Selflessness

Rumor has it that Darwinian theory is falling out of favor in some mainstream scientific circles due to lack of hard evidence in support of it. A rival theory, equally unsupported but more to my liking, is devolution. “Forbidden Archeology” author Michael Cremo proposes in his new book “Human Devolution” that we’re beings of pure consciousness, temporarily housed in our bodies, devolved from the spiritual plane.

In her Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) lecture “Stroke of Insight,” neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor describes the sensation of separating from her “self” when she nearly died of a brain hemorrhage in 1996. The stroke occurred in her left hemisphere, the linear-thinking “I am” half that enables us to distinguish ourselves from our surroundings. As her left hemisphere “fell silent,” her right hemisphere woke up, and as it did she says that she could no longer define the boundaries of her body. “The atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall.” She was “immediately captivated with the magnificence of the energy” around her. She felt “at one with that energy” as a sense of peacefulness overcame her and she said goodbye to her life. “My spirit soared free like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria. I found Nirvana. I remember thinking there was no way I’d ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body.”

Eventually she did return to her body and, over the eight years that followed, recovered fully. The insight she gained from this experience is that we can choose to be led by the right side or the left side of the brain. We can choose to emphasize boundaries or connections. We can live in Heaven or Hell.

In my own experience as a creative person I’ve found it beneficial to eliminate myself as much as possible from whatever I’m doing.  My intuition tells me that creative people are conduits for the energy that Taylor says is all around us … not originators, but intermediaries.

When Cremo says that we’re devolved from a purely spiritual state, it seems to me that he’s referring, at least in part, to the left brain’s imposition of it’s me-focused will on the right brain. That imposition is ego, I think. Selfishness.

So I try to stay focused on the joy of the creative process itself, rather than on what part of that process I ” own.”