Wednesday, April 02, 2008

A GENIE LIBERATED FROM HER BOTTLE


There is an organization, Technology, Entertainment, and Design, TED, that has annual meetings at which innovators in the titular fields give talks. I found this particular presentation to transcend the meeting's agenda in that it encompasses the Buddhist view of reality through the personal experience of a brain specialist in the terms of western civilization. Jill Bolte Taylor is truly a genie liberated from her bottle, I cannot but feel her entire energy field when watching this amazing woman describe the possibility of world peace. It may well be the most worthwhile 18 minutes you spend this decade.

10 comments:

Garth said...

My right brain was enthralled by such a beutiful description of the trip; my left was unsettled by her evangelical zeal.
Truth is that the vast majority of us wouldn't know where to find the turn on button.

Yodood said...

hi pi, I find a world of difference in the use of the word evangelical and what her zeal reveals. Precisely because she could so fully emote the experience, as much as anything could, she has moved me totally in every re-veiwing. She's using the jargon of western psychiatry and neurology to explain the value of meditation to more western minds than an India full of saints ever could. That vast majority you mentioned are looking everywhere but inward for that button — and you well understand that, my friend.

Anonymous said...

The goal should be for us to use both and harmonize them, to see both the forest and the individual trees, the universe and ourselves as a unique part.

Expressing creativity is a good way to liberate the right brain, writing in a stream of consciousness style or speaking "in the moment" without pre-editing yourself is a good way to hear what your right brain is saying.

Yodood said...

Right on, Mike. As my Dad always told me, "Art is in knowing when to leave in the happy mistakes while you're basically engineering something.

Garth said...

Perhaps it is more true to say "Art is in knowing when to leave in the happy mistakes while you're basically engineering NOTHING" - since the pursuit of art is essentially the pursuit of the void.
All of which is to take nothing away from the creative urge itself; merely to place it in context. ;]

Unknown said...

What an inspiring talk and not one mention of any deity involved in the proceedings!
A stroke of genius indeed.

Anonymous said...

Blogging as art. Discuss. :)

Diane Dehler said...

I bookmarked this link and will come back to view it earlier tomorrow. Have had a headache all day and can't concentrate. It looks interesting and the conversation that you have going hear makes it all the more intriguing.

Garth said...

All acts of creation or creative thought may be defined as art.
To keep the dicussion in line with the post it is perhaps more prudent to discuss how the two sides of the brain come together to create - and in this we may discover the truth about art.

Yodood said...

Ah, Pisces, to the very point of it.

Art seems to be that balance between the two halves in that it is as purposeless as the sea of electrons beheld by the right and as material as the world of matter that matters to the left. Any more left brain and you have engineering, legislation and sinning. Any more right brain and you have shamen, autism and esp.

When the balance is perfect life itself is art becoming more artificial when leaning left (as demanded by civilization) and unwilling to articulate when leaning right (the redundancy of talking to others seen as intimately, essentially connected to oneself already).