Nursing as an Aesthetic Praxis

By Marina Tucakovic Ph D.

Nursing as an Aesthetic Praxis is a work into how we be, approached through narratives of nursing. As an inquiry it is both phenomenological and metaphysical as they relate to being. Being is unfolded as a process by which and through which we create and recreate ourselves for the purpose of consciously knowing that which we already are. Dis-ease is positioned as one result of how we be in this process, that as an act of ongoing creation can be recreated. To come to this place of knowing is to begin to know Love. In this way, Nursing as an Aesthetic Praxis is really a love story, a story about a way to love that when known by nurses will enable nursing to be an art of healing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 8, 2005
• ISBN: 9781463469498

Marina Tucakovic Ph D.

Marina has over 30 years of experience in education and health care.  During former roles as a paediatric and adult intensive care clinician and educator Marina observed that clinical competency did not address staff retention issues.  As Chairperson for final year nursing students curricula initiatives were directed at how people experienced their world emotionally.   To this end Marina embarked on a study in 1996 to understand what now is commonly termed Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and what this meant in terms of nursing and being human.   The change from nursing evolved from the realisation that being was germane to all. Marina is now the Director of Emovere www.emovere.com.au a firm committed to evolving human consciousness.   She holds Bachelor Degrees in Applied Science and Education, a Masters of Nursing Science, a Doctorate in Philosophy and certificates in healing.

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Contents

Foreword

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Preface

Overview

Chapter 1: Paradigmatic position as process

Chapter 2: The Void: The human, Being as an empty vessel

Chapter 3: Aesthetics in Nursing

Chapter 4: Selfhood as Energy

Chapter 5: The ethics of health

Chapter 6: The Human-being, Creator Energy

Chapter 7: On Thought and Action in Nursing

Chapter 8: Beauty and the Body

Chapter 9: Body as Memory

Chapter 10: The aesthetic in practice and curriculum

Chapter 11: The body as temple

Chapter 12: Transformation through health care

Chapter 13: To love and to nurse

Chapter 14: Stories from the field

References/Bibliography

About the Author

Marina Tucakovic RN RM BAppSci (Adv.N) BEd MNS PhD

Director, Emovere, Wallington Australia. A company dedicated to helping people ‘live’ the theory in this book.

Website: www.emovere.com.au

Foreword

Some books are like people. You have to live with them and converse with them and grow through them. This book will evoke this level of possibility.

Marina has sought to unravel accepted notions of illness and healing in the search for a way to challenge the reader to begin to open to one's own position in health and illness as central. Given this realisation the implications are presented in a form that is both known and yet surprising. Most often texts with this focus are completed at the revelation of what matters being stated as love. This text is unique as it begins at this point and offers a way of thinking about love.

Recognising that we be love and that we create our lives and what we create will be reflected in physicality, in embodiment, sometimes requires a measured smile and a slow blink as we breathe in and out…perhaps someone in our training did actually mean to say this life is about love and so is illness but of course you have to come to that in due course.

This will be helpful in a practical sense for some readers as it is not uncommon for people to share that what has occurred for them as an event or what they have found meaningful concerns their new or renewed appreciation of love. How one engages in this moment of revelation matters. It is not easy to have the capacity to listen let alone enable the person to realize that you too have an inkling of what might be occurring.

However there is much more possible. If the reader is willing to move beyond thinking through what love might be as conversation or as an aesthetic in the more usual appreciation, Marina proposes that the reader conceive of how to be, if love is all. The depth in the originating argument is suddenly reignited and the reader once again has to consider if in fact love is a central force or in fact the only force or energy in life.

There is a provocative argument for authenticity in life in this text that rings true and intends to invite the best in us as a global community of human beings living in a cosmos both known and unknowable. You will not be invited to converse or consider at this level because inspired text simply is what is.

Marina’s heritage of an ancient culture has enabled her to convey the text with ease. Old cultures dreamed up these ways of being alongside ways of surviving and embodied the storylines at the level that we regard as genetic code or memory today. Hence this project is not developed by the formulation of modernist questions, but rather propositions of a timeless philosophical nature. She lightens the text with observations that read like asides in a play for instance observing wryly that we do seem to have to be willing to be challenged to live more fully.

The text does offer a detailed way to proceed if one is in the situation of seeking to align with the realisation that one's own thinking and vision of being is in part or wholly central to one's circumstances. While this argument and the stories that support this process are not novel, what is unique is the resonant quality of the stories embedded in Marina's revelation of her exploration and gradual gaining of insight in to the implication of this positioning of one's self.

There is a positioning of referred texts, some ancient and many modern, that will interest scholar’s consideration of such ideas and concerns. And there is a life affirming foundational narrative that reveals the authors own humanity through her appreciation of life as an aesthetic. This text reveals Marina’s ability as a respected teacher and nursing colleague. In this narrative she is a storyteller revealing how often deep and trusting life change occurs with ease because of the moment-to-moment concern and consideration another human being brings to what is occurring. This text will seem to be unique because the author has the heritage, wit and practice capacity clinically, and with Australian nurses in training reveals how she brings herself to be with those with whom she has cared.

The raw pleasure in being confronted with the edges in one’s own thinking and practice invites the reader to reconsider the foundations of one’s own being with what is so readily accepted day to day thinking and practice.

Is it possible to live and practice creatively as a professional in every moment and think beyond the edges of where our disciplines have defined the domains of our knowledge and philosophy? If we could claim a cosmological basis for practice would this uplift our insight and capacity to heal in practice? Marina's text reveals that such questions have not begun to scratch the surface of what is possible. At times in class and conferences, I have witnessed and felt such provocative questioning simultaneously excite, offend and provoke. In presenting this text Marina has offered colleagues and the community of scholars the opportunity to live with the thoughts and ideas thereby allowing a considered, even meditative appreciation of the depth of what she proposes.

