Safety Net
A couple of weeks ago I had an episode that shook my thoughts in the same way as the events of December 2022, which prompted me to write about the madness of the assistant and home care business. I thought I would now go into more depth on an issue that affects many: the importance of support from home carers, assistants and health workers for people in need.
Today’s challenge
A couple of weeks ago, the assistant on duty helped me into the shower. When she was supposed to help me get back into the wheelchair I lost my balance and it was impossible for her to lift me back to standing. I fell on the floor and after my breathing evened out I called home care. On the morning of that day I was visited by a tall, Filipino young man and I believed he could lift me up.
“You need a safety bracelet” was the first reaction of the home care company. “We used to use a hoist to deal with cases like this,” the assistant behind me said. As if the loss of balance was definitely my fault. The fact is that with an attentive assistant, transfers are no problem. Because I needed help in the acute situation, the home care agency agreed to send help. “I don’t think one person – even a man – can lift you up,” my assistant said.
The young man turned up. He placed my feet on the edge of the floor and wall so that I could push up, lifted me by the armpits and placed me on a stool. My assistant praised this young man’s strength, apparently not thinking at all about the fact that I myself have strength in my muscles when activated in the right way.
As a result of this episode, the assistance company decided that in the future the assistants would help me shower in a mobile shower chair, not help me stand on my feet and move to the shower stool myself. The idea of being moved around my apartment like a suitcase seemed absurd.
Obviously, the companies that provide assistance services think they have the right to determine what kind of assistance they offer to their clients. The assistants of the firms providing the assistance are assistants of the firm, who listen to their superiors, not to the persons, who need assistance. However, in Finland it is defined in the law that the services and support measures must take into account the individual needs of the client. It is funny that this is not self-evident, even though companies generally emphasize customer orientation in all their activities.
“This is for everyone’s safety, including yours,” I was assured. The last time similarly concerned about my safety was in 1990 a Chinese university that invited me to study in China. However, because of my severe physical disability, the university refused to accept me as a student. One reason, of course, was that it was unsafe for me to be on the university campus.
Because I didn’t get a place to study, I didn’t get a student visa to China either. I therefore had to travel to Hong Kong on my own and buy a visa to give me time to find another place to study in China (I don’t know if this is still possible, but it was possible in 1990 when Hong Kong was under British administration).
Activating internal resources
In education, rehabilitation and healthcare, the main issue is not safety, but deliberate concentration and focus of energy. Any top athlete or otherwise successful person knows how important it is to have the support of family. Children with overprotective parents cannot achieve anything on their own unless they take their destiny, that is self-determination, into their own hands. No amount of financial support can replace the willpower in the hearts of individuals. Even the severely disabled benefit from everyday mobility, just as many people prefer to climb stairs rather than use lifts.
Many people may now think that the situation is completely different for the severely disabled and impaired people, when the bones are brittle and the physics and anatomy don’t work normally. I myself once broke a bone on my foot when I pushed myself up from the floor. But that doesn’t stop me from doing my best to be as self-sufficient as possible.
Adults cherish their illusions of a life of dignity and for many, the fear of embarrassing themselves in front of others paralyses all activity. Losing one’s balance and falling is thought to be one of the situations in which a person embarrasses him- or herself. There are many videos circulating on the internet of presidents stumbling on the stairs. It is considered a sign of dementia and is apparently an indication that a person is incapable of performing his or her duties.
On the other hand, we know that people should maintain throughout their lives the same drive that children have when trying to get their muscles under control. No amount of falling, fumbling or failing knees is a reason to stop trying, because trying at least gives hope for better. If I lie on my laurels and leave myself to be moved by others, I can be sure that I will be moved for the rest of my life. Perhaps this is one reason why we have so many people in hospitals and nursing homes to be moved and assisted.
My physiotherapist told me that one of her clients with CP was able to get out of bed and into a wheelchair by himself after they spent time practising it. Before that, he was moved around by nurses and assistants using a hoist. However, the carers were not happy about the assisted person’s new-found ability, as it took time to get up. And time is, after all, the most precious commodity in the world.
