A brain roughly sliced in half

Cheesy advice from a mosquito...

Last week, I could finally tell him in person. How his book changed my life. I did it in my usual clumsy way. Stumbling over my words, a bit vague and unclear. But I did let the man know that coming across his writing was an emotional encounter. An affirmation. Now I know why I am like I am. Split in two. Divided.

After three years of active study, I got close to Iain McGilchrist last week. In a Zoom session with about forty people, I had my two-minute audience with the eminent professor. Even after weeks of thinking, I didn't have a question prepared. Weird, because from the moment I had read the blurb on the back of the book, I've had these imaginary conversations with the author. I've written long letters in my head over and over, trying to word how spot on the book was, and how it completely missed the point at the same time.

I am unschooled, he is the epitome of erudition and academic excellence. A mosquito and an elephant. Imagine that dialogue….

For the ones not familiar with his work. He states we all have two ways of looking at the world. Two opposing perspectives that come from our divided brain. In a slow process that has taken centuries, the lesser half has become dominant. The one that should serve has become the bully, thinking it rules the world.

Several years prior to someone lending me a copy of 'The Master and his Emissary' (many books seem to land at exactly the right moment), I had made a list in a notebook. I do make plenty of lists, but this one was special. It stood out. A vertical line, dividing the page in two. On each side, I put words that belonged together. Two fields. Two collections. Two ways of dealing with things. And it struck me that the left side was 'the world', while my ways were in the opposing realm. How the world I was born into had landed in the half not mine. I lived in the field across the fence. This was no surprise but seeing it take shape so literally was daunting, it shook me up. Here was my me-against-the-world feeling on a few pages of clarity. Where most of what I considered good was on the wrong side of the tracks. And the collection of the least desirable had the label 'this world'.

I think people have jumped for less.

It was a bit of a moment. I could have given up. And accept the overwhelming evidence of not belonging in this place.

Clearly, I have not yet given in. But here it was. Mainstream and sidetracked values. And there were probably some personal disputable choices on there, but overall, I think you would make the same divide. If I gave you random cards, one after the other, asking you to order them into two piles, it would lead to roughly the same cut. The line is real.

The rift runs through society and culture.

This wasn't just me.

That was, and still is, my lifeline.

This isn't just me struggling. Fighting. Resisting. I may feel alienated and out of place. But this is not about some imagined lack, a collection of shortcomings, an inborn handicap or some collection of disorders to be stitched onto my forehead.

I was represented by a large field of great traits. A bundle to be proud of. A set to believe in and build a life on.

There was a problem, though. That same field, my field, seemed to have no representative. No tribe. No collective. While the other side had brochures, and summits high up in the Swiss alps, names, and institutions. I couldn't find anyone to talk to. Only fragments. Splinter groups. Minorities. A long list of them.

I tried several of those jackets. They didn't fit. Their fabric only covered part of my being. Leaving a lot of my surface exposed. Vulnerable, unprotected.

How could it be that each of those groups belonged on my list of preferables, and none of them could see they all were on the big list together?

It's been seven years since I made that list. And I feel last week's meeting has completed a wide encirclement. An enormous flanking movement. This personal journey of inward exploration has started to turn to a new cycle. Do I stand at the beginning of another seven years?

The major arcana of the tarot is a fools' journey. From blissfully unaware to seeing the world lie at your feet in all its horrific nakedness. I have lost my home in those seven years. I have written The Castle of the Naked Knights in the same period. I have had fallouts with almost all of my relations trying to get to the bottom of this. I almost succeeded. I have drawn each of the big cards.

But the fool is present at both ends, at each step along this intense adventure. And arriving at the world is only the halfway point. After climbing the mountain and seeing the view, the descent follows. After the fall into the pit of despair, the rise sets in.

I can see the signs. My writing has turned outward. I have started to reconnect to a world severed. A slow process. The general direction of it only visible when I stand back. Of course, I am not ready for it. But it is real nevertheless.

Substack is my platform for reaching out, my stage to do my singing. And the learning curve is steep. The climb is confronting and rewarding.

Finding other writers, proper ones, that respect and appreciate what I have to say. Learning new skills that improve my performance with every week. I have started writing a new novel. A sci-fi speculative story on virtual reality. A week from now, I am scheduled to be interviewed by an author I deeply admire. She has seen me, read me, and understood what I try to point at. There is more. A big creative project coming up.....there's a good chance I can paint a full set of divination cards in a co-creation. Almost eighty original artworks, each one a deep meditation.