It has made me a better person to have worked beside Marina. I live when I know life touches life. To find this we always have to push beyond what is known. What more is there?

Dr. Margaret C. Martin

Wellington, New Zealand

Dedication

To us all, the students, administrative and clinicians/academic staff who were drawn together as the Faculty of Nursing, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia 1990 - 1995.

Know, from the desire to make a difference - we did.

Acknowledgements

When creating a book the acknowledgement page is one of the last to be written. Until one arrives at this stage of their creation it is impossible to appreciate just how many people are brought forward to support one in undertaking such a project. I could write at least another three books about the people who came forward to support me. How those energies coalesced are stories within this great story.

I would tell you about the evening I consciously acknowledged how well I knew the feeling of unworthiness, I am the Queen of unworthiness I announced, I am not worthy of a PhD. The next morning Margi Martin appeared on my computer screen encouraging me to send my draft thesis to New Zealand for consideration of PhD candidature. She then agreed to undertake the supervision required to complete the work. This book is the result having taken that step.

I could tell you stories about the realness of the academics of the Graduate School of Nursing and Midwifery, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, their candle lighting ritual or how the schools are conducted in a way to support a student to bring forth their highest work. You would laugh when I told you how my friend and esteemed colleague Associate Professor Dr. Cheryle Moss, who always met me at the Wellington airport, even at five past midnight, made her guest room available and well understood how a visitor to Wellington appreciated an electric blanket came to the conclusion that, nothing you do Marina, would surprise me. They were deep words of encouragement to reinforce the belief that I could do whatever I made my mind up to do. My trips over the Tasman to these people helped to shape the work. Thank-you.

Then I could tell you a great story of incredible generosity. How Professor Trisha Dunning AM of Melbourne University and I were waiting to catch a flight from Adelaide back to Melbourne, and in the course of our conversation asked what I was going to do with my thesis. On sharing my dream of giving it out to the nursing community by formulating a book from the PhD document I noted serious editing was required. This generous soul replied, It would be my honour to edit it Marina. She worked on it for over four months. I would title this story On being generous. Thank-you.

A volume would be filled with tales of the hours and hours in the classrooms with many, many third year students from Deakin University, Geelong campus. About the times we laughed and the times we cried as we explored our souls. Some of those moments are recorded in this book, most remain recorded in my heart. In the process, however, I can stand back and say we made a difference to each other's lives. I now know our gathering in that time and place was no accident. You helped me stand. I thank-you and carry the memories of those days in my soul for-the-ever.

I have said I could write three volumes about the people who came forward to support this work. Two of those volumes would be filled with stories about those with whom I have walked the talk through playing out my perceptions of reality in the most incredible ways, with the most amazing originator of counter games. To the Tikashi Mastery class who were my fellow game players, and Tikashi the creator and Master facilitator of those countless counter ego games, thank-you seems so inadequate. We too have laughed and cried and in the process allowed more love in this world. What we have shared cannot be adequately expressed in words. What we have shared is known in feelings. Thank-you. Thank-you.

I think all good books need a chapter on making the miraculous a part of everyday life. This chapter would be the story about two Ascended Masters, a Master artist and a Master waitress who supported a grand act of creation. Isaiah gently reminded feel it my lady, feel it so served to encourage creation from the deepest place of my being. Tikashi asked the question that served to empower. What are you finding challenging about Mastery? Knowing, I can. Good, I will send you some challenges. Feeling and letting go is the stuff of making miracles happen. In the early hours of a July morning my computer downloaded an image captured by an extraordinary photographer. I think this is the image for your book Marina. ‘The Pieta’, shot in an underground car park in Melbourne, Australia, was photographed by Heather Dinas and modelled by Pamela. In a story about making the miraculous common place in life we would be reminded of the truths that God’s timing is always perfect and, when we create with God only miracles can exist. Isaiah, Tikashi, Heather and Pamela, we thank you.

Finally, I have always been blessed with very fine teachers. Nursing School was no exception. Thelma Harlock and Roma Hammond of the Colac and District Hospital, Colac, and Joy Buckland and Leah Windt of the Geelong Hospital, Geelong, were among the best of the best. They taught me their subject matter expertly and each in their own way taught me more.

As I neared the end of my first professional practical examination I selected a card that said, demonstrate a double ear bandage. I greeted the elderly patient who had agreed to be the guinea pig and began the task. Sr. Hammond stood by watching and Sr. Harlock escorted Matron up and down the corridor between the practical room and library. At the third turn of my bandage I knew my nursing career was in serious trouble. Sr. Hammond must have drawn the same conclusion because in one swipe she pulled off my feeble attempt pushed it into my hands and whispered, re-roll it. She then grabbed a fresh bandage and whipped it around the woman's head in seconds. With a half turn left to complete she stepped back, pushed me forward and taking the re-rolled bandage out of my hand substituted her hand for mine on the women's forehead thereby leaving me to complete the turn and insert the safety pin. At exactly that moment Matron and Sr. Harlock entered the library. Matron inspected the double ear bandage and jubilantly proclaimed, well done nurse, an excellent job, ten out of ten. I looked at Sr. Hammond in shock and disbelief.

From her position of authority she reified my unconscious knowing that a true life is not lived according to 'the rules’ it is created with each out-breath to carry forth every thought and then returned with the in-breath as experience to be felt. In essence she gave me permission to follow my heart and use my head. On that day, in that little library, by the action of an excellent clinician she took the bandage off my ears so I could begin to listen to my heart. By listening I would become the fertile ground in which this work grew. Eventually I would learn to hear the story within a story about nursing so that I might tell the world a new story, a story about love in its grandest version.

