THE ARTIST. THE BRAIN. AND MEDICINE for Bonnie Marranca

THE ARTIST'S BRAIN & MEDICINE

Art is a brain game. Why? Artists know how to move out of an attachment to worry-hurry mind and choose to play in the brain of seratonin/dopamine: a positive pay-off.
Artists know that medical strokes are a gamble and that they can happen in the right or left brain. A crap shoot. Brain 1 door: surrender and love. Brain 2 door: dimentia and rants in the wheelchair.
Artists have a habit of nurturing the neurologically positive brain and thereby transformatively free themselves from the prison of the discursive mind.

Father Bede Griffith, a Catholic priest who lived in India, had a stroke in brain 1 and won SURRENDER AND LOVE. Does that make him a full fledged medically induced artist? Listen to his story.

FATHER BEDE GRIFFITH:

 " Last January, I had this experience of what medically they call a stroke. It means death of the mind. Suddendly a terriffic force hit me and the mind went like that.(demonstrates see You Tube) And I was laid out for about a week. People thought that I was going to die and I thought I was going to die which was very important...and then I slowly began to come back and as I was coming back I had the premonition that I was going to die. I said the proper prayers ....and waited and nothing happnened and so I got (Shamla ?) to massage me and I came back to normal and then I felt a need to surrender and it was interesting. "SURRENDER TO THE MOTHER".

It came very clearly, "SURRENDER TO THE MOTHER." And I made this act of surrender and a kind of wave of love overwhelmed me. There was a friend, a nurse, Judy Waters, looking after me....and I called out, "I've been overwhelmed with love and I don't know if I can weather and survive it." It was such a tremendous hurricaine. I think it was simply an opening to the unconscious. A call to the feminine simply opened up.That was real death of the mind...and from that time onwards, I've never really been in the dualistic mind. Something is always beyond it....What my experience taught me was that when everything else goes you discover this love which is in you all the time. It's there, deep down there, and you know nothing about it. But let everything go and it comes.

And I got a tremendous insight into Jesus on the Cross through this. It was very interesting and the words, "MY GOD , MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?" came. That was the climax for him. I think it was at that moment he lost everything: his disciples had fled, the Jews were all against him, his people rejected him and now he had to let go of his God. "MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?"

 And the moment he let go of God and faced death, darkness , nothingness he was taken into total love...That is the experience of death. Behind all death is the tremendous power of love. Everybody has got it in them if they could only find it but the mind is controlling all the time and won't let it through. But somebody has to hit you on the head to awaken you to, " I am no longer afraid of death or accidents or illness; they are all incidents which love can use to reveal itself."

I think that when people die, they are all afraid of so many things. But what you face is unconditional love. That is the Judgment. It's unconditional love which is very demanding. It doesn't let you do whatever you like.

Love demands Love. You're called! Some people just cannot respond. But for most people it's so powerfull you just have to give way and surrender. That's what we're called to do."

Father Bede Griffith: I'm an artist, you are a holy saint. Teach me loving kindness. Linda Mary Montano