A Perfect World of 90 Seconds

One of the questions I find a bit daunting.
"What did you have for lunch yesterday?"

I usually stumble over my words, and as I search for an answer, I feel a sense of gloom over my own lack of memory.

Even so, on very rare occasions, I can answer immediately.
"I had shojin ryori (Buddhist vegetarian cuisine) at a temple in Asuka Village."

That day, I was visiting a mountain temple in Nara Prefecture for a commissioned job, and the head priest's wife treated us to a meal she had put her heart and soul into preparing.

As for the menu, it was a rare luxury using plenty of local ingredients: simmered zuiki (taro stalks) in season, a mixed dish of koya-dofu, deep-fried vegetables, green beans in chili sauce, pickles, and rice cooked with chestnuts and sweet potatoes.

Including the head priest and his wife, there must have been over ten people around the table.
Because it was quite a large group, the conversation shifted like a living thing, sometimes involving everyone and sometimes just those sitting next to each other.

At one point, someone mentioned the name Jill Bolte Taylor.
I happened to be talking to the person next to me about how many grand shrines there are in the country and which ones I had visited, so I don't know how the conversation turned to that famous brain scientist.

Dr. Taylor, who suffered a stroke at age 37 and experienced the collapse and recovery of her language functions due to a brain hemorrhage, caused a sensation around the world with her book My Stroke of Insight.
I remember being deeply moved when I encountered her story.

Two years ago, the sequel, WHOLE BRAIN Living, was released, in which a new core concept, the Four Characters, was introduced.
The topic of how to interpret this came up, and we all talked and laughed about which character's traits we possessed most strongly.

If I am to talk about these "Four Characters," perhaps it would be best to start with a very brief review of brain knowledge.

The thin gray matter on the surface of the cerebrum, the cerebral cortex (the thinking center), is responsible for higher cognitive functions and is divided into the left and right cerebral hemispheres.
The limbic system (the emotional center) located deep inside governs emotions and motivation, and includes parts of the basal ganglia, which are right-brain dominant, the amygdala, and the hippocampus, which is left-brain dominant and handles language-related functions.

Dr. Taylor's idea is that these parts create four different characters; to put it simply, the left-brain characters are Planning and Anxiety, while the right-brain characters are Positivity and Wholeness.

Among them, "Wholeness" is the sensation Dr. Taylor says she felt most intensely after her stroke. It was a vast feeling of happiness, oneness, affirmation, being as one is, and being one with the world and the universe.

Having lost the left-brain functions that govern language and value judgment, the doctor was in this state when she awoke from her coma. At that point, it is almost the state of the highest religious practitioner.

You might think, "No, I have nothing to do with such things..." but in my interpretation, this sensation is by no means special. Including the examples that came up at lunch, it exists in familiar places everywhere: when you listen to the song of a bird, when you ride a motorcycle at speed, when you watch a child laugh, when you sigh at the magnificence of a sunset, when you pray for someone, or when you feel your body relax to the core in a hot spring.

Even if it is not something special, if you can have a moment where you can face something wholeheartedly without any room for self-consciousness or value judgment, that means you are living in "Wholeness."

Wrapped only in calmness and joy, without any complaints or fears. If you repeat such experiences, even for just a few seconds a day, the quality of your life itself will surely change eventually.

Everyone has these four characters and experiences various states throughout the day, but according to Dr. Taylor's assessment, many people are recently becoming overly dominated by the left-brain side of "Planning" and "Anxiety," especially "Anxiety."

If the proportion of your familiar characters is more than half on the left-brain side of "Planning" and "Anxiety," it might be an opportunity to seriously rethink your balance.

Preparation is necessary in life, but even so, uncertain factors will never disappear.
In such a situation, living while making overly detailed plans, fearing anxiety, and being on guard is too suffocating and restrictive.
If you live without "Positivity" and "Wholeness," you will lose the joy of life and the opportunities for unique adventures and success.

Even if this world is far from perfect, it is complete in another sense, and the same is true for each and every one of us.
As I write this passage, I am experiencing "Wholeness" myself, and I can believe that we can be peaceful and happy right here, right now, and that we can safely become one with the outside world and move things forward.

According to the theory in WHOLE BRAIN, all emotions cycle through in 90 seconds. This 90-second period is the time it takes from when you think of something, stimulating the deepest emotional circuits of the brain, to when the physiological reaction occurs and then subsides.

Anger, joy, or any emotion is born from the activation of neural circuits and eventually fades within 90 seconds.
Emotions that persist longer than that are caused by the repeated stimulation of those circuits.

Otherwise, regardless of whether an emotion is positive or negative, if you simply wait for 90 seconds, everything will naturally wash away and disappear.

Just knowing the fact that "pain and suffering will disappear if you wait 90 seconds" prevents you from being unnecessarily swayed by your emotions. For example, even if you are shaken by intense sadness, you can maintain your composure by thinking of your emotional circuits and realizing, 'Ah, my brain is just doing its thing again.'

Walking within "wholeness" is surely much better than being needlessly tormented by "anxiety."

I was very happy again during these 90 seconds, and I hope that the cycle continues even after you close this page.

I would be very happy if you read to the end and felt even a little bit of that "wholeness" yourself.