I thank her, and in thanking her I thank every one who has shown me something about life and so contributed to this book. Thank-you.

To Elizabeth Hewitt for the initial technical support with the manuscript and who has supported me in this way for the past decade I would acknowledge your role in my creation. Thank-you. To Vid Beldavs and Teri Watkins from AuthorHouse thankyou for your part in bringing this book to fruition.

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to quote from the following copyrighted works:

Esoteric Healing by A.A. Bailey, permission granted by the © Lucis Trust.

Molecules of Emotion: why you feel the way you feel by © Candace Pert, permission granted by Candace Pert.

Conversations with God series, permission granted by Rita Curtis, Executive Director, Conversations with God Foundation © Neale Donald Walsch.

Ramtha, permission granted by Jaime Leal-Anaya © J. Z. Knight Inc.

Tikashi, permission granted by Eschani Taylor and Geoffrey Hoiles of Byahmee House.

The Divine Milieu by Pierre Teilhard De Chardin. Copyright (c) 1957 by Editions du Seuil, Paris. English translation copyright (c) 1960 by Wm, Collins Sons & Co., London, and Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., New York. Renewed © 1988 by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. Reprinted by Permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

Poetry, Language, Thought by Martin Heidegger. Translations and Introduction by Albert Hofstadter. Copyright (c) 1971 by Martin Heidegger. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

A Passion for the Possible (c) 1997 by Jean Houston, permission granted by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson (c) 1992, permission granted HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

Core Energetics by John C. Pierrakos, MD used with permission from the publishers, LifeRhythm, PO Box 806, Mendocino, CA, USA, www.LifeRhythm.com.

Nursing: Human science and human care. A theory of nursing by Jean Watson (1988) printed by permission of the National League for Nursing (NLN).

Paterson, J.G. & Zderad, L.T. Humanistic Nursing (1988) printed by permission of National League of Nursing (NLN).

Jump Time by Jean Houston (2000) printed by permission Penguin Group (U.S.A.) Inc.

I HAVE A DREAM P. Delanoe/M Fugain/G. Blaness © Musicales Le Minotaur/Universal Music Publishing. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

Bantam edition of BLACK HOLES AND BABY UNIVERSES by Stephen Hawking (1993). Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays by Stephen Hawking, published by Bantam Press. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

Black Holes and Baby Universes reprinted by arrangement with Writers House, LLC. As agent for Stephen Hawking. Copyright 1993 by Stephen Hawking.

Preface

I began this work nine years ago. To say that I was conscious of where my students' stories would take me does little to convey the sense of awe I felt when I looked at the collated pile of paper on my desk ready for PhD submission and again two years latter as the reshaped thesis became a book manuscript. I suppose most researchers and writers make comments of this nature as they approach the completion of their work.

To have written what I wrote and arrive at the insights detailed in my work is a surprise because I cannot say that in the past I had thought deeply about who I was or pondered on a purpose or meaning of life. Embodiment was not a word in my vocabulary and philosophy was the legacy of some great people. However, God did exist in the beauty I felt when I leant on the fence and watched the sun set in the back paddock. I felt the same feeling as I walked along the beach with a friend, laughing, the sun dancing on the water and the tide lapping at my feet. On a warm summer's evening I could see and smell heaven in my rose garden.

I feel both peace and expansiveness as I stand in the paddock during the early hours of the morning head bent toward the heavens gazing at the back velvet star studded night with the sea roaring in the background and the smell of fresh cow manure penetrating my nostrils. I remember how I felt the first time I saw the birth of a human being and how different I felt when it became evident that my dear Mrs Waterhouse and Miss Searle were going to die. In the ongoing dramas we call to life I have felt such wonderment and despair for and about my fellow human beings. These things I already knew.

In my life as a nurse-teacher I have read a multitude of essays, watched my students undertake all manner of activities, listened to a myriad of nursing encounters and applauded hundreds as they crossed the stage on graduation day. I have experienced much. In my life as a nurse I have stood beside countless beds holding a hand, kissed foreheads of patients after they had died and watched with a family as the game of life and death was played out. In all these actions there was a lot to experience. None of these things changed when I undertook this work. What did change was that I now know that the potentiality of God has always existed in all of these experiences. I realise now that in some way these 'things' have held the possibility for me to know God, by knowing more LOVE.

Knowing God and who we are, is what my book offers. It documents my insights into being through how I have been reflected to me in the world around me through the world of nursing. By unfolding being through revealing a process about being I have made facets of being visible. These facets are identified as tools and hold the potential of the self-engaging in life where the intent is first and foremost to be ‘more’.

These tools are; non-judgement, love, awareness, tenacity, trust, honesty, willingness, creativity, openness, allowance, gentleness, confidence, vulnerability, self-responsibility, courage, support, spontaneity, flexibility, now, honour and integrity, listening, anticipation, wonder, worthiness, choice, focus, respect, stillness, commitment, patience, surrender, acknowledgement, inspiration, beauty, value, process and passion.

Nursing as an Aesthetic Praxis is the product of research work into how we be in Nursing developed through narratives of nursing. As a method of inquiry it uses both phenomenological and metaphysical concepts as they relate to being. Being is unfolded as a process by which and through which we create and recreate ourselves by consciously knowing who we already are. In this way Nursing as an Aesthetic Praxis is really a love story. It is a story about a way to love, which when it is known by nurses, will enable nursing to be an art of healing.