What I am trying to say is that on several levels, I am reconnecting. Good for you, you might say, but why would I care?

Well, in different times I would have been a shaman or a fortune-teller. And I have a long tradition of being ahead of the pack. Not in an alpha male way, but more in often finding myself in uninhabited territory. On unexplored terrain. Being on the fringe, one can see things that others living a more embedded life cannot. From a separate place, you can see where the collective might be heading. A painful clarity. And you can't put it to use. I don't think being a prophet of doom is very functional besides entertainment. I don't believe in starting a fight for some specific holy cause.

But if you are not the hero, nor the villain, Bertus, what is your role? If you do not choose sides in this raging war, where do you stand?

The rift tearing this world in two does not just run through society. The line divides me too. The two halves are in me as much as they are around me. And that same abyss lies in you too. In every single individual.

This is my prediction.

My seven years of separation will be followed by seven years of bridging the gap. Of reconnecting, of relating. And I am only slightly ahead of the pack.

I can see the early signs. We have almost reached the end of a deep collective process of separation. Heading for total loneliness. For a despair unprecedented. A breakdown of communication and community never before felt on this scale. And somewhere soon the lowest point will be reached. Not all at once, but inch by inch. One by one we will turn and bridge the gap.

The ability to connect, depends on you being able to hold both perspectives. Nothing needs to be solved, unified, absorbed or even integrated. You just cross the divide and meet that other way of being in the world without losing your rootedness.

The dominant way is attempting to uproot all. It doesn't know any better, it is the only thing it is good at. That way mustn't be destroyed. It can be embraced and lovingly moved away from the head of the table. Step down and serve. Whatever was pulled out can be replanted.

The dominant way is unable to crossover. Despite the chest-hammering, he is an incompetent leader, severely handicapped, non-creative and limited.

Only the more gentle way can hold both.

If right overcomes its fear of crossing over. Some are caught on the wrong side of the line. And fear keeps them trapped. Some are close to their softer side and feel cutoff from all means, incapable of rejoin. Their strength is invisible, unreachable.

But I can see the signs of change. Part of the meaning of the word healing, of becoming whole, may be this recovery of the other half of your functioning, of your being. Finding back your way to the other half of your brain.

If you are a mostly right hemispheric being like me, you know it is the bigger half, the wider one, the one better connected to reality. But you also know the lack of arguments, the implicit nature, the frustrating inability to put into words what you mean, what you find totally obvious seems to have no substance, no handle, while it is clearly is the most significant.

When you are on the dominant left hemispheric side of being in the world, you get impatient with the stupidity, frustrated with why it doesn't work like planned. If only we would be better educated, better organised, able to communicate more precisely things could be perfect. We just need a better plan, solve the great divide, fill up the gap and pave it. Then we can settle in the flat middle.

The one wants the other gone.

Left wants to annihilate, purify, colonise the right field. Right ignores the role of the left and longs to be self-sufficient, to be left in peace. (These have nothing to do with the political wings btw, pointing at brain hemispheres here.)

We require both. To heal, we need both. To find real peace, we must learn to use both our hands, both our eyes, both our brains. Peace means finding harmonic tensions, not cutting the strings. Peace means going where you are not comfortable and finding hospitality. Not killing what opposes you. Peace means the inner ability to sit with the unresolved. Not eliminating all things unwanted.

I can see the signs. An undercurrent of souls able to be here without trying to remake the world. Instead, they do without doing. They see without judging. They have taken back the lead. They are ‘leading’ their own life.

Here's the best bit. No matter if you are a fifth wave feminist, an autist, have multiple layers of ADHD, are crosseyed dyslexic, or being discriminated against, no matter if you are cast out, homeless, plain weird, alien, on the run, unfit, unfixed, diseased, stupidly smart, relentlessly idiotic, green, yellow or purple, left-handed, addicted to sex, flowers or straight lines, I don't care if you are OCD as hell, blind, deaf, crooked, into angels, demons, pentagrams, crosses, or circles. It is of no importance you can analyse, identify, declare, define or disguise, it is totally fine being ugly as a dog, asymmetrical as a crab, incomplete as an apple with a missing bite, or irritating as a window in need of constant updates….

I can do my half and you can do yours. I depend on you. You need me. We belong together.

See? Cheesy as a week-old camembert but no solving required. Just a willingness to accept the opposing hemispheres as an essential part of how this place is set up and start leading your life.