I recently viewed a TED talk titled “A Stroke of Insight” by Jill Bolte Taylor. Throughout she outlines her experiences whilst suffering a stroke and as a brain scientist has a much more thorough understanding of the changes that were occuring within her own brain as it deteriorated. Essentially she was able to study the effects of a stroke from the inside and portray a very unique insight which made for an interesting watch.
In an attempt to explain why this talk had such an effect on me and to add some context, I would like to give a little insight into my background and some of the aspect of my life to date that have culminated to this point.
From a young age I’ve always had a deep rooted sense that life is supposed to be so much more than the mundane 9 to 5 existence most people seem to live out and accept, with the weekend and the latest episodes of their choice of TV series being their only salvation. I’ve seemed to question authority at every level and never been one to simply adhere to the status quo or settle for aspects of life I found unfulfilling or unimportant. Even holding management level jobs with a high salary; once the initial novelty wore off, I would get increasingly agitated until I eventually quit and moved on.
I’d spend time looking into the societal system as a whole, the potential reasons behind it and why the majority of the populous seem to accept it. Not to the levels that most would describe as a conspiracy theorist, a term I use reluctantly as its simply a derogatory term that’s main function is to automatically undermine and discredit what is; in a lot of cases, provable evidence being put forward that simply contradicts the publicly portrayed status quo, but just enough to acquire what I interpret as a good overall picture of the corrupt system we are accustom to and are controlled by.
Wealth and power are the governing factors of the planet, those who have it will do their utmost to keep and increase it at the expense of the majority of the populous through a multitude of control mechanisms, psychological, physiological or otherwise. They do not want a world of free thinking, creative, compassionate and conscious visionaries, In fact quite the opposite. They essentially desire and on the most part have succeeded in creating a blinkered unconscious work force that keep the economic cogs turning, are far too engrossed in their own life situations and what’s on TV to look up and question anything.
For quite a while I was made to believe, by society and piers, that these quite rebellious traits were negative characteristics and would only result in failure and segregation, but over time I’ve come to realize that that’s not necessarily true as these traits have assisted my enquiries into uncovering what I am starting to see as some kind of truth.
With this in mind, I have also spent most of my life to date also very opposed to religious practices. Predominantly due to the constraints that are usually imposed and the fact I saw them as some of the core ways of controlling and also segregating the masses. However, a few years back; for reasons I can no longer recall, I happened to randomly stumble upon some of the teachings of Buddhism, which unlike any other religion, in a lot of areas seemed to resonate with me.
Upon delving into the practice further I did; and have found, a lot of the aspects and practices very helpful and relatable. There are no deities or gods to worship, your encouraged to question everything including even their own teachings and not asked or told to believe anything on face value, but to test the teachings for yourself and take from them what you feel is right.
Some of the core teachings are; we are all one, are intrinsically connected to everything and everyone else and that through constantly identifying with the ego, the term they use for our false sense of isolated self, we disconnect ourselves from this higher consciousness and connectivity which in turn helps to breed all the negative aspects of society that we see so much of today like greed, selfishness, segregation and the persecution of others who seem to be different from ourselves I.e. their Race, religious or political views and so on. We constantly either dwell on past events that can no longer be changed or we project our thoughts into the future, usually worrying and creating apprehension over events that have not yet, and may not even occur.
In light of this they use a practice called meditation, which, in a nutshell, is a practice used to try and silence that constant mind chatter regarding past and future events. By regularly participating in this practice you will eventually be able to fully connect to and appreciate the present moment, cease the constant identification with the egoic self and constant dialog within your mind and access this higher sense of consciousness and connectedness that we have all been disconnected from. This higher state of consciousness they call “reaching enlightenment”.
Although I do not fully identify with the Buddhist belief system, I do believe there to be some kind of truth within the religious practice and I also believe this truth and higher state of consciousness to be accessible by all who have the high level of dedication required. However, this realization did bring up some rather large questions within my mind, one of them being “why is it that we all need to spend years upon years practicing, trying to rid ourselves of these negative traits we’ve developed and reconnect to this higher consciousness?” and “why are we not automatically connected to it?” This is why Jill Bolte Taylor’s Ted talk had such an effect on me, as it turns out we most likely are but are just engineered to forget and ignore it.
Her story is that from a young age she developed a keen interest in the brain due to her brothers severe schizophrenia. Essentially wanting to fully understand how the brain functions and operates to hopefully understand and alleviate her brothers illness. After studying and spending her young life immerced within this area of study, she eventually went on to become a respected brain scientist.
She initially explains that the brain is split into two completely separate hemispheres. Obviously they do communicate with one another but other than that have completely different functions.
Our right hemispheres are all about this present moment, the right here right now, it thinks in pictures, takes in information in the form of energy streams through all our sensory systems and then all that information explodes into the collage of what this present moment looks like, feels like, smells like, tastes like etc. She goes on to say that we are all energy beings connected to everything else and connected to the energy all around us through the consciousness of our right hemispheres. Its other main functions include art awareness, creativity, imagination, insight, intuition, holistic thought, visualization / daydreaming, individuality and so on.
Our left hemispheres however, are the complete opposite. It thinks linearly and methodically and is all about the past, the future and the shopping you need to remember to get on your way home. It takes out details and more details about the present moment, associates them to everything in the past we’ve ever learnt and categorizes and organizes that 400 billion bits of data a second into only the around 2000 that relate to our past experiences, this gives us our current and future projection of possibilities. It thinks in language and is that ongoing brain chatter that connects us and our internal world to the external world we perceive as reality and solidity. It deals with sequencing, logic, computation and is repetitive and detached. Most importantly though, it is the half of the brain that says to us ” I am ” just Dave or “I am” just Jamie from a little town called Scarborough and these are all the troubles, worries and fears that I have built up over the years. It separates us from the energy flow and connectivity all around us, gives us the sense of limitation we put on our own abilities and is also the part of the brain the powers at be utilize and manipulate.
