Book Review: My Stroke Of Insight

September 6, 2009

What if you had a choice, moment by moment, of either being happy or being right?

Well, happy feels better.

We’re very busy and have a lot to do. We’ve been wronged and have to devote some time to thinking about that. We’re looking for happiness outside of ourselves. If we had a little more money, we could fix the problem. Happiness is not out there. If I got that job, I’d calm right down. If you’re bringing yourself along to the new job, you may not find that your problems suddenly disappear. If I got rid of that mole or this scar, I’d really feel so good. The purest tranquility lives in us now but we choose not to fixate on it because there is a leaky faucet that is irritating us.

If we could just be. Just taste. Just see. Without feeling that the time or the place have much importance at all.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain scientist. At 37, she has a stroke. As a brain scientist, she watches her brain functions shutting down, one by one. So that’s just spellbinding, that this would happen to this woman who would later be able to lay it out, moment by moment, for other stroke surviviors and neurologists.

When the Left brain was rendered non-functioning and quiet, the normally silenced Right brain found its voice. And it was life-changing because what she found was that this happens to be where euphoria resides.

Watch her here at TED. It’s 18 minutes long, as are all the TED talks, but just watch it. It is AWESOME.

She writes as she speaks. The language is so clean, the book is small, the message is far more scientific than mystic. And yet, it transcends. It seems so obvious and so possible, like confirming something we already know anyhow, something we are already electrically wired to receive.

I see the value of meditation, of quieting your mind, but I never make time. Metaphysical joy discussions feel like wading around wondering what the point is and how to actually get there. This isn’t like that. You already are there. As you read, you can feel yourself recognizing something you feel you might already know. You can feel it waking up and saying “Hey, how long have you been in here?”.

The deepest joy, the most profound peace and calm and understanding, the most expansive and interconnected oneness, pure happiness – they’re already there. They always were. These are the parts of the brain that have been shown to be stimulated when prayer or meditation attain their highest absolute. There are other ways of getting there than having a L-sided stroke. What if it were just a matter of choosing to be there?

If we could learn to simply cherish the miracle of interwoven molecular genius that is digestion, or vision, or reproduction. If I had to come up with a definition of religion, I see human beings like the electron cloud around a nucleus. Linked to one another and united to a common whole, not just all humanity, but beyond galaxies. There is a shared and essential (to continued life) subconscious that instructs us to be good to one another, because as in any web, when you weaken the one, you harm the whole. Is this why I am so taken with the internet? One problem with the religions I know is that it feels like not everyone is welcome at the table. Here, anyone not at the table is missed.

During her recovery, she describes how we are perceived by anyone with neurological impairment, be it stroke or some other. We are taught to think of how Alzheimer’s, autism, and other patients see and feel and hear us. My mother had Alzheimer’s disease. She didn’t care when my next appointment was or what colour my hair was. She just lived life moment-by-moment. If she felt fine in that moment, life was good. She never talked about wanting it to end, and only seldom about feeling there was anything wrong with her. I appreciate now how I must have appeared to her. She just wanted someone to “BE” with. Since she had no hope of recovery, it wasn’t important to try to teach her to reconnect externally to herself. I remember applying conscious effort to shutting myself off when I was with her, and what a lot of effort it took. Just to be, to rub her arm, to look out a window, and I thought her brain was blank. I see now that it was my brain that was limited with its minute preoccupations, while for all I know, she was soaring.

In the last few lines, Dr. Taylor quotes Einstein (and I quote approximately), “Until I’m ready to walk away from what I am, I can never become what I will be.” This line resonated with me like a huge gong in my head. When I’m faced with a decision I’m having difficulty with, this is the banner that starts blinking behind my eyes. If I allow the complacency of “I am who I am because I’m used to it and that’s the way it is”, then I have little hope.

Knowing what I seek is in me makes it easier to find. Like trying to solve a difficult puzzle, knowing an answer does exist gives me more faith that I can find it, rather than thinking it’s a trick question without a solution. I just have to get through all the locks in my own head. I see that I have to be silent to hear my guides. They won’t force their way in. I have to shut up. The past 2000 years of spiritual teaching has been about trying to hear voices coming from outside us. In fact, the necessary silence is to allow something inside us to be heard.

Her recovery was, and is still (though she has fully regained L brain functions) devoted to not losing the glory she found within. Fascinating too are her choices of what to recover and what she decided to leave behind. Jealousy, argument, dominance, she chose to lose permanently. As familiar as this feels, like confirming something we know already, there is practical guidance for how to move towards this peaceful, wonderful place. You need not be alone in a church or in a hot scented bath with your mind completely empty to feel a glimmer of the sensation she describes.

Imagine if her bleed had been R sided. She probably would have had the fearful experience so many stroke survivors describe.

Buy the book because you’ll want to underline.

Do not miss this. Please do not miss this.

Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Happiness

Comments

4 Responses to “Book Review: My Stroke Of Insight”

sonja on September 7th, 2009 7:19 pm

I watched her on TED. It was absolutely riveting. I have never heard someone describe an event such as a stroke so clearly and with so much detail. It was fascinating. I am now waiting for the book from the library.
Christine Scaman on September 9th, 2009 5:51 am

Sonja,

The book is better in some ways, because in addition to telling her story, it gives many valuable tools to the reader for helping survivors and finding the happiness we all look for in our own lives.

But I agree, the video was riveting. She really gives of herself in a very humbling way.
Salida on September 11th, 2009 5:49 pm

The nirvana she speaks of sounds wonderful. To leave all our baggage out of our heads for good. How terrific, and inspiring goal to strive for.
I have recently read Mona Lisa Schulz’s books. You may like them as well.
Christine Scaman on September 14th, 2009 5:24 pm

Hello, Salida,

Dr. Taylor’s story really is remarkable. I don’t think she has retained the ability to wander about in her right brain at will but she holds the incredible memory of experiencing pure R brain function. Her most amazing contribution is just knowing what’s in there and how more of it would be available to more of us if we suppressed the busy-busy thing instead of the silent-silent thing.

I keep thinking about how all this would never have become known if her bleed had been in a different place. If her R brain were being sprayed with blood, the L brain would be doing its normal duties of searching for patterns from the R brain’s catalog of perceptions and would find nothing. It would be frantic.

I wonder too if the experience of stroke is different in women who have so many more R-L brain connections. We find the rhyme and reason in the ordinary so exceptionally well. Having said that, is there a difference between R-brain thoughts and no-brain thoughts? Men can keep a truly blank brain for a sustained time. I don’t know many women who can do that. I have a friend who sits in a church, the quietest place she can find, and she tries. Maybe this is also because of our thicker R-L network.

I’m working on consciously allowing my R brain when things bug me. Since things bug me a lot, I have a lot of opportunity to think about stuff that seems crazy, like how my hair feels or how the chair is supporting my back and it feels pretty good. Oddly enough, I settle right down.

Thanks for the recommendation for Schulz’s books. They’ve gone on my Search list.