In the title the word ‘rehabilitation’ refers to physical and mental rehabilitation that play an important part in my own life, but in general the other meaning of ‘rehabilitation’, which is to restore reputation and prestige applies to all people. Restoration of prestige in a sense that we understand our real value, our divine origin and unlimited creative power, so that we can achieve our full potential and dignity that is our innate quality.
The Trap of Humanitarianism
Our inner being is pure positive energy. Its essence is love and compassion and it appreciates everything that exists. Our most important task is to get as close to our true self at the ego-consciousness level as possible and maintain the highest possible vibrational frequency in our energy field.
People, who have achieved a high vibration are compassionate and humane. They want to share their well-being and help everyone, who needs assistance. In the video Letting Go is Getting Into the Vortex Abraham warns people about the danger that is hidden in this well-meaning attitude: Empathic people, who are involved in humanitarian work and respect human rights, sympathize with the people and their problems they are assisting so closely, that their own vibration lowers at the level of the persons of their focus.
Maybe you also remember a case, when someone seemed to suck all energy from you. In such cases the people, who are helping others lose their own connection to their inner being. When their vibrational frequency does not vibrate at the same level as the resources from the source, aid workers and people they are assisting both fall into a pit. Also the Bible talks about “blind guides of the blind”. (Matthew 15:14)
As a consequence people start to work completely at the level of ego-consciousness, without seeing the entirety of things. It strengthens thoughts that shackle us to this limited time-space reality and the five sense organs. These people, who have lost connection to their real self, begin in the worst case blame about that the people they should help. In the backwash the babies are thrown out with the bathwater.
That is why it is extremely important that we align with the vibration of our inner being and maintain it, regardless of external conditions. Many people consider the people with high vibration to be arrogant, but in order to overcome the challenges of our life, we do not have other options than to align with our inner being.
Individuality of Consumers
When Abraham talks about, how important it is for helpers regardless of external circumstances to maintain their connection to their real self and thus their high vibrational frequency, it is only one side of the coin. I believe that people are more often faced with situations, when helpers’ awareness and vibrational frequency do not reach that of the individuals they should help.
Helpers are all, who provide us wide variety of services, for which we pay money and which uphold an organized society. These include childcare and child protection, health care, education, rehabilitation and care services, transport , legal and financial services and so on. Aid recipients are consumers, clients of these service providers, also when the service is paid by municipality or state.
And here is the first stumbling block: clients, who do not pay for the service themselves, are often considered faceless masses, targets of measures and procedures, and who are not seen as individuals that have their own needs and approach to things.
Empowerment – Activating Innate Human Powers
The organizers of various (social) services have come up with a common denominator for their services: empowerment. I have not delved deeper into this term and how they understand it, but I use the term here, as it describes the very thing I want to deal with. Namely, no one can empower another person. The power comes always from within.
The only way an outsider can empower another person is to create conditions, in which a person can fulfil himself and activate his innate abilities. Even doctors or therapists can not empower or rehabilitate anyone, unless they get a connection with the hearts of the persons they are treating and make them trust their inner powers. For the end results, it is very important that we know, what we can do and what is our responsibility in the whole.
Common Sense and Fair Play are the Backbone of our Life
When I have listened to Abraham and teachers preaching the Gospel of Abundance, I sometimes felt as if they regard critical thinking and criticism as a sin. Sometimes it is a question that my own attitudes prevents me from attracting things that I want, and sometimes I just feel that I am a killjoy among persons striving for cheerful happiness, positive energy and abundance. It feels, as if their message was that we only need to ask and align with our inner being, and be happy and grateful to receive all the good things the universe has to deliver to us. No matter how my own action affects the whole, whether I use common sense, or whether I am even fair to others.
However, it is certain that everyone wants things to happen in accordance with common sense and especially so that others are fair to you. Even criminals want that. Fair play is our vital condition and we can expect others to be fair to ourselves only, if we treat others in a fair manner. No human right gives me the privilege to treat others arbitrarily, if I want others to be fair to me.
