Brain like a computer  --  My stroke of insight

by Jill BolteTaylor :

      http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

Human brain – two hemispheres are completely separate from each other.

Two cerebral cortexes are completely separate from one and other. For those who understand computers, our right hemisphere functions like a parallel processor while our left hemisphere functions like a serial processor.

The two hemisphere do communicate with one and other through the Corpus Callossum (highway for information transfer) that is made up of some 300 billion of axonal fibers.

But other than that, the two hemispheres are completely separate.

Because they process information differently, each of our hemispheres thinks about different things, they care about different things, and there I say, they have very different personalities.

Right human hemisphere is all about this present moment. It is all about right here, right now.

Right hemisphere thinks in pictures, and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies.

Information in a 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 – smells like – 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 (awareness) of my right hemisphere.

We are energy beings CONNECTED to one and other through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And right here, right now, we are brothers and sisters on this planet here to make the world better place.   And in this moment we are perfect. We are whole, and we are beautiful.

Right: PARALLEL processor  /  Left: SERIAL processor

Our left hemisphere is a very different place. It thinks linearly and methodically.

Our left hemisphere is about timeline: it is all about the past (memory of) and all about the future (projection of).

Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment and start picking out specific details, zooming in on details about those details, and more details…

It then categorizes and organizes (linear space-related ordering, quantifying) all that information, associates it with everything in the past  we have ever learned and  PROJECTS  into the future all of our (learned and recognized) possibilities.

It thinks in language (specific symbols with assigned meaning/value). It is that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and  my internal world  to my external world.

It is that little voice that says to ‘me’: Hey, you’ve got to remember make a deposit, call parents, eat …

It is that calculating Intelligence that knows and reminds me when I have to do my laundry.

It is that  little voice that says to ‘me’:  I am.  I AM!

And as soon my left hemisphere says to ‘me’:  “I am”,  I become separate. 

(As a specific focal/reference point.)

I become a single solid individual, separate from the energy flow around me, and separate from all of you (others).

...  As if my consciousness has shifted away from my normal perception of reality where I am the person on the machine having the experience, to some esoteric space where  I am witnessing myself  having  this experience.

...  Later, I am driving in an ambulance, I curled up into a little fetal ball and just like a balloon with the last bit of air  just right out of balloon  I felt my energy LIFT and I felt my spirit surrender.

In that moment I knew I was no longer a choreographer of my life, and either the doctors rescue my body and give me a second chance in life, or this was perhaps my moment of transition.

When I woke later that afternoon I was shocked that I was still alive.

When I felt my spirit surrender, I said good bye to my life, and my mind was now suspended between  two very different  planes of reality.

Stimulation coming in through my sensory system felt like pure pain, light burned my brain like wild-fire, and sounds were so loud and chaotic that I could not pick a voice out of background and I just wanted to escape.

Because I could not identify  the position of my body in space, I felt enormous and expensive like a Genie liberated from her bottle.

My spirit soared free like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria.

Nirvana, I have found nirvana.

I remember thinking: no way, I would ever be  able to squeeze the enormousness of my Self  back inside this tiny little body.

But then I realized  I am still alive.

I am still alive and I have found nirvana, and if I have found nirvana and I am still alive then everyone who is alive can find nirvana.

And I pictured the world filled with beautiful peaceful compassionate loving people  who KNEW that they CAN come to this space at any time, and that they could  purposely choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres and find this peace.

Then I realized, what a tremendous gift this EXPERIENCE could be!

What a stroke of INSIGHT this could be to how we live our lives, and it motivated me to recover.

It took me 8 years to completely recover.

So, who are we?

We are the life force power of the Universe with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds.

We have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and  how  we want to be in the world.

 Map Of Consciousness:  

A Course in Miracles Documentary 3a     

Recognize to forgive is to overlook. To love is to choose to love.

What you think other has done to you  has never in truth occurred (identity as spirit).

I dare to forgive because I exchange the point of reference I identify with from a surface-related little self to spirit-linked Self.

Recognizing that I want peace rather than hold a grudge.

That I want to be happy rather than be right.

Include Higher Self in the process of liberation from a dream of suffering (hand over all thoughts that would hurt).

Looking at the world through one’s Higher Self (mind's eye). Seeing one Self in all, accepting that I am that ‘other’.

