If you have followed me for any length of time, you know that I love to listen to audiobooks while running. Right now I’m listening to a guy called Chris Niebauer, Ph.D.. He’s an American neuropsychologist, and a lover of all things Buddhist and Zen. He’s written a book called “No Self No Problem”, in which he maintains that neuropsychology is now catching up to the Buddhist idea that the ego-self is an illusion, created by our own brains.
I’m only halfway through the book, but he’s given a fascinating description of the way our thinking left brain likes to be in charge – if it doesn’t know something, it will make up a convincing explanation, which may be completely untrue. Our silent right brain knows and understands a lot more about the world, but it is often drowned out by the chatter from the bossy left brain. It takes quiet and meditation to hear that still, small voice.
Our Western society and all its technology are based very much on the left brain view of the world – scientific, linear, and if you can’t explain something in words, it doesn’t exist. And yet all of us, especially those of us who are more tuned in to our intuitive side, know that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our scientific philosophy. Will knew a thing or two about humans.
While listening to this book, I was particularly struck by the idea that our left brain will just make stuff up if it doesn’t know what actually happened. We all experience this – we make up complete fabrications about other people, or about events, and we convince ourselves that that is what happened. Then something turns up to show us that it was wrong, and yet it all seemed so real.
The same is true of our internal environment – that voice in our heads that tells us that we are stupid, or clumsy, or that other people don’t like us, is the voice of the chatty, bossy left brain, just making stuff up because it can. Anyone who has had any kind of therapy or life coaching knows that these stories can be changed, which proves that they aren’t true. Just reframe the situation in your mind, and you can see things differently. So where did the original, negative story come from? We must have created it at some time in our lives, probably based on erroneous information, and we accepted it as true. We all have these kinds of stories in our minds, and we can change them, once we are aware that they are based on nothing. We may need help, but it can be done. They are just stories, after all.
What kind of stories does your left brain tell you? How many of them are true? What are you going to do about the ones that aren’t? I’d love to know, if you are willing to share.