The division of the brain was when it first came up in the 1950s and the 60s, actually in the 1960s,

with the split brain research of Rogers Berry and Michael Gazzaniga and then other famous

neuroscientists at first promised this idea that the division between the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere

was very easy to grasp and that the left was entirely logical, reasonable language oriented and that the right hemisphere was the seat of essentially just emotions and spatial reasoning.

And of course, then a lot of subsequent research showed that both the left and the right are involved in reason, thinking,

left or anything that's really important, we have to be able to use both hemispheres of our brain.

And because things got a little complex, people threw out understanding the brain because it just required a little bit more of a nuanced understanding.

But actually there's a lot of research that's happened in the last 50 years

that paints actually a very interesting picture of not only how the brain, the hemispheres have divided but also in terms of how we as a culture

prioritize one hemisphere over the other and how that prioritization is creating a lot of suffering for us.

All of us, all species require the ability to do two different kinds of tasks to survive. One basic set of tasks is the ability

to keep track of threats, predators, friends, and have an overall picture of the actual environment that we're in, whether it's safe or not safe, whether we can relax or

whether we should be anxious and unguard, whether we are in essence secure or not secure. And this job is a very holistic awareness.

It brings in a sense of the entire context that we're in.

It doesn't think in terms of acquiring, getting anything.

It doesn't think in terms of plans for the future its job is just to sustain a

vigilant awareness of what's going on right now. Am I safe? Do I need to move closer to friends, to shelter, or can I relax?

So that's one kind of attention. It's very global, it's aware of the entire

setting, it's very realistic, it has no expectations about the way the world should be, it just looks to what's actually happening.

And then the other kind of attention is the mind that realizes we're missing something like food or something that we need specifically

to essentially ensure our survival.

Give us an advantage food, clothing, some kind of tool.

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