Forgive your brother for what he has not done to spirit you are.

There is nothing and no one in this world that has power to take God’s peace away from me except my own mind, if I choose to see myself separate from it. Therefore, no one has taken God’s peace from me, and the person to forgive is myself, for it was my mistake that took away my peace.

The Light in one awakens it in all. When you see it in your brother, you are remembering for everyone.

Fleeting glimpse I caught is not gone!

A Course in Miracles Documentary 3aa    

Until we are willing to see innocence in others and in ourselves, we cannot experience inner peace.

Heaven is an awareness of our oneness, and we are one in our innocence.

The way how we make mistakes is different, but your innocence is the same as my innocence.

“You have but two emotions, love and fear.

One you made and one was given you.

Each is a way of seeing and different wills arise from different sights.

See the love of God in you,  and you will see it everywhere because it is everywhere.”  With love in you, you have no need except to extend it.

“I am responsible for what I see. I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve. And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked.”

If I am angry, at some level that is a choice.

In order to get in touch with our creativity, to be truly creative rather than reactive, we need to get beyond the position of victim that justifies the feeling of anger as ‘being right’.

“You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think.

The truth is that  you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you CAN exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think.

Do not try to look for truth beyond yourself, for truth can only be within you.”

The ‘problem’ that we forgot that we even have the mind (a tool we use).

Not understanding that the suffering we feel comes from choice our minds have made. Miracle restores awareness to us that we have the mind, and within this mind is a power of choice (to attack vs. to love).

Complete ACIM can be downloaded from a link in the Essentials section after you log in.

HOLDING SPACE in relationships 

by Eckhart Tolle: 

Recognize the formless in forms.

Relate through stillness and silence, listening, still focused attention that flows out towards the other being.

I am there as a field of aware presence.

Interaction not dominated by mind, but still presence sensing oneself as an awareness, present, listening, conscious.

Past aka pain body - -an energetic entity that lives in us, always identifying with form.

Reincarnation into the old emotion that feeds into the old pain through other person reaction, mistaking pain body for who I am.

Pain body is an energy form that leaves when recognized. 

Some consciousness has stepped out  of the form, and is present as pure consciousness, watching unconscious behaviour.

When there is awareness here (still watcher) the identification cycle fed by unawareness is broken, and I am awake now.

Shining the light of consciousness is to end of reincarnation of unawareness...

One-sided love relationship 

by Eckhart Tolle:        

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3miuaOWsj8

One way love traffic situation… One form loves, the other form does not reciprocate. Why?

A basic condition of form-identified self is deep seeded sense of lack, of not complete.

Now, the mind-made self tries to fill that emptiness that it feels almost continuously from external resources including the area of relationships.

The ‘other’ will complete me, make me feel whole and loved…

The entire focus is now on the other ‘one',  who is going to complete me.

Attachment to  the image of that person,  to that form is what is called falling in love. Contract ensures that we are not left by that special one.

Shortly a doubt arises, whether this actually works.

Can he/she actually live up to this task to complete ‘me’?

To make me feel happy?

Old emptiness and fear reemerges and the present feeling of it  is now attached to the other one person:  he or she is the cause of what I now feel.

Bubble bursts in recognition of my temporary delusion –  this person is a representation of pain-body.

Every time the other one is not fulfilling his/hers obligations, the love turns into aggression, hostility, attack, withdrawal (drama).

Relationship fluctuates from loved to not loved, romance gradually turns into unhappiness of just coexistence, or to a divorce. Still blaming ‘that form’ over there for causing me the pain I feel.

It failed, because it was an attempt to fulfill my need from some outer form.

Mind tends to paint all kinds of  fantasies around it.

What is called love is that  deep seeded need of  the ego-self  that focuses on external form  for its satisfaction.

Being Present in Relationships  

by Eckhart Tolle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vshBnR4Z9x8 

Meeting humans with whom  you share a lot of past.

The more past you share with them, the more the old behavior will want to come back in.

Old mental/emotional patterns of who you think he is, or who he thinks you are.

Be present, be in your body meeting while meeting human being without past.

Not that you cannot remember the past, but deciding not to bring it as an active operating principle  into the interaction.

Meeting everyone without past,  just in this moment, through the power of this moment which is the power of presence  which is  the power of who you are (now).

Not meeting the other person as a walking personal history.

