A Stroke of Insight #079
Jill Bolte Taylor and the role of the brain in creating our world
The Power of Our Brain to Change Reality
Welcome back! There is a book that I always found very inspiring and which describes the power of our brain to change reality. This is Jill Bolte Taylor's "My Stroke of Insight." This is a book where she, a neurophysiologist and researcher of the brain, has herself a stroke. This is a real case; this is a non-fiction book, and she had this stroke. Because she was a scientist studying the brain, she was able to describe it, and she was able to observe herself having this stroke.
A Memorable Description of a Stroke
One very memorable thing is how she describes how suddenly her brain stopped being in this mode of always chattering and talking to her and separating her from the world outside. Because the stroke was in the left side of the brain, and the left side is responsible for logical thinking and for separating the individual from the environment, she describes standing in the shower and seeing her hand and not being able to say where her hand ends and where the wall begins. She felt like being one part of the whole world of the whole house that surrounded her, and how she was essentially one with the whole universe around her.
A State of Peace
This was not an entirely bad state of affairs. She was happy in this moment. She was happy to be rid of all the responsibilities that we normally have and of all the trouble that our brains are anticipating and creating for us. She was in a very peaceful place when she was just part of the world. Perhaps this is how animals perceive the world when they are happy, and perhaps this is something that is also possible to recover for us through meditation, through spiritual practices where we can unlearn this very strict way that our brains have of cataloging the world and looking into the future and not concentrating on the present.
Unlearning to Reconnect
But we can try and instead to silence this part of our brain and through meditation, perhaps through practices of living in the moment, of concentrating on the moment, to open up our brains to the possibility of just perceiving the moment as it is and seeing ourselves as connected with the whole world.
Thank you, and see you next time.
