Do you ever wonder where people go when they’re “not all there”? They aren’t dead, but they aren’t here, either. My mom has strange episodes where she looks like she’s having a stroke, and even like she’s dead, but it’s really an electrical malfunction of her heart called supraventricular tachycardia or SVT. Her heart beats so fast it can’t pump blood to her brain which, of course, causes all sorts of problems.
One solution is to shock her heart back into a normal rhythm by getting her upset. We put ice cubes on her face. She hates that. Or we yell that the ambulance is coming, which she hates even more. So far, some part of her mind eventually responds.
But Mom is in memory care and explaining this to the staff isn’t easy because, when an episode happens, they want to make her comfortable instead of angry. Or they freak out.
“She died!” they’ll whisper. “She did! She died!” And, in a manner of speaking, I guess that’s true. The last time it took her three hours to come back. Where did she go? Did she cross over to the other side? Or did she visit the same place we go when we scroll Facebook, read the news, or stay upset with someone about something?
Aren’t our brains also on “off” when we do? Isn’t that just another way of being dead?
The Course tells us: “All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening. … This is a pathetic way of trying not to know by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual.” (CE.T.8.8.4:2&4)
Most of us don’t have SVT. Yet, how many times do we die and come back every day?