It is enormously  liberating thing to do when  you can meet even your mother and father free from past.

Many in this world did not grow up in a relatively conscious family,  where father and mother were  manifesting various degrees of  unconsciousness (unaware of being unaware).

Resentment built up over the years between parents and child, often with grievances, complains, anger  (he does not understand me, I get criticized often, disapproved of…)

The same reaction happens every time you visit them.

One day you meet them, and you look at them, and feel the inner body at the same time (being anchored in the Now).

You have to be VERY present, unmoved by the old energy/emotional patterns.

The non-resistance to  their viewpoint  causes them to feel a slight  disorientation  because I am not feeding the old patterns anymore.

I am not reacting, and his or her ego will miss the ‘player’ to interact with.

It will be hard to play out the old script  without the opponent being present,  the other one not reacting as expected, simply stating what is as it is.

And you do not even expect anything anymore, because expectation that  he/she should behave in a particular way to  make ‘me’ happy,   is to do with  being identified with certain thought-forms (that how things should be, he/she should understand me..., so that I can be happy).

The whole thing is illusionary edifice.

You won’t be happy even if he/she understands you,  it will not make any real difference to you. (Now, he understands me, so now what?) What has changed? Nothing.

We become free of that which  we thought  we needed while being identified with thoughts.

While being present, you don’t really need anything, psychologically speaking.  You can see the old patterns crumbling, and a genuine interest may arise instead: What are you really into?  These miracles happen, and if they don’t, that is fine too.

With awareness of presence comes an acceptance of what is –  the human being in front of you  as  he/she is.

Be compassionate GIVING them  space to be, because your presence is your inner space, or spaciousness, formless consciousness, peace, aware of being aware…

DEATH   by  Eckhart Tolle   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqOgR61zAlo&feature=channel

Her form through an illness began to dissolve, more and more the light of consciousness was shining through the fading form. Looking into her eyes was beautiful. You see the light of the ‘unconditioned’ was shining through her eyes and through her entire form.

When death comes, she was able to surrender, so she was opened wide for the radiance to shine through.

It did not matter anymore how much longer this form would be here, the flowering had happened.

The fulfillment – the consciousness flowering  through  this form has happened, it has flowered.

The whole evolutionary impulse of the universe is towards that. Consciousness wants to flower through the form.

It flowers where there is a transparency, where the rigid mind structures give away. They ‘die’ first.

Identification with that ‘me’ = mind-made self goes. You are here because you can find ‘death’ before death finds you.

The heavy mind-structures that you are identified with as ‘me’, the thought-forms die!

So the flowering is happening here before death finds you. You embrace death already.

It does not matter when it happens and consciousness will move through.

It could be a criminal, killed several people, inflicted suffering on others and of course on himself. In that midst of hell, waiting for execution, suddenly insight the entire structure of the self, mental, emotional structures dissolve because the suffering is unbearable.

And suddenly something shines through.

And he does not care anymore whether the execution happens or not.

At some point, something happened in the suffering mind and surrender happened. Suddenly, there was a being of great softness and beauty. There was not even guilt anymore, because guilt is still to be indentified with unconscious movements as ‘me’ to derive your sense of self. From the movement of unconsciousness then saying: ‘I did that, that was me.’

She saw the dreadful nature of that (what had happened) but it no longer disturbed her peace. It was not her at all. That was not the consciousness that has now emerged.

There is something that shines through that is deeper than any person could be. The personal dimension has given away to ‘that’. It is the destiny of all humans to go through that transformation.

Eckhart Tolle

Presence in Relationships:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLfEADDxBS4&feature=channel

What beauty  if  you can recognize the formless in form!

First you can recognize it in natural things more easily, because they are less challenging than humans.

Relate through stillness and presence, more and more. Gradually, you bring it into human relationships. Easy with humans you meet the first time. Let them be. As you listen to another human being, it does not mean that all your attention is on the words.

It is more as listening as an analogy, there is a field of still attention that flows out towards that human being.  One could say, you give him or her space.

And then, that person may be speaking, words arise in the space, but you are there as the spaciousness that allows words to come.

You are there as a field of aware presence. Then, words may come out of your mouth suddenly. That is different from so called ‘normal’ human interaction that is all completely mind dominated.

