Rick Raw: Heart Tests Inspire Mystical Experience

By rick Grant rickgrant01@comcast.net www.rickatnight.com

As a result of suffering chest pressure for a week, which I couldn’t explain, I decided to go get checked out by a cardiologist, Dr. Constantin, associated with St. Lukes Hospital,. The tests consisted of a gamma scan of my chest, an ultra sound scan of my heart, and a stress test on a treadmill hooked up to a heart monitoring machine. Dr. Constantin’s clinic is modern and high tech. The personnel are friendly and efficient, which was a change from my usual medical office experience.

Of all the tests, the ultra-sound scan was the most interesting. Ultra-sound technology has come a long way from the blurry black & white images of yesteryear. Today’s ultra sound is digitized on a computer screen. There I was, looking at my own beating heart, watching the valves open and close. I was fascinated and mesmerized by this strange pulsating organ. "It’s alive–it’s alive!"

Soon, as the tech moved his K-Y Jelly coated wand around my chest, I pondered the big questions of life and death. As I viewed my hard working heart, I realized that it could suddenly stop, and I’d find out what was on the other side. In my mind, seeing my heart working justified getting the tests.

My half-brother died of a catastrophic sudden-death heart attack. He was only 65 years old. He had just retired from the police force and had been playing racquetball. He was sitting on a bench cooling down after a match and he just keeled-over and died. At 67, soon to be 68, I’ve passed that milestone. Still, the chest pressure that drove me to he doctor felt like Mike Tyson was holding me down by pressing my chest. It freaked me out. Dr. Constantin said that I did the right thing getting it checked out. The doctor will study the data from the tests and I’ll see him on July 30 to get the results.

The heart is nothing more than a pump, composed of muscle which pumps blood throughout the body, beating an average of 72 times per minute for every minute of our lives. My regular heartbeat is 84 bpm. On the treadmill, the highest I could get it up to was 110 bpm. The technician was frustrated that I couldn’t get it higher. She turned up the treadmill’s speed and nearly killed me. Finally, my knees gave out, but 110 bps was the highest it would go. Like all muscles, the heart needs exercise. We run, walk, or do other aerobic exercises to make the heart workout by forcing it to beat faster, thus making it stronger.

Seeing my beating heart also made me think of how fragile I am. I tried to imagine how many times my heart had to beat over my 67 years. What if I lived to a hundred? Then I thought about the electrical system that generates the power to keep the heart working. This led me to my lifelong studies of quantum physics, which tells us that everything in the universe is connected. And, we humans are connected to the higher energy–God as it were.

To me, spirituality is secular, since all humans have direct access to the higher energy. I call on it often. Some call it prayer, but it’s just semantics what we call it. Some people like to wrap it in the Biblical symbolism of organized religion, which gets you to the same place. Just turn on that switch in your head and you’re connected to the higher energy. Ask and it shall be given!

Yes, a person can actually die of a broken heart, which emotionally wrecks the heart. Our heart can ache for lost love ones. Thus the heart does play a role in our emotional life–literally and figuratively. When we fall in love, our heart feels good as it beats with healthy verve. It’s our engine that drives the bus that is us.

Seeing my heart working had profound effect on me. It was a mystical experience that verified my belief in the higher energy to which we are connected. My heart, like all the beating hearts in the world, is part of the whole –the great pulsating and expanding universe.