Bilateral Course (1)

True Or False? The Bilateral Meter Tells All

The monitoring of the selective arousal of the two hemispheres of the brain is the major application of the Bilateral Meter. With this added dimension psycho-therapeutic issues may be resolved more quickly, and the client who has been helped by these methods (and given the feedback of the left/right needle responses) has an added awareness of the workings of his mind and in consequence enhanced ability when working on his own on self-administered techniques such as The Insight Project, to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

The introduction of the GSR meter was a tremendous advance over previous psycho-analytical techniques, because it enabled the analyst to discriminate accessible, emotionally charged items from inaccessible or uncharged items in the client's case, saving endless hours of dealing with the wrong items and the consequence bypassed charge (ignored or suppressed emotional pain which results in upset and premature departure). Yet the GSR meter has some limitations; for example, when it is used by the American police for lie detection, it all too frequently fails to discriminate between the guilty person (who will tend to respond on the meter but who may be psychopathic and have detached emotional responses) and a suspect who has only fantasized the bad action or who has other bad actions which the questioning provokes (and which also may cause a response on the meter). Two quite different types of internal conflict are involved, but both types of conflict respond similarly. Likewise, the GSR meter when used in therapy, frequently fails to discriminate between insight and rationalizations, because it fails to discriminate between emotional charge and the surrounding significance.

The Bilateral Meter is an advance of a similar order of magnitude to the conventional meter. It enables the therapist to discriminate between the real and the imagined, between the relevant and the irrelevant, between truth and untruth. Why is this so?

Man is a being of several parts, which work best together as an integrated whole. Firstly there is the spiritual Being, which is, essentially, not located in space nor time. Secondly, there is the Mind of subtle energies, which relate to the considerations of the Being, and his located viewpoint in the physical world. Thirdly, there is the Body, which the Being and Mind identify with. The subtle energies are translated by the brain computer into physical, nervous-system impulses which cause action of the body. Furthermore, man has a dual brain which allows him to see two or more aspects of his environment and to compute upon these aspects simultaneously.

The parallel processing of the right hemisphere attends to the nonverbal, holistic, spatial and emotional aspects of the environment. The right brain identifies relevant experience and provides the context and awareness within which understanding is possible. There is no sense of time, and much of this process operates below the level of consciousness.

In contrast, the interpretative processing of the left hemisphere provides a verbal description and attends to the detailed information in the environment, and this material is usually available to our conscious minds. The left brain is sequential and, above all, time-based - it includes an accurate internal clock. When the left-brain takes control, this results in rigid adherence to the one-sided reality in which we have been educated and culturally conditioned. In short, we have been fed with pre-packaged cultural patterns - fixed solutions - which emphasize the penetrating, masculine values of activity, manipulation and direct influence over the environment.

In most cases right-hemisphere participation in conscious thinking is actually suppressed. As a result of traumatic experience and cultural conditioning many of the important functions of the right hemisphere are suppressed, e.g. the softer, more feminine ability to be aware of one's feelings, to let things happen and be involved in the moment in an un-selfconscious way. If only the verbal-analytic left side is operating, a person is effectively cut off from many of the ways in which he could experience the world around him - life can become dry, meaningless and boring.

Whether you are left or right handed, man or woman, left-hemispheric cultural patterns of thinking rule the day. As a result we lose touch with our intuitive, spiritual nature. We push aside our unspoken feelings as irrelevant to the struggle for survival. We rationalize the beliefs we have adopted in order to be accepted members of our partnership, family, peer generation, etc. We push aside right-hemisphere intuition because it contains the real truth of who we are, what we have done and what we intend to do. Above all, we repress what we feel about ourselves, because the truth hurts. The keystone of left-brain consciousness is time, the primary lie of the physical universe. The right brain is timeless, so it cannot lie!

The brain is a sophisticated transduction device through which the Higher Self is able to relate its mental subtle energies to the coarser energies of the nervous system of its bodily identity. In this way, mental processes manifest as changes of arousal in particular parts of the brain, which leads to bodily action or behavior. The left hemisphere of the brain cortex usually controls selective attention, language, rational analysis, temporal and other sequential functions; meanwhile, the right hemisphere is responsible for felt, intuitional, relational, pictorial, spatial and other awareness processes - it creates a non-verbal, holistic synthesis of information without regard to particular details.

In short, the left brain deals with significance and attempts to reason, and the right-brain deals with the perception, kinesthetic sensation and pictured memory of reality and emotion. Thus the left-brain interprets, which can lead to falsity and rationalization, whereas the right-brain duplicates reality as it is.

A normal GSR meter measures overall brain arousal, whether of the left or right hemisphere, through the means of skin-resistance changes. The Bilateral Meter further facilitates spiritual, cognitive, emotional and behavioral growth, through the means of monitoring changes of skin resistance on the left and right side of the body corresponding to differential changes of arousal in the right and left cortial hemispheres (the cognitive centers). When a question is asked, both left and right hemispheres come into operation and may produce very different responses.

If the thought processes produce data that conflict with actual reality, then a Bilateral Meter will respond towards the left or the right, depending on the type of conflict and the nature of defenses reactively put up by the mind, consciously or subconsciously.

The left-brain mode of thought is one of sifting sequentially through files of associated data and then the right brain obtains an overview. The emotional force contained within the right-brain way of representation may prevent inspection of deeply held beliefs, hidden aspects of the personality, or repressed traumatic experience; in which case the right brain will have reduced arousal. In addition the left-brain may fictionalise to cover up missing data (including that which is unconfrontable in the right-brain) or make rationalizations, based on false information or influences which have been installed through genetic or cultural imprinting; in which case the Bilateral Meter will respond to the left.

