizing and understanding the truth of yourself and life each day.
Notice the strange effect of thinking born of memories, of yesterday. There is only interpretation of the facts of yourself, your life and others today. Bias, opinions and beliefs build a psychological barrier between you and the reality. There is no interest in the facts as they are, only in manipulating the facts for your own ends. This is the root cause of confusion and isolation.
Correct thinking
Notice, when you think only in response to the factual circumstances at hand, or when thinking comes from the felt sense in the body (rather than from the bias of your memories). That thinking is the expressed understanding of life each moment. Such thinking is not separate or disassociated from the immediate reality of life, there is only interest in what is real, regardless of what it may reveal. Such thinking dissolves all confusion and isolation and is in itself sustainable clarity.
Instead of living your life as it is each day you think about it. Thereby you postpone living and life passes by whilst you are thinking about it. Just live your life. When you walk, just walk. Don’t walk and think about it. Just walk and you’ll experience life. Be alive. When you drive (apart from mechanical thought necessary for the act of driving) don’t think outside of the immediate circumstance and you’ll experience life in acute awareness. When meditating don’t concern yourself with any thought or technique, just experience yourself, the living organism, alive with sensations and in that moment you are in the truth of yourself. Anything more than this is not the real, it is not meditation.
Life is the real. Your thoughts and words chattering about it are why you are numb, insensitive or confused. Out of that confusion you think and worry about yourself. Which of course gets you no-where. To understand yourself and life, just live with it, as it is. Whether responding to your environment or quietly alone, experience yourself in and as the very sensations, the vibrating life in you the body – the living breathing organism. Thought arising from this, the reality of life, is correct thinking. This is to live in spontaneous, dynamic understanding.
Patient Advocate Ninja
Quick quiz…after you get a truly great doctor and fantastic medical coverage, what one thing do you still need to insure your safety in a hospital? Think about it. Are you going in for a hip replacement, new elbow or knee? Likely you’ll be knocked out and have a few hours in recovery. If it is a big deal you may be staying a few nights in the hospital and maybe up to a week in a rehabilitation facility. Give up? You’re going to need a Patient Advocate Ninja.
Think of Mr. ‘T’ in scrubs. Start lining up a full blown body guard with nursing background and a touch of Sherlock Holmes. Maybe your third grade teacher will do (mine could stop a clock). Bottom line, you’re going to need someone to fight for your rights, guard your stuff and check your meds while you are drifting off to La-la-land. Maybe the next time I get sick I will simply hire the cast of the Chippendale dancers and check into the Biltmore Hotel. It will be cheaper, better service and with a much improved disposition of staff.
I have ‘graduated’ from every new age, self-help, religious and motivational program ever invented (yes, ‘sucker’ is written on my forehead). Tony, Jack, Werner, Brian, Napoleon, and Norman; I love you guys. Yet NONE of it prepared me for what lay ahead lurking in the hallways of our great healing institutions after Visiting Hours. I was, it seems, an educated, well-rounded, lightly basted renaissance sitting duck.
I was paralyzed from the waist down in 30 minutes by a rare neuro-immune disease. The shock of losing use of my legs was NOTHNG compared to the shock of losing my dignity, and darn near my life, by bumbling staff who apparently never took Economics 101. You know, the part where the patient’s payment pays your salary. Ergo: a) don’t treat the patient with disdain and b) don’t kill them off or they will stop paying your wages.
From first hand reports I hear, very few hospital are prepared for the patient load. Maybe the bean counters decided one nurse could actually care for 10 or more patients at a time. But speaking as one of those it’s a bad idea. I was given drugs improperly bringing on shock. I was asked repeatedly to get up and use the commode. Read the chart Art, if I could walk I’d get up and leave.
This from an article on the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (aacn.org): The ANA, which worked closely with Sen. Inouye’s office on the bill, lobbied for this legislation (nurse-patient ratio laws) to protect patients and registered nurses, given the absence of enforceable standards for nurse staffing in hospitals and the widespread practice of health care facilities stretching their nursing staff with unsafe patient loads, mandatory overtime, “floating” to specialty units without training and orientation and other practices that undermine the delivery of safe, quality care.
Speaking of floating, another time my bladder was not monitored, until it was at near fatal levels pushing toward kidney failure. I was of course blamed for not telling the staff I felt bloated. ‘My bad!” However in all fairness to me, I am…what was that long word on my chart that apparently no one can read… PARALYZED. FYI to the staff, strangely enough for some folks (moi), paralyzed means cannot feel anything. “I know, perhaps while I monitor my bladder, blood levels, fluid intake and out take I could manage your Mutual Fund Portfolio. I am such a slacker laying here with all this free time just wasted away in Marguerita-Morphine-Ville.” Yish!
Add to that being given the wrong pills. Oh, did I mention the infection on my arms from too many IVs? The night doctor said ice packs, the day doctor said heating pads. What to do? I used ice packs based on the fact that the night doctor was nicer. and cuter. (So sue me for sexual harassment; I was on death’s door. I cared?) And I was robbed (okay, it was only 4 Godiva candy bars @$4 a pop, but it wasn’t like I could jump in a car and go get more, was it?) And what goes better with morphine than chocolate?
I was misdiagnosed for the first two days. Fortunately I had a friend from my church who was a doctor who came to my rescue. He urged the hospital to get a neurologist. Once there the pleasant neuro-chappie diagnosed my condition in 5 minutes, thus saving my legs, so I can now walk. (LISTEN TO ME: Get these Patient Advocate Ninja people lined up in advance folks, you may need them.)
But what to do if you are in a strange place when all this occurs? Fortunately there is a movement afoot called the National Patient Advocate Foundation and they have a companion organization the Patient Advocate Foundation. These fine folks are for hire to help patients. This from their mission statement:
National Patient Advocate Foundation (npaf.org) is a national non-profit organization providing the patient voice in improving access to, and reimbursement for, high-quality health care through regulatory and legislative reform at the state and federal levels. NPAF translates the experience of millions of patients who have been helped by our companion, Patient Advocate Foundation (Patientadvocate.org), which provides professional case management services to individuals facing barriers to healthcare access for chronic and disabling disease, medical debt crisis and employment-related issues at no cost.
The NPAF and PAF is a great start, but let me tell you, you’re going to want to line up someone who can come with you into your room. A person who can watch your back when you’re, well, flat out on that back. This might be a good time to befriend a linebacker or a Harley rider, just saying.
I am not insinuating that all nurses are Nurse Ratched and all doctors are from TV’s “Nip Tuck”, but it only takes one bad apple to ruin a really pleasant hospital stay (and life).
Sally Franz is an award winning humor writer, with accolades from Jonathan Winters, Jayne Meadows, and Mark Victor Hansen. She has two daughters and two grandchildren. She lives in NC. She is a Transverse Myelitis survivor and an advocate for patients: believing they have rights, deserve dignity and should have ready access to medical information.
