Shifting to the Right

In her book, My Stroke of Insight , Jill Bolte Taylor describes how her life threatening stroke in 1996 forced her to see the world through the eyes of the only part of her brain that could still function at the time:  her right brain.  As she explains in her book, this is the half of the brain that lives in the moment.  It has no sense of past and future.  It tells no stories.  It has no worries or obsessions, no plans or responsibilities.  It does not see any difference between the inner world and the outer world, between human body and surroundings.  It only sees all of reality as it is right now, accepting everything that is exactly as it is right now, at peace and filled with wonder.

According to Taylor, this type of awareness is available to all of us.  It is part of being human.  It is a basic fact of brain science that the left side of the brain is verbal, that the left side is logical, that it tells the stories of past and future, that it is the side of the brain that distinguishes between self and other.  It is also known that the right brain is intuitive, that it just sees the present moment without connecting the now to the past and the future in a timeline, and that the right brain blurs the boundaries between self and universe.  But the left brain dominates most of our awareness.  The mental chatter doesn't stop for more than a few seconds at a time.  Thoughts of past and future constantly jump into our brains.  Peaceful, carefree, silent absorption in the current moment, feeling connected to everything, is an ecstatic spiritual state we read about but can feel outside of our grasp.

How can we shift our awareness to our right brains as Taylor did without getting there as she did, by suffering a hemmorrhage or blod clot that shuts down the rest of our brain?

I don't think it's that hard to give the left brain a rest and shift to the right.  This is what meditation is all about.

Effective meditation is all about setting up conditions in which the left brain takes a vacation.  And when the left brain lets go, the right brain naturally rushes in to fill the void.  Here are some of the things that I've found will help me deepen my daily meditations:

1. Always give myself permission to stop DOING anything until the meditation is over.  I always need to tell myself that I'll get back to my work, my family, and my home later.  In the long run, everyone will benefit if I stop pushing all those agendas ahead for 20 or 30 minutes while I meditate.  I can't possibly shift to my Right Brain if I don't do this because, as long as there is work to be done, my Left Brain is going to insist on being in charge.
2. Keep conversations short.  As many meditation guides suggest, it's way too much to expect NO thoughts to creep in, to beat yourself up because you remember something you ought to do next time your at work, or a bad memory pops up.  But I always start my meditations with the intention of limiting these conversations.  Notice them when they arise.  But don't run with any particular train of thought.  Remind myself that this is not the time, that I can get back to that topic later.
3. Always relax my body.  A relaxed body and the Left Brain don't mix.  The Left Brain is about action, effort, fight, or flight.  When the body relaxes, the Right Brain settles in.
4. Focus on something fluid.  Anything that is fluid--a candle, a river, the wind in the trees, or my breath--has no rigid boundaries.  The flame starts at the wick, continues into the visible flame, continues into invisible hot gas, and ends in smoke dispersing everywhere.  Where does the flame start and end?  Similarly, when I inhale, is the breath inside my lungs "me"?   When I exhale, has part of "me" left?  Focusing on anything fluid during meditation is a great reminder that there are no clear boundaries between my inner world and the outer world.  And because this is how the Right Brain already thinks, when I focus on these things during meditation, I encourage my Right Brain to take control.