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Page 4 |
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Donna Gulick on Accessing the
Right
Hemisphere of our Brain
for Peace and Security in a Turbulent World
continued from
Page1 |
 We
can balance the use of our brain's right and
left hemispheres. The
left hemisphere of the brain is the side for
linear thinking, Gulick explained. This is
the hemisphere that will tell you a story
over and over. For example, if someone cut
you off in traffic ten minutes ago, your
left hemisphere is the one that is keeping
that anger fueled by repeating the story.
Additionally, the left brain is the center
of your self-identity, the identity more
commonly called the ego, something we
carefully construct for on-going self-esteem
based on comparisons and relativity. The
left brain makes lists, and it is the
speaker, organizer, analyzer, and the center
for concrete focus.
The left brain is not a negative thing,
however! We're just a little down on it
since it has become so dominant in our
Western society. We need our left
hemispheres to ground us and to keep us
functional in the world. Gulick mentioned,
for example, that though she is
predominantly a right-brained person, during
her years of graduate school she had to let
her left brain become more dominant,
otherwise she would not have been as
successful.
For the right brain, she explained, is the
peaceful, timeless aspect of ourselves that
accepts things as they are. It is enthusiastic and full of an
inner joy, and it seems to have a oneness
identity, a connection to all of life with
no need for labeling. It sees the big
picture rather than focusing on the tiny
details. It is peaceful, friendly, and
innocent as well as very diffuse. For
example, a predominantly right-brained
person will feel the energy of the entire
audience when giving a speech - he or she is
more "psychically permeable."
Bridging the hemispheres is important. If
you are so into your right brain that you
feel ungrounded, then put the physical part
of your body to work - scrub something,
Gulick recommended, or play sports!
Gulick cited the work of Jill Bolte Taylor
as being incredibly influential to the
understanding of the hemispheres. Taylor had
a stroke, and the left hemisphere of her
brain was drowned in blood from an aneurysm.
Before surgery she only had a right brain to
use, whereas she had been very left-brained
before. What Taylor realized, Gulick said,
was that with only the right brain
functioning, all inner judgment,
self-judgment, and other-judgment stopped.
Also the ability to see and do things
quickly stopped -- the right brain is just
so in-the-moment. In fact, Gulick continued,
Taylor stated that it takes less than 90
seconds for an emotional trigger to come
through us and be flushed out. Anything
beyond that is a choice - a story that the
left brain is telling you. Any sort of
emotion, anger, jealousy, shame, guilt, etc,
would not last past 90 seconds in a
right-brained world!
Choose to release the emotion, Gulick
instructed. She quoted Taylor who says,
"Deep inner peace is just a thought or a
feeling away. It doesn't mean life is always
blissful. It means you are capable of
tapping into a blissful state of mind."
Accessing your right brain to reach this
inner more blissful state is something we
all can do, said Gulick. Some tricks she
mentioned: meditate on peacefulness,
consciously pay attention to sensory
perceptions, trust your hunches and your
intuition, close your eyes and use your
imagination to receive guidance, pay
attention to your dreams, communicate with
animals, intentionally blur your vision,
intentionally diffuse your hearing, and
finally, feel what it feels like to be
someone else - tap into his/her energy. Of
course, with all of these practices, you
also need to be able to move back into your
left brain - the cross-over is the key. So,
for example, after your blur your vision,
then focus on something specific; after your
diffuse your hearing, then focus on a single
sound, after meditating, stretch and move
your body, after tapping into someone else's
energy, ground yourself and move back into
your body (by physical movements and
conscious emotional awareness).
Highly successful people, she noted, move
well between the hemispheres. Many
scientists, for example, have made their
greatest discoveries through a simple hunch
that could not be explained with logic. They
just knew that they should test a certain
hypothesis. This hunch comes from the right
brain; the scientific method to prove the
hunch from the left. As you access your
right brain more and more, you will receive
strong guidance from your intuition. Gulick
cautioned to ask the question, "Is this mine
to do?" when receiving guidance that
influences someone else's life. For example,
if you have a significant dream about
someone else, you do not have to run right
to that person to tell him or her all about
it - perhaps it was really all about you and
that person was used by your unconscious in
a symbolic way. Before giving someone else
advice, Gulick cautioned, think to yourself,
is it ego or spirit that makes me want to do
this?
