Илья Басов – Psychological support at the last stage of life path of human (страница 2)
In general, we can confidently state that if there really is an intention to understand something root (fundamental) about what is happening to a person, then we need to look for a mismatched duality, and the way out (including from suffering) is the harmonization of duality (understanding the importance of both sides, the transition from enmity to cooperation).
We believe that a clear vision of the mechanics of the work of personality dualities and the transition from "the game is played by you" to the position of free choice is possible only through the noetic dimension, through those higher meanings and values that are there. To such a meaning (or a non–transferable, win-win value) we refer awareness – a clear understanding of oneself ("who you are and why"). I.e., to consider a human only as a person (ego), as a set of certain physical, mental, sensory components and variables, it means to humiliate him, put him in a Procrustean bed and deprive him of the most valuable, important, perhaps life itself in its deepest understanding – to transfer him from the sphere of life into existence.
It is the view from the noetic dimension that provides us with understanding and answers to the most difficult and painful events in a person's life (for example, the loss of a child, the collapse of life values, the experience of a terminal illness). If we consider a person only as a body-mind-feelings structure, designated here as a personality or ego, then the answers will be explanatory, superficial.
In readiness and transition to a contemplative position, it is not difficult to see a somato-psychological unity that creates harmony of the physical and psychological, allowing an aging person to calmly relate to the past, present and future. Against the background of a decrease in physical strength, a constant feeling of physical malaise, on the eve of the end of life, such a position reflects
Spiritual and existential understanding of life, its individual stages leads a person to cope with the fear of death, to "outgrow" the idea that it negates any successes achieved and efforts made. Filling life fragments and its lived parts by the meaning, understanding their value, creates a subjective feeling of correctness, truth of the path in a person. It also opens up certain fragments in the future, building internal connections that were not initially manifested for the personality, which largely support the desire to live and interest in oneself (i.e. considering access to spiritual meanings as an existential task of late adulthood and old age, we can see the manifestation of its solution in the inner harmonious state of personality, acceptance of existential givens). The fulfillment of the existential task of understanding one's life (general principles and an example of understanding life, in a popular science format, are also given in Appendix No. 2) includes understanding the inherent meanings and those fragments of life that a person evaluates negatively as dysfunctional. But when we subjecting them to secondary (tertiary, etc.) semantic processing it will lead us to acceptance of our personality and life in general (i.e., including death). We come to the conclusion that "all this was not in vain", "it was not in vain". Such comprehension (the discovery of the not obvious significance of some moments of life), a kind of pilgrimage to one's own Self, of course, requires a developed reflection and experience of self-contemplation from the individual, and failure to fulfill this task deprives a person of existential fullness and existential joy.
As we noted earlier14, by carrying out the spiritual work described here and further, a person creates the following: as he learns about himself, he outgrows the boundaries of the ego – connects his deep essence with something greater than himself, "with the superhuman beginnings of his nature, changes the scale of self-perception and forms a new attitude to his deeds, choices and life in general. Every grain of self-knowledge gained is experienced by him as a step in the direction of personal growth, congruence of the Self and the world. Such self–identification and the discovery of the value of the Self, the need for oneself in being – a significant condition of human existence –
I.S. Pryazhnikov refers to the personal neoplasms of the elderly as a change of value orientations with access to existential questions, the search for meaning in a new life activity, summing up (revealing the meanings) of a life lived. With retirement, a person can come to a special happiness, for some people, it may consist in "the desire to calmly comprehend the whole life lived" (in this case, self-determination will be retrospective, awareness of the meaning of the life lived). The personal neoplasm in this case will be a sense of integrity and harmony, or, if the meanings are not found, a sense of inharmonicity, incompleteness.
During the period of old age itself, one of the leading activities of I.S. Pryazhnikov is the preparation for death, which can be expressed in the preparation of a will, introduction to religious or esoteric knowledge. Personal neoplasm has a dual character: "either it is a strengthening sense of self-worth when an old person finds an important meaning of his life for himself in spite of all circumstances, or it is a feeling of despair when such a meaning is not found and an old person wastes his strength in small things, literally "fading before his eyes"."17
All the moments of awareness of the unattainability of the fullness of self-incarnation that are becoming more frequent during late adulthood and old age are closely related to thoughts about death (the inevitable existential reality of existence). When a person constructively overcomes the "crisis of aging", then with a retrospective immersion in the past, he experiences the "fulfillment" of the meanings of life, finding in it moments of happiness, self-actualization, moments of self-embodiment and fullness of being. If the fear of death overwhelms the personality, then the appeal to the past occurs rather forcibly, in order to find excuses for not embodying meanings, there is a projection of self-condemnation on others, on inherited circumstances and leads to negative experiences, a sense of subjective distress.
Thus, both the "crisis of aging" and what can be designated as the "crisis of death", a person fixes in a sense by himself, – as a line when there are no resources, time and effort to implement something conceived that gives a justified meaning, and life will pass without it. But in order for this to be experienced as a tragedy, it is necessary to reinforce it with ideas about the insolvency of a past life (about "wasted and pointlessly wasted time") and the inability to comprehend a certain critical value of the semantic spectrum of death. However, the first still does not happen so often, because rethinking the life path, referring to past experience, always has a chance to find valuable, important, right in life, at least acceptable meanings, "versions of yourself". In this regard, it would be appropriate to quote the words of Sapogova: "youth can be correlated with an existential "willingness / courage to become" (in potency – everything a person wants and can do), maturity – with "willingness / courage to be" (that is, to live the way he has become, or change to be again), then the subsequent ages – with "willingness / courage to understand", to take place in their already "become" quality and accept the realized meanings of their becoming and being."18
When a person comes to the perception of old age, dying and death as a "gift presented to himself"19, then the external frightening attributes appear in a more voluminous form, and not only as a "sign of trouble". Achieving such a level, of course, requires from a person the actualization of hermeneutic (internal) resources, the manifestation of the completeness of the "human" and their direction to the building of meanings, such work is an act of great human courage (and more than in youth or adulthood). As F. Petraka accurately said "old age is a time of exposing the meaning of all human goals, demonstrating their nobility or insignificance."20
"Pragmatic" classification of types of death
Further in our study, we will adhere to a less academic line21 of presentation (which does not mean less scientific value of the work) both because of some "absurdity" of attempts to pack the content of the sacrament of the last stage of a person's life path into the "dry" language of science, and in order to increase the practical applicability of labor, making it more "alive".