Stroke of Insight
By now you may have already seen Dr Jill Bolte Taylor – on TED, You Tube (below), Oprah or in some other thought forum or read her provocative book “My Stroke of Insight“.
For those who may not, I offer a little background. She is a brain scientist who was working at the Harvard Brain Bank when she had a massive stroke and watched ‘from the inside out’ as her brain functions shut down one by one — motion, speech, memory, self-awareness. With the help of her mother, she spent the next eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk! But her recovery is not what makes her story so provocative. It was what she gained in the process of losing her left brain functioning.
Surprised to find that she was alive, she reported,
” I could not identify the position of my body in space, I felt enormous and expansive, like a genie just liberated from her bottle. And my spirit soared free, like a great whale gliding through the sea of silent euphoria. Nirvana. I found Nirvana. And I remember thinking, there’s no way I would ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body.”
She goes on to say that they she realized,
“But I’m still alive. I’m still alive, and I have found Nirvana. And if I have found Nirvana and I’m still alive, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana. And I pictured a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who know that they could come to this space at any time. And that they could purposely choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres and find this peace. And then I realized what a tremendous gift this experience could be, what a stroke of insight this could be to how we live our lives. And it motivated me to recover.”
The experience of being at one with all that is and these realizations were so profound that they carried her through the eight grueling years of her recovery. She asks those who come to hear her story — So who are we? Her answer,
“We are the life-force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here, right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere, where we are. I am the life-force power of the universe. I am the life-force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form, at one with all that is. Or, I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere, where I become a single individual, a solid. Separate from the flow, separate from you. . . . Which do you choose?”
Which do you choose? Do you choose to identify and carry the life-force power of the universe? Can you recall a time of liberation and expansiveness when you were not limited by fear, doubt, worry or whatever constrains your experience? Do you remember how incredibly vast your essence is? Do you long to be at one with all that is? Do you long to experience Nirvana?
For me the power of Jill’s message is that each of us possesses this capacity. Her stroke of insight is just that — the insight that those who seek will find Nirvana within. Imagine what your life would be like if you could stop striving, stop reaching outside of yourself, if you could truly recognize that the “kingdom of heaven lies within”. How different would your choices be? Now that you know, what will you choose? . . . [separator top=”40″ style=”shadow”]
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