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To view the world compassionately, we need the undeveloped capacities of our right cerebral hemisphere

April 25, 2023

To my mind, one of the most paradigm-changing statements of the 20th century was from Nobel laureate and neuroscientist Roger Sperry:

There appears to be two modes of thinking, verbal and nonverbal, represented separately in left and right hemispheres, respectively. Our educational system, and science in general, tends to neglect the nonverbal form of intellect. What it comes down to is that modern society discriminates against the right hemisphere.

While neuroscience now shows that it’s not that simple (our emotional limbic tissue is evenly divided between the two hemispheres), to my mind, we still haven’t fully understood or developed upon Sperry’s insights.

One part of our brain (I still call it the left hemisphere) can analyze, dissect, separate things, and make distinctions. But it can’t bring things together.  It can’t connect things.

But the other, undeveloped and ‘dismissed’ part of our brain views the world INTIMATELY…  it understands feelings and knows how to connect things. 

In other words, to view the world (and other people) compassionately, we need the undeveloped capacities of the right cerebral hemisphere.

Because our culture is solely focused on perceiving the world through the analytical part of our brains, we haven’t understood how to access and draw on the extraordinarily creative powers that lie beyond our thinking. 

Powers that we can only access through the metaphoric language of the right hemisphere.

For more on the creative power of the right brain and its language of metaphor, check out my book, Deep Knowing: Entering the Realm of Non-Ordinary Intelligence  and my article on the non-ordinary knowing of the right hemisphere:   https://www.kimhermanson.com/2023/01/28/to-see-the-world…ebral-hemisphere/

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