[Rodney Marsh]

Hi again Don

Your question has been like an earworm!

How has the ‘hemispheric’ world view changed my walking the dog? …listening to music? …eating? …meditating?

The answer is the same ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’ – I take all I am with me into the present moment – I have no choice – I don’t like lots of the memories, plans, views (hemispheric or not) attitudes, emotions, body pains, but I have no choice – I carry all of me body-mind-relationships (Augustine used the traditional division – memory, understanding & will – to describe our mind) with me at all times, everywhere I go, for that is who I am. So in a sense ‘technique’ (right, left or religious or otherwise) are irrelevant. BUT the none of ‘me’ that I take into the present moment (because it is time-bound etc) so meditation becomes for me a (sometimes frustrating) dispossession of me by turning up and being where I am, who I am.

I could not turn up and be present to my life if I wasn’t using the agency of my LH, but no LH agency can participate in the flow of being in the present moment of my life. My being (‘me’) is participating in the flow of the present moment and meditation, walking, music, being a part of Nature etc. etc. All matter is holy because it participates in this flow of being. The gift to humans is that we can dispose ourselves and become aware of our place in the flow of life.

‘Techniques to balance the hemispheres’ appears on the surface to me to be a LH trap into which we must not fall. To add Iain’s view of who I/the world is and how I/the world work to the list of control mechanisms for life would be a giant betrayal – though that is how I fear many will react to it!

God’s name given to Moses (YWH) means ‘I will be who I will be’ indicating that it is not possible to control God.