Finished The Midnight Disease, a book about writing and the brain. Alice Flaherty has an interesting theory. Creative drive is closely related to religious drive and originates in the temporal lobe. Or at least the temporal lobe is more important to it than what we normally think. When TMS stimulates the temporal lobe we feel a presence. Artists along with religious devotees, tend to be the people who feel, or strive to feel this presence in life without the aid of magnetic stimulation tools.
Meditators also build activity in the temporal lobe. Whether or not the sensed presence is an actual presence may be somewhat immaterial. The skill of sensing a presence, sensing an invisible self other than your own may be an important skill in developing creativity, integrating the brain, and having more control over our sense of well being. Maybe this makes us less prone to all the stuff people are trying to sell as well being.
It makes sense in terms of our cultural metaphor of "inner strength". Perhaps this inner strength is temporal lobe strength. Perhaps what I am doing with I do standing meditation is gently and slowly building all the good things that come from the temporal lobe, primal emotion like joy, primal drives. Maybe there is a way that we can bring all the secondary emotions, processes, etc. back under control of the temporal lobe, but in a healthy integrative way. Not with the usual things we associate with the temporal lobe, like anger and lust and other primary drives.
Something to think about.
