All You Need to Relax is A Stroke

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

I've been wanting to write about this for a couple of days- a neuroscientist in Boston had a stroke that caused her to experience true nirvana. She's now trying to prove scientifically that bliss is a an attainable state for all human beings.

"The incessant chatter that normally filled her mind disappeared. Her everyday worries — about a brother with schizophrenia and her high-powered job — untethered themselves from her and slid away.

Her perceptions changed, too. She could see that the atoms and molecules making up her body blended with the space around her; the whole world and the creatures in it were all part of the same magnificent field of shimmering energy.

“My perception of physical boundaries was no longer limited to where my skin met air,” she has written in her memoir, “My Stroke of Insight,” which was just published by Viking.

After experiencing intense pain, she said, her body disconnected from her mind. “I felt like a genie liberated from its bottle,” she wrote in her book. “The energy of my spirit seemed to flow like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria.”

My first reaction when reading this, honestly, was "duh." Not as a criticism to Dr. Taylor necessary, but to people who don't seem to understand the basics of how their brains work. I'm not a neuroscientist but I know about left lobes and right lobes. It's completely logical to deduce that stress, anxiety, panic attacks and general strife come from living inside a society hellbent on forcing us all to be left brain dominant ($$$), while those who exist on the fringe- religious figures, artists, "hippie dippies," etc seem to achieve a sort of deeper peace/release from focusing more on their right lobes.

I've known more than a few people (am related to and have dated a few of them too, unfortunately) whose first and immediate reaction to someone attempting to live a peaceful, empathetic lifestyle is to denigrate them by labeling them "gay" or some other charming variant. That sort of woeful misguidedness is rampant within my generation, which prides itself on being the "most unique" as long as that title come from within a set boundary of what's already acceptably hip. They pride themselves on how WICKED DRUNK. BRO they can get every weekend, never bothering to give themselves more credit than that because having the other drunk people think they're "cool" means more to them. We've somehow defined the people who choose other, healthier-for-the-soul activities as "boring" or "lame. "Ours is a culture that hunts down loving, empathetic people and attempts to mold and shape them into something "stronger" and more "American" by calling them names and shaming them. Since when it empathy, caring and general pacifism something to be ashamed of? Since when is cruelty, sarcasm, cynicism and ego tripping something to be PROUD of? How can you PRIDE yourself on that? No thanks, America. I'd much rather be "boring" (aka "not drunk") or "gay" (aka "feeling") then get caught up in that defeatist meat grinder any day. The people with the inner strength to live outside of all that are much more interesting to me anyway.

My point is, we live in a society that is fueled by our anxiety. The very structure of our culture relies on it. Rushing to work, depriving ourselves of sleep, worrying about how we look, worrying about how others perceive us, rushing home from work, worrying whether we're making enough money, worrying about our stuff and things, dressing ourselves up for the bar, worrying about how well we can squeeze ourselves into the rigid definition of "acceptable." No wonder the idea of nirvana seems like a myth to most of us, right? No wonder there's so much scorn aimed at people who manage to find a way to live comfortably outside of all that posturing and worry. I'd be jealous too.

"When we find ourselves believing that killing a man makes us more of a man, but loving a man makes us less of a man, it’s probably time to reexamine our criteria for manhood." -Jay Smooth @ illdoctrine.com

How's that for a mouthful?

American society is a mess, a complete mess. And how "civilized" humanity at large didn't see the mess coming a mile away, I'm not sure. We've all but abandoned the greater, more powerful aspects of our humanity for money and nationality (both of which are man-made concepts anyway, completely dependent on society's belief in them to exist), and now we wonder why we all have Generalized Anxiety Disorder and can't relate to each other? The "greatest minds" of our species spend so much money and time (both left lobe controlled, btw) on trying to figure out ways to medicate our numerous psychological maladies. Depression, anxiety, personality disorders, ADHD, autism. Instead of pumping ourselves full of drugs, how about we (as a society) stop stressing the importance of ULTIMATE EGO and take the time to hang out with each other for a while? How about working for pleasure and self fulfillment instead of corporations? Is all this negativity and soul sucking worth the leisure of being able to stroll into a store at any time and buy whatever we "need?" How badly do we truly "need" designer clothes, giant cars, cheap plastic baby toys, and any number of things created in factories? Is pacifying our laziness really worth giving up our collective sanity? Do most of us even realize how fully involved in the rat race we are? I don't think we do.

You don't need to have a stroke to experience nirvana. You don't need to use drugs or join a monastery. You just need to give yourself the time, space and tools to go out into the fresh air, dream and create, regain the power of (and then trust) your natural intuition, and be empathetic to others who aren't exactly like you. Give yourself permission to be peaceful. How any of us can possibly manage to do all of that while still paying our bills and therefore keeping ourselves "alive" in this warped culture, I don't know.