My wife recently made the choice to donate her kidney. To her Earthly, biological mother, Marcia. Marcia is 69 years old and has suffered an insidious degradation of her quality of life due to 14 years of kidney disease. Despite years of trying to deflect attention from herself and of denying herself any other possibility other than pain, suffering, and inevitable demise, she finally acquiesced to outside pressures to make the choice of trying to improve her health and to prolong her life. A recent "close encounter" with death, coupled with the impending move into a "dream home" of her own design, gave Marcia the motivation to choose to place her name on the kidney transplant list. Both Toril and Marcia's adoring husband of 49 years, Toril's father, John, jumped at the opportunity to become Marcia's donor. Only Toril made it through the screening process.
On October 22, 2014, Toril "went under the knife." Though the kidney was removed laparoscopically through a "single port" (her belly-button!), the recovery has been challenging. "Ten times worse than child birth," she says. Marcia's recovery was much quicker--and the effect of the new kidney was immediate: Within a few hours after her surgery her copius urine was showing no signs of the toxins that had been breaking her bodily systems down for years. The morning after surgery she was attending post-operative education classes and her test numbers were indicating that her kidney function was better than those of a normal human being! Released from hospital only five days after receiving her new kidney, she came home saying, "Other than the pain at the surgical scar and some old arthritis, I am no longer sick." All 22 of the 24 symptoms of kidney failure that she had exhibited only five days before had disappeared. They were gone. No more nausea, poor sleep patterns, joint swelling, skin psoriasis, lack of energy, poor appetite, high blood pressure, and many other nagging and/or debilitating symptoms, gone!
Did you know that 64% of people on organ transplant lists die before they ever get a chance to receive their organ transplant? Apparently, this is not only due to the reluctance and delay that potential donors have for allowing their names to be placed on the list but more it is due to the extreme hardship the commitment places upon the donor. A living donor will miss four to six weeks of work. Becoming a living donor makes life and health insurance companies drop you or turn you away. A living donor's family is automatically and sometimes catastrophically (if one loses income or a job) absorbed into the recovery period as someone must look after the donor for the four to six weeks it takes to heal and get strength back. In the case of a kidney donation, the living donor is almost guaranteed to fall into the Stage One Kidney Disease category. It usually takes around six months for the donor to fully regain strength and energy.
With all of this in light, I want to open a discussion around the subject of the karmic or spiritual significances of becoming an organ donor. The human body is a vessel, a vehicle, that We use for Self-discovery and Self-realization. Like any vehicle, what's wrong with giving away a part or piece so long as it doesn't have any detrimental affect to the desired functioning of the host vehicle? If the body or vehicle is dead, then this really is a non-issue. But if I'm a healthy, living human, why not give you one of my spark plugs or one of my dual carburetors or my catalytic converter if it will help prolong the life span of your vehicle? So long as the intentions and desires of the recipient are to use the life extension and improved quality for continued gathering of adventures, experiences, learning and growth, right?
But--and this is a very big, seemingly cruel "but"--what about 'forcing' the diseased person to accept responsibility for and learning from the choices he or she made which brought them to the point of disease and demise? There is no right or wrong, no better or worse, no sooner or later. There is always a chance to learn our lessons. But, that "always" also includes the learning we can (and will) do after we have left our human vessel. Won't the impact of that death and dying experience be greater for the pain and suffering that our self-inflicted disease and corporeal destruction incurred?
Perhaps. And perhaps not. Learning can be done through suffering but it can also be done through joy. Again, neither choice is right or wrong, better or worse. One comes to acquire preferences. Partly out of familiarity and pattern, but even out of curiosity and courage (to conquer fear, to go some "place" you haven't gone before). With an extended life due to receiving an organ donation one might choose either, and both, suffering or joy as one's learning medium. It is more likely that the demise and death due to disease would involve pain and suffering--though even here some people find the mental and spiritual strength and detachment to choose to learn through Joy despite their physical pain and suffering.
