Unlocking the right brain: The magic of metaphor, creativity, and compassion

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), we still haven’t fully understood or developed upon Sperry’s insights.

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

The other part of our brain (right hemisphere) views the world INTIMATELY… it understands feelings and knows how to connect things.

So to see the world (our natural world and people) compassionately, we need the capacities of our 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 and compassionate powers that lie beyond our thinking.

The language of the right hemisphere is metaphor.

For more on the power 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/