In contrast, if thinking analytically about painful experiences or wrong-doings cannot be confronted, this may result in a retreat to the right-brain mode of experience, where there are strong feelings but no logic to direct them. This is how we feel when overcome by fear, sadness or remorse, and when we are cathartically re-experiencing a past moment of pain or loss.

Healing the split

Truth may be concealed by distorted thinking fuelled by charged contents of both the left and right hemispheres. Alterations and additions to the truth are derived from the left-brain. Likewise, avoidance of truth and obscured information, derives from painful material in the right brain. Whilst the right brain 'feels wrong', the left brain 'is wrong'. However, from the perspective of a deeper level of consciousness, we 'know better'. We already know the nature of the conflict, and the defense system surrounding it, because we have set this up, almost as a mental game. A game requires unknowingness, and this void is filled with fiction. The unconscious mind contains the truth as to the nature of the conflict - what the Higher Self has 'un-known' - and this drives the needle of the Bilateral Meter to the left or right.

Using the conventional meter, charged mental content will cause a response, but while this is helpful in quickly spotting items to handle, this does not indicate the nature of distortion that the mind is executing. By examining the Bilateral Meter response to a charged item or idea in terms of left and right hemispherical arousal, it becomes possible to know whether the client is distorting or obscuring a truth. Using this guidance the therapist can then direct the client by using appropriate questions. This will assist the client to look further, either sideways (left-brain) to find the altered data, or deeper (right brain) and realize the whole truth that is known, as it is objectively perceived. This will then be the honest and real viewpoint, rather than a rationalized viewpoint that further suppresses the unacceptable truth. The Higher Self, the objective viewpoint, will have risen from it's slumber (identification with the mind) and become aware of that which its mind contains.

Practice with the Bilateral technique, results in improved ability to recognize the mental processes of thought distortion as they occur. This new ability will greatly assist a therapist in resolving a client's problems, and the self-analyst, to get quickly to the core of any issue being examined.

Learning to use a Bilateral Meter for counselling purposes, provides a tool that revolutionises the effectiveness of psycho-therapeutic procedures, laying bare the primal, root experiences and decisions of the client. The GSR Meter will open-up a case and get it started; the Bilateral will get to the bones of the case and resolve it quickly.

The Bilateral Meter acts as a truth-detector because the right hemisphere cannot tell a lie about empirical reality or a deeply held belief. When a lie is told, or when mis-remembering occurs, the needle will go to the left. In contrast, when a subject contacts his real feelings on the matter, the needle will go to the right - indicating the areas of heavy emotion and effort that are so easily bypassed in previous methods of analysis. Finally, when reality is perceived at an objective level, the needle will 'float' in a detached manner, denoting freed communication or synchronization between the hemispheres.

The Bilateral Meter will not usually float however, when the subject tells a personalized truth rather than objective truth, because in telling his truth, either he is expressing a viewpoint which is on the right track but obscures part of the objective truth, or he is expressing a viewpoint grounded in faith. In both of these cases, the needle goes to the right, because the client is being as truthful as he can, but there is more to it; the 'truth' may be emotionally based, but it has not been understood, accepted and integrated with the left-brain view. In short, the meter is reading to the right because there is a conflict in the right hemisphere between relative (subjective) truth and objective truth.

It could be summarized that the Bilateral Meter will read to the left when the client is knowingly or unknowingly giving false or irrelevant data; and it will read to the right when the client is knowingly or unknowingly being economical with the truth - either he is not telling all the truth, or there are occlusions and barriers that hinder him from fully facing up to and consciously perceiving the objective truth. Part of the client though, does know the whole truth. Eventually, through guidance from the Bilateral Meter, this knowingness of the unified self can come to light through the intuitive faculty of the right hemisphere.

Case is accessible for resolution if it falls within the current awareness, responsibility and confront of the individual. This will vary for different areas of the case and the aim of therapy is to raise these factors in the areas being addressed. If the GSR meter is responding on a topic, then it is emotionally charged and accessible - with guidance the person will be able to expand his viewpoint and increase awareness, responsibility and confront of the reality of the situation or experiences being addressed. The Bilateral Meter can be used for additional guidance in this process:

When the meter responds to the left, this means there is an alteration of the reality occuring in the mental processes of the subject. This may be a defense of rightness, a manipulation, a lie, a rationalization to avoid facing the reality. The subject must be guided to look in a different direction, to think laterally, away from fixed ideas - this will cause the activation of right brain processes, i.e. contact with more objective perception and feelings. A simple stimulation in that direction would be: "But...?"

When the meter responds to the right, this means there is a suppression of the emotional force connected with the reality, an effort to make nothing of it. The subject must be guided to look deeper, to confront and fully experience the feelings. A simple stimulation in that direction would be: "And...?" This may involve re-living traumatic experiences, and similar connected experiences if necessary, until the reality can be fully accepted. Or it may involve getting in touch with the feelings that underlie held beliefs, or decisions made at times of stress. Then these ideas can be looked at in a clear light, which is possible with the newly established left-right brain communication.

An example application in Sports Therapy

In talking about the sport and the person's involvement in it, if certain considerations cause a response to the left (left brain arousal) this means a defense of some sort is in play - the person may be rationalising, blaming or justifying - and this means responsibility is not being taken in