To be still with another human being while you listen and sense yourself as the awareness (while you listen), so some of your attention is on the words and some of your attention is being present get into your body so you can be present with your entire energy field, so every cell of your body is present as you listen.

Humans can be very challenging. Because they are dominated by mind they want you to contribute to their mental structures – the drama. Their pain-body (other way of identifying with form) may be active. The old emotion that arises triggers the pain –body episode, pain-body being the old, stored-up emotion from the past (human suffering) that has not gone away, that is partly personal – partly collective humanity. Ultimately, the human pain is not personal at all.

And that is a little energy-entity that lives in you, sometimes dormant and sometimes active.  Sometimes, half asleep with one eye open, waiting for an opportunity, for a trigger that it can come up. The trigger could be a remark your partner makes: ‘are you accusing me of being…’. The drama starts that awakens the partner’s pain body and exchange goes on as they feed each other.

You totally reincarnate into old pain. You live it, it lives through you.

Not knowing that you are going through another reincarnation. You may not know, while you are fighting with whoever that  you are reincarnating right in this moment.

Reincarnating into the old emotions (unconscious energy) wants to feed on the experience of more pain. It pretends to be you. When you identify with it (making a big deal out of...), it occupies your entire space. And you feed on the other person’s reaction.  And you love it,  the pain-body at that moment.

There is mistaking the pain-body  for who you are, that’s reincarnation.

Or it would feed on your mind. If you have no partner (to fight with) it will feed on your thinking: how dreadful my life is, what ‘they’ did to me, the world, politicians, people… whatever the mind can think of in a form of a negative thought the pain-body loves it.

The pain-body is the addiction to the negativity that humans carry, it is a little entity, an energy form.

All that is required for you to see it, to recognize it. Then, you don’t incarnate into it anymore. And even if you were reincarnated, it is possible in the middle of negative thinking or a drama to suddenly know what is happening.

That means that some of your consciousness has stepped out of the form and is there as pure awareness.

Before, it was totally trapped in the form. When you suddenly see what is happening, some consciousness has stepped out of the reincarnation and is there as pure consciousness watching.  And there you are the angry/upset entity screaming #xvz## !!...  

Oh, look at that – silence.

When there is awareness there,  presence,  which is simply the still watcher,  it cannot renew itself,  because it needs your complete identification with it.  At least, I woke up in the middle of it, or right after.

At least, I am awake now.

Just a tiny thing going wrong can trigger the pain-body (reaction far greater than the relatively insignificant event).

Shining the light of attention/consciousness on it is all that is needed. Now, you don’t incarnate completely into it.

Why do senseless events happen?  

By Eckhart Tolle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeFe9FJp9Oc&feature=channel

We  cannot understand  through the mind  why an even that seems senseless happens to ‘us’?

It does not make sense. The mind says: this should not be happening, this person had the whole life ahead of them and now, he is falling ill and might die prematurely…  If a child dies, it seems to be against the entire law of universe, that life has been taken away from somebody who has hardly started to live.

But the human mind cannot understand why certain things happen within the totality.  But it can understand that  there are no isolated events. Everything is connected with everything else.

It is all through our superficial sense perception that we isolate something into a definite form:  this is an event. 

But the event is a part of totality – the cosmos, and is connected to all other things.

The entire universe is one organism -  one being.

Everything there is interconnected. There are no separate or isolated events, but we cannot possibly understand through the human mind what function a seemingly senseless event is having within the totality.

That includes the ‘worst’ things humans do to other humans creating hell on the planet. Why?

Even ‘that’ within the totality has a function.

We cannot understand because all we see is a fragment, a tiny pigment out of the whole picture. The dot seems not to make sense of itself.

It is only if you could see the totality you could see where it fits in.

Sometimes, one can get a glimpse of it when you see a seemingly negative events (something that should not be happening like a war) that at the same time there was an amazing awakening happening too.  A great movement of spiritual awakening.  Somehow, that seemingly negative event cannot be separated from the awakening because the awakening was seeing the madness of the collective human mind.

The seeing of the madness of the collective human mind was part of the awakening, of many thousands of people disidentifying  from collective forms that they until then had become elitely identified with.

Stepping out of the collective (mental) structures. So there can be a glimpse of how seemingly negative and awakening fit together.

What humanity has done out of the madness, which is a madness of being lost in ‘things’, in the world of mind, in the world of forms, totally identified with forms. The collective egoic mind and what it does.

