Left and Right Together
What’s our actual experience of life? What’s our experience of ourselves.
The Mystic Samuel Lewis always told his students to look for an actual experience of unity. Just thinking about it, isn’t it.
What is our actual experience?
I would like to think that all of us have very similar experiences of the inside of our heads and inhabiting our bodies. Jill Bolte Taylor gave us a clear experience of the two sides of the brain. She has given us a detailed description of an experience with the mystical mind, of what it’s like when a physical section of the left brain suddenly stops working. When that happened, she was suddenly in this parallel universe. A completely mystical place. A place with total unity, no separation, no naming of things, no words.
She went through eight years of therapy and was able to come back and tell us about it. She was able to physically rebuild the broken section of her brain so that she had both sides working at the same time.
Lots of people ask her. “Well, why didn’t you just stay there?” They ask because going 100% mystical is the spiritual dream. Many people think that this is what we are looking for. I always like the expression on her face when people ask her that. Like, “Why would I do that? I was sick.”
One thing we know for sure. There she was, simply living her life. All of a sudden, she had a stroke and the talking part of her brain quit. The mystical experience came to the forefront, but it did not suddenly then. It had always been there and was uncovered in the silence. The left-brain part of her perception was gone and she was suddenly able to consciously experience it. Her awareness was now coming within the field of this other place.
Same thing happened when she was finally able to heal herself and come back and talk to us. It’s not like, suddenly, the right brain was gone. Once she came back it was still there, just not always at the forefront anymore.
She now has interesting stories now about how she sees herself as an integrated whole person with both of the sides of her brain working in harmony. She’s clearly seen both sides. She’s lived both sides in separation, and has discovered how to live them both in harmony. Her story tells us that both sides are way more conscious than we knew.
This is one of the reasons why meditation and spiritual practices are done. Why they are effective if done with the right attitude. if done under the right guidance. A guide is important because the guide shows us that we are not looking for some special thing. We are simply exploring ourselves. Exploring who we are.
Stillness meditation with no goals is important because the more we can make our whole brain be conscious, the closer we are to figuring out who we are.
That’s why we’re looking for consciousness. That’s why we’re looking for awakening.
So yes, it’s tempting to want to get your left brain, your yacky brain, under control. But hopefully you are seeing that it’s not the 100% goal previously thought. The better quest is to bring them both into balance.
Lots of people experience their existence as a terrible thing. Too many of us wish that we could completely shut down our brain. But, as Jill Bolte Taylor has told us, you would then be ill. Someone would have to take care of you. You literally can’t do anything from that place.
So pause for a moment and ask” Why does our brain work like this at all? I mean, it feels like it’s a mistake. Why did we get made this way?
How did that happen? What went wrong?
Anthropology, The Right Brain is as big as the Left
Science and History
Let’s go into a little bit of science, history and anthropology to help see ourselves clearly.
When Jill Bolton Taylor does her talk she walks out on stage with a brain.
She’s actually a scientist. I’m just a regular gal talking about scientists and scientific discoveries, so don’t take it all from me. It’s good to get what she’s saying from the source. (see it here: https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_my_stroke_of_insight)
She comes out holding a brain. I don’t happen to have a brain because I’m not a brain scientist and they don’t let me have one. But you’ve probably see pictures of a brain before.
The brain has upper lobes, and lower lobes, and left and right. The upper lobes are really big, and the bottom ones small. There is a left bottom and a right bottom, And there is a left top and a right top.
Anthropologists love to gather skulls and figure out who evolved when, who did what, and make guesses as to what our ancestors were like. Turns out that we’ve been standing upright, growing our brains, for millions of years.
Back when we were running around in the woods we had little brains. We had a little left brain and a little right brain. Over time our brains kept evolving, and we kept getting “smarter and smarter.”
