Then there's NO Brain lol

And wouldn't you know, I'd explain the test but not what it means to be right or left-brained.  Good going, Cath.  Okay this is what a few people with alphabets after their names have to say about certain autonomic functions of the ole cranium corpora:

              

To be right-brained is said to contain all the processes of artistic, creative feelings with small frustrations that they aren't being understood (or expressed enough).  It also means you tend to think with your heart though knowing it's not always best, yet you're pulled to follow familiar feelings before anything else.  This comes from a lifetime of instinctual progress and trusting the "inner voice" you're convinced you have.  Which you do.  You're governed by the left side of your body, but not your left hand however, that is cultural or genetic, and these quantifications about how our brain functions are basically subjective. 

A left-brained thinker enjoys watching things in life that make sense, that contain logic and objecivity.  They are governed by the right-side of their bodies (again, not hand) They respond favorably to numbers.  They feel comfortable with schedules, directions, and to know if they're pleasing people.  That is a need to see the reflection of their work in the smiling eyes of others, it's very human, and left-brained people are, if anything, anxious to know if their advice on something has worked out.  They enjoy fixing things, physically or emotionally.  It's hard for a left-brained person to understand the world that has no balance, no grounding, but they use their great logic to find a way to adjust.  They can be very accomplished musicians because of the mathematics it's based upon.  For some reason, lefters tend to be more deeply religious (not same as spiritual).   

                                      

The righter is someone who can tolerate a certain degree of, say, clutter, they can be comfortable with a mess here or there.  Structure sometimes makes them uncomfortable but as they age they adjust to the vagaries of life.  This is in conrast to left-brainers, who cannot easily abide anything out of place and will sometimes make themselves late because they have to leave the house "just so" with certain things in their "proper" place.  This isn't a phobia, it's a character trait and one my mother always wished I had.  Sorry Ma.

For left-brained folks, the world must have a "schedule" a kind of definition to use in times of confusion.  Logic is important to the lefter.  They possess great skill organization but at times neglect parts of their inner selves in order to show an outer "perfection" of discipline and order.  It's hard for a left-brainer when coming into an area of no structure, but they are adaptable people and find a way.  They're also very loyal and intelligent.

As for righters, they like to work with "all or nothing" whereas a lefter will make use of what is handy.  

The right-brainer sometimes loses track of what they're doing, what time it is, what they have scheduled next.  They tend to think in pictures.  The left-brainer tends to think in words, even numbers at rare times.  Although the righter is the more artistic generally, their greatest enduring friends are usually lefters, who care for them and show them ways to organize.  The righter can paint, play music, dance, but has trouble finding the car keys and whether they left the iron on.  The lefter knows exactly what's what in their world.  This makes them comfortable.   

If you tend to dream about "putting things together" you probably allow your left-brain tendencies to roam free, and aren't taken in by people's criticisms.

If you dream about houses and getting lost alot, you are allowing your own right-brain urges to express themselves in daily life, reflected in your subconscious.  You are hurt by people's remarks too easily but with age, don't dwell on them. 

Did you know your brain speaks in a language of pictures, sounds, feelings, smells, tastes, i.e., the input from your senses.   It can't work with "negative" information, or things you haven't experienced yet.  It can only work with what you've experienced in life through your 5 senses, which it manipulates into the imagination. 

I could go on, there's so much research here, but this is just the part I forgot in the part I remembered after I forgot it the first time (see?)  Right-brained clutter I guess....

Something neat:  Look through these pictures and see which eye tends to find the images hidden within. Gallery1 Click on this then at the bottom click on "Start Slideshow" it should work. 

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Basics courtesy of Psychology Today, Mayo Clinic Scan Studies, rev. 2003. 

 

 

       

 

Left Brain Right Brain

Okay I didn't forget, just got caught up in the business of life.  The little experiment of holding an object up to each eye and staring through the center for awhile, then noting which direction your eyes tend to move, shows you if you're right or left-brained.  If your eyes moved to the left, you're right-brained (so "they" say) and if to the right, you're left-brained.  There's some basic data for this, as many left-handed people looked to the right - meaning their left frontal lobe was more active.  The brain is so complex yet perfectly contained, isn't it?                 

              

It's normal to imagine our brain starts at the top of our head and ends at the bottom, but it's not so at all.  Your brain matter is directly behind your eyes, and ends around the middle of your skull.  Something like this:

                  

Image courtesy of photovault.            

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Partial Lunar Eclipse

This is a very good aproximation of what I've been staring at for a few hours now, it being almost 5 a.m. EST.  A partial lunar eclipse only follows a full moon.

                   seen from my window

The full moon of last weekend was like no other for me, as I got to see it over the Atlantic, close to the water's horizon, from the shore area of Jersey.  This is very much what we saw, without the cloud cover, and when the pix are developed I'll post them.

                 

It was as if luna was rising from the ocean, which was a deep blue-gray.  I spent last weekend down the shore, and now I'm seeing the last of this partial lunar eclipse.  In the short time it took to type this, it's now moved directly above my head.  Maybe not spectacular but enough to keep me awake!

                

Here's a very beautiful harvest moon eclipse.

               

This is a great shot of luna and Venus. 