This moment is as it is because it cannot be otherwise. That is all we know. The more deeply we know  this, the more (even the world of forms and things) changes.

When a human being lives in the two dimensions:  the form (the world of things) and the formless (stillness, spaciousness) that  stillness does something to the way in which you experience the world of form.

It ‘something’ flows into the world of form that does not remove certain polarities which are always inherent in the world of forms, and yet makes a world of form more benign, softer place. With polarity still there, yes.

Forms do still crumble and dissolve here and there, but without the harshness and incredible suffering that is there when this deeper dimension is absent in the human life.

The world becomes a more benevolent place which it already is.

It is the human mind that creates hell.

The planet itself is a beautiful jewel of unspeakable beauty. Humans are destroying it, poisoning it, madness, it is what it is. The more humans see the madness the more change comes.

You cannot fight madness. (Because) you become mad yourself.

If you fight madness, you get drawn into (gravitate to)  the madness, and you become mad.

If you fight unconsciousness, you have withdrawn into unconsciousness.

Just to see it is enough.

You can point it out, you can write your newspapers about it,  but without the fighting spirit behind it.

Because then you personalize unconsciousness, you make identity out of it,  and you call certain people or groups bad.  They may be bad because of what they are doing but that is not their identity.

They embody human unconsciousness.

 "Can I be the SPACE for this?"

 by  Eckhart Tolle: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx526pO9UV0

The secret of life is to move in the world of  object-consciousness where things continuously happen and have to be dealt with, continuous demand of this objectified world is:  GIVE me  your attention now!

I need your attention, the situation is serious, we have to do something now…  being completely  lost in form.

What (kind of) decisions are you going to take on the basis of THAT state of consciousness?

Complete  lack of space  which means  complete absence of wisdom (awareness available for the mind to be used). Just absurd decision are being taken (idea of a shortage of space translates into a competition for it).

Nothing can come out of that  state of consciousness  that does not  extend (create) more suffering, because it is a state of great unbalance.

A state where everything  pretends to matter absolutely,  and there is a continuous underlying fear, because all you know  is the world of objects (things happening).

This is the energy that is behind a lot of the present structures (physical & mental), it is  a  mad  energy.

What is missing?

Space.

Can  you be here as a  BRINGER of space in  any situation?

Can you be here as a bringer of space in any situation?

Can you be here as a bringer of space in any situation?

Your Pain Body Is Very Seductive  

by Eckhart Tolle:

Who is watching the violence on TV, news, in movies?

The pain body.

Who is financing them, produce them, pay to watch them, loved them… creating whole industry to watch violence on a screen: ‘Oh, that was a good scare!’

Can you watch your own drama and realize, it has a story,  a mind created  fiction designed to give you a sense of identity in the absence of true sense of identity.  Ok, I will hang on the ‘miserable one’…  Madness of our civilization, when seen clearly,  turns into a tragicomedy.

When  you see  your own drama  as  illusion,  then you either laugh or smile.

 And then  you smile a lot more when  you see it a lot  around you.

Pain bodies do not  like to be seen,  to have attention put directly on them because they strive in non-attention (unawareness).

They strive in and through unconsciousness.

When  you become conscious and look at the pain body directly it shrinks and tries to withdraw, often becoming dormant as if  it is not here anymore.

Yet, it is waiting for a better moment to show its aliveness.

Become aware of  that  in you that wants to watch the violence/news,  get  in touch with it  by becoming conscious of its presence.  (overcome your fear of it)

TV news: being ‘fed’ by decision of a specific group of few people who embody certain  level of consciousness, and  decide about what is relevant to their present state, not yours, as significant.

 Being Yourself  

by Eckhart Tolle:    

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j42cTkiGdXY

God, or your essential nature, is not somethingness.

It is stillness and vastness of pure consciousness.

The light of God present and coming through as your awareness is not form.

What it is cannot be named, but can be known. Not conceptually, being formless.

No matter how heavy and turbulent the mental noise may be (mind-made energies), your essence (spirit) is not separate from the essence (spirit) of the universe.

The analysis of pointer is pointless.

Beautiful words pointing to the dimension of the stillness within, extremely awake but silent.

In between thoughts is the canvas on which whole phenomenal existence is painted.

The enormous power of YES  

by Eckhart Tolle: