Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/610464
and affected the whole-human level of consciousness. When someone's whole consciousness breaks down, we can feel they have disappeared. But have they? at depends, of course, on how we define "self." Reimagining Self I n everyday life we experience our- selves as a continuous "I." A combi- nation of our experiences, memories and personality, we seem to remain constant over time. We find it difficult to think of ourselves in any other way. Yet people with advanced Alzheimer's lose this sense of continuous self, oen not recognizing them- selves or anyone around them. ey experience each moment as new. In the philosophy of panpsychism, the self experiences each mo- ment as new not only be- cause the moment is new, but because the self is new in each moment. Not a static entity moving through time and space gathering experiences, the self develops out of a collection of expe- riences linked together over time—a process. Although this concept seems new, we experience it every day, for who can say exactly when we change from baby to child, or from unlined to wrinkled? Life constantly moves and changes. e "I" that I experience in this moment becomes the "I" of the new moment looking back at the "I" of the past moment. My "self " rec- ognizes the current moment and all of the related past moments as if it were one entity, one self. Memory gathers all of the past moments into a cohesive story. Advanced Alzheimer's patients lose their ability to experience their conti- nuity of self because of memory loss. ey become a body experiencing a collection of random past memories and experiences with no sense of uni- ty. is loss of cohesion prompted my friend Sarah to ask, "Where is she?" when interacting with her mother. She feels the loss of her mother's continu- ous and unified sense of self. Yet, while experiencing someone with Alzheimer's as "not all there," we do still acknowledge that some aspect of his or her "self " remains. We feel instinctively that humans are made of more than the memory of experiences. Again, panpsychism guides us by em- phasizing our interconnection. Interconnected Beings H umans seem to experience each other as individual bubbles run- ning around interacting with other bubbles. We feel like discrete entities that can't know what others experi- ence on the "inside" and that can't be understood from the "outside." With an Alzheimer's patient we think "I" am relating to "her" as a separate enti- ty. Yet, as described above, we are not really individual entities, souls sep- arate from bodies. We are processes, part of a whole cosmos of interdepen- dent processes. Much like not being able to tell when we officially change from babies to children, we can't clearly tell where each process that makes up the cos- mos begins and ends. Although our skin seems to be a pretty clear marker of the outside of our self, we depend on the larger processes that form us. Without the process of air interacting with the cells in our lungs, without the processes of all the microscopic organ- isms that compose our digestive tract and digest the food we consume, and without the process of sunlight helping plants grow to produce the food we eat and the oxygen we breathe, we would not have a self. We need to take a step back from our self-bubble to see how everything intertwines. Our individ- ual processes are formed in the larger process of cosmos. Whether you name it God, Allah or Brahman, or Ground of Being, Is- ness or Self, this cosmic consciousness connects everything. Because our cells radiate with this same consciousness, we really are the cosmos. New Possibilities A lzheimer's patients, too, are the cosmos. Sarah and her mother remain deeply connected at this lev- el. Even aer her mother dies and her conscious cells return to the larger cosmic process, Sarah can continue to connect with her mother through the cosmic consciousness all around her. What comfort and meaning might she find if she senses her mother in a beautiful tree or feels her with every in-breath, or if she finds peace in their deep intercon- nection through the consciousness in their cells? Remembering that the process of evolution forms us, Sarah can even ap- preciate the force of creation she holds in the midst of her mother's physical decline. As intertwined processes, Sar- ah can co-create both herself and her mother. She can free herself from her isolation and wondering about where her mother has "gone" by actively cre- ating their unfolding connection in this very moment. She has the power to free herself from any fixed ideas of her mother from the past and let go of stagnant images of herself as "daugh- ter." She can ask, "What don't I yet know about my mother?" "What does it mean to be a daughter, anyway?" or "Who do I want to be now?" Panpsychism gives us the gi of an ongoing and deep interconnection that never ends. A vibrant and creative process, it shows us how to find trans- formation and growth, even in the midst of disease and decline. —Lora Wedge, spiritual director, holis- tic healing practitioner and former hos- pice worker founded Live Fully Studio. Because of the modern obsession with objectivity, we don't value what we can't measure, and we don't know how to measure consciousness. december/january 2016 27