The view from my kitchen is not a beautiful one. It stares out into an alley that is pleasant enough, but in mid November Montreal, not particularly pretty. At dawn, the only evidence of the magnificent rising sun is the golden light that hits the upper story windows of an industrial building on St. Laurent.
This is the view from the picture window on the left side of the room. Not much to see out of the door window on the right side of my room. It hit me this morning, however, what a lovely subtle metaphor this is for what is happening in my brain. I've been reading Mathieu Ricard's book, Happiness, this week. His theory, which I wrote about in an earlier post, is that happiness can be measured on an fMRI. Happier people, like long time meditators, tend to have more activity happening in the left side of their brain. Depressed people, the right side.
The last few weeks for me have felt like a huge neurological detox. My right brain is regressing, picking fights, wandering all over the place, obsessing, trying desperately to regain control. And often it is winning. But I am waking up every morning and standing in the place and watching those small golden windows in my left brain start to take their place, permanently. Someday, maybe in the summer I will go out and do this in a place where I can watch the sun rise every morning. But for now this golden window is all I need. It's there. And when I come back to meditation during the day I look at that window. If the weather is nice it is bright with the sun. That is my brain, now, more often than not. That is a good enough vision for me.
