A few months ago, without much schmaltz, fanfare or drama, God left me and walked away into the sunset.
Any reflections or realizations ever since have only been affirming this burst of my God bubble time and again to the point that I draw a blank whenever I try to pray these days. Even though, my mental shift over this new development has felt rather matter-of-factly and there has been no separation anxiety per se about His leaving, a small part of me has been latently wary of old uncertainties like enlightenment, inner peace, and everlasting bliss that have resurfaced with a new kind of blurriness in His wake. When a super-abstraction like God can vanish with a sleight of the hand, what will become of sub-abstractions that are just as godly as God Himself?
Enter, My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor.
I had to revisit this book for something else that I was trying to gain clarity on (subsequent post) and as it is the case with every spiral pathway of spiritual rabbit holes, this book has helped me better connect the dots the second time around.
My Stroke of Insight is about a neuroanatomist’s unexpected but astounding experience of a stroke brought on by a blood clot in her brain that allowed her to witness the workings of the two hemispheres of the brain from the inside out.
Our left side of the brain is responsible for logic, language, memory, and social skills while the right side takes care of visual imagery, creativity, intuition, and imagination among many other functions. Even though the two hemispheres of the brain interpret the world differently, inputs from both parts are essential to perform any task because as evolution would have it, the job of comprehending reality is split between the two hemisphere so the brain could process more data and perceive the world in a wholesome manner. And the information streaming in from these two hemispheres are stitched together so seamlessly for our comprehension that in our normal experience we don’t see them as two different sets of information.
But Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke helped her draw the curtain between the two hemispheres as her left hemisphere started shutting down function after function and discover the magic that resides in the right hemisphere of her brain (also everyone else’s). It took her eight years to fully recover but not before she gained a wholly new perspective on her life’s study. While her book is an interesting read, her TED talk from almost ten years ago is simply phenomenal and one listen will convince anyone as to why it still reigns as one of the 20 most popular talks of all times at ted.com.
In her narration, Jill Bolte Taylor explains that the right hemisphere understands incoming information through sensory experiences while the left processes information through language and analysis. While the right is all about the present moment, the left is about the past and the future. While the right comprehends everything as a fundamental energy form that is one and the same, the left pulls back the reins with the inner voice of reality that helps us stay in our lane. So on the day of her stroke, it was in this left hemisphere where a blood vessel burst causing her to lose the ability to talk, walk, read or recall within a matter of hours. But when the part of her brain that helps her perform as a social being deteriorated, she noticed that her brain chatter ceased and an engulfing silence took its place.
“I lost my balance and I am propped up against the wall. I looked down at my arm and I realized that I can no longer define the boundaries of my body, I can’t define where I begin and where I end, because the atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall and all I could detect was this energy. I am asking myself what is wrong with me, what is going on and in that moment, my left hemisphere brain chatter went totally silent just like someone took a remote control and pushed the mute button. Total silence. And at first I was shocked to find myself inside of a silent mind, but then I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of the energy around me. And because I could no longer identify the boundaries of my body, I felt enormous and expansive. I felt one with all the energy that was and it was beautiful there.” - Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor
Sounds familiar? Sounds suspiciously like the stuff of yogis and teachers who spend their lifetime meditating, searching for the truth, and finally reaching that sea of blissful silence, aka, enlightenment?
Interestingly, in the case of Tibetan meditators and Franciscan nuns SPECT imaging done while they meditated or prayed had revealed a decrease in the same left hemisphere language center activities that results in the silencing of brain chatter, along with a decrease in the orientation association area of the left hemisphere that enables one to identify their personal physical boundaries. Just as Jill Bolte Taylor’s experience.
So when the master teachers said things like “You are already That”, “Enlightenment is a natural state that is within us”, or the simplest of all, “Be Still”, what they meant was that the big ticket items of life like inner peace and enlightenment are not an abstract, farfetched potential within us, but rather tangible entities that are as real as the liver or spleen. They are very much present in all of us, like the rectus abdominis muscle, which is a biological default in every human being that is not going to reveal itself as the fetching six pack abs unless we lose the fat atop and strengthen the muscle. We truly don’t have to do anything but only remove the obstacles that stop us from seeing that which we already are.
So enlightenment is a simple neurochemical interaction of neurons in an ocean of grey matter. It is a dormant biological function, a straightforward spiritual neuroscience. It can come with years of practice or in the blink of an eye because our neural wirings just up and decided to go a different way.
Does this oversimplify the ethereal godly concept and knock it down from its heavenly pedestal? Probably, yes. Does it make it any less spectacular? Most definitely, not. I guess what this means for me now is that the reverence has not been lost but just switched places. Now it is closer to home, right at my neural tip. Enlightenment doesn’t make me uneasy any more because it sits not at a faraway destination as an abstraction but right here, perfectly between my fears and joy, mistakes and anxieties, untouched by anything that was and anything that would be. We may not have been officially introduced to each other yet, this enlightenment and I, but it is no longer a stranger. This realization in itself feels like an invisible shackle breaking off, a shackle that I did not even realize I was wearing on me all this time.
Sure, God left me and walked away into sunset.
But not before He looked over His shoulder and said, “You are going to be okay, my child.”