The audience was appreciative of her
knowledgeable talk, and many intriguing
aspects of the left and right hemispheres
came up in the post-talk questions. For one
thing, Gulick mentioned that autism seems to
be an extremely right-brained phenomenon.
Rhythm and repetition are right-brain
aspects, and autistic people are very
comfortable with rhythm and repetition.
Another interesting point that came up was
that spending extended time in your right
hemisphere (for example, an extended stay in
the wilderness) can bring you to an expanded
state of consciousness, what Gulick termed
cosmic consciousness - almost an out-of-body
experience. She likened it to the way you
feel when you come home from a spiritual
retreat: you are in this magnificent
expanded state, and it is hard to
communicate with people who were not there,
who are in a similar state as you were
before you left.
The right hemisphere is a beautiful place!
Certainly, though it is a happy place, we
better not get lost there, and bridging
between the two so that at least the right
has an equal influence to the left seems
advisable. In fact, on a global level, if
our world can become more "right-brained,"
then we have a much better chance of making
it through these times of crisis. As Gulick
said, world leadership, science, and
international service all need a
whole-brained approach. |
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Michele Bustamante and
Sally Rhine Feather on Animal Communication
continued from page 1 |
When asked about the best way to communicate
with or understand animals, she said, "I
just try to get really clear." It is similar
to any psi experience, the less cluttered
your mind, the more chance you have of
receiving information. You have to practice,
she added, and you do not always know for
sure the exact communication you're
receiving. Sometimes a change in the
behavior is a clue. Usually it is quick, she
added; you don't have to think about it --
it comes right out. Sometimes, Bustamante
said, she is partly right, but not
completely.
For example, in the search for a missing
dog, Bustamante used a pendulum over a map
and it indicated a certain area in which to
look. She went there and looked on a certain
property, but she did not find the missing
dog. She still felt that she should go back
there, however, and when she did the next
day, she looked on the other side of the
road and there was the dog in the ditch. It
had been missing for six days!
Sally Rhine Feather added that this
spontaneous knowing is similar to waking
intuition as compared to dreams. With
dreaming, she said, you are sleeping with no
distractions, so it is easier for
information to come through. For an animal
communicator, then, using a telephone can be
less distracting than being there in person.
The person's energy might be distracting,
but it minimizes other disturbances.
Bustamante added that those who are quieter
in their minds - those who are meditative -
tend to have animals who are easier to
communicate with. Additionally, people who
are more open to communication tend to have
animals who are easier to work with. Perhaps
the common wisdom is true, animals really
are like their owners.
Sally Rhine Feather noted that the Rhine
Center is interested in collecting reports
of animal communication experiences and
reports of animal psi, and she hopes that
this line of research will once again gain
momentum in the field. One of our Rhine
Center volunteers, Anne Kirby, is going to
be starting this new collection of animal
psi. Please send any relevant information to
office@rhine.org. |
|
Stacy Horn and Sy Mauskopf on the Rhine Center’s Legacy
continued from
page 1 |
|
Horn picked up
where he left off with her book
Unbelievable, and during the panel she
regaled the audience with stories from her
years of research in the Duke archives. Her
research, she says, was focused mostly on
correspondence among scientists, and she
noted that the Rhines were so famous in
their time period that whenever anything
"paranormal" happened, they were likely to
be the first to receive correspondence about
it. Horn included many intriguing stories,
for example, the famous movie The Exorcist
was based on a real-life situation in New
Jersey. J.B. Rhine corresponded with the
boy's priest, but the family wanted an
exorcist, not science. Another notable
moment was when Gaither Pratt, a researcher
at the Rhine Center, went to Long Island to
study a poltergeist case that was stumping
the local police. Of 67 events, Pratt found
that 17 could not be explained by normal
means (things were falling off tables, off
walls, etc.). Horn took great pains to
interview family members and others who were
associated with these stories (members of
the police force, for example) to follow up
on these stories and give the whole account
in her book, rending numerous fascinating
accounts of these psi experiences and their
aftermath.