Evolution doesn’t work like an artist. It doesn’t go, “Hey. This is a really good idea, but there are a few kinks, so let’s start the painting over and redo the bits that aren’t working quite right.” Instead, things just add on, and add on to what was there before.
It kept being advantageous for the brain to get a bit bigger, and a bit bigger, and the left and right sides grew together. There wasn’t a situation where the left brain got big and then later the right brain caught up. There wasn’t a time where the right brain grew and the left caught up. They grew bigger together.
It’s true today. Our left brain is not bigger than our right.
Also, I’m being simple here. I’m saying two parts of the brain when it’s much more complicated than that. There are numerous different areas that seem to do many different things. For now, it’s best to talk about left and right in the context of self awareness because it’s too complicated to explore that whole story right now. What’s important to know is that it (we) grew as an integrated whole.
Here in the modern world it feels like the left logical brain is big and loud and the left brain is dormant. We all went to schools that mostly trained our left brain. We feel that logical thinking is the biggest part of us.
We are so used to experiencing the thinking brain as our mind that we might even wonder what the silent right brain even does! Society seems to feel it’s not a useful thing, except maybe for artists. We even have books and training programs for the right brain: Drawing on the right side of the brain,
From our professional, always doing, perspective what’s the use of having all that brain power that seems to do nothing at all?
The point I’m trying to make, though, is that the right mystical brain must be as important as the left thinking brain or it wouldn’t be there at all. They both grew at the same time, so we must use them both. They must both be as important to us as human beings.
Why was the mystical brain needed? Why has every society been mystical as well as practical?
My experience is that the mystical side of us is much more than just mystical. It’s our spatial world. It’s where we picture things and see things. It’s how we put things together. It’s the non-time oriented experience that allows us to create.
The right brain works easily without words, and gives us pleasure in creativity.
Picture how our long ago ancestors lived. For millions of years, as our brain kept growing bigger, everything we used we made ourselves. Everyone was creative.
Think about tanning a hide. Or arrows? Imagine the level on concentration it takes to sit there and chip away at a stone and make it into a perfect arrowhead. Get on Youtube and you can watch people do it. They seem to be doing it pretty fast, but it took years and years of chipping away at rocks to gain the spatial skill to chip and know where to chip.
You have to know where to hit, and how it will split. Same with tanning hides. I don’t know if you’ve ever done that. I’ve done it, and it is tedious. Spinning wool is slow and tedious, and yet pleasant. Spinning, weaving, even knitting is the long slow movement through time with very little happening each moment, and yet something grows in our hands.
What about walking around? How are you able to walk out of your house, stroll along on a walk, and then turn around and find your way home? You can easily find your home again. You don’t have to think, “I have to turn right on 3rd, and left on Main Street.” You just walk home enjoying the scenery.
I’m proposing that even today we use our mystical brain all the time. We feel imbalanced because we’re not creative like we used to be, making things all day long. We feel we are not mystical because we don’t actively stimulate the mystical brain experience. But I propose that both sides of our brain are operating all the time. So this means that the mystical experience is happening all the time whether you notice it or not.
Just like Jill Bolte Taylor describes to us in her stroke of insight.
The mystical never goes away. It’s always there humming quietly along. In the mystical experience there is no time, there are no words describing things. It feels so silent that we may think it’s asleep. But it’s always there.
Let’s do a couple of experiments to prove it in our next video.
Right Brain Exercises
Finding the mystical mind
Let’s do some experiments to start getting a real sense of our mystical brain. To experience that it is there working all the time whether we notice it or not.
Mystical training, spiritual training and the spiritual path, is about learning to be aware of this part of ourselves and acknowledging it in ourselves.
So here we go. We’re going to do a couple of very simple exercises.
Exercise number one: Where is your spatula?
Fooled you huh? That’s not what you expected, but you probably succeeded at the exercise all the same. I bet you magically know where you spatula is all the time without thinking about it. If you did think words the words came after the seeing.
