When it was over I asked the nurse if any of her patients had ever reported having a spiritual experience. She replied that apart from tingling on their skin or spots in front of their eyes, nothing, really. I had just been through an MRI, magnetic resonance imaging, to get an accurate image of what is going on with my brain. Nothing grave, I'm sure, but they want to make sure that the benign tumour on my pituitary gland is really shrinking so that it doesn't return to wreak havoc on my system.
As a person of faith I always try to go into these experiences praying. So, lying on my back, as I was being inserted into the machine I was focussing all my attention on God as I conceive him and in ways that I still cannot conceive him. Despite the weird electronic noises the machine was making-sometimes I felt like I was lying on the dance floor of a techno club-I didn't find this at all difficult.
Something else was happening. I was awake but also aware of being in a rather different dimension, surrounded by light, joy, peace and love and I saw different people standing with me. I melted into the most sublime sense of joy and resignation to beauty and was aware of tears falling down my face. This continued during much of the session, and I never once felt bored, disturbed or restless. I actually did get a little rest, much needed given how poorly I slept last night. These early morning medical appointments can really mess with your sleep.
At the end of the session, as the nurse and I were talking-she was young, twenty-something-I mentioned also to her what an inspiration my mother was to me. During my adolescence when she was in and out of hospital for a while, and years later as she was dying of cancer she always put others ahead of her. She remained cheerful, warm, friendly and kind to others throughout, regardless of what she herself was going through. I will never forget this and to this day I try to emulate her. The nurse seemed intrigued by this and mentioned how glad she is to hear things like this, given how self-focussed everyone seems to be these days. We live in a very superficial culture, she said. Did I say that she is in her twenties?
I have to agree with her. My generation, the Boomers, seem to have raised a brood of entitled, spoiled, self-obsessed little cowards, at the worst, though their are people of that generation who also inspire me with their altruism and their generous idealism (did I mention that my nurse is in her twenties?), so I think one should be careful about over-generalizing. And really, my generation was probably not one bit better when we were young, and now that we are all headed towards the death zone I feel sometimes ashamed to see how deplorable many of us are.
I do wonder how much blame can be assigned to our absolute dependence these days on information technology. That many of us are so focussed on phones and laptops and social media that some basic social skills and standards of courtesy have gone to the landfill. I think this is pretty likely. We are becoming less and less able to really coexist in a way that is friendly or mutually courteous and respectful as we become increasingly self-involved, tuning out everything and everyone in our surroundings. I think this is of concern because this is not how we are wired nor how we evolved. Our natural inclination is towards cohesion and co-operation, but this seems to have been co-opted by our equally natural tendency towards selfish individualism.
My challenge to us, this week, Gentle Reader, is that each day, we make an effort, one small solitary effort, to summon forth the better angels of our nature and of those around us. It begins by being simply aware of the person standing or seated next to you.
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