Could you do it? Could you donate an organ? To loved one or a stranger? Would you? What would be your reasons and motivations? What would be your hesitations or fears? What might your lessons be through this process?
Fresh off the publication of Episode 41: Tough Love, I have to ask whether or not your saying "no" to organ donation causes you guilt or shame--and where do you think those feelings of guilt or shame comes from? Are you less brave, more selfish, less of a "humanitarian," more cruel and heartless if you choose not to consider donating an organ? What are the elements of codependency active in the process of donating an organ? I mean, the possibility of transplanting human, animal, or artificial organs is as amazing as creating machines with replaceable and interchangeable parts. Human ingenuity and the technological advances of the scientific approach are extraordinary for their advances. But, to what end? What is the purpose of healing or saving life, limb or property? Are we not just extending the inevitable? And in this day and age of capitalist greed, is the motivation of our "health care" and "insurance" industries truly altruistic? I mean, fame, power, self-gratification, wealth, and greed seem more the dominant motivators in our cultural paradigm at this time. Using others and their suffering from illness, accident and disease for personal gain seems a bit shady, doesn't it? But then, we are in the Dark Ages of our Sun's journey.
Though it seems only natural that one question the motivations behind one's organ donation, I must again remind you that there is no right or wrong. Every choice that you make sets in motion myriad waves of effects, offers myriad opportunities for learning, and myriad opportunities for more choices. Choices made in Ego consciousness have different effects from those made in Spiritual awareness. The more aware we are of our Spiritual origins, of our Divine Nature, the more able are we to think and act from higher forms of Love. Unconditional love is a place from which we think we would like to act, however, unconditional love is not achieved through the mere throwing down of the phrase. The "unconditional" part indicates a full knowledge and willingness to Love without expectation, without condition, with total detachment from any desire or outcome. I fear that the occasions of human love that transpire unconditionally (while consciously) are rare. I know that their occurrence will only increase as we learn to recognize more fully our Spiritual Nature, as we are able to reign Ego in and bring it under the full submission of Spirit.
With unconditional love something like a kidney donation is as easy and effortless as giving a stranger our last stick of gum. Aware of the Illusions of Duality in Creation, detachment from our own needs and desires becomes easy. And detaching from the choices that the recipient makes with regard to his or her use of that kidney (or stick of gum) is just as easy. As I've said all along, it's all a matter of perspective. Are you viewing the situation from a position of fear, need, and separation, or are you viewing the situation from a position of Love and detachment.
Tough Love is given that name for a reason: it's tough to master, tough to sustain, tough to break old habits--especially when they're conditioned in you by societal patterns. But, in all honesty, unconditional love is the true toughest form of love--at least for humans--because it entails letting go of any and all conditions, attachments, desires, expectations, and wishes for outcomes, returns, or effects. It entails a surety that your thought or deed is enacted in the full intention that it be according to the Highest Good of all Creation, and that it's effects will be equally perfect and Good. Actually, unconditional love requires a full and constant confidence that any thought or act is in fact always and in all ways exactly the most perfect and highest good for all of Creation. Being an act of creation which, as we know, is only possible because every act of creation comes from our Divine Nature, from the Creative Source from which we all come, from which we derive all of our power and strength and intelligence, every thought or action is always an act of our most recent version of our greatest definition of our Highest Understanding of our Highest Truth, Highest Beauty, Highest Love, and Highest Joy. Armed with this perspective, unconditional love is omnipotent and unfailing; armed with unconditional love all other forms of love merely fall into place. Then something as big as a kidney donation becomes as small as a wave lapping up onto a beach or an exploding supernova or a Big Bang or a leap of a lepton from one side of the Universe to the other or the life of a puny little human being on the puny little blue planet that revolves around this average little star in this average size galaxy we call the Milky Way. Big and little, important and inconsequential, right and wrong, better and worse. It's all just a matter of perspective.
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