Tending the Garden of Your Mind
- Details
- Created on Sunday, 18 April 2010 01:00
- Written by Margie King Saphier
Reading
Excerpt from My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor;
Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist, suffered from an extensive cerebral bleed due to a congenital arterio-venous malformation that ruptured resulting in the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex being a washed in blood.
The following is her account of what she experienced during her stroke. In spite of a wicked headache from the cerebral bleeding, the pervasive feeling unity, peace and inner joy far outweighed the pain.
“As I held my hands up in front of my face and wiggled my fingers, I was simultaneously perplexed and intrigued. Wow, what a strange and amazing thing I am. What a bizarre living being I am. Life! I am life! I am a sea of water bound inside this membranous pouch. Here, in this form, I am conscious mind and this body is the vehicle through which I am ALIVE! I am trillions of cells sharing a common mind. I am here, now, thriving as life. Wow! What an unfathomable concept! I am cellular life, no – I am molecular life with manual dexterity and a cognitive mind!
In the wisdom of my dementia, I understood that my body was, by the magnificence of its biological design a precious and fragile gift. It was clear to me that this body functioned like a portal through which the energy of who I am can be beamed into a three-dimensional external space.
This cellular mass of my body had provided me with a marvelous temporary home. This amazing brain had been capable of integrating literally billions of trillions of bits of data, in every instant to create for me a three-dimensional perception of this environment that actually appeared to be not only seamless and real, but also safe. Here, in this delusion, I was mesmerized by the efficiency of this biological matrix as it created my form, and I was awed by the simplicity of its design. I saw myself as a complex composite of dynamic systems, a collection of interlacing cells capable of integrating a medley of sensory modalities streaming in from the external world. And when the systems functioned properly, they naturally manifested a consciousness capable of normal reality. I wondered how I could have spent so many years in this body, in this form of life, and never really understood that I was just visiting here.
Even in this condition, the egotistical mind of my left hemisphere arrogantly retained the belief that although I was experiencing a dramatic mental incapacity, my life was invincible. Optimistically, I believed that I would recover completely from this morning’s events … by the end of the week.” Pp. 42 -45.
It took Dr. Taylor 8 years to fully regain all she lost.
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“Prior to this experience with my stroke, the cells in my left hemisphere had been capable of dominating the cells in my right hemisphere. The judging and analytical character in my left mind dominated my personality. When I experienced the hemorrhage and lost my left hemisphere language center cells that defined my self, those cells could no longer inhibit the cells in my right mind. As a result, I have gained a clear delineation of the two very distinct characters co-habiting my cranium. The two halves of my brain don’t just perceive and think in different ways at a neurological level, but they demonstrate very different values based upon the types of information they perceive, and thus exhibit very different personalities. My stroke of insight is that the core of my right hemisphere consciousness is a character that is directly connected to my feeling of deep inner peace, love, joy, and compassion in the world. ….
It is my goal to help you find a hemispheric home for each of your characters so that we can honor their identities and perhaps have more say in how we want to be in the world.” p. 133
{player 2010-04-18-9am-sermon.mp3}
Sermon
In Jill Bolte Taylor’s amazing book, My Stroke of Insight, she reveals we have two characters or personalities living with in our cranium. We need to get know these characters so we have more choice of how we want to be in the world consciously expressing our free will.
Jill in her own right is a very interesting person. She decided as a teenager she wanted to study the brain. Her brother, who is close to her in age, has schizophrenia. She wanted to discover the answer, why she and her brother could be in the same room taking in the same stimuli, and yet each had a different understanding of what they were perceiving. In other words, they experienced the same stimuli as different realities. So Jill came to Harvard, as a neuroanatomist, to study the brain and on weekends she was a spokesperson for NAMI, the National Association for Mental Illness. One purpose was to encourage folks to donate their brains after they died for research. So if you always wanted to go to Harvard, and didn’t get to go ….. you can still go! I even have application form!!
Taylor writes, “One of the jobs of our left hemisphere language center is to define our self by saying “I am.” Through the use of brain chatter, the brain repeats over and over again the details of our life so we will remember them, otherwise we would lose track of our life and identity.” This is an important function of the left hemisphere, but it does not serve us well when we believe it represents all there is. Taylor came to realize this when, after 8 years, her left-brain language center recovered and became functional again. The brain chatter returned. She observed the constant stories and often thought they were funny, until she realized her left mind expected the rest of her mind to believe these stories as truth. So after 8 years of absent brain chatter, the portion of her left mind she chose not to recover was the part that had the potential to be the bully, to incessantly worry or to be verbally abusive to others or herself.
In other words, Taylor chose to assert her free will in her relationship with the incessant judge. (144)
When I was in college studying nursing in the 1960’s, I had an awe-inspiring experience of unity, peace and joy like the one Taylor experienced. Fortunately I did not have a stroke to have the experience.