People who need help do not live for companies that provide home care services. The need is always temporary, even if it looks permanent to the outside world. Home care, assistance and care services are an essential part of rehabilitation. Instead of considering, how many caretakers are needed, decision makers should focus on activating the internal resources of the person to be assisted.
The human body is a biological machine
Carers and assistants should be as familiar with the physics of the human body as they are with smart devices and computer applications. Everyone has probably noticed that all machines and their operating systems need to be set up correctly before a device or program will even work. In most cases, tuning the right settings requires nothing more than common sense.
Despite this logical premise, many people try to lift me to my feet, even though they have not placed my legs in a way that they have a focal point to carry my weight. Despite my paralysis, my body still works according to the same physics as a healthy body, even though my muscles are weak. The first thing people need to do to stand up is to make sure that your legs are in the right position to take the weight of your body on them.
This action is usually automatic, but various disturbances in the body mean that every movement requires careful coordination. I once wrote that gymnastics with a physiotherapist is like building a house of cards and one ill-considered move can make the house collapse. Falling down is as natural to me as it is to a toddler learning to stand and walk. Staggering and falling down is not something that shouldn’t happen. Everything that is meant to happen happens and events have a purpose.
For me and many others, muscle weakness is caused by nerve impulses not traveling from the brain to the muscles as they should. The strengthening of nerve pathways always starts with individual and is not replaced by any kind of psychotherapy, multidisciplinary meetings or outside work, unless it causes the person to activate his or her own inner resources.
Many assistants/carers think they are helping me by pushing my hip when they help me with transfers. This pushing causes me to lose my balance and fall to the floor. When nerve impulses do not travel from the brain to the muscles normally, all that helps is patience. This is a bit like a slow computer that loads instructions in slow motion. Impatience only makes the whole machine go haywire.
You cannot force the flow of nerve impulses, just as you cannot impose your thoughts on others. Everything takes time to mature, but slowness is by no means an obstacle to progress.
Concentrating energy in the machinery to maintain performance
Decades ago, I once asked my doctor if he could give me something (a medicine) to improve my poor concentration. “Your problem is not poor concentration,” the doctor said. “You too easily let outside distractions distract you.”
This was like a long-hidden piece of information being revealed to me. It meant that I was not at the mercy of bad genes or bad starting points, but I could influence my own concentration by creating an optimal environment for situations that required concentration. For the first time, I understood on an intellectual level why people with disabilities at university were allowed to take exams in their own room.
I had used this option myself, but I hadn’t given it much thought. So it was simply a question of creating an optimal environment in a test situation. Exams and tests are not essentially competitions where everyone has the same starting point, but the most important thing is to create an environment where each individual can get the best outcome of him or herself. Everyone competes with themselves.
Improving functionality or ergonomics at work
When I made it clear to myself that the cause of my fall was not my weak muscles, but external ‘distractions’, these ‘distractions’ miraculously disappeared. The nurses’ only job was to grab the elbow of the paralysed side, lift the weight off my hips and help me stand up firmly, giving my legs room to move.
It is difficult to lighten the weight from the hips if the assistant is shorter than me. The assistant relies entirely on arm strength, and may not even be able to extend his or her arms enough to take the weight off my hips to give my legs room to move. But there is a simple remedy to this problem: it would be a good idea for short people to wear high-soled shoes at work. I don’t mean high-heeled, but high-soled, like high-soled sneakers.
This would greatly improve ergonomics at work. I have noticed, when working in a standing wheelchair, that even a couple of centimetres of elevation in the sitting position creates a completely different lever in the arms, which activates the weak muscles. Sometimes I can’t close the window when sitting in the normal position. When I raise the seat, I can use my arms in a completely different ratio and the window handle easily twists. Perhaps this is also because my arms have the support of my legs.
When I was 12, I spent several weeks at the SOS Children’s Villages international summer camp in Italy. During the summer I grew 7 cm, which boosted my self-esteem. One of the reasons for this is certainly that the sudden increase in height improved my whole appearance. But probably the most important thing is that the height increase made my limbs work in a different way, which had an effect on the whole energy field around me.
