[This book] is a chronological documentation of the journey I took into the formless abyss of a silent mind, where the essence of my being became enfolded in a deep inner peace.
As a trained neuroanatomist, Taylor in a sense "watched" the entire left side of her brain shut down within a matter of hours, and she could recognize, but not prevent, what was happening to her. The book is an amazing chronicle of the eight years of stroke and full recovery from someone articulate and knowlegable enough to document the journey. As her "right brain" took over the functioning of her body and existence for the next few years, Taylor records a shift in perspective and understanding of who she really was as a person. Here are some excerpts from the book:
...it was clear that the 'I' whom I had grown up to be had not survived this neurological catastrophe. I understood that that Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor died that morning, and ....I felt no obligation to being her anymore....In my mind, in my new perspective, that Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor died that morning and no longer existed. Now that I didn't know her life---her relationships, successes and mistakes, I was no longer bound to her decisions or self-induced limitations.
Although I experienced enormous grief for the death of my left hemisphere consciousness---and the woman I had been, I concurrently felt tremendous relief. That Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor had grown up with lots of anger and a lifetime of emotional baggage that must have required a lot of energy to sustain....
I had spent a lifetime of 37 years being enthusiastically committed to "do-do-doing" lots of stuff at a very fast pace. On this special day, I learned the meaning of simply "being."....Like walking along the beach, or just hanging out in the beauty of nature, I shifted from the doing-consciousness of my left brain to the being-consciousness of my right brain.
The entire book, after the first few scientific explanations of the brain and its normal processes, goes on in this vein. I wanted to highlight and re-read so much of the book, but need to buy my own copy to do so. One night, I was reading the book before going to sleep, as is my custom. After reading just a few sentences, however, my own brain exploded with revelations, so much so that I could not sleep for hours---until I finally shut down all the ideas by doing logic puzzles to put me to sleep.
In one place, Taylor writes that it is a shame we cannot find a safe, non-invasive way to induce her experience of living in the right brain to others. For her, as she worked her way back to full-brain functioning, the difficulty was to regain left-brain function without giving up the peace, joy, love, and fluidity of the right-brain. She no longer had any desire to return to the "normal" world. Time after time she had to ask herself whether she wanted to regain the affect, emotion, or personality traits that were neurologically linked to her left-brain memories and abilities. Her "old" personality traits were no longer acceptable to the person she now wanted to be. The most fundamental traits of her right hemisphere personality were "deep inner peace and loving compassion."
Taylor now knows her tragic stroke to be the greatest gift of her entire life. She has fully returned to normal brain function, with a lot of work, but she is no longer the same person she was before. She was able to choose the values and brain circuitry she wanted as she recovered her personality.
Never before have I read anything that better explains the experience of being "born again" of water and the Holy Spirit that Jesus revealed to Nicodemus in John 3. Almost the first recorded words of Jesus were: The kingdom of God is within you. (Different translations may read: The kingdom of heaven is among you.) As a scientist, Taylor describes her experience in terms of left-brain, right-brain functioning, and of course, the more brain research that is done confirms her descriptions. For all of us non-scientists, everything in Scripture correlates exactly to what she describes: the death of the "old man/ the natural man/ Adam" and the birth of the "new man," the "spiritual man," risen with Christ from the dead,in the image of God, and in-breathed by the Spirit. Everything Taylor describes I have experienced, not from a stroke, but more gradually, as the Holy Spirit gradually put to death the person I was before and made me a "new creation in Christ Jesus."
The reason I could not sleep from excitement in reading this book is that I knew that what Taylor so desperately wished for---a way for people to experience the "right brain" ascendancy of our personalities, the part of us that is created like God---is truly available in the "born again" or "Baptism of the Holy Spirit" experience. Like John the Baptist in his mother's womb, I "leaped for joy," recognizing in her descriptions what I had experienced spiritually.
I think maybe Taylor, the brain anatomist, was allowed to experience and then to describe a path that is open to all of us. As I read her book, I was so impressed at how what I call her "spirit" and what she calls her "right brain" was able to guide her actions and choices to recovery and full health. I wanted to stand up and shout "Halleluiah!" just like they do in the Baptist church.
More tomorrow!
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