Because I want to follow these simple guidelines, critical thinking and criticism have grown into my backbone. Nothing makes me feel more alive than getting acquainted with different opinions, perspectives and research results that help me know, what I want. When I face situation in everyday life that challenge my concept of justice or common sense, it is only natural that I try to do my best to correct the situation. Especially if other people’s attitudes prevent me from fulfilling myself or receiving what I want.
Artificial Barriers to Participation
In July, I decided to go to have pool therapy in a rehabilitation unit, where I used to go over 10 years ago for several years. In that time I got along myself in the bath room and the sauna, so I did not need an assistant to have therapy. But this time, according to the new rules, I can not move in the wash room and in the pool area with my wheelchair, because its wheels has dust from the soil and it sticks onto the floor, when I move. The rules stipulated that I had to use a shower chair in the bath room and the pool area, no matter that I could not move it by myself at all. That would mean that I could only have pool therapy, when I have an assistant.
This regulation in itself is in harsh contradiction with the goals of rehabilitation. Its main goal is to activate rehabilitees own potential in a way that they are able to act as far as possible without an assistant.
Aesthetic Disadvantage as an Obstacle to Participation
Several years ago, people raised a vociferous protest, when one banker expressed his opinions about the problem that in the shoes of proletarians sand moves to the bank lobby. People did not spare their words when they condemned such thinking, but the same people are now denying my free movement with the same argument that soil dust enters into the bath room and the pool area on my wheels.
Hygiene is a good thing, but I do not believe that anybody seriously thinks that soil dust on the floor is a health threat. If that were the case, all outdoor swimming pools should be banned. In beautifully tiled swimming halls, soil dust on the floor is at most an aesthetic disadvantage.
Empowerment in Rehabilitation
Since I did not want to make myself dependent on my assistant in order to get rehabilitation, I changed the service provider. In a new place, I got a promise that I could move around in the bathroom and in the pool area with my wheelchair, but before I got into the pool, the therapist put a swimming collar around my neck. When I said that I have not needed a swimming collar before, and hardly need it this time, the therapist announced that with us, no one will go into the pool without a swimming collar. Instructions determine.
When the purpose of the pool therapy is to help rehabilitees or clients to control their muscles and limbs with the help of the lifting and resistance characteristic of water, it is incomprehensible that so-called experts put a ring around the neck of their rehabilitees that draws attention away from the most important thing. A swimming collar is certainly important in many situations, but in my case and certainly in many other cases also, it is simply an exaggeration of safety measures.
I held the collar during the first pool therapy. I could not take it off, even when it prevented me from doing an exercise. The second time, the therapist continued her mantra: “This is for your safety.” There was no common understanding between us, and I felt black clouds gathering above my head.
When I thought that only in a public swimming hall I had the opportunity to self-determination, I thought about the cold water and scream of children. In that moment I decided not to let any well-meaning therapist to stand in my way and prevent me from achieving my goals. As if physical rehabilitation itself would not be a big enough challenge, but additionally one had to waste expensive therapy time for unnecessary arguing.
I tore the swimming collar off, even though it did not please the therapist. After that, we had an effective pool therapy that made my limbs breathe. After sauna bath and a good meal it felt like every cell in my body was rejoicing.
Consumers and Subordinates of Administration
These episodes reminded me of decades of negative experiences in the field of rehabilitation, which ultimately led me to close all troublemakers outside my world, and organize all my rehabilitation at home. These experiences are not limited to my personal rehabilitation only, but problems in the field of rehabilitation as well as other social problems, are reflecting contradictions in human thought patterns.
It is strange that people are bound to a bureaucratic leash as soon as they need support from the society to get their life organized. They are no longer consumers, who retain sovereignty over themselves and who could vote with their feet in the spirit of free market economy and could choose their service provider.
When social help is needed, they will become subordinates of administration. Bureaucracy becomes an end in itself, a self realizing faceless procedure and people are forced to give an account of all the smallest information about their lives. Private companies have been set up to provide public services, which seemingly operate according to market economy rules, but which would not survive a year, if the rules of a free market economy would be applied to them.