My work is about being in a body and who we are and how, through being-human we create patterns we know as dis-ease. Dis-ease has been positioned as one result of how we be in this process of experiencing life emotionally that as an act of ongoing creation can be recreated. To come to the place of knowing is to begin to know Love/God.

This work places nurses in their relationship with other human beings as a process of being where the relationship is one of reflection as a possibility to transcend being-human. As the nurse learns to consciously re-pattern, that is hold a new pattern they are more able to assist others consciously in their own process of re-patterning. I have called consciously holding a pattern with another person, which is a way of acting (nursing/healing), refraction. To be able to refract is to practice nursing as expressed in Nightingales vision of the finest of the fine arts and as such to be of service to human kind.

Nursing as an Aesthetic Praxis reveals that life is experienced emotionally and emotion is the basis for the creation of belief systems or patterns that in turn become thought expressed through understanding that energy follows thought. I assert that thought attached to emotion is ‘confused’ in the sense that it limits reality/truth.

I recognise that to change thinking is to re-experience an emotion because feeling is considered to be the dominion of the soul/spirit. Thinking, as the work reveals cannot be approached by the rational/logical/intellectual/local mind. Thinking is immersed in feeling, where the outcome as process is greater and greater connection of a mind to the universal mind.

The work shows how in the subjectivity of being human, our way of thinking distinctively identifies us as human beings. In the ability to respond to our world emotionally, lies a key to unlocking our power to connect to universal mind. The universal mind is described in this work as the mind of God or Love that exists for every being, being human as a field of consciousness. The text shows that in giving up or surrendering the human capacity to judge, expressed as responding to what is felt in life, is to begin to embrace one’s divinity through being love. Thus, the work is presented as a unique text to reveal and guide the reader to consider and explore the idea that we are each free to think and thinking is how we be free.

In the idea that thought is attached to emotion lies the concept that for feeling, if felt consciously, is human freedom. The text shows that it is a process of consciously choosing to feel love as the response to what is felt and in that way come to know who we really are. The work positions human beings as the expression of love, not as an end, but as an infinity. I suggest that, in realising this consciousness and naming it being love, is how we are free to become free travellers in the universe. We sunder the bonds of suffering and break the chains that tie us to the idea that the shadow is real.

To this end we learn how to appraise the effort of a life experience. In letting the expectation of perfection go, which is the expression of ego, we make a conscious choice to live not only differently but to live in the light. In fact, the text states clearly that unless we choose to live life as a state of excellence, to be, we can only continue to strive for perfection and so we remain in the dark. The work is primarily about consciousness and energy uncovered through nursing. As such I present human beings as consciousness and energy in order to describe human beings as light and love. We are light and love.

The work was a journey of honesty and integrity and the text is presented in such a way that it remains authentic in order to reveal the purpose of being human and make that ideal/intent real, to be, light and love. From this position I made the distinctive and unusual suggestion that dis-ease and nursing are opportunities to allow the ideal/intent to be achieved and the return to light and love is not some sort of afterlife but a revelation to be created on earth whilst being in a body. As a process life can be an act of conscious creation in every living breathing moment.

Thus, the text reveals that in creating our realities we create what we think. Not only do we create our lives by what we think we are in fact creating the cosmos through our thoughts. In knowing how we create our realities lies the potential to create as an act of conscious intentionality, not a response to life, but a calling forth of life, Elohim, I call forth or, in the beginning. To call forth in this manner is to call forth from the fullest expression of who or what we are because we are simultaneously God/Love/Source. If we understand that all things come from or have their origins in God, we can understand how healing is made manifest from and by what we call God/Love. God is not an end point but the source from which healing takes place, which is known through feeling.

Nursing as an Aesthetic Praxis began simply with the desire to reveal more of nursing through stories about nursing. The text stands as that revelation. Thus I arrived at a place where I find myself both answerable and able to answer my own quest. I wonder, how can I teach nursing in a way that enables them (and me) to see more? I called. Nursing as an Aesthetic Praxis is the response.

I said that before undertaking the work I had not consciously engaged in thoughts about existence (despite having written a Master's thesis titled Spiritual Aesthetics in Nursing). I clearly remember that from a very early age I felt such a depth of loneliness that as a small child I used to say I want to go home I want to go home.

Whenever I experienced life with what I perceived to be a lack of love, the loneliness surfaced as a reminder of the tenuous hold on my living my life. No matter and whom I filled my life with these things or people served to offer a short respite from my loneliness. In hindsight, I can see how my loneliness supported my search for something I eventually discovered was not found in other people, places or things but in myself. The feeling of loneliness took me on a great journey. It served me very, very well.

Finally, my search is over. In having undertaken this work, this part of my life journey, I can again feel the cavity midway between my breastbone pulsating but now the pulsation is no longer dependent on any one, or any one thing. I have awoken to my potential, my love, myself, and it feels is - VERY EXCELLENT. … when a more excellent thing is generated from a less excellent, we have generation absolutely … (Aquinas, 1267, p.721).

Through loneliness, I have found more of my origin. In having undertaken my journey I re-membered that home is not out there or in somebody or something. Home, I know, is within me and it is my choice, and mine alone, to feel it, with every breath and in every heartbeat. In this light, I offer my work and if it assists you to fill your space with even one more drop of love thank God, because as I Am, so are you.

Therefore it is in being that I have identified a process that is the movement toward the pureness of being or the light of being. As consciousness, it is Christ or God consciousness, where the meaning of the word Christos is to know. Knowing is not finite. For if God cannot create then God ceases to exist and then all things that have their origins in God do not exist either, because all things come from God. While I lay no claim to having attained this level of consciousness, I know it to be my intent and this work is a result of the steps I have taken toward that infinity. The gift of this work as I perceive it to be, is not in what it reveals, but how I have learned to reveal.

