Pursuit of Happiness | “the Happy Movie” | “My Stroke of Insight” |
February 28, 2013 2 Comments
I’ve been writing about happiness for a while now. https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/speaking-of-happiness-laughter-yoga-giggling-guru-madan-kataria/
I have a series of blogs on the subject from different angles. http://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/pursuit-of-happiness-idea-authentic-happiness-perma-%E2%80%A8/
In the last months I’ve attended a number of lectures that are part of a colloquium of courses open to the public from LVC, Lebanon Valley College on the subject of happiness. One of these was given by an artist who decided to make a life-long commitment to revealing those people whose courage and risks to tell the truth have enabled the rest of the us to have more rights. https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/americans-who-tell-the-truth-portraits-by-robert-shetterly/
Various people have given lectures, presenting their views on happiness with respect to different disciplines. As part of the colloquium the 2011 documentary “Happy” played recently. I believe that this movie should be mandatory!
It’s available through their website and on netflix.
I happened to go to a lecture open to the public a few days ago and subsequently attended a course for one session on “Spirituality and Mysticism”. There I was introduced to a book written by a neurologist who had a stroke. Because of her background as a brain scientist, she was able to communicate clearly the various stages of consciousness and perceptions that she had of her own condition. It’s fascinating and illuminating. “My Stroke of Insight” by Jill Bolte Taylor. PhD.
She articulates how her sense perceptions and sense of self were drastically altered when the left hemisphere of her brain (the analytical side which breaks things into compartments, where language and even identity of oneself is built) was no longer functioning. Without the memory and learned structure of how to look at the objects around oneself, one can not identify what these objects are. Her depth perception and distinction of colors and forms was fuzzy. She describes that even the boundaries of where ‘she’ ended had dissolved, and her identification with her own ego dissolved, because she had lost the memory of the aggregate of experiences and composite of all of the different associations that made up the history of who she was, were lost. She described feeling completely boundless and blissful. She saw the world through her field of vision as a bunch of vibrating particles, in which she didn’t see distinctions between objects nor could sense where ‘she’ ended; her sense of ‘self’ expanded way beyond the borders of her own flesh.
In her TED talks presentation http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html (from the German site) she describes the process of consciousness and her realization that we are the life force power of the universe with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. She describes that the right hemisphere of the brain is a parallel processor which is in the here and now; thinking in pictures and processing information in a kinesthetic manner, whereas the left hemisphere is a serial processor which processes information linearly; methodically categorizing, analyzing and associating information about the past and projecting into the future. The left hemisphere of her brain was severely damaged; the part of the brain dealing with language, writing and which formulates and maintains the concept of a separate self. When this ‘ego’ identification receded, along with the other functions that are part of linear thinking, she experienced simply seeing energy and vibrating particles with no distinction of what she was looking at. She sensed very clearly with only the right hemisphere functioning that we are energy beings connected to energy all around us, with an enormous boundless spirit that is not contained within the body. It was an esoteric sense of bliss, nirvana, being one with the universe and at peace. She concludes with the point that we all have the choice to connect to this right hemisphere deep inner peace circuitry, and the more that we do, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will become.
Obviously, we all need the left hemisphere of our brain to function; to plan goals, execute them, learn tasks and to process information. It is a very unique insight coming from someone who is able to communicate the experience of having had a stroke of this nature. In some ways this perception without boundaries is approaching what shamans and mystics experience, as far as seeing the world of matter as it is, vibrating energy.
I’ve added some more information on my other blog about this book.
The Happy movie does not delve into the neurological or spiritual, but looks at the constraints that many of us put on ourselves, in terms of competing with peers for material acquisitions, and the fallacy that these material things are somehow going to bring happiness. The movie looks at the competition and bullying among youth, and also compares people of dramatically different economic standing, revealing that some people with little to no wealth, have an abundance of happiness, whereas other cultures that appear to be quite wealthy in terms of the GDP Gross Domestic Product, are some of the least happy. They point out that the Japanese have constricted themselves into such an emphasis on material gain, that many literally die from overworking, to the extent that they have even added this new word and concept to their vocabulary, Karoshi
With respect to the West’s emphasis on the GDP, the country of Bhutan recognizes that there are things more important than measuring economic growth, because of the fact that one needs to look at the whole picture; some things may be dramatically absent, lost and sacrificed for economic gain. I wrote about this in a previous blog as well. https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/gross_domestic_problem_-why-measurement-of-wealth-depends-on-a-healthy-environment/ 
And here are a series of other blogs I’ve written on the subject of happiness.
http://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/happiness/
http://carolkeiter.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/pointing-the-other-four-fingers-back-at-myself/