                     

                                                 

 

 

Athena Parthenos

The goddess Athena.  Beloved of the ancient Greeks, she was wise protector, guardian, reflector of purity, a loving warrior.  This colossal statue was sculpted in her likeness using the equivalent of 2500 lbs of gold.  It is called the "Athena Parthenos" and gets its name from the temple she was housed in.  Many once believed the Parthenon was a singular structure on its own, but we now know it was made solely to house and display this great 50-foot likeness:
                
This gives a small idea of the proportions of the statue.  She holds the winged goddess of victory "Nike" in her right hand.  In Greek mythology Athena was said to be the most beloved daughter of Zeus, having been born fully formed from the top of his head.  Referred to in Homer's Iliad, she is a fierce warrior, ready to defend her city against any enemy.  In truth, she was a loving guardian, as any mother of man would be.  Athena was pure and wise, devoted to the arts, agriculture, civilized life and peace through intelligence. 
                     

The most common expression used for Athena is "the bright eyed" perhaps denoting wisdom (the owl was her favored creature).  Parthenos translates from Greek as "virgin" hence the name of her temple.  
              
This is The Parthenon which, at one brilliant time in history, protected and displayed this colossal statue.
                       
As fierce as she may have been depicted, Athena was one of the 3 virgin goddesses of Greek myth, and woe to anyone who questioned her purity!  This was what made her such a striking exception to Olympian society, where all gods were free to use mortals for their pleasure - as Zeus did repeatedly.
                             

This image strikes a familiar chord.  In tarot, I recall that certain figures were never depicted as seated.  Athena is one, although I cannot find a suitable counterpart in the Major Arcana (that smaller part of the deck showing attributes, rather than suits).  But who knows...? 

                           

   
                          

 
                                   

Seeing The Invisible

It's fairly certain most people believe that without their eyes they cannot see.  This is false of course.

                                  

Our eyes are intensely complex cameras which present a picture to the visual cortex of our brain, known as the dura.  The picture is then interpreted by the brain based on the thousands of images you've collected in your so-far lifetime.  If you've never seen a thing and it's being presented to your dura, the brain will have to analize the picture and store the information in your visual cortex.  That's the basic process. 

                            

It's fascinating how easily our cameras can be fooled.  If we see smoke, we may immediately think of fire, a comparative interpretation of our brain, and even "see" flames where there are none.  What if we could bypass those cameras and present pictures directly to the dura of another kind, perhaps infra-red images.  We'd see things normally invisible to the rods and cones of the retina.  Would it be illusional?  It depends on the assumtions made by the brain, I'd say.  

                              

Some people claim to "see" images around others, ectoplasmic shapes, softly-lighted humanoids that appear to be people connected to that person, i.e. their deceased grandmother, etc.  Like Sylvia Browne.  Ghosts.   She claims to hear and see a person's dead friends and relatives.  Assuming she's actually seeing something, she's not using her cameras, her eyes, to see them.  Images are being shown to her visual cortex that are not coming from her eyes.  Where are they coming from?  (Perhaps her brain's interpretation of what is expected of her to see?) 

                          

If we could see the invisible world surrounding us, the potential would be limitless.  And since we "teach" our brain to see, would this abililty somehow further our continuing evolution?

Fascinating.            

Little experiment:  Find two objects of differing color and shape (like a hair brush and a TV remote)  Hold each one in front of each eye, about 15", then look directly ahead of you, staring at the space between.  Wait a few seconds and see where your eyes tend to travel.  I'll reveal what it means afterward, so I don't prejudice your answer.  Try it !  

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Absolutes In The Kingdom Of "Right/Wrong"

Since I don't know what's absolutely right, I can't say what's absolutely wrong - but we can draw conclusions based on instinct, personal bias, and generalities we've so far learned on this journey called life. And we can hypothesize. Everything You'll Ever Need To Answer Any Question This old post explains my method of reaching decisions. The problem seems to enter in the presentation of "right and wrong". Let me tell you of an actual incident and its outcome.

A little 6-year old girl fell on the playground and was knocked unconscious for a long minute. An hour later she started speaking gibberish, and generally didn't respond when her parents addressed her. Seemed confused. They kept her home from school.

One day her teacher came to visit his former pupil. He sat and listened as the little girl muttered her nonsensical gibberish, then stood and said in shock:

"She's speaking fluent Greek, I recognize my grandparents native tongue, it's Greek. She's speaking Greek."

Cutting to the chase, she was taken out of school, isolated from all friends, put in a private academy for accelerated children, treated like a relic, and was a mediocre student. Her grades, at first average, became less so over the years. As a young adult she developed manic depression, hospitalized many times, and now must be medicated to get through life.

Her parents thought she was a "miracle-child" - wanted her special gift to be nurtured. Their intentions seemed right seemed good yet it ended very badly. So what's right and what's wrong here? Should she have been left alone to continue in her known universe, or taken out because she might be gifted?

How do we make decisions? Granted this was a child, but we draw conclusions about people every day and take action based on them - is that right? If I didn't know who Albert Einstein was and someone showed me his picture I'd think it was some crazed nut who didn't know how to brush his hair.

At the end of the day, when we resort to thinking in absolutes it's a razor's edge of conflict. Oh and one more thing: the reason she did so poorly in that new school? that teacher was mistaken. It wasn't Greek it was simple gibberish, brought on by a small concussion.