I was studying for an obstetrics exam about cell division and differentiation as a zygote developed into a fetus. As I poured over my books and notes, gaining more understanding of this process, I suddenly felt I was actually seeing this cell division happening over and over again as it repeated itself throughout all creation. It was like I was seeing a miracle unfold before my eyes. I suddenly experienced the universe as Taylor did, “full of complex dynamic systems of energy, cells, molecules, matter – all inter-related and interdependent.” In that moment, I felt I was experiencing the unity of the universe of which I was very much a part, and it filled me with joy! I was ecstatic!! In that moment I was very much in the moment.
So all this is to say moments of unity can come to each one of us spontaneously and unbidden, but when they come the mind chatter is silent.
On the other hand, in meditation, one can experience the same sense of unity that Taylor did, but for that to happen, the constant chatter has to become less dominating. Since one’s mind chatter wants to be the only show in town, meditation requires commitment and clear intention. When the mind chatter becomes less dominating, we can become aware there is another reality. I have practiced meditation for close to 20 years and I confess I have no memory of experiencing a silent mind - a quieter mind, yes, but not a silent one.
I have also experienced a slow but steady change to how I respond to the chatter in my mind, which I attribute to my awareness that there is another reality beside the one that is telling me I am the queen bee of the hive or the biggest jerk on the block. As our meditation practice deepens, we see patterns in the stories the chatter tells and that the stories do not have much to do with reality. We often need to grieve and forgive ourselves when we realize how we have hurt loved ones because we acted out of these stories as if they were reality. But we can also gain a sense a humor about the persistent, ever-changing mind chatter that is always trying to define us. It is a very persistent clever fellow.
As a society, Taylor observed, we do not teach children or adults that we need to carefully tend the garden of our minds. Without structure, censorship or discipline our thoughts can run on automatic and we lose the opportunity to exercise our free will. Robin Casarjian, who has written a book Houses of Healing for incarcerated men and women, teaches how we can cultivate the garden of their minds to bring forth compassion, clarity, creativity, connection and pull out the choking weeds of judgment, criticism, blame, meanness, etc. Taylor writes, “Although there are certain limbic system (emotional) programs that can be triggered automatically, it takes less than 90 seconds for one of these programs to be triggered, surge through our body and then be completely flushed out of our blood stream. … . If we remain angry after the 90 seconds have passed, it is because we have chosen to let that circuit continue to run.” (p. 146)
I think most of us are unaware that we have a 90 second fuse which we can fuel or extinguish.
One of the weekly assignments, Robin Casarjian developed to help the prisoners with this is called Emotional Weather Report. It might sound like this: I woke up in a sunny mood, but clouds began gathering as I remembered the talk I had with my boss yesterday. She was concerned with the quality of my work this past month. She asked if any thing was wrong. I know I can never do any thing right. Then Joe bumped into me with a glass of OJ. What a mess! Well, the gathering clouds let loose lightning, thunder, and a torrent of rain. I lit into him and let him have it. I came home and decided to have a few beers and go bed. The fog started to roll in: I did not want to talk to any one.
So in looking at this emotional weather report we can see how the emotions can easily snowball. The next step after writing the report is to go back in your memory to remember the physical sensations that you experienced around when your boss expressed concern about the quality of your work. Did your stomach turn? Throat constrict? Heart race? By becoming aware of the physical sensations to our emotional response we can lengthen that 90 second fuse to give ourselves a bit more time before we react or respond. Once we become aware of the physical sensations, our awareness can put us into contact with whatever old tape is playing. In this scenario it is, “I can never do anything right. ”We can then remind our self that tape is from childhood. We can take a deep breath, which helps to break the emotional response and helps us to step back mentally to decide what to do I want to do next. We might remember our boss expressed concern and we will be able let go of our self-defenses. Whatever we decide, another reality can be entertained.
If you don’t want to meditate, how do you gain influence over the mind chatter? Taylor states the first step to getting out of these reverberating loops of negative thoughts is to recognize when you are in them. Speak to these negative thought loops as if they are unruly children. You can even shake your finger at these unruly thoughts. Use diversionary tactics to interrupt the cycle: find something fascinating to think about or think about something that brings you great joy, or find an activity you would like to do and do it.
Become aware of and get to know your physiological responses to these negative thought patterns, so you cut them off sooner when it is easier. Have a sense of humor about the scheming antics of the storyteller and laugh out loud. Reframe what the story of the storyteller is saying. If you are worried about a loved, send a prayer or meditation of loving kindness. Prayer or meditation may or may not help others, but if it is sent with intentional compassion, it will help us by opening our minds to a larger reality of compassion rather than keeping us in a small world of worry.
I leave you with a final quote from Dr. Taylor.
“I view the garden in my mind as a sacred patch of cosmic real estate that the universe has entrusted to me to tend over the years of my lifetime. Regardless of the garden I have inherited, once I consciously take over the responsibility of tending my mind, I choose to nurture those circuits that I want to grow, and consciously prune back those circuits I prefer to live without. …
The mental health of our society is established by the mental health of the brains making up society… I think Gandhi was right when he said, ‘We must be the change we want to see in the world.’”
“I find that my right hemisphere consciousness is eager for us to take the next giant leap for humankind and step to the right [meaning to our right cranial hemisphere] so we can evolve this planet into the peaceful loving place we yearn for it to be.”
May it be so.