Into Balance

I'm intrigued by the experience of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, which she presents in this video. If you haven't watched it, do take the time. It's about 20 minutes long, but you'll think about it for the rest of the day and beyond.

Dr. Bolte Taylor is a neuroanatomist who suffered from a massive stroke on the left side of her brain in 1996. Surprisingly, she found that the stroke opened her up to an entirely different -- and blissful -- experience of existence. She has since called it her "stroke of insight."

She recounts that, as a scientist, she had lived her whole life sensing the world through the left hemisphere of her brain. The left hemisphere of the brain processes sensory data in a logical, linear way. The stroke changed that for her. As a result, Dr. Bolte Taylor was forced to experience the world through the creative, intuitive right hemisphere of her brain. Her description of the experience is mystical.

What intrigued me about her talk was the idea that I was experiencing much the same journey, but in reverse. While Dr. Bolte Taylor's journey of consciousness moved from the logical left hemisphere of her brain to the intuitive right hemisphere of her brain, my journey was taking me from the intuitive right to the logical left. My years in the Center were all about the development and elevation of my right brain operations to the exclusion of the logical left (at least from a neurological point of view).

Unlike Dr. Bolte Taylor, though, the agent of change for my journey from intuitive insight to intellectual development was not the sudden physical violence of a stroke. Instead, I was moved psychologically.

Honestly, I had nowhere else to go. After nine years in the Center, I had no inclination to return to the contemplative life. And after I had spent close to three years cultivating my inner warrior only to have that dream come crashing down with my utter failure at SEAL training, intellectual development -- the left hemisphere of the brain -- seemed the only option left.

Thankfully, after three years of menial labor on the USS Nimitz, I was desperate to study and it was a great relief for me to begin classes at MIIS in January 1996. Though I was a little apprehensive that first day, I quickly settled into a routine that would sustain me for the next two and a half years.

Shortly after starting classes, my wife, two year old son, and I moved from Santa Cruz -- where we had been living with my mom -- to Monterey. From that point, I began walking back and forth to school every day.

The walk was about a mile, up one side of a hill, through the Presidio of Monterey Army Garrison, and down the other side of the hill into Monterey proper. Typically, I might have had two classes in the morning and another in the mid-afternoon. So, after my morning classes, I'd head over to the Monterey Sports Center (quite possibly the best city-run athletic center anywhere). There I began working out again in earnest, for the first time since quitting BUD/S. Twice a week I swam and three times a week I lifted weights and ran north along the Monterey coast.

On weekends, I began doing long runs out to Pebble Beach and the famous 17-Mile Drive, which always reminded me of the first time I ran there in the late 1980s with Sundar. My life was coming into balance for the first time.

As for scholastic activities, I got a job with one of the Institute's research facilities, the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. CNS, as it is called, is the largest research organization in the United States devoted to tracking, reporting, and in that way preventing the spread of WMD throughout the world. For the next few years, I spent about 20 hours a week at CNS -- which is right on campus -- reviewing papers and journals for articles reporting about the trade of ballistic missiles in and around Asia.

I also began studying Japanese. My initial plan had been to study Arabic, but at some point between leaving the Navy and starting school I realized that to really perfect my language acquisition I would have to spend time living in the area of study and I didn't think Elaine -- who is Jewish -- would feel comfortable if we moved to Syria, for example. Plus, I'd always felt some affinity for Japan. Between the ages of five and 12, I had studied Judo at a traditional dojo (Santa Clara Judo Club run by Sensei Tosh Higashi).

With that, my formal journey into the logical left hemisphere of my brain began. My life entered a state of relative equilibrium that I hadn't experienced in a long time, if ever. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was building a solid intellectual foundation that was to support the reemergence of my psychic being in the very near future.

Comments

sunirmalya said…
that jill-bolte taylor is amazing - it is the best story of this century
January 24, 2009 at 1:59 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

David Moretti

Image
On October 18, 1981, I got the word that Sri Chinmoy had accepted me as one of his disciples. I was 16, a junior in high school. Young as I was, the story behind my applying to join what some in my family believed -- perhaps correctly -- to be a Hindu religious cult stretched back a few years and is a story of happenstance, serendipity and interesting personalities. Over the following nine years of my discipleship, I would meet some of the most unique individuals I've ever met and I'll do my best to draw attention to them as my story unfolds. First, though, I want to acknowledge my boyhood friend, David Moretti (pictured above). Dave was my best friend through grade school. His father worked for the Almaden winery when there were still vineyards in Silicon Valley, and his mother worked for a local bank. Unlike my parents, Dave's mom and dad hadn't divorced. I spent just about every day after elementary school hanging out at the Moretti's house. When the whole...
Read more

Hear Me Roar

Image
The time for former women disciples to come together, "in numbers too big to ignore" as Helen Reddy sings in her famous song, is now. With the huge exception of Jayanti Tamm -- and her book Cartwheels in a Sari -- there have been precious few examples of what the disciple life was like from a woman's perspective. That should change. There are now scores of women who spent significant time in the Center leading extremely disciplined lives, who are now living outside the shadow of the Center, standing on their own, each of whom have distinct and unique voices. I'd really like to hear from them (you all know who you are). And I don't mean just in guest posts here (though I love them). What I'm really advocating is a site for women, by women. Something like a spiritual Double X site . I take inspiration again from Jayanti, who is perhaps laying the foundation for such a site at her blog -- read the latest lion's roar here . That's Helen Reddy in the pho...
Read more

Lavanya - A Guest Post

Image
I WAS NOT AS SPECIAL AS YOU AND I THOUGHT This is the story of a few pivotal experiences of my 31 years in the Sri Chinmoy Centre. Telling it makes me feel sad, mad, ashamed, and foolish for staying and serving for so many years after I knew things were not as they should be, starting with our divine leader. Still, when I finally left the Centre, I swore to myself that I would never tell what I knew about him, and until recently I thought I never would. But when I left the Centre, I thought I knew what was true about Chinmoy, when actually I knew almost nothing. Now, as the real Chinmoy is gradually being revealed by piecing together all of our experiences with him, it seems I can’t keep my own story tamped down any longer. It needs to be told.  It’s not a good story, not a happy story, and I am not a heroine – on the contrary. But life is telling me it’s time to speak up. I probably should have spoken long ago. I definitely COULD have spoken about 40 years ago. Maybe I...
Read more