Two Sides of the Same Brain: Insights from Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke Experience

PART TWO

The Choice We have to Make

The first step is to let go of the belief that you must do something to prove yourself worthy. This thought immediately misaligns and separates you from experiencing your Oneness and equality with all. We do not have to attain anything to be enlightened, but we must understand how to move past our fear. To do this, we must solve a paradoxical riddle to find our way back to the Garden of Eden. I now understand that my right brain orientation is not activated if I have even one fear thought.

The cause of our most primary fear is experiencing the finite life of our body.

When we feel separate from Life, we observe our body from our left brain. Our left brain discrimination can cause us to feel frightened of the vastness of Life. By itself, the left brain perceives an essential threat to the integrity of our being and will and attempts to assert control over our life. Since it is impossible to control life, fear of life becomes a primary experience. When we cede control to the left-brain orientation of our mind, it asserts a dominator relationship with our body. If our most primary fear is of the physical limitation of our own body, then the most basic healing can occur by directing our attention to have an unmediated experience with the life of our body. The moment we do this, we cease abandoning or judging our body. We quiet our most primary fear, and our right brain becomes immediately available to our consciousness. This shift is very fragile and sensitive.

Sometimes we hear things we know are important, but we cannot apply the knowledge because we do not yet have the right context to apply what we have heard. Before hearing Jill Bolte Taylor’s talk, I could only intuitively explain the right-brain/left-brain relationship to my own work. Now, Jill’s sharing has provided a scientist’s explanation of what happens when I align my breathing process with my body. Precisely tracking my breath as it moves along my central channel takes me on an extraordinary journey of recapitulation of the complete cycle of my birth and death. As described in the pulse of my breath, I discover the basic format for everything in life: My inhalation creates my exhalation, and my exhalation in turn generates my inhalation; an endless never-ending synergy in which each thing magically arises out of its opposite.

On the other hand, the domain of my left brain describes everything as alien. If I forget that I am one with the infinite creativity of the universe, there is everything for me to fear. Thus, access to the innate enlightenment is determined by my basic orientation to Life: Am I one with All, or am I separate? If I believe I am separate, then all I can do is attempt to manipulate and control my world from all the things that are separate from me and can do me harm. I live in the over-controlling disempowerment of my futile attempts to manipulate the past and future.

Our access to our right or left brain orientations is thus actually determined by the identity that we choose. Again, are we one with everything and equal to everything, as is everything is one with us and equal to us? Or do we live in unstable world of separation and hierarchy, where our position is under constant threat and we must be continually vigilant towards everything we perceive as alien? If we define ourselves as separate from the power of everything else, how could we NOT justify our need to react violently and destructively??

Remember—the primary cause of our fear is our own abandonment of our physical body. This primary separation sets up the prototype of our dislocation from everything. If this is so, then there is a simple path to heal the disconnection of our dysfunctional beliefs that keep us from our enlightened birthright. The moment we quiet our fear, the innate enlightenment that lives in our right brain becomes available to us.