Peace is just a thought away.

Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist who had a powerful spiritual experience of peace, joy, and oneness during a stroke. 

The experience is quite fascinating, and Bolte Taylor's account of it is engaging and entertaining. She was a 37-year-old neuroscientist at Harvard's brain research center when, on the morning of December 10, 1996, she had a massive stroke. As the stroke ran its course, she says her mind switched back and forth between concern about what was happening to her and an expansive state that she affectionately called "La La Land." This was a truly amazing state. She lost her normal sense of physical boundaries. She felt an exhilarating freedom, "like a genie liberated from its bottle." She felt like she was one with everything; the world was all one great energy field. And she felt a deep sense of peace and joy:

So here I am in this space and any stress related to my, to my job, it was gone. And I felt lighter in my body. And imagine all of the relationships in the external world and the many stressors related to any of those, they were gone. I felt a sense of peacefulness. And imagine what it would feel like to lose 37 years of emotional baggage! I felt euphoria. Euphoria was beautiful….The energy of my spirit seemed to flow like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria.

Our right hemisphere is all about this present moment. It's all about right here right now. Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information in the form of energy streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems. And then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like. What this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and what it sounds like. I am an energy being connected to the energy all around me through the consciousness of my right hemisphere. We are energy beings connected to one another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And right here, right now, all we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a better place. And in this moment we are perfect. We are whole. And we are beautiful.

My left hemisphere is a very different place. Our left hemisphere thinks linearly and methodically. Our left hemisphere is all about the past, and it's all about the future. Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment. And start picking details and more details and more details about those details. It then categorizes and organizes all that information. Associates it with everything in the past we've ever learned and projects into the future all of our possibilities. And our left hemisphere thinks in language. It's that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to my external world. It's that little voice that says to me, "Hey, you gotta remember to pick up bananas on your way home, and eat 'em in the morning." It's that calculating intelligence that reminds me when I have to do my laundry. But perhaps most important, it's that little voice that says to me, "I am. I am." And as soon as my left hemisphere says to me "I am," I become separate. I become a single solid individual separate from the energy flow around me and separate from you.

While recovering in the hospital, she felt that she had a calling to communicate the message that people "could purposely choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres and find this peace." She had experienced "Nirvana" and lived to tell about it. "And if I have found Nirvana and I'm still alive, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana." She now says that she is a new person who "can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere" whenever she chooses and be "one with all that is." Her talk concludes with a call to make this choice ourselves:

So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are—I am—the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the "we" inside of me.

https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight?language=en

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Bolte_Taylor

http://drjilltaylor.com/

http://www.mystrokeofinsight.com/

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