To impale being in post modernity or claim design as metaphysical with phenomenological beginnings that exist within an ontology that is concerned with the ultimate nature of being, is to engage in theorising. To theorise and 'to know' are not the same. Theorising does not change consciousness. So rather than theorise, what I present in this book is the result of my journey told through stories about nursing that are supported by phenomenological and metaphysical understandings and incarnate and non incarnate beings. It is the story of how I wondered about being. In wondering I allowed the energy of all things to move and flow in divine timing.

From the space of wondering about being, I offer what might be called a natural philosophy, that is, a study of truth in which I have explored how to become more through the experience of being human. The naturalness of it is that I came to a place of knowing that just knows I became more knowing of who I naturally am and that my origin is LOVE.

As we listened to handover I began to feel uncomfortable about what I was hearing. She was an elderly woman who had migrated from Italy after the war. She had breast cancer, again. Her other breast had been removed six years earlier. The night nurse reported she hadn't slept well and was concerned that she had been found out of bed several times during the night. They staff were worried that she might fall. The nurse told us that her nausea and vomiting were still problematic and that the daughter continued to insist her mother not be told she had cancer. My immediate thoughts were, would this woman want to know? What was the daughter dealing with? I hoped a student would be allocated her care, as this would allow me to meet her. She was not amongst the patients allocated to students. Still, I had to go to her room. I had to go to her. I looked up and down the corridor there was no one in sight and so I made a beeline into her room shutting the door behind me.

There she sat on top of the bed. A little woman dressed in a pink nightgown with a matching bed jacket and her white wispy hair curled up in a knot on the top of her head. She looked tired, her skin was a little sallow and there were dark circles under her eyes. Ah, but her eyes were crystal blue and they still had their sparkle. I introduced myself. I told her I had heard she hadn't slept very well and that she had been out of bed several times during the night. I asked her why she was unable to sleep. She said, Ima ringin the bell and ringin the bell and a no-one she come. I gotta go to the toiletta. Ima scared Ima go-inn to wetta the bed. I no do this before I come, and I no start now! I told her I would negotiate for a commode to be left by her bed and she could ring when she had finished. This seemed most agreeable. I then asked about her nausea and vomiting. She told me that she had 'little appetite'. I asked how she was dealing with hospital Angelo-Saxon cuisine. She said, ave you seena the food in this a place? I asked could her daughter cook and she responded with whata sort of a mother you thinka I am thata my daughter she cannota cook? I asked would her daughter bring her in a meal each day and she said, shea allowed to do this? I said yes". I asked what she liked to eat and we swapped recipes (she told me how to make sure the pasta is soft but not overcooked). I suggested her daughter might cook some of her favorite things. She said her daughter would. From there our conversation moved to the war and the impact it had on her life. She told me about her life in Australia and her early loss of one child and the death of her husband several years ago. It was during this conversation, that I knew that she knew she was dying. She also knew I knew she knew. We did not need to discuss her breast cancer and dying, what we needed to work out was how to support her daughter.

She then asked me to explain my work. So I went through the I am a nurse and a teacher routine. When I had finished there was silence for a moment, she then raised her right hand pointed an arthritic index finger at me and tapping that finger in the air she spoke these words, Ah, so you are a teacher, [pause] then there is only one thinga you musta teacha your students, only, onea thinga. And what is that? I asked her. "You musta teacha them how to love the people".

Nursing as an aesthetic praxis is exactly that. It is about being love. And in its unfolding its intent is to show that when we each come to know love, as love we will love the people.

Marina Tucakovic

Wallington, Australia

Overview

This book is titled Nursing as an Aesthetic Praxis. The aesthetic denotes the human reaction through emotion to life that is an engagement of mind translated into physicality throughout the body. Praxis as used here is refers to the relationship between thought, energy and consciousness. Together, as an aesthetic praxis they serve to reveal a mind-body relationship that expresses a consciousness and reflects a human being's reality. That reality consists of multiple facets.

In the course of the book I make the argument that dis-ease or illness is an expression of consciousness that, as consciousness, can change. From the understanding of dis-ease as an expression of consciousness the thesis positions nursing as an art through the form of a human-to-human connection expressed in patterns of energy and experienced as human emotion.

In this way, the activity of nursing has as its focus consciousness and energy. Nursing activity is guided by the intent to enable another to expand their consciousness so that the other is supported and assisted to raise their consciousness to move out of a condition.

The book is a result of research that challenges perceptions of reality grounded in physical existence because it takes the position that physical reality is the product of thought/intent and is the outcome itself, rather than the nature of reality.

I do not designate the work phenomenological or metaphysical, where the principal area of speculation is ontological. While I have attempted to make as clear as possible some phenomenological and metaphysical principles through my unfolding the nature of being, these principles have occurred as a result of a hindsight and not foresight. Therefore, they have not directed the work as a conscious directive as is the process with phenomenology and metaphysics.

Therefore, while the work has not been presented as an ontology for the purpose of engaging in a discourse that is concerned with the ultimate nature of being, the work is concerned with the nature of being. The concern is positioned as a verb, through which the activity of research has required that I had to be both the observed and the observer. In order to focus on being/beingness I had to be. I had to experience the essence of being human in order to allow the self to observe myself in the process of learning to consciously collapse energy so that I could see ‘what is’.

