Posted by JohnD
Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:35:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by absolutwade at Flickr
The story of her stroke and remarkable recovery are now well-known, through her book, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey
, through the remarkable 18-minute video of her TED talk and through multiple interviews and articles in national media. Though Jill Bolte Taylor emphasizes her professional experience as a neuroanatomist, she has become a star not of science but of a kind of humanist spirituality. She passionately pleads for a shift of humanity toward the intuitive side of life and the dwelling in a state of peace achieved by apprehension of the union of all things through a powerful energy or life force. That is the state she came to by the impact of a stroke that stripped away all other mental functioning, including the understanding and speaking of language, as well as the command of her own body.
At one point in the TED video, she refers to the “nirvana” she reached through physical disaster. Her description of this state of oneness with things is remarkable and matches those of others who have achieved such experience through spiritual discipline, mystical encounters or an altered consciousness assisted by hallucinogenic drugs. But this is no momentary vision. It was what she had left of her mind, her awareness, her functional capacities in the aftermath of the stroke. And it is the state she says is accessible to her whenever she becomes oppressed by the tensions and depression that can be brought on by excessive dwelling in the analytic, verbal, organizing part of her mind.
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Posted in Explanations, Fighting Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags brain, christian, depression, Jill Bolte Taylor, language, mind, mystic, neuroscience, oneness, peace, peacefulness, spirituality, Thomas Merton, vision | 1 comment
Posted by JohnD
Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:18:00 GMT
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I keep remembering those amazing moments, all too brief, when I had the sense of stepping out of time, schedules, worry, depression into a different kind of space that was free of all that. It was an opening to peacefulness, calm and a sense of being that I can only call spiritual. As Jill Bolte Taylor
put it, she achieved a state of utter peace and oneness with the universe after undergoing the most drastic experience imaginable, a stroke that took away much of her mental functioning and memory, left her unable even to move. But inwardly, she gained access to a world of being that still remains available to her after recovery. Thomas Merton
focused himself on a life of contemplation to achieve a state of union with God, but to do this he withdrew from the everyday world into the silence and discipline of monastic life. These two can stand for the many who have found access to such states only after calamitous events or prolonged and demanding practice that involves a separation to some degree from the ordinary demands of living.
I count myself among the greater number who make do, if very lucky, with glimpses of such things that suddenly strike through all the worries about the big and small events that put us on a roller-coaster of feelings and imaginings. Dwelling on these moments now, I’m looking for what they might tell me about finding a way to a more lasting recovery from the long-term effects of major depression than I have yet been able to achieve. Here is one such moment.
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Posted in Connecting, Spirituality and Depression | Tags Blue Velvet, David Lynch, depression, God, Jill Bolte Taylor, peacefulness, self, spirituality, Thomas Merton, vision, wholeness | 10 comments
Posted by JohnD
Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:45:00 GMT
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Please note that this post has been revised to reflect commentary on Jill Bolte Taylor’s reliance on the right brain—left brain model. See the note at the end of this post.
If you have any interest at all in the relationship between the brain and your awareness of who you are, please go straight to this site. Read the excerpt from Jill Bolte Taylor’s book, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey. Then listen to the podcast of Terry Gross’s interview with the author on Fresh Air. I heard it this morning on the radio, and it’s provided more insight about the human power to heal than all the books and articles I’ve read to date.
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Posted in Connecting, Fighting Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags analytical thinking, associational thinking, brain, euphoria, healing, intuition, Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroscience, recovery, religion, spirituality | no comments
