Tag: innerpeace

Left Brain / Right Brain

I recently read a quote that goes “Enlightenment is not about learning but it is all about unlearning”. I thought that is such a profound statement. So today, let’s try and figure out what it is that we need to unlearn to develop lasting inner peace.

My brother and I had this discussion a few years ago. We both agreed that “Bhola Ne Bhagwan Jaldi Male”. Loosely translated, simple people get to Nirvana faster. There is a lot of truth in this. If you think about it, all we are saying when someone is simple is that they are right-brain dominated. They tend to have an artistic streak but more importantly, they focus on life’s little pleasures. They are at peace with themselves most of the time. They are not out there trying to prove anything to anyone. When you are happy, inner peace naturally comes to you.

So how do we get to a point where a lot of people in the Western world lost their ability to connect with their right brain? I have a theory. I believe that from an early age, we put so much emphasis on left-brain activities for children. Our linguistics controls are in our left brain. So does the ability to do Math. The area that keeps us organized is right in the center of our left brain and of course, the logic that we put so much emphasis on also is on the left side of the brain. As a result, we as a society have put undue emphasis on the dominance of the left brain.

What we learn to be successful in daily life actually gets in the way of our inner happiness. We learn about how to be “clever”, how to out-negotiate someone, how to push buttons to get our ways, and so on. All of these things give us some degree of material success and allow us to make “progress”. However, all of these skills increase our inner chatter. This inner chatter keeps us on the toe and keeps us always on the go. Which in turn prevents us from reaching true lasting happiness.

All of us have this potential for lasting inner peace. However, these so-called life skills are like layers of dust on the nugget of happiness. The dust layers are so thick that we don’t even know what the nugget looks like anymore. This is what the quote means when we talk about enlightenment is about unlearning.

So how do we remove this dirt from our inherently peaceful nature you ask? Well, the first thing to do is recognize. Once you realize that we need to unlearn some of these, it is then a matter of getting to work in a step-by-step fashion. We can begin with keeping an eye out for our inner chatter. Our mind keeps going all the time thinking of all kinds of things. It plays and replays things that happened in the past. It makes up stories about what may happen in the future. I recently read the book “My Stroke of Insight” by Dr. Jill Taylor. This is an interesting story. Dr. Taylor is a neuroanatomist. I didn’t know the word until I read the book quite frankly. Essentially, she studies brain-behavior for a living. At the age of 37, she had a devastating stroke. He left-brain hemorrhaged and as a result, she could not read, write, speak, hear, see for a long time. It took her eight years to recover believe it or not. In her book, Dr. Taylor says something interesting. She says our inner chatter has very little basis in fact. It makes up all the stories based on the previous history that is most convenient at the time.

My question to you is if our inner chatter is all made up, why are we listening to it anyway. Do me a favor, keep an eye out for where your inner chatter takes you for the next day or so. You will realize that it mostly wants to take you on a ride that is not useful anyway. So when you do catch yourself with this inner chat, bring yourself back. Just think about a happy incident that happened recently. Or, listen to music or start doing some arts and crafts. Point is, bring yourself to the present moment. Every week, when we meditate we talk about how the present moment is peaceful and how that allows us to have the next peaceful moment and so on. So if we are aware of our inner chat, it will allow us to bring ourselves back to the present moment. I hope this makes sense and we all start paying attention to the right side of our brain just a little more than we have been.

Our Daily Problems

When you think about our daily problems, they fall into two categories: outer problems and inner problems. If we understand the difference between outer problems and inner problems, we can begin to look at a solution for a peaceful life. Let’s take some examples. Say our car breaks down. Some people get really anxious when their car breaks down – creating an inner problem. This is a result of a strong attachment towards an object. We have so much attachment towards our things that we begin to identify with our possessions. When a car breaks down, it can be fixed by a skilled mechanic. It just needs the right person to fix it. However, when we begin to get unhappy because of the breakdown of the car, no one can fix that. We are the only ones responsible for our inner happiness. If we control our mind and realize that car is an inanimate object. It has no feelings, so it has no problems as such. Yes, it is broken but by itself, it has no problems. It cannot express its disappointment. It is completely an outer problem. On the other hand, if we look at the breaking down of a car objectively, take it to the right shop to get fixed and not let it disturb our inner peace, we will come out ahead.

Let’s take another example of our body which is much closer to ourselves than an external object or a situation. Now, this is going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people because all of our lives, we have identified our body as I. Let’s say we get diagnosed with a disease. Getting a disease or hurting our body is an inner problem most of you will argue. But it is actually our body’s problem. We have this strong attachment to our bodies that makes us think that we are our bodies. We believe our pain comes from our body, but the body cannot feel pain without the mind. The body is also an inanimate object just like our car. You may have heard stories of Indian yogis who let their Doctors perform surgery on them without anesthesia. These yogis do not feel any pain because they have overcome their self-grasping and understand that they are not their body. We, on the other hand, grasp our bodies a little too tight!

If we let that outer problem affect us internally, it affects our happiness creating an inner problem. Our unpleasant feelings are the result of our mind. They are arising out of uncontrolled desires or attachment, anger, and self-grasping. What do I mean by that? When we become upset about an external object such as a car breaking down, surely, we are responding to our attachment to our car or our attachment towards a meeting we are headed to and so forth. It is certainly our attachment that is driving these feelings. If we learn to objectively separate our attachment, we will not get angry and we will be able to maintain our inner peace. For example, I was in a car accident a few years ago. I hit a car in front of me on a highway. I walked out asked the other driver to make sure he was fine. And then knowing he was fine, I apologized to him and he said it’s just the car! What a beautiful way to look at it. I am sure he had somewhere to be and was delayed because of me. He knew the car was going to be fixed by insurance. He did not let an outer problem affect his inner peace. How many of us can remain peaceful like that? That is what keeps our inner happiness.

It is never too late to start controlling our minds. If we make a determination that we will not let outer problems disturb us, we should be able to make a habit – remember, it takes 21 days to make a habit.