Heroes Not Zombies

There are many meditation practices and I’m no expert but many, if not most, involve training your attention, whether it’s attending to your breath, or watching your thoughts, images and feelings arise and fade away.

Iain McGilchrist, in The Master and His Emissary, shows how each of our cerebral hemispheres enable us to pay attention to the world in different ways. The right hemisphere uses a broad attention to be aware of our circumstances, our contexts, the unanalysed flow of feelings and sensations. It allows us to see connections and to keep an eye open to novelty. The left hemisphere on the other hand uses a narrow, even laser like, focus, to pick out details from whatever we encounter, to re-cognise, re-present, analyse and classify.

We use both all the time. We need both. Having both is our super power.

But we have to learn to become aware of what each kind of attention is most active at any moment. And we can choose. We can choose to focus in on a detail, to drill down and analyse it. Or we can choose to appreciate the here and now as a whole, undivided, unclassified, an every changing flow of new connections.

Iain’s contention is that we’ve become unbalanced and that we need to re-balance by re-integrating the work of the left into the right.

Here’s three things I find strengthen the right and support re-integration – music, poetry and a conscious attitude of wonder.

Try it for yourself. Allow yourself more music, more poetry and more everyday wonder.