Maybe you have a whole bunch of spatulas and saw them all at the same time. But you just saw them. You didn’t think with the logical brain, “It’s in the third drawer over from the right.” Or, “It’s sitting on top of my counter in a ceramic pot.”
You didn’t need to think about it in language. You just knew where you spatula is.
How do you know where your spatula is? I just said the word and knowing happened.
It’s because there is a part of your brain, a part of your consciousness that knows spatial reality. That is your mystical brain.
Stop for a second and feel that knowing inside your consciousness.
There is a different feel to this “knowing” part of your mind. Now switch over and think logically about spatulas. When you do that you’ll immediately start telling stories about spatulas. Where it came from. Which one you like best. Maybe you’ll realize they are all dirty and you really should do your dishes. Boom! You just switched over to the full left-brain experience. Thoughts, stories, guilt.
These two ways of knowing things are very different.
One of the biggest differences is that thinking stories about spatulas come and go, but visualizing your spatula seems to stay (all you have to do is shift to that, and boom! Spatula!) We’re so used to the noisy left-side of our mind that we operate in this illusion that things come and go. This thinking part of the mind can forget things, and is very good at making things up.
The mystical knowing about the spatula, on the other hand, is always there. It’s quiet, non judgmental, and relaxed. You don’t have to wait for it to come. It’s waiting for you.
You can be happy and know where your spatula is. You can be sad and still know. There is no difference. You can be thinking about something completely different, like your cat. You’re thinking about your cat and not thinking about spatulas at all, but this quiet little spatial knowing is there ready to be tapped into.
Exercise number two.
Here’s another one. Imagine that you are driving along. You are going to the grocery store and you see a parking spot. You know, one of those with two lines. You see the two lines while your car is moving. You take your wheel and you’re able to turn and guide the car right between the two lines.
You weren’t able to do that when you first started driving. At first it was really hard because you can’t just turn diagonally into the space. You have to be just a bit beyond and then turn the wheel and pivot on the back tires and slide in.
You also have to work your feet at the same time: a little bit of gas, brake, maybe even a clutch. Then, boom. Stop.
That is your right brain at work. It’s nice and awake, participating in every moment of your life.
Yes, it can be trained. That’s why we have spiritual training. That’s what the spiritual path is supposed to be doing. Working on that mystical muscle.
Changing and Not Changing
They say that all our cells change every seven years. But through those seven years our beingness stays the same. We continue knowing were our spatula is. We continue knowing how to pull into a parking spot.
It never happens that you are driving along, see a parking spot, and need to stop and think, “Okay brain. Time to pull into a parking spot. Let’s stop a sec and access the part of my mind that can do this.”
No. You know it’s always there. Ingrained, unquestioning trust. That’s how integrated your brain always is.
Experiencing Your Integration
Now that you’ve seen how simple these two exercises are you know, as your own experience, that it’s not some philosophy. The mystical brain is always there. Yes. Always there. Just like Buddha says.
Buddha and all the eastern traditions teach this in different ways. It’s absolutely true that this part of you is always there.
You’ve seen it now and can never unsee it.
Third exercise
Here’s another one that’s great for us old people.
Do you remember that moment when the first spaceship went out into space and they took a picture of the Earth. They beamed the picture back and we saw it for the first time.
That picture literally changed the consciousness of everyone on the whole planet because we had never seen ourselves before.
Remember that moment?
You can never unsee it. It’s an integral part of your mystical mind now because it was so amazing and even shocking.
Even people who were not alive at the time the first picture came back will have it in their mind. I bet you were able to imagine how the earth looks from space the second I mentioned it. The blue floating planet.
You’ve seen pictures and the second I mentioned it you saw it in your mind. We can never unsee ourselves as a blue planet. What we look like from space.
Once we see it, it’s permanent. This is just what seeing and knowing yourself is like.
Up until a few moments ago you probably thought spirituality was difficult. But it’s not. It’s just this easy.
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