This video is neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor‘s talk at the TED conference on Feb. 27, 2008, on her experience of a hemorrhagic stroke in 1996. You may relate better to some posts I’m planning if you have listened to this speech first. I plan to refer to it when I write about my own experience of working since April 2003 to recover from hypoxic brain injury and regain executive function, my weight loss program and the process of gaining higher states of consciousness (which really and truly exist).
I’ve struggled with whether to tell my story because it is so very painful for me to write about. I would prefer to be telling it after having reached the goals I’ve set for myself. But some of my dear gentle regular commenters are asking me about it now, one or two because they have similar challenges. I am concerned about what could happen to them if I delay. Nearly all the family members, friends and acquaintances I’ve spoken to after I recognized their symptoms of sleep apnea got tested and treated and were joyful about how much better they felt. One, however, a fit ex-Marine, did not and died in his sleep at the age of 49. So, since lives are at stake, it seems better to trust that if some people are asking for my story now, then now is the time to tell it. Let it begin as a journey story.
P.S.
The experience Dr. Taylor refers to in her talk as “La-la Land” is pure bliss consciousness. I will be explaining in future posts how to have it without the risk and inconvenience of a brain injury. In fact, the technology for culturing the brain’s ability to maintain the experience of pure bliss consciousness at all times, waking and sleeping, is what I’ve been using to heal. As I’ll explain, Dr. Taylor’s story has given me a better intuitive model for how it works.
Too bad I got no bliss at all from my stroke, only fear and confusion when I couldn’t talk and half of my body wasn’t working properly. I could have used some bliss.
I have had the La-la Land experience without having a stroke. As far as I know, it was not associated with any physical pathology. However afterwards I was reading about temporal lobe epilepsy, and I discovered that a seizure emanating from the left temporal lobe can induce an altered state of consciousness that may be interpreted as a mystical experience. So I have found myself wondering if attempting to cultivate such an experience is essentially training yourself to have such seizures.
Alice,
I think the sense of bliss and unboundedness comes from quieting the verbal centers of the brain, which overshadow one’s ability to experience it at all times. The gentlest, easiest and most pleasant technology for cultivating the brain’s ability to maintain bliss during activity — waking, dreaming and sleeping — is the Transcendental Meditation technique. No other program for self-development is as well-researched.
Cynthia