Left, right, and centering

We have two hemispheres to our brain, and they seem to be quite independent people. Your right brain is a parallel processing device which deals in imagery, the here and now, and the connectedness with
all things. The left hemisphere is serial and concerned with the creation of and preservation of identity, placing us within a temporal context.

This does not stop at perceptual interpretation, but includes phenomena such as the “evil hand” (where one of your hands misbehaves, expresses its own intentions, and sometimes even tries to harm its,
er… owner. You need only look at schizophrenia to see that we have two people living within us.

This is an odd and relatively new realisation to me, but I wonder if that’s much of what meditation concerns itself with – trying to reconcile these two halves.

An interesting lecture on this from the marvellous TED: http://is.gd/QSS