Idle Facilities to Maximize Profits
Companies strive to provide their owners with the utmost profit with as little input as possible. I observed this 12 years ago when I was in a rehabilitation center. The only way to enjoy the magnificent pool department at the rehabilitation center was to meditate behind the pool section window. I could at least recall warm memories, when I moved from the hospital to a rehabilitation center in 1979 sitting in a wheelchair. At the rehabilitation center, I was allowed to go to the pool every morning at 6 o’clock to walk in water. After two weeks I started walking with a rollator.
Now the pool department was empty most of the time. I could not go there, because my electric wheelchair had soil dust on its wheels. Rehabilitees or clients, who were able to walk, could not go there, because there was no swim guard, for the case that someone gets a sudden attack of illness or something. The only people with free access to the pool department were the employees of the rehabilitation center.
Apparently it was too large an investment for the rehabilitation center to hire a cleaner to wipe floors or swim guard to ensure safe pool therapy. This despite the fact that the National Health Insurance Fund pays the service provider approximately 10,000 euros for three-week rehabilitation period of each rehabilitee, irrespective of the outcome or regardless of whether the rehabilitation benefits the rehabilitee or client at all.
Businesses get the biggest benefit, when they make sure that each client is in the pool for 100 euros per hour. And this is ensured by inventing rules after rules and suppressing all self-reliant action of the rehabilitees and clients. However, this has a reverse side, not only for rehabilitees, but it does not benefit anyone. When rehabilitation costs become unreasonable, society simply can not afford to rehabilitate citizens. Therapy appointments are shortened and many do not get rehabilitation at all, although they are in dire need of rehabilitation services.
Appropriate Allocation of Resources
I myself would like my rehabilitation to be exercise-oriented, because my biggest challenge is physical rehabilitation. The rehabilitation center presents on its web site that the programme of rehabilitation is planned on the basis of individual needs and objectives of rehabilitee / client. However, the rehabilitation center focuses more on evaluations of their ‘multi-professional team’ and the role of the rehabilitee is to participate even in a singing or music group, if therapists so decide, even if he or she has no motivation for such ‘rehabilitation’.
During my three-week rehabilitation period, I spent 9 hours explaining to a psychologist my life situation and doing some memory and perceptions tests. When the psychologist gave a final report at the end of the rehabilitation period on the issues we had been through, she missed everything I considered to be the most important part of my life.
From the tests she only brought up things, where I got bad results. After one test she said to me that 95% of Americans are below my performance (the test was developed in America). However, the final report did not even mention that the results of the tests vary a lot, nor did it have estimates of what this might suggest.
Empowerment at Home
My rehabilitation period did not leave me empty-handed, though. With the occupational therapist we designed a plastic splint, which I could use to train the flexibility of my left upper arm at home. However, the occupational therapist made it clear to me that the splint would not be of any use to me. She did not want to understand that I had been practicing with a home-made tool for two years already and I felt clearly in my arm what the benefits of the training were.
After this rehabilitation center experience, I decided 12 years ago to arrange physiotherapy and all physical rehabilitation at home to get the most benefit from the time spent on rehabilitation. I have furnished my home with fitness equipment to increase mobility and strength and for the most part, I myself have made my rehabilitation program.
Naturally, my physiotherapist has helped me where my own physical boundaries hinder things. However, most important has been his mental support. I have sometimes felt that just his presence has got my energy to rise tenfold. This is not just my experience, but the experience of his clients in general.
In my opinion, rehabilitation centers could operate on the same principle as large shopping centers. They could fully comply with the rules of a free market economy. Rehabilitees do not necessarily need guidance on rehabilitation, and there is no need to make overall rehabilitation plans and share therapy appointments. Rehabilitation centers could only provide facilities and versatile health and rehabilitation services for their clients and everyone could develop their own rehabilitation program.
The small, simple rehabilitation center, where I was in China at the beginning of the 21st century, worked with such a principle. It was empowering: After a few months of training I was able to walk with a rollator.
Read also:
Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation Challenges II
Video:
Abraham Hicks: Letting Go IS Getting Into The Vortex