My Stroke of Insight by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Imagine if you reorganize how your mind processes information, releasing painful triggers and keeping only happy ones. For good. This is what Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist, got to do. Well yes, at age 37 she had to suffer a massive debilitating stroke from which she took eight years to recover for the privilege, but she did get to do this.

Sometimes a book comes along and so touches my life that it ever after informs the most intimate inner processes of my thinking and feeling. This book did that for me.

Consider this: when something triggers an emotion in us, a series of chemicals which we experience as fear, excitement, grief etc. goes through our blood stream in 90 seconds. Any experience we have of that emotion longer than 90 seconds is because we VOLUNTARILY keep thinking about whatever triggered us. We chose these thoughts. We can chose other thoughts.
But generally, we don’t – we mull and attach and prolong the feeling. Sometimes this is a good idea, sometimes not, but it is always a choice. Knowing that is incredibly freeing.

This is just one tidbit from Taylor's story, which is amazing both in terms of how wisely and imaginatively she handled her recovery back from a pre-verbal state, and in terms of how she made use of the fresh start that had been forced upon her.

For anyone who’s tried to meditate and wondered what the heck they were doing, this is for you.

What if... joy?

What if we were exactly perfect the way we are? What if we could all just groove on our innate perfection, delight in how much bad TV we watch, laugh at our inconsistent behavior, rejoice in the messes we make.

So much gets caught up in how we want to be seen by others and by ourselves, sometimes we don't savor an aspect of ourselves because our only relationship to it is trying to change it. I'm not against change. Not by a long shot. I see how certain habits of body or mind do not serve me and I work to eliminate/adapt /update/release them.

But what if we allowed for the idea that, along the way – no matter how fat, lazy, broke, dishonest, undisciplined we may be – we never cease to be magnificent. The movie Leaving Las Vegas was a sort of homage to that idea.

I believe that all our actions of body and mind can only serve to reveal the joy of our lives, or veil it. We cannot create joy, anymore than we can destroy it. We can only interfere with our experience of it – and even then, some of the ways we chose to block our own joy are downright beautiful in their absurdity, the way rust on iron can be a beautiful color.

What if .... joy?

Seven Pounds

I just saw Will Smith's latest movie last night, Seven Pounds. Deeply affecting when I saw it, it haunted my dreams all night.

Without "spoiling" the plot or ending, I can tell you that the reviews I read missed the point completely. They say it is a strange and failed vehicle for a story about redemption, or forgiveness, or repentance. It is none of these things.

It is an incredibly beautiful character study of a man who is going down, unstoppably. Suffering from what I would call a terrible mental illness induced by a horrific trauma, he does not perceive any way or reason to stop his own descent, but he does see a way to harness its sheer energy and give it meaning, make it resonant and beautiful.

This is a tragedy, a man whose fatal flaw is that he ceases to perceive his own value, but his strength of character and beauty of soul are such that he strives to use his life to bring beauty and possibility around him.

A devastating storm has its beauty, and as one watches it one can only pray that one's home is never touched by it.

I was especially affected by the story as I have a cousin who suffered the same trauma, and, after careful, painful years of rebuilding his life, became a whole new person. In a sense that is what Will Smith's character strives to do. See this movie, and tell me if you think he achieved it.

Season's Greetings

For Mary, and for You and Me too


long journey. darkness. silence. doors slamming shut.

you most exhausted with your massive weighty belly: no way out.

worn out, disgusted by the barn, unwashed animals,

not even a small bowl of clean water or the tiniest lamp.


each of us has been here, wondered, why me? wondered, why go on?


yet the waters break by themselves.

into the dark manger of our fears, our shame, our divine new life is born.

not without excruciating labor, but when the bright new babe is in our arms

pain and past are washed clean, washed away,

in the starlight of joy,

the brilliance of the eternal present,

the sparkling magic of Christmas.

Creativity

Today I wish simply to share this quote from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet:

In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love come to life again and fill it with majesty and exaltation.

And those who come together in the nights and are entwined in rocking delight (even if they have made a mistake and embrace blindly), perform a solemn task and gather sweetness, depth and strength for the song of some future poet, who will appear in order to say ecstasies that are unsayable.

This to me is the cycle of beauty. Were I to have a religion, this could be its credo. How thrilling to find it expressed so perfectly, over 100 years ago.

Loving Kindness

Dinner with a friend recently spurred the following musing in my mind: what if no matter what do, we embody loving kindness?


Mostly, I’ve thought of the practice of loving kindness as an effort, a mindfulness, a way of regarding and treating people that is different from my normal reactive way. But assuming we are indeed divine creations, can any of our actions not be loving?


I’ve been spared so much by turning away from people who were mean. In a sense, they were guard dogs against danger. Every time I’ve been hurt or angered, I’ve also been spurred to move on to a truer place, impelled to find a job/lover/home/perspective where/with whom I could best become who I want to be, who I believe I was born to be.


I think of the Zen koan, ‘Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.’



What if loving kindness were not so much about altering how we behave or perceive others, and rather accept that there is nothing we can do that does not become fuel for our own or others’ eventual evolution and greater capacity for love and awareness? What if we all are (and all we are is) loving kindness, and our only task is to accept that?


Am I on to something here, or is it just another grease fire in the brain pan?


Does this make sense outside my head? Pray do tell.

This Moment

Like many of you, I’m thrilled and anxious when considering the outcome of tomorrow’s election.


By some grace, though, a joyous, steadying thought keeps coming back: we made it this far. Through the campaign, through the last fifty years, last four hundred years.

The past two elections disappointed me deeply, not only for the resulting administration, but also for the alienation I then felt from the rest of the country.

Now I’m looking around, and I like what I see. While nothing is certain, one thing is clear: an African-American man has a very clear shot at becoming our 44th president, less than fifty years after young men and women of his skin shade had to protest for the right to vote (not to forget the open savage violence when they attempted to register).

Has this been pointed out enough? Can it be?

1963

2008

I like the new signs better, don’t you?

I’m not saying racism is over in this country. I just want to say I’m proud of us. I look across the ocean to France: the Algerian Revolution ended in 1962, and Arabs in France have made few real gains in status. Not to oversimplify, as that is a multi-dimensionally different situation, but look at us.

Just look at us.

I don’t know how I’ll feel on Wednesday; emotions are riding high. But right now, for the first time in a long time, I am proud to be American – not just a New Yorker!