Today's Sermon:

How to come out of a coma.

You have a lot on your mind. You may find easy, restful times, on occasion. But mainly your thoughts are active...even while on vacation...even while asleep.

If you don't have anything to think about, you'll figure out something to think about. Perhaps you'll think about work, perhaps you'll think about a daydream.

A simple playful daydream. Or is it?

A daydream is full of neurons firing, receptors recepting, and chemicals flowing and interacting with living tissues.

Even in a daydream, you have a lot on your mind.

You, your brain, work(s) hard to provide you with your mind.

You have plenty to think about when you fill your mind with Jesus Christ, life, love, happiness.

The addition of extra elements, by choice, or by circumstance, can overfill the container of the brain. Drugs, sex, sensual information, anger, devious plans, and remorse, each carry an extra burden for the brain. The brain has to work harder to function properly.

Plus, when the mind finds that the extra elements, in part or in whole, conflict with previous information, the mind and the brain have to work even harder. Subconsciously, the mind has to figure ways to deal with awkward, conflicting information.

The mind has to add, cross reference, and (virtually delete, with footnote).

Subconsciously, the mind prioritorizes, categorizes, and fits the new information into it's pattern.

However, when the subconscious mind cannot readily find a typical location for the information, or when the subconscious mind is flooded and overloaded with new information, then the subconscious mind alerts the conscious mind.

The mind now has to consciously concentrate to figure out the problems.

So what happens if the conscious mind has too many problems? It becomes overloaded and instead of changing old conflicting habits, it may choose to do something easier and less complex and react defensively. Defense is a more relaxed posture than the offensive strategem of working to find the optimal solution.

Defense lulls the user into a feeling of real or imagined safety and comfort.

So when the mind is overloaded it may choose to react defensively and set a limit or default line. Anything that crosses that border would be subconsciously handled by default, or in other words, anything that falls into that zone of thought could be automatically placed into a new file. This new file might be titled Danger, scrap, miscellaneous, or any of a wide variety of titles.

When the subconscious is filled with too many "Danger", or "Miscellaneous", or similar files, it may react by alerting the conscious mind...repeating the process.

When the conscious and subscious are both filled to capacity thusly, the mind may react with a symptom or emotional response. The symptom may be a chemical reaction by the brain causing the body to perhaps intensify chemical activity, and perhaps resulting in an ulcer. An emotional response might be an outburst of yelling, or crying.

Continuing on this same line of reasoning, it is normal then to predict further developments. If the symptoms or emotionnal responses are too severe or occur too frequently, then the brain may react on another defensive level, causing mind to enter a state of depression, anxiety, or other state of emotional disorder. Or the body may enter dysfunction, and medical help might be sought.

If the process continues with the improper habits of defense being consistently reinforced, the brain may choose to shut down, severing ties with the senses and the outside world.

The brain (with mind) may move into a state of stupor or coma.

While the brain may be in euphoria, pain, or other, the patient's doctor or other observer may view it as a calm, almost lifeless condition.

Having an idea of a possible root cause as proffered per the forgoing process, the question arises as to what can be done to remedy the situation.

From within the victim and patient the right solution can be initiated.

Externally, a solution by the doctor, a visiting observer, or other, requires an extra step or tool to reach the mind of the patient.

With all of the patient's senses shut off, the patient would slip from that which is typically recognized as human life. Therefore the living patient in stable condition does sense and react to outside stimuli.

The patient might still be operating their own heart, and perhaps their own lungs. But even if they are not, all hope is not lost for the human.

Sunlight, for instance, might come through the window and warm the patient's brain, for better or for worse. The heating causes chemicals to react differently.

So a patient can be stimulated to change for the better.

Selection and administration of the right stimulus should be timely, since brain patterns often become entrenched over time.

The patient may be dealing with new information very infrequently, and then allowing only small amounts of new information to enter. This does not guarantee recovery.

Also, the patient might not allow certain types of stimuli, while freely allowing other stimuli. For instance, the patient's brain might not allow certain catch phrase files, such as one titled "Dangerous". "Dangerous" might include sound, sight, touch, taste, speech, movement, and many other areas. Yet the brain might not have catergorized some item, such as smell, for instance, as a threatening item.

If you are the visitor, you can use this to your advantage to help the victim. You might try constantly giving the victim encouraging, helpful, delightful, information, assuring the victim of safety, comfort, and even more excellent success.

You could hold their hand, speak to them, play music, bring flowers, and so on. Hopefully, some of the information will be allowed into the victim's brain without triggering the auto-defense sequence. And hopefully, the victim will allow an increasing amount of information to be received, and will continue to respond, even if not immediately appearant.

With perserverence over time, the victim may continue to improve. Perhaps some slight movement, such as a smile, may appear. Or a tighter grip on your hand.

Then perhaps open eyes and speech.

Perfect recovery involves perfection. We can find such perfection in Jesus Christ, our savior and defender.

The foregoing is not meant to replace professional help, and the foregoing has not been tested. It is only theory, offered for your consideration, and hopefully to your benefit, and for the benefits it may bring others.

Composed and published 12/5/99 by Bob Benchoff. "Solution" link added 1/5/02 by Dr. Benchoff. Non-ICCDBB groups noted below were updated 2/8/2003. Permission to reprint in whole is freely granted. Permission to reprint in part, keeping the original context, is freely granted.

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