Evidence is mounting.....that my theory about the right brain....might not be the entire story..

It is slowly occuring to me that the powerful experiences and insights that I have experienced since beginning a spiritual path when I was 12 may have little or nothing to do with my theory that I have accelerated right brain development. That in some way that I still find incredibly hard to believe that my intention made at the age of 12 that I was going to be spiritual and not religious has been like rocket fuel for everything that has happened. It is impossible to underestimate the power of a decision made in childhood and early adulthood. These are the decisions that go on to shape who we become as individuals. They are what make up our ego/identity/personality and they come about as the result of the development of mind. Mind is the structure that holds all the decisions that we made when we were growing up.

Why have I suddenly gone less than certain on what was for me a definite reason for why I was the way I was. Well the strongest reason is that I have come across the work of Dr Mario Beauregard who has written a book called 'The Spiritual Brain'. In it he suggests that mystical/spiritual experiences involve the brain but are not limited to it. In my theory I had completely limited what happened to me to the workings of the brain and more particular to increased activity in the right side and nothing else. A couple of weeks ago I put pen to paper and sent him an email briefly outlining the experience where I experienced the rising of an energy from the base of my spine to my head and the transformation that happened afterwards. I explained about the lack of sight in my right eye and the link between the eye and the brain and asked him about the possibility of having some brain scan done on my brain to see the level of right brain activity vis a vis the left. He replied to me the next day which I was really grateful for and told me that spiritual activity involves both sides of the brain and gave me some advice on how to go about getting a brain scan. There was no indication that he wished to be further involved with me.

I am used to this reaction by now because of all the experts in this field I have spoken to and I have a great deal of respect for Dr Beauregard. I have only just begun his book but I want to copy a sentence which has resonated. There is an old Sufi saying that says 'I thought about you so often, that I completely became you; little by little you drew closer; And slowly but surely I passed away' What this is saying is that to be focussed continuously on something is to bring it about. Now in Dr Beauregard's book, he says on page 33 when he is speaking about the field of quantum mechanics 'Experiments have shown that because the brain is a quantum system, if you focus on a given idea, you hold its pattern of connecting neurons in place. The idea does not decay as it would if it were ignored. But the action of holding an idea in place truly is a decision you make' So here we have a sufi and a scientist saying more or less the same thing. I think this is why also that when we focus on what we don't want in life, we get more of the same. The key to effortlessly manifesting is to focus continuously on what we do want.

For me from the age of 12 I wanted nothing more than to be spiritual. I had no idea what that looked like. I was born into an Irish Catholic family so I knew religion but I had no idea of spirituality yet I knew that there was a fundamental difference between being spiritual and being religious. I could also look at it like the continuous focus on being spiritual has driven my brain to develop in the way that it has. In this way we have a chicken and egg scenario, what came first, the brain development or my desire to be spiritual? The truth is that I don't know. One thing I am committed though is to be true to myself no matter what the experts try to tell me.....