In recent years, research has indicated a division of labor in our mind/brain, between spatial wholes and digital breakdowns. This is the well-worn theory of right and left brain-thinking. Our preoccupation, indeed isolation within, left-hemisphere or digital, analytical “take-apart” thinking, has been the subject of much speculation. While in contrast to analytical thinking, insight clearly indicates a mode of unity-thinking , a look at the whole procedure shows interaction between the two disparate modes. Insight indicates a greater power than thinking, and a greater synchrony.
Learning research finds that anxiety is the great enemy of intelligence and development. Our anxiety is not some passing emotional disturbance, but a bio-electrical imbalance flashing its danger-to-survival signals. Anxiety is singularly intolerable to the brain system. It truly swamps the switchboard and stops all processes, as everything in an anxiety-ridden brain bends toward trying to remove that anxiety, a state of mind influencing all sensory and mental content.
The dominance of left-hemisphere thinking may result, not from its inherent superiority, but from the anxiety and powerlessness this one-sided mental action produces. Needless to say, both modes of thinking are valid and needed, yet either is troubled if dominant. Right-hemisphere thinking can lead to stasis, avoidance of concrete thinking, a retreat from the realities of the physical world. Left-hemisphere thinking can lead to splitting-apart to the point of fragmentation and chaos. A balance between the modes, reason and knowing, is obviously desirable.
The values that typify the right brain include empathy with the plight of one’s companions, generosity toward strangers, tolerance of dissent, love of nature, nurturance of children, laughter, playfulness, mysticism, forgiveness of enemies and nonviolence. In contrast, people tend to exhibit left-brain attributes when absorbed in work, goals, focus, power, and money. According to Leonard Shlain, author of The Alphabet Versus The Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, cruelty, argument, violence, a disregard for nature, and lack of empathy reside as well in left hemisphere processes.
Our problem is that thoughts take over and become self-generative, meaning a kind of closed-circuit, tape-looped effect of the brain, wherein the brain feeds on its own output, rather than on insight-intelligence. Through enculturation and its resulting anxiety, thought relates exclusively to the brain, the body, and the outer world, and loses its connection with consciousness and insight. Brain research indicates that new processes of thought and experience open for us through synchronization of right and left hemispheres of the brain.
“Thought, consciousness, and insight form a trinity: one which can’t, ultimately, be divided,” according to Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of, The Biology of Transcendence: A Blueprint of the Human Spirit. “Thought is man; insight is God; consciousness is the bonding-power, the connecting force, the Holy Spirit, that Shakti or energy which underlies all reality.” Shakti is the energy of creation itself. Allowed to develop within, this energy always moves for unity; it can order into coherence our mind/brain split asunder by the force of madness about us, and bring us into balance with this awesome universe we carry within our skulls. By training the right hemisphere with neurofeedback the left-brained processes of hunter and warrior can be subdued, and the capacity for intuitive knowing, empathy and relationship enhanced.
By increasing the capacity of our right hemisphere, we enhance our ability to be present for a relationship with Shakti. This is how neurofeedback (EEG biofeedback) supports one’s spiritual journey through brain wave regulation to build a capacious chalice for the Grail of an awakened relationship with Holy Spirit. Perhaps the future depends upon our caring for and rebalancing right-side processes to bring them into greater equilibrium and allow both individuals and cultures to actualize the benefits of balance. 618