Harvard-Trained Brain Scientist Had A Stroke & Figured Out The Mystery Of Life

by Joe Martino

What if your left brain suddenly shut off and only the right side of your brain were active and working? This is something that can happen when you have a stroke, and exactly what neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor experienced in 1996 — and she was conscious of it happening.

Taylor’s story is not a new one. She gave a TED talk about the amazing journey she had the morning of her stroke and wrote a book about what she learned. I wanted to draw attention to this story today because ‘consciousness’ has become a huge topic recently, and Jill’s story, which gets at the heart of who we truly are, offers much to the discussion.

Think about some of the shows and movies that have taken over the collective consciousness over the past two years — The OA, Stranger Things, Sense 8, Interstellar, The Arrival, Unacknowledged — and you’ll see these share a common theme: the exploration of our reality and consciousness.

Even if these themes weren’t obvious to everyone who watched, they planted seeds that continue to germinate a desire to explore more about our reality and who we are.

A subject once viewed as purely religious has now become more acceptable to explore and to discuss scientifically. Once viewed as pseudoscience, consciousness is now becoming self evident.

“We are energy beings connected to one another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And right here, right now, all we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a better place. And in this moment we are perfect. We are whole. And we are beautiful.”

Why Now?

But why? Why now? Why has this subject become so huge, not just in the minds of explorers, but also in pop culture? I examined this question in 2011 when I began a film project to discover why humanity seemed to be going through a mass shift in consciousness. I looked at science, the cosmos, daily global events, and what ancient cultures had been saying for years about things that apply to our own time, and I discovered that we are in fact going through the greatest and most profound shift in human history. No it’s not a renaissance, a small revolution of ideas, a new tech age, or even the natural progression that happens from generation to generation. This is much bigger. You can watch the film we released for free here.

In this moment it may be hard to wrap our minds around it, just as Jill had trouble grasping everything she was discovering during her stroke. This is why it’s imperative to practice presence and going within. I also believe it’s imperative to do this sober.

“Imagine what it would be like to be totally disconnected from your brain chatter that connects you to the external world. So here I am in this space and any stress related to my, to my job, it was gone. And I felt lighter in my body. And imagine all of the relationships in the external world and the many stressors related to any of those, they were gone. I felt a sense of peacefulness.”

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Video:  My stroke of insight | Jill Bolte Taylor

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