In this light, what my book offers are insights into the nature of being in order to be more. For in speaking to being, the work speaks to the possibility of an ongoing expansion in consciousness through which we can each come to know the unknown. In that way, the work reveals, we move toward the light of our divinity, where movement, as action, is grounded in the experience of being human and we exist in a state of excellence rather than perfection. To locate the research within a theoretical position of an ontology would be to suggest that consciousness, as truth exists within an ultimate reality. I argue that consciousness exists as thought and that thought is a product of how the world is experienced, further it exits until thought is changed. A view of the world is the result of how the individual thinks about the world. Therefore, as this work will show, there is no ultimate nature of being, rather, there is only the ongoing expansion of consciousness that as the energy of creation is expressed as the purest form of being and is infinite.

The first chapter unfolds my way of working. I have presented a way of working that began by exploring methodology, which I abandoned when that exploration opened a new possibility. As a research work, I have located tenets of paradigms from which some methodological assumptions are exposed. These exposures are a result of having identified how I learnt 'to be', and therefore, observe. I made the decision not to use the term ‘methodology’ to express how I conducted the research and on that basis named the first chapter Paradigmatic Position as Process to reflect, my position.

The chapters that follow the documentation and explanation of learning to observe and therefore be are products of the experiences of having observed myself. The early chapters can be read as separate papers. The writing style varies significantly, as does the genre of literature. While at one level the variance reflects the different moments of exploration, it is also the outcome of an expansion of consciousness that when grounded in physical reality clearly demonstrates this particular shift in my consciousness. In other words, as I shifted the consciousness that resulted in my use of multiple voices I did not need as many voices to express the ideas. There are moments in the text where I was able to touch upon the fullness of that which is ‘I’ that reflect a non-fragmented perception of ‘I’ and then the work speaks with the most beautiful voice.

Other factors that account for the variance in style includes my ongoing developing skill of learning to observe. The written work is a clear demonstration of how I came to learn to observe the self. In the initial stages the completeness or depth of the text makes the limitations I placed on my own observation visible. These limitations are the physical manifestation of my beginning to observe myself, which is exposed in the text in the way the ideas are not quite complete or fully revealed/explicated. As I learned to observe myself more fully the text begins to change. Understanding this point is critical if the reader is to grasp not only how we access states of consciousness, then to give them form, but the ability to access states of consciousness also determines the nature/quality to be formed, for example a piece of silk or nylon. They can both be crafted into a garment, yet there is a clear distinction in the nature or quality of the material and skill calibre of the seamstress. The early chapters are a reflection of this truth about consciousness and the messenger.

I arrived at the content in the chapters through having allowed myself to observe myself and so have been able to express my inherent knowing that is then supported by literature. The chapters exist as the result of having made the ongoing shifts in my consciousness and reflect my movement from the unknown into the known, through having engaged in being. Each chapter comes to a natural closure, but the closure is not an endpoint in itself, but rather as an outcome of what I processed through having observed myself.

The closure of one chapter does not determine where the next will begin. For the unfoldment of consciousness is not a straight line. Being is not linear. Being unfolds in order to come to know being, and consequently is not linear. Having said that there are ideas woven throughout the entire document that makes a much bigger picture more visible. Thus the work is like a tapestry in the making, where the threads are eventually woven together to convey a fuller picture. To claim the entire picture as a starting point would not be consistent with the nature of this work.

I also wish to make clear how I used the literature. While I read much, I did not read to write. The literature is a vehicle to convey or validate the ideas generated on my journey. In this way the text is a living demonstration of having to engage in process as an ongoing process where the literature rather than informing the text validates the process. I write to read, rather than read to write. Therefore I did not use the literature to engage in a critique of multiple views in an area. The information drawn to myself to assist and support me in expressing this work is in someway a reflection of consciousness/vibration/frequency. Therefore, it is not who, but rather, what was said, as a reflection of the consciousness/vibration of being, that determined the literature referred to in this work. Also, given the nature of the work I hope it does not come as a surprise that I have been supported by both incarnate and non-incarnate beings and some of the literature reflects this.

I would also take the opportunity to convey to the reader, that in keeping with the nature of this work, where the crux of the argument rests in the notion of the aesthetic through emotion and feeling the purpose of the particular style of crafting the cited literature, nursing stories, dialogues and song lyrics, into the text. The focus is on the aesthetic moment, which rests on the understanding that the aesthetic is both timeless and apersonal and to 'the one' and 'the many' simultaneously. Therefore, I have not located the stories to person or a time. While I have shared some personal stories in the chapter Paradigmatic Position as Process, I have done so to 'show' or unfold process, to convey how I undertook this work. The commonality then, is not in the context or situatedness of story, but in the emotion embedded in story.

In the latter chapters some of the data is used differently. While on one hand it is positioned to demonstrate the ideas and thoughts, it is also positioned to engage the reader through feeling. To this end, the argument, particularly in the latter stages, is not always directly signposted through analysis, debate, critique and summation. It attempts to speak to the reader at the unconscious level because to appeal directly to the intellect does not fully convey what I am attempting to communicate. Therefore, I have endeavoured to speak to the reader at both a feeling and intellectual level to illustrate the ideas in the work.

Chapter outline:

This following brief outline of the book is not intended to be a map to guide the reader on the journey. It provides a small indication of the possibility in taking that journey.

Chapter One unfolds how I learned, stumbled, discovered and explored being, so as to identify being as a process. In revealing some of my experiences 'to process', I begin to illustrate being.

Chapter Two starts as an exploration of being grounded in descriptions. I identify yearning as how we engage ourselves in being. The discussion then moves to identify being as situated in human beings and lived out through a form of connectedness

Chapter Three introduces the meaning of the aesthetic that is bound in human emotion and feeling to enable the nature of perception to be explored and reveal how life experience as emotional memory, reifies an idea about reality that then has the outcome of 'tricking' the mind into thinking that it is generating the percept. Dis-ease when presented, as an interruption to the flow of energy is, therefore, an outcome of reifying a particular reality.