This was the portion of the brain Jill lost for a period of time on the morning she had the stroke. She was working out at home when all of a sudden her body seemed to lose some of it’s solidity and she could no longer properly distinguish between her own body and other matter in the room. The atoms and molecules of her body and everything else had started to slightly blend as fundamentally they are all made up of the same basic components, however the left hemisphere of our brain would usually process and identify the different vibrational frequencies and bits of data then form the projection of the world we see around us. It was as though her consciousness had shifted from her normal perception of reality where she’s sat having the experience to one where she was in a sense witnessing herself having the experience.
Instead of this being a negative experience though as you’d expect, she actually felt quite expansive and could sense intense energies and a overpowering connectivity to all.
As the hemorrhage in her left hemisphere grew, that constant brain chatter all of us experience; for her, suddenly went totally silent and she instantaneously lost 37 years of emotional baggage. She was totally disconnected from just being separate little Jill with all her problems and worries and essentially describes experiencing a state of pure euphoria.
After a period of basking in this euphoria, her left hemisphere kicks back in for a moment and says “we really need help here, you’re having a stroke” so reluctantly she pulls herself away from the euphoric state and attempts to raise the alarm. Unfortunately she can no longer recall numbers, how to properly use a phone, how to drive or read written words as she finds out when she tries to read her own business card. All she saw were pixels due to the left hemisphere usually being responsible for processing written words and numbers. After a time she eventually manages to match up the shape of the pixels on the card with the ones on the phone but to her bemusement; when her colleague answers, all she hears are peculiar noises which is also what occurs when she attempts to reply, again due to her left hemisphere being the half of the brain that deals with processing language. In the end her colleague realizes there must be an issue, sends help and she eventually makes a full recovery.
Looking back over her experiences she believes that through the computing left side of her brain shutting down whilst suffering a stroke, she involuntarily reached this higher consciousness and connectivity that many spend their lives meditating to achieve. And for a brief time lost the undesirable aspects of the mind Buddhists attempt to eradicate through the practice in their endeavor to reach this enlightened state.
Upon reflection of this talk I started to think about our society as a whole and the shear amount of it that is specifically engineered towards us predominantly associating with our left hemispheres.
As small children we have no set belief systems so will happily interact with anyone no matter what race or religion etc, we have no sense of limitation or boundaries so have vivid imaginations and when given the correct teachings can do and achieve amazing feats in all areas way beyond what is expected. There are also, endless accounts of small children supposedly interacting with beings or forces that we can no longer see as adults. Then, before long, this pure and inquisative state of being is stripped away as we are forced to attend school where we are molded into the government approved drone that can no longer think outside the prescribed consensus.
We are made to believe that individuality, being different or having ideas and thoughts that differ from the public norm are bad things and deserve ridicule, this is then perpetuated by society in general. The government is now even trying to classify children who daydream as having a disorder similar to ADHD.
You learn to repeat information instead of how to think for yourself so that you do not become a threat to the current status quo and then we associate and celebrate knowledge and intellect with having a high ability to take in and recall the information we are indoctrinated with and are never told to question. Then once you leave, you will get a job; most of the time one which will leave you unfulfilled and pay your taxes in order to perpetuate the corporate system.
The media is purposely designed to make us all feel inadequate and insignificant which encourages us to be egotistical, segregated and to concentrate on appearance rather than personality or substance. It is hugely bias, only portrays the smallest sections of world events that do not interfere with the powers at be’s agendas and keep us in a constant state of fear.
Technologies like virtual reality headsets, games like Pokemon go, social media, mobile phones and so on promote even further disconnection and prevent us from having real human experiences. Applications like facebook have become the governments most occumplished tools for spying and keeping tabs on the masses while most believe they are simply there for fun.
Religions; even though on the most part, all fundamentally include the same core teachings and beliefs when studied and compared, have been created with slight differences in how the stories are portrayed and dieties are given different names even though they represent more or less the same being. This leaves just enough room to create massive amounts of division, as divided, the populous is far easier to control.
All of these and much more, when delved into deep enough, I believe have been purposefully and cleverly designed as an extremely effective veil to shield us from the truth of our own divinity. Although I am not disputing the importance of the mechanical left hemisphere when completing tasks and taking in information and such like, I believe as a society we must strive to put so much more importance on the utilization of our right hemespheres and into seeing the left for what it is “a machine” that is to be used like any other machine; your laptop for example, you access it when you need to send an email or search the web but once these tasks are completed, we put it on stand by and then direct our energies into other more important aspects of our lives. However, as a society, us predominatly associating with this mechanical section of our brain is Keeping us from fully utilizing our connected right and truly realizing that we are all connected consciousness, meaning race wars or the persecution of others in any sense would be ludacris and division would be a thing of the past. This is why we have to exert huge amounts of effort to reconnect to this higher state. Because without these control mechanisms we would all wake up and realize how ridiculous the system around us really is. We would realize that we truly are all connected know matter what race, gender, religion etc. We’d have far more compassion for one another and would stop fuelling this destructive and cleverly engineered society that is so destructive to the planet as a whole and our own divinity. We would start to break free from what I call the consciousness brain cage.
First stages of painting
Painting close to completion
Additional section
Painting with section added
Finished piece version 1
Finished! Baring a few details 
Work by Dan Howard-Birt
Dogon tribe member
Final sculptural piece ‘Brick tree totem’
JAMIE WALTON 