When this connection was disrupted, however, it became possible to study the job of each side of the brain in isolation. My left brain had a problem accepting the premise of this book; that the story telling part of the brain is responsible for all suffering and delusion.

Now, people who are left-brain dominant tend to explain away examples of intuitive intelligence as silly. There’s no reason to think that the stories of the self, and the self’s preoccupation with sorrows, worries, and problems, are any more than plausible fictions based on incomplete information.But imagine how surprised you would be to find out that you misread the situation entirely and that, instead, they were planning your surprise birthday party! Spotlight attention, language center, interpretation/stories, labels/categories, sequential/patterns, nonliving/mechanical. So, when you practice compassion, you’re actually exercising your right brain and becoming more zen at the same time! Sequential/patterns: senses the world in series (one thing at a time); separating time into ‘before that’ or ‘after this’; thinks in terms of cause and effect; pattern recognition.

Of course, if you pursue this line of questioning enough, you’ll come to the realization that there really is no innate, specific quality that unites all chairs under the umbrella of “chairness.And although neuroscience hasn’t yet found a way to explain how intuition works, that doesn’t mean it’s not real. If you are a fan of the books written by Ruiz and his sons (as I am), I am pretty sure that you will love the No Self, No Problem Workbook. Buddhism has a word for this concept— anatta, which is often translated as ‘no self’—which is one of the most fundamental tenets of Buddhism, if not the most important. Because, let’s face it, we’re all secretly our own favorite subject; we love to talk about ourselves!