Chapter Four presents the idea of the human body as fields of energy to convey the possibility of the movement of energy from cellular, universal and mathematical perspectives. In so doing, it is possible to view illness as a pattern of energy that reflects thought that is linked to emotion.

Chapter Five begins to build on the ideas presented in chapter three. Although incomplete, this chapter reveals how the aesthetic and the notion of judgement are crucial to being. It demonstrates that these experiences in life can serve to either expand or limit being/consciousness that then illustrates an attitude to life that is either perfection or excellence.

Chapter Six explores the idea that we are the Creators of our reality, and argues that we are God/Love/Source. Our lives are acts of creation. Illness is a creation. With this understanding nursing can be viewed as a series of creative acts.

Chapter Seven argues that most thought is unconscious, given that the world is perceived through filters and creation is mostly an unconscious act. It starts to identify how to begin to make thought/intent conscious.

Chapter Eight begins to identify thinking that is pure thought through further exploration of image and perception. Such thinking is pivotal on experiencing life from the position of ‘the beautiful’. 'The beautiful', as this chapter explains, connects body, mind and spirit and in that way connects the self to the self, and other. Through ‘the beautiful’, we are open to all things, we open to pure thought/intuition.

Chapter Nine explores emotion, feeling and non-judgement as a process of being and further develops the idea of the body as memory through the notion that memory is stored on/in the body. Through memory, the body communicates states of being. The idea of the body as memory serves to further explicate being as either an automatic response, and thus an already achieved state, or a wilful action, and in that way a state to be achieved. ‘Being’ is positioned as an engagement of the mind and body through emotion and feeling that serves to either reinforce the idea of separation or non unity through the experience of being human, or, to connect a being, to the greater Mind/God/Love/Source as consciousness that in turn is feeling to be expressed. Illness as a state of mind is an expression of consciousness and therefore the experience of illness holds the potential for a human being to express a greater consciousness through making choices about being.

Chapter Ten explores the possibility of nursing as an aesthetic praxis through how nursing is lived and learned. Where thought and action can serve to evolve the consciousness of the human being named nurse, so that they can support another named patient, in the experience of illness all can evolve their consciousness.

Chapter Eleven picks up key concepts already outlined to expand the notion of thought/intent as conscious consciousness that evolves from the awareness of 'how' reality is created as the outcome of thought. Consciousness is presented as the ongoing evolvement of mind/heart in the experience of being human through being a human being. In understanding this evolvement, Nursing's role as midwife and healer is then further explicated.

Chapter Twelve expands the key concepts further by examining the feminine as feeling that serves to connect us to God through which all things are made possible. This chapter suggests that if nursing was viewed in the Aristotelian sense of an entelechy, nursing as a beginning and end could be approached as consciousness and energy. Health and healing are positioned in relation to these key concepts that revolve around intent/thought and emotion and feeling from which we can come to know.

Chapter Thirteen is an illustration of the transmutation of energy in practice that serves to demonstrate a number of facets of being that are grounded in emotion and feeling as praxis. The act of nursing is portrayed as reflection that holds the potential of more love for both beings or, refraction that is an act of pure love. Refraction is an already achieved state of being that demonstrates nursing as the finest of the fine arts. More love is revealed in both nursing situations, reflection and refraction more love, and all beings, through being human, have undergone a transformation/healing.

Chapter Fourteen shares some of the stories that informed the creation of this text. They are included as a magnificent illustration of what nursing is, to encourage undergraduates to bring their stories forward while highlighting the struggles and issues they face in practice and serve as a reminder, to those post -graduates who need reminding, of the magic in what it is we do.

Chapter 1: Paradigmatic position as process

No matter how 'postmodern' we pretend to be, each of us has been marinated in the medieval soup of the mind. To face the radical need of the future, we need a new natural philosophy, one that encompasses an appreciation of what is … as our evolutionary possibilities.

Houston (2000, pp. 21-22)

Finding a method

To designate the qualitative inquiry I engaged in as only ‘phenomenology’, does not position the work accurately. To position my way of working as ‘metaphysical’ is likewise accurate, in the sense that metaphysical understandings became apparent in the course of the research and indeed are what enabled me to make the move from phenomenology and delve deeper into consciousness. I outlined my paradigmatic concerns in the introduction and therefore outlined a position. Rather than begin by naming what did here I decided to unfold my process of research by unravelling my understandings of being in a way that tracks the story that began as a phenomenological inquiry and developed in a seemingly natural movement. In this natural movement or shift in thinking, I positioned myself in such a way that the work reveals tenets of a paradigmatic position from which I could consider how 'we be'.

I use the words 'paradigm' and 'how' mindfully for in the human condition we have a tendency to box things as a way of creating new ways 'to be'. The new rules about how things should be become criteria for evidence to validate our choice of box. Therefore, with this tendency in mind, because this work is mindful, I titled the chapter 'Paradigmatic Position as Process' as a reminder to avoid boxing. Paradigm has become something that has had a natural course of disclosure that is neither an end nor starting point, but rather, a place where I chose to pause for a while as I went about creating my evolutionary possibilities.

