It’s been a long time since my last post on “Bird of Spirit,” my on-line spiritual journal. In the past year I’ve experienced something more than writer’s block: something more like heartache, having lost my 88 year-old mother on July 9 and my partner’s mother on October 19, 2012. Both of them suffered a lot in their last months and years, their bodies and minds rebelling against them in steady, undignified and irrevocable deterioration. Hardest of all, I witnessed my father falling into a highly focussed form of delusional thinking, which has led him to give away most of his assets to an elder fraud sweepstakes scam. In short, 2012 was a very difficult year for me, and the wings of my spirit were severely clipped. It was definitely time to recalibrate, so I arranged for an energy healing session earlier this month with a real spiritual warrior, Jessica Maxwell, author of “Roll Around Heaven,” who has generously become my de facto guru.
But what actually needed recalibration? Jessica saw clearly that my left brain was over-activated and my right brain suppressed. We now know from many sources, including Jill Bolte Taylor’s astonishing work, “My Stroke of Insight,” that when neural activity in the left hemisphere of the brain is suppressed, as it was with Taylor’s stroke, one’s consciousness is suddenly free to experience God’s eternal and infinite bliss and peace. This is what the Hindus call “samadhi,” or God-union, and the Buddhists call “bliss consciousness.” Christians simply call it “grace.”
Guiding me by drawing the infinity symbol in the air with her finger, Jessica encouraged me to allow my consciousness to flow into my right hemisphere. I could actually feel a pulling sensation on the right side of my head, like the force of a magnet. In a spiritually democratic, equal-opportunity, East-meets-West form of worship, we lit candles and invoked the spirits of Yogananda, Lama Karma (Oregon’s own Tibetan Buddhist monk), Amma, and Mary Magdalene. Three hours or so later, I could feel my heartache slipping away, and my meditation practice has improved ever since.
Why does recalibration work? It works because we are creatures in this world but not of it. The neurons of the left brain are like the strings the Lilliputians used to tie poor Gulliver’s body to the earth. An even better analogy is to a balloon tied down awaiting its next flight: we are the passengers caught in the basket between the soaring dome of our right brain above and the anchoring cords of our left below. One half of our mind is in heaven; the other half refuses to see it or admit it.
When I went to see Jessica, the first thing I told her was that I felt like I was a lotus plant that had not bloomed in a very long time. The lotus is honored in both Hindu and Buddhist mythology not only for its beautiful, floating flower but for the mucky roots anchoring it to the lake bed. My roots were definitely anchored in the muck, but my head was not above water. Now I feel like I’m ready to bloom again.
But why do we so often or always forget to stop and recalibrate? We are like walking lotus plants, always trekking through the muck of life, with our heads only barely above the water line. We forget to recalibrate because most of the time we’re unaware that our right brain is even there. If we were not tied to the earth, we could not survive; we would forget to feed ourselves. More significantly, all the earthly rewards we could possibly want to reap are linked to the care and feeding of our left brains, those problem-solving machines. Reasoning is rewarded by society; blissful feelings are not. Who are highly paid lawyers, doctors and scientists if not persons whose left brains have been carefully nurtured, fed and trained?
The more time you spend reasoning to solve problems, seeking that higher earthly paycheck of money, fame or recognition, the more you forget to recognize and honor the part of your brain that connects you to heaven. Let’s just say I spent all of 2012 trying as hard as I could to solve problems. We always forget that after one or two hours spent in the light of our right-brains, away from thoughts, the solution will simply present itself. Visiting the right brain is like oiling the machine: the Light becomes a light-bulb. A machine that is not oiled regularly always cracks and breaks.
Bird of Spirit 