Hemisphere Dharma
- aka Brain ReMastering
- ie "instructions for how to learn healthy interaction patterns between your two brain hemispheres"
- status: patchy WIP
- I'm assuming if you've read this that you already have general sense of McGilchrist's brain hemisphere model and you have some sense of RH consciousness and want to know how to shift your locus of beingness so that the RH is wisely deploying the LH, rather than the LH running the show. I'm neither going to explain the model from scratch nor justify the shift on this page.
- A ton of sources are pointing at this already, and all of them become easier when you realize that you have a part of your brain that's naturally inclined towards this way of being / way of doing / way of relating, and another part that was never made for that and may never be able to but can at least learn to get out of the way.
- It seems clear to me that this shift is pretty core to the dharma, ie the teachings of the buddha.
- For more on this, see this twitter thread:
- What are the core components here?
- having experiences that allow us to identify the difference
- I almost forgot this one because it was something that had happened for me before I came across this model, but it wouldn't be for some people. I guess it is sort of implied by the prerequisites:: though. But worth noting for if I'm ever going to adapt this for a group/context where I can't assume that
- grasping & grokking McGilchrist's brain hemisphere model
- so that your left hemisphere has at least a theoretical model of where it fits and its own limitations
- note that it has a tendency to take credit for stuff the RH does
- (case study of me thinking "I wouldn't be that dumb" when reading about RH-stroke patients saying bizarre shit like "that arm [their arm] isn't mine, it's my mother's", and then realizing that the very part of me that was confidently asserting "I wouldn't be that dumb" was exactly the part that would be.)
- learning RH frameworks that are more compatible with the RH world
- & systems thinking more generally
- developing specific RH capacities
- unlearning specific LH graspings
- learning a generalized LH letting-go move
- Sources that explicitly point at two different modes or mindsets:
- who
- LH
- RH
- Carol Dweck
- Fixed Mindset
- Growth Mindset
- Arbinger Institute
- Inward Mindset
- Outward Mindset
- Marilee Adams
- Judger Mindset
- Learner Mindset
- James Carse
- Finite Games
- Infinite Games
- Carol Dweck: Fixed Mindset → Growth Mindset
- Arbinger Institute: Inward Mindset → Outward Mindset
- Marilee Adams: Judger Mindset → Learner Mindset
- James Carse: Finite Games → Infinite Games
- Buddhism, particularly Vajrayana
- eg Spectrum of Ecstasy talks about non-dual awareness
- Other fields:
- Systems Thinking - various sources
- I quite like The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge
- Improvisation
- Impro by Keith Johnstone
- various musicians talking about this
- Relevant right hemisphere capacities:
- 🎭 improvising
- 👁 vigilant or sustained awareness
- ⚛ nonlinear thinking
- 🌏 big picture thinking
- ❓ embracing uncertainty
- 😍 orienting to what's meaningful
- 👥 seeing people as experiencers & carers (not objects)
- 🕸 seeing world as flowing complex systems (not static concepts)
- 😔 reading facial expressions
- ⛅️ both/and thinking
- Somewhere:
- Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
- This chart indicates two mindsets and two kinds of relationships, and those columns pretty clearly correspond to the LH & RH's worlds.
- "We all have both mindsets, and we have the power to choose where we operate from in any moment."
- McGilchrist's model seems like a pretty powerful answer to the question of "how is it that people have both modes and yet oscillate between them?"
- (there's also a question of how does the emotional brain stuff fit in here...)
- and I think it's pretty vital, because there's a way to repurpose the LH's thinking so that it isn't busy judging... but this requires getting the imprinted school-prison culture out of the way
- Misc
- something something Loch Kelly
- oh yeah his stuff on effortless mindfulness is very relevant
- I just searched amazon for "neurodharma" and apparently there's a book from a guy who previously wrote a book called Buddha's Brain
- and he had a buddhist geeks interview called "A Crash Course in Neurodharma" back in 2009
- "left hemisphere" = mind = sense organ
- maybe something about alexander technique, inner game of tennis, & nonjudgmental awareness
- < Michael Ashcroft's post >
- James Stuber asks:
- What would you expect to find in a book titled "The Recovering Rationalist's guide to Restoring the Right Side of the Brain" ?
- Something to do a thread on. Initial thoughts
- Meaningness as a substantial fraction of this
- Something about letting go
- Something about the difference between probability & ontological uncertainty
6 linked references
Books or essays that answer each others' questions
- The Master and his Emissary answers on a really deep level questions (that I don't know where they're raised) like:
- why do insights end up getting all goodharted & stale?
- why is it so hard to put certain common experiences into words?
- The Master and his Emissary relates to Spectrum of Ecstasy in that nondual awareness seems to be characteristic of the right hemisphere
- So you could say that The Master and his Emissary answers these questions one might have reading Spectrum of Ecstasy
- "In what sense, concretely, is the nondual view "always already there"?"
- it's your right hemisphere's perspective
- and it's important to note that just because you (when you're in LH mode) are not consciously aware of how your right hemisphere is perceiving and operating, it's still entirely involved in every moment of operating
- "What's going on neurologically when someone shifts from a dualistic to non-dualistic view?"
- this isn't answered very precisely, but it's clearly something about a shift in the relationship between the hemispheres
- The Way of Effortless Mindfulness by Loch Kelly is also very related to this topic.
- If, reading The Master and his Emissary, you have the question "what sort of thing might I do that would shift my experience into a more right hemisphere mode?" then The Way of Effortless Mindfulness has dozens of exercises for this.
- This is all part of Adyashanti's school, btw, which is part of Mahamudra which is a close cousin of Dzogchen. See pages about these on HowToHuman (troubleshooting guide for the human condition)
Podcast summaries
- Keywords - brain hemispheres coercion what is coercion? productivity scapegoat Everyone is basically living in a dream mashup of their current external situation & old emotional meanings everyone is constantly overgeneralizing Conversation As Medium make shared or different frames explicit shared train of thought do people naturally self-regulate how deep they're willing to go? commitment/choice is a confused way to relate to stances/mindsets dream mashups Unlocking the Emotional Brain IFS partswork what might a healthy community look like? doing community well The Master and his Emissary intro left hemisphere right hemisphere Behavior: The Control of Perception Perceptual Control Theory Hemisphere DharmaChange doesn't just happenHemispheres & Self-improvement left hemispheres aren't made for interfacing with other people Perceptual Control Theory control systems
- 1:20:17 - 1:26:20 - What drives us to attempt to understand how our minds work? To understand the deeper parts of ourselves Behavior: The Control of Perception Perceptual Control Theory Hemisphere Dharma