How a Brain Scientist's Stroke Helped Her Achieve Enlightenment
Her left brain shut down, and she experienced the right brain's deep inner peace
Spiritual enlightenment is a distant dream for the majority of people. Most of us do not seek spiritual awareness either because we are indifferent or skeptical.
Jill Bolte Taylor was trained as a neuroanatomist and was engaged in brain research. She was an advocate for brain tissue donation.
Jill had no clue of what destiny had planned for her until a stroke crippled her brain's left hemisphere on the morning of December 10, 1996, when she was thirty-seven years old.
Jill was able to realize the stroke symptoms as blood leaked all over her left brain. She lost her ability to speak, walk, read or write as her left brain controlled these functions.
She was alone in her apartment when the stroke happened. She forgot the phone numbers of her office. The stroke immobilized her right side. She summoned her willpower and managed to call her colleague Steve at the Laboratory for Structural Neuroscience at McLean Hospital using her left hand.
They rushed her to Mount Auburn Hospital, where they referred her to Massachusetts General Hospital. She had major surgery two weeks later when surgeons removed a bulb-size block from her left brain.
Recovery, rehabilitation and spiritual enlightenment
It took eight years for Jill to recover her physical and mental faculties controlled by her left brain.
Jill wrote a bestselling book, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey, which is part of a memoir and crucial scientific information about the brain's dual hemispheric architecture and its impact on our lives. Jill wrote about her spiritual transformation and appealed for greater awareness about tapping into the right brain's inner peace.
In the book's introduction, she wrote:
“This book is about the beauty and resilience of our human brain because of its innate ability to constantly adapt to change and recover function. Ultimately, it’s about my brain’s journey into my right hemisphere’s consciousness where I became enveloped in deep inner peace. I have resurrected the consciousness of my left hemisphere in order to help others achieve that same inner peace- without having to experience a stroke!”
The human brain's dual hemispheric architecture
The brain's left and right hemispheres have distinct functions and differ in the way they process information.
The left brain processes information in a linear way, the right looks at the big picture.
The left brain looks at details and categorizes information hierarchically. It helps build our identity 'I' and makes us judge people and things. It is a storyteller and looks at the past, present and future.
The right brain has no conception of time. It considers only the present moment.
The right brain doesn't recognize the ego; it considers individuals as part of a cosmic whole. Therefore, it does not judge anybody or anything.
The left brain controls motor functions like speech and physical movement. It engages in loops of recurring thoughts, significantly negative stories that it spins cleverly.
Despite their distinctive functions, the brain's left and right hemispheres coordinate processing information and influencing our thoughts and actions.
A scientist experiences spirituality
The recovery from the stroke was both terrifying and exhilarating for Jill. She wanted to regain her lost mental and physical faculties the left brain controlled. At the same time, she did not wish the left brain's negative thinking loops to overwhelm the right brain's offering of soothing and tranquil inner peace.
According to Jill, neurons operate in circuits that consolidate certain automatic behaviours. It is up to us to watch over our recurring negative thought patterns generated by the left brain.
Jill says the right brain always stays in the here and now. It has no past or future. Therefore, the best way to tap into the non-judgmental right brain's circuits is to be present at the moment.
Jill advocates measures to help us stay in the present like watching the body's sensory perceptions like the breath, walking in nature, singing, chanting, composing and learning music, engaging in art, etc.
Final thoughts
Jill's transformation from a skeptical scientist to an enlightened spiritualist was a remarkable journey of physical and mental trauma, of tremendous willpower to reclaim the left brain's consciousness and realization about the cosmic unity of existence. According to her:
“ I believe the more time we spend running our inner peace/compassion circuitry, then the more peace/compassion we will project onto the world, and ultimately the more peace/compassion we will have on this planet.”
Jill's book is a must-read for scientists and laypeople alike. It bears testimony to her courage and intellectual honesty to accept spiritual insights beyond the realm of scientific inquiry. More importantly, her story imparts authentic information and knowledge about stroke and how to recover from its devastating consequences.
Thanks for reading this story.