The Rhines, with their insistence on
research and practicality, became mainstays
in a field based on inexplicable yet
seemingly undeniable events. Horn mentioned
correspondence from such notables as Albert
Einstein, Margaret Mead, Alan Gregg, Alfred
P. Sloan, Aldus Huxley, Richard Nixon, Carl
Jung, and Chester Carlson, each with his/her
own interesting story. Not only were there
numerous letters about famous events and
people, Louisa Rhine, Horn said, collected
an enormous amount of letters from the
general public. These letters (and those
that are still coming) are a strong source
of anecdotal information for the Rhine
Center, giving the Rhine one of the largest
collections of spontaneous psi occurrences
in the United States -- dealing with issues
such as clairvoyance, telepathy,
clairsentience, animal psi experiences,
extraordinary healings, psychokinesis, and
dream psi experiences.
Horn says that the
overriding question that keeps the study and
discussion of psi going is, "Is there life
after death or not?" As both Horn and
Mauskopf's analysis of the history shows, no
matter what happens in the field, these
types of questions and events will keep us
hanging on. |
|
|
Summer
Online Course on Parapsychology and
Philosophy Offered at Methodist University
http://www.methodist.edu/academics/online.shtml |
Colleges
and universities in the U.S. often erect a
wall beyond which parapsychology cannot
pass. Parapsychology courses at accredited
institutions of higher learning are rare.
However, sometimes a course in
parapsychology slips through a crack in the
wall, and a parapsychology course is offered
for university credit. This will be the case
this summer at Methodist University in
Fayetteville, North Carolina, where Dr.
Michael Potts, Professor of Philosophy, will
be offering an online course,
“Parapsychology and Philosophy.”
Dr. Potts, who received his Ph.D. in
philosophy from The University of Georgia in
1992, also holds master’s degrees in
theology (Harding University Graduate School
of Religion) and Religious Studies
(Vanderbilt University). He has co-edited a
book on the issue of brain death, and has a
number of peer-reviewed articles and book
chapters on issues in medical and business
ethics. But he also has long been interested
in parapsychology, especially the survival
question, and has two peer-reviewed articles
on near-death experiences (in the International Journal for Philosophy of
Religion and in the Journal of
Near-Death Studies). He is currently
teaching a special topics course at
Methodist University entitled,
“Paranormal Phenomena and Life after Death.”
Potts’s
course will require three textbooks:
- Stacy Horn,
Unbelievable: Investigations Into
Ghosts, Poltergeists, Telepathy, and Other
Unseen Phenomena, from the Duke
Parapsychology Laboratory
(Ecco,
2009)
- Harvey J.
Irwin and Carolyn A. Watt, An Introduction to Parapsychology, 5th
revised edition (McFarland, 2007); and
Stephen E. Braude
- The
Limits of Influence: Psychokinesis and the
Philosophy of Science, 2nd revised
edition (University Press of America, 1997)
Individuals
who are not current Methodist University
students may register for the course as
special students. For information on
enrolling for the course, visit
Methodist University Online
at their web site.
|
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Web News by Judith Gadd |
|
There is
always more going on here at the Rhine
Center than we can fit into our Journal,
quarterly newsletters, email blasts and
website! That is why we started a
Rhine Blog back in March.
Whenever we
have speakers there is always a lot to tell
about their work, books published, web
sites, etc. Plus we want to keep you up to
date on the activities and conversations
that go on day to day at the Rhine Center.
The blog is also a place for you to give
your comments. We hope you will enjoy
it.
We would
also like to have your feedback about the
program of events we host. We want to
hear your comments about the events, and
also get your ideas about future speakers
and workshops.
Email us,
we're listening.
New to the
web site this month is a links page with
links to comprehensive information on:
parapsychology & related topics; peer
reviewed journals, organizations and
centers, worldwide with a major focus on
parapsychology; web sites of prominent
researcher's interest and work in
parapsychology, and more.
Here's the link. Warning there is so
much here it will take you days to visit all
the links!
 One
more thing... The Rhine Center is now on
Facebook.
View the wall for updates, photos,
and calendar news, and become a fan of the
Rhine. Slowly but surely we are finding our
way with this! You will need to join
Facebook to view this page. |
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Rhine Online: Institute
for Consciousness Studies Newsletter
Volume 2 2009 |
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