Much of the suffering in the world is due to one central misguided understanding: in our mindless attempt to avoid death or blindly try to extend life, our own and our children’s, we have established cultures that have erroneously over-developed the neural networks in the left/fear structures of the brain. Along the way we have inadvertently sacrificed brain for heart, intellect for wisdom and joy for the illusion of invulnerability.
Many of you are familiar with the TED talk about her near-death experience after a stroke given by Jill Bolte Taylor. I have posted and spoken about her here before. In her book, My Stroke of Insight, Jill goes into extraordinary detail about what life was like with only her right brain operational. Much that we experience as spiritual and precious, global and wise is born of the right brain where memories of our first few years of life are stored, primarily as imagery and sensation. Jill also speaks at great length about the many choices she had to make concerning which left-brain circuits she wished to reactivate in the wake of her profound right-brain realizations. Here’s some of what she discovered as her left brain/mind began rewiring back to life:
One of the most prominent characteristics of our left brain is its ability to weave stories. This story-teller portion of our left mind’s language center is specifically designed to make sense of the world outside of us, based upon minimal amounts of information. It functions by taking whatever details it has to work with, and then weaves them together in the form of a story. Most impressively our left brain is brilliant in its ability to make stuff up, and fill in the blanks when there are gaps in its factual data. In addition, during its process of generating a story line, our left mind is quite the genius in its ability to manufacture alternative scenarios. And if it’s a subject you really feel passionate about, either good or awful, it’s particularly effective at hooking into those circuits of emotion and exhausting all the “what if” possibilities.
As my left brain language centers recovered and became functional again, I spent a lot of time observing how my story-teller would draw conclusions based upon minimal information. For the longest time I found these antics of my story-teller to be rather comical. At least until I realized that my left mind full-heartedly expected the rest of my brain to believe the stories it was making up!. . . .I need to remember however, that there are enormous gaps between what I know and what I think I know (my italics). I learned I need to be very wary of my storyteller’s potential for stirring up trauma and drama.
Death is one of the things I don’t really know much about; it’s one of life’s experiences my storytelling, lying left brain though, tries to convince me it knows everything about. Anytime any of us are upset about ANYTHING – our kids, our partners, our puppies – there’s a high probability that our left brain is busily at work making stuff up. And if we trace it down and around to any kind of ultimate vulnerable wellspring, at bottom, the story will often end up with us or those we love fearful of dying a painful, lonely death from illness, lack or inconsolable grief.
Suffering: The Gorilla Glue of Love
It used to surprise me to discover that people who have suffered greatly in their lives are some of the kindest, most joyful, compassionate people I’ve ever encountered. It no longer does. Traumatic memories are primarily stored in our right brain circuitry. Out of the healing that comes from profound suffering, many of those encapsulated or disorganized circuits become reactivated, apparently helping to bring much greater right brain strength and balance to counter our culture’s left brain dominance. It’s often described as strength of heart, true grit or compassionate heart. And while many of my right brain friends assure me that the heart is definitely involved, what we know for sure, both from science and from anecdotal evidence like Jill’s, is that right brain reclamation appears to be the primary driver of Compassionate Heart.
What’s the takeaway from these brain hemisphere discoveries? Parents would do well to honor and embrace everything they can that will help mitigate the left brain dominance designed into western education and culture. Rather than math and science, going forward the arts might well be the focus that receive overwhelming nurturing and support. Contemporary culture will take care of necessary left brain development all by itself. Instead of ABC’s and 123’s, kids would be well-served to memorize this quotation from French Renaissance writer, Michel de Montaigne:
To begin denying death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death …. We do not know where death awaits us, so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. (S/he) who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
Such early compassionate exposure to aging and death will demonstrate that just as birth has inherent in it a wise organic intelligence, death does as well. We all would be well-served by learning to be emotionally honest, vulnerable and learn to play nice with the Reaper while we’re in the prime of life. It’s painful to have our own actions and motives ignorantly misunderstood , and so I’m guessing even the misunderstood Reaper could use a hug now and then.
