Turning down the noise...

Recently, with all my reading of Eckhart Tolle, Alan Watts, and Deepak Chopra, I decided to cut down on tv, radio, and thought. I couldn't describe why but I felt the excessive noise was adding to my stress level. I still engage in all three, but now I don't leave the tv on unless I'm actively watching it, sometimes I drive or shower in silence, and when I find my thoughts backing up until they're running each other over, I make it a point to stop and hit pause. I think it's been helpful, but I never really knew for sure until I started reading Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's memoir and Neurology 101 handbook, My Stroke of Insight, after hearing her interviewed on NPR.

In the book, Taylor, a neuroanatomist, details- literally- her stroke experience, describing each resulting loss of function, and then relates her recovery from her recognition of color to her reading comprehension. But that's not the most intriguing part. The greatest facet of this book to me is the experience she had sans her left hemisphere. Taylor was left with essentially only her right-hemisphere function and therefore experienced our world with no concept of past or present. Her thoughts came in pictures, not words. In her interactions with others, she felt energies instead of seeing the superficial. She felt one with the universe literally, as she lacked the ability to recognize boundaries. In other words, she had no idea where she ended and the world began. Likewise with sounds, she was unable to differentiate one sound from the veritable flood of noise around her at all times.

In learning to cope with the world under such circumstances, Taylor taught herself how to limit her exposure to negative energies from others and to sound pollution. She even taught herself to steer away from creating negative mental loops of pain and suffering. She could simply decide not to feel badly about certain things. So this got me thinking- if we all have this going on in our right hemispheres at all times, we are probably having the same negative reactions to stimuli that she did in her recovery. We just don't notice it because we have our right hemisphere operating in tandem to overrule it.

These days we are in almost constant communication via cell phones, email, and Facebook. We collide with sounds at every turn. Not just conversation, tv, and radio, but thoughts. We worry about overstimulating our children, but as adults, we don't give it a second thought. Yet, we frequently read about the importance of "me time" and the danger of "energy vampires", people who sap you of positive energy with their constant negative chatter.

I really believe that all of this excess noise is cause to such daily torments as road rage, stress, emotional breakdowns, and misdirected anger. I truly feel that being preemptive and cutting some of the unnecessary pollution out of my brain has helped chill me out. And, hearing Dr. Taylor's words just fortified my suspicions. I think her book is a huge step forward for our species.