On one hand, research is a systematic process. Research is a way of making public/available its product and often its processes. To 'do' research, is an opportunity to consciously engage in one's world through activity that investigates, inquires, studies, scrutinises and examines that world. While any word, as language, denotes meaning, it is the particular meaning that we as individuals subscribe to a word that then alludes to its form of action. To 'do' research, on one hand, can imply that what is being 'looked at', 'studied' 'investigated' is in some way separate to and from the person 'doing' the research. Alternatively, when the investigating, studying or examining is realised from the position that all things are connected, then slowly, 'the doing' becomes an examination of one's world that identifies the researcher, me, as the central character. Everything else is positioned as a form of support on the understanding that all things serve as a mirror because all things are connected.

In this way what I could begin 'to do' as a researcher was move toward positioning myself as the central sun of my own universe. In any one lifetime, the stage of life has afforded me many entrances and exits, through which I engaged in life with other human beings, who are themselves being. Therefore, as human beings, being, I consider that we are each other's support actors and at the same time 'the star' of our own drama called to life, where each person is free to determine their own process/condition/journey. To this end, I have consciously identified myself as the star engaging in the world through research. The stage on which my drama was played out is the world of nursing. My support actors and actresses were students of nursing. Together what I/we have produced a work titled 'Nursing as an Aesthetic Praxis' that, as a methodology/process, is available to us all.

To begin I named this way of working Phenomenology, using Heidegger's (1976) work where the phenomenon under study was ‘being’. To now say that I had any developed idea about the notion of being, despite my pondering of Heidegger's work, does not acknowledge what or how I have learned in the course of this research. My hope is that when others read how I learned to be, they will find being revealed for themselves. To demonstrate this I present a way of working that conveys being as engaging in life that affords us the opportunity of allowing the purity of our beingness to emerge. As a result this thesis then reveals my expression of a sacred truth that all we ever need do is just be.

I have outlined in greater depth my early understanding of being in the second chapter. The detail is important to the overall thesis in two ways. First, after a year of attempting to work with my initial research proposal I recognized that what I was getting 'back to' or what I was 'attempting to make visible' would remain hidden unless I changed my way of working. Essentially, to move forward I had to put aside my initial blueprint/map/methodology as a way of working. This was an important step and one that I will describe in greater detail.

To proceed I had to abandon my previous understandings of being from a Heideggerian perspective of phenomenology and consider how to explore thinking in a way that did not have a design/plan with which to step forward. This essentially meant I had to step forward into the ‘unknown yet'. Therefore, there were no rules in the emerging method only identifiable design elements that emerged with hindsight with which I could move forward into the next moment of the ‘unknown yet’. Thus, I identified 'tools' after events that assisted me to take other steps in a process that I inherently learned to trust in the pursuit of truth/reality/beingness/existence. The further I progressed, the greater the level of trust I required. Such a way of working is not intellectual, which is not the same as saying that I did not use the intellect. Rather, I moved forward in the research as if blindfolded, but knowing that the potentiality of uncovering existed.

I began with the understanding that to proceed with research I needed a research methodology. While I positioned my original design as phenomenology, it was the phenomenological intent to uncover or reveal by engaging in the notion of being, where my focus lay. Therefore, phenomena were of importance only from the perspective that they could assist to reveal being. In abandoning my plan, but not the original intent, I discovered how to make more of the 'unknown' 'known' and reveal being. So, while the common word within nursing research circles to describe how one engaged in one's work is methodology, I would suggest that my way of working is better represented in the word process. A process infers something that is ever evolving in an ongoing act of creating and recreating and where process can never be an end in itself. The name of this chapter, 'Paradigmatic Position as Process' was chosen to reflect the text as part of an ongoing act that is my act of creation in which I paused for periods to identify the elements of design.

The word ‘methodology’, on the other hand, when used to denote a design or recipe implies a blueprint, map or plan. I argue, that the finished research product while the result of a preconceived idea, even if that idea was not conscious, cannot be understood if viewed as a methodology. Therefore, I deliberately choose the word process to outline my method of interpretation. From this position I share the process I uncovered during the progress of the research.

My initial attempts to follow my interpretation of a phenomenological inquiry by exposing ground structures, as I had done in previous research activity using story (Tucakovic, 1993), led me to conclude that to proceed would only result in similar work being produced, despite having different and new data. I had to decide how to allow the new data to speak to me as a new awareness. While this was an incredibly 'earth shattering' revelation at the time, and one that took just over twelve months to reach, I can now thank myself for having gone down that pathway of discovery. Only by moving over a different terrain in the same way, and essentially discovering the same thing, was I able to place myself in a position to find a way 'to be' open to more. I discovered that the very nature of being could only be revealed, by being. While I still had a very limited understanding of being, at that stage, it was enough to begin to make the shift in thinking about being to a form of doing, so as to be able to begin see being in a new light. Therefore, my old blueprint had served me very well by knowing what did not serve me any longer I was able to recognise that I had become open to new ideas.

Exploring working without rules

In being willing to explore being from a form of 'doing being' my previous experience revealed that my blueprint, while helpful for a period, had served to keep me tied to an old map that grounded me in time. While recognizing that this is not the same as saying that another blueprint or map would have offered different insights, I eventually recognized that I had explored the terrain from every possible direction and what I had been unconsciously searching for was a way to experience the terrain from a whole new perspective. I then determined that in order to come to know more of the ‘unknown yet' I had to proceed unknowingly, that is, to move forward in a way that appeared to be without rules. A key to proceed unknowingly was to listen to my inner voice and then follow without knowing where it would lead. I became aware that I had begun to cultivate my ability to listen and hear my true inner voice. Having said that, I wish to make it clear that the ability to listen and hear intuitively is both a process and an outcome. The outcome of the process of being is to be more intuitive. As process, I discovered there were many voices competing to be heard as the intuitive voice. Nonetheless, by identifying the need to abandon my plan I had