Hi Mark, I just love your blog – some weeks it’s as if you read my mind and know just what I need answered. My husband’s brother died suddenly recently and I decided not to keep it from my four year old. He understood so clearly the passing and the permanence, but I was not prepared for his extrapolation that I could also die and his concern over that. Since my mother died in my arms, I’ve questioned the western approach to death and dying and wondered why we have got it so wrong. You’ve helped me understand more of this and I hope that I can keep my son’s brain more open to the journey through death and not to drift into paralysis and fear. As you can tell I am totally unacademic – but you simplify the incredibly complex and it’s treasured. Thanks for sharing your wisdom.
Mark, thank you for choosing to bring this (often morbid) topic.
My understanding of the differences between the Western Judeo-Christian traditions’ relationship to death and Eastern philosophies and spiritual practices’ around living and dieing relates to what I believe to be an erroneous interpretation of what it means to “choose Life” (as stated in Deuteronomy “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity . . . Choose life . . .”). http://bible.cc/deuteronomy/30-15.htm
The West’s tanacious holding on to life (and youth) is the very opposite of a spiritual practice, as it has become the very enslavement to the material world, and a movement away from Life (spiritual freedom) and toward daily anguish–inner and outer conflicts.
So in my work with kids, and with my own kids, I find ways (often in the context of loss of all sorts) to speak about the physical circle of life and death, not as an existential topic (which seems to be more of an adult developmental issue), but as a spiritual “primer”–to begin to consider what it truly means to Live in relationships, I believe we can really benefit from befriending the finality of our lives.
~Dorit
While the left brain may be the story-teller, the great stories (Oedipus, Lear, Romeo & Juliet, etc.) very often deal with death… and as you suggest arts education to balance math and science… I find myself thinking about the corpus callosum, that band linking left and right over the top of the brain—bigger in women than in men, bigger in artists than in non-artists… and wondering if in the future we may find some way to strengthen that area (as well as the prefrontal cortex and its Buddha-like capacities to integrate thinking and feeling, do empathy and deepen compassionate connections).
I also found myself remembering a dream I had after my best friend was killed when we were kids—me having to go to “funeral practice” where I had to be in a casket as they closed the lid on me… but I freaked out and pushed it back open. I suppose it’s obvious enough that I wanted to live, but after reading your post today I see a new value in that dream, and in my adolescent plunge into the existentialists and a rather “Harold and Maude” preoccupation with mortality.
I’m going to elevate “My Stroke of Insight” up the reading pile of things my left brain still hasn’t gotten around to doing. Thanks for the great post.
As a child, I had a Catholic, convent-bred upbringing. I used to hang out at the convent with the really ancient nuns who I found both fascinating and scary. I KNEW they “knew” stuff. In this environment, I spent many long hours reading about the lives of the saints, intrigued by their Other Worldly experiences. In retrospect, I suspect that these “Saints” were folks whose right brains were dialed in at an extraordinary level, with left brains mostly on “mute”. Nothing about that made me anxious or frightened, but rather I found myself longing to know and feel what they had experienced, and much of it was associated with death and the Afterlife. I suspect that kids don’t make the distinctions between Ordinary Reality and Non-Ordinary Reality that our adult left brains do. Maybe it really isn’t so scary afterall to children. Perhaps it is our adult fears projected onto them?
Brilliant column Mark, and thank you. Hard to put this all in words with elegance and scientific framework. As a death educator and passionate advocate of the strong medicine of death contemplation, I am glad to hear the idea of death and children uttered together. Most likely they are our teachers. This seems like just the medicine the culture needs….but how to get it sweet enough.
Jeanne
Perhaps, Jeanne, we simply introduce a Super Hero who can move between the realities? Hey, I know, how about a computer game? hee, hee…