We are all in the same consciousness
I am surprised that someone with whom I am on the same wavelength spiritually, but in practice our cooperation does not work at all. My writings may evoke laudatory common sense feelings in a person, but on a practical level our cooperation does not work at all and the person says: “I can’t help it that I have not been given common sense as much as you have!”.
One person impatiently cursed own ‘stupidity’ when I tried to instruct her on how to use ChatGPT. As if technology and its applications were flawless and always worked perfectly. However, it is clear that not all systems are so intuitive and easy to navigate so that we find things as easily as, say, finding a particular screw in a large department store or on the Internet’s global marketplace. Web pages and posts are also often updated and search engines do not find them as we are used to. Not finding something can also depend on own browser or computer settings. It is said: “It is not a sign of health (intelligence) to adapt to a sick society.” The saying applies equally well to computer networks and machines/devices.
It is a contradiction in terms that someone can recognize common sense in my writings, but cannot apply common sense to practical life. The fact that someone recognizes common sense in my writings is an indication that they have common sense in themselves. However, he does not put his own self into practice, but applies bureaucratic rules to his life and lives entirely according to the modus operandi of this 3D world. The only thing that distinguishes people is the way the brain and the heart work together. The intuitive heart works in 5D consciousness unless we allow the 3D ego to control our actions.
We all live in the same quantum field, where everyone has access to everything and have complete freedom to fulfill themselves on their own terms. The extent to which we succeed in implementing common sense depends on each individual’s own choices. We all have the same potential to evolve into the best version of ourselves. Common sense is an essential part of our lives, for it is the essence of the universe.
Support from home
Successful people praise the support and role of their own folks in their success. If we want to create an equal society where everyone can thrive, we need to broaden our understanding of family and home. Our family and home people are not just our blood relatives, but everyone we come into contact with. Home team includes home carers, helpers and therapists who assist people with disabilities. Housing planners, landlords, property managers, maintenance workers and all those whose services help to make our daily lives run more smoothly can also be seen as own folks.
Our galactic family, which influences life on Earth in many ways and paves the way for humanity’s direct contact with the Star Races and the Ascended Masters belong also to our home team. Home team also include our decision-makers who, during the last government negotiations, launched the “Finland on the Move” programme to increase physical activity and sport opportunities for citizens.
The government’s aim is to “increase mobility in every age group”, as “good physical activity is a prerequisite for older people to feel well and live at home. The need to increase physical activity is greatest for those with the lowest levels of functional capacity.” (These are direct quotes from the government programme.) So the decision by the company providing assistant services to start moving me around like a suitcase is not only repugnant from my point of view, it is also contrary to government objectives.
The responsibility of the individual citizen
People are expected to stay in work as long as possible. It is therefore common sense that health, welfare and rehabilitation services should apply to all citizens, regardless of age. I myself will turn 65 next year, which means that Kela rehabilitation will cease. This is yet another rule made by bureaucrats that needs updating.
Despite the support of the home front, the biggest influence on our success lies with each individual. What matters most in human relationships is how we speak to ourselves and to others. Our words create the general atmosphere, either negative or positive. A simple change of perspective has a profound effect on the reality we create for ourselves.
Individual home carers and assistants are generally aware of the importance of being client-centred. However, they consider it their duty to act according to the instructions of their superiors. They do not consider that by their actions they are giving tacit approval to what they consider to be wrong practices.
“I was just following orders” is not a defense, nor is it an excuse when it comes to people’s individual duty to listen to their hearts and do what they think is right. Just because there are political prostitutes among our decision-makers and leaders does not mean that citizens have to follow the bureaucratic rules they have made.
Everyone has the right and the duty to do exactly what they think is right. Simply internalizing this, focusing our energy and acting with deliberation under the guidance of our intuitive heart, raises the vibrational frequency of our energy. The political prostitutes of this world, the remaining minions of the forces of darkness, cannot do anything about that. Everyone does themselves and their community a great service by restoring their sovereignty to the control of their heart.
The society of the future will not support activities based on false feelings of well-being, such as material wealth, social status, position, or superiority. The currency of the future is consciousness, and to avoid public and personal loss, everyone should orient themselves according to their hearts.