A Stroke of Insight

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=jill+bolte+ted&emb=0&aq=f#

Excerpt from Stroke of Insight:
…And I curl up into a little fetal ball, and just like a balloon with the last bit of air , I just felt my energy lift and I felt my spirit surrender. And in that moment I knew that I was no longer the choreographer of my life and either the doctors rescued my body and gave me a second chance at life, or perhaps this was my moment of transition. When I woke later that afternoon I was shocked to discover that I was still alive. When I felt my spirit surrender I said goodbye to my life and my mind was now suspended between two opposite planes of reality: stimulation coming in through my sensory systems felt like pure pain. Light burned my brain like wildfire and sounds were so loud and chaotic that I could not pick a voice out from the background noise and I just wanted to escape, because I could not identify the position of my body in space. I felt enormous and expansive like a genie just liberated from her bottle and my spirit soared free like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria—nirvana. I found nirvana. And I remember thinking there would be no way that I would ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body. But then I realized , but I’m still alive. I’m still alive, and I have found nirvana. And if I have found nirvana and I’m still alive, then everyone can find nirvana. And I pictured a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew that they could come to this space at anytime and that they could purposely choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres. And I realized, what a tremendous gift this experience could be. What a stroke of insight this could be to how we live our lives. And it motivated me to recover…

November 23, 2008.
After watching this video, I realized that there’s so much more to life that I have yet to experience. That every time I think humanity has pushed its boundaries, we have yet to even scratch the surface of our capabilities. Not just through intellectual disciplines like science, the arts, mathematics, but in our ability to love one another. Rick Warren spoke about the gifts God offered each of us. I’ve still yet to find what I have to offer the rest of the world with what I’ve been given in my hands. But that’s where I’m at right now. And this speech by Dr. Jill Bolte has inspired me to do things for the greater good, not just for my own selfish advancement in life.

I want to turn this into my personal manifesto and have it hung on my wall so that I am reminded of a place called nirvana, and that it is up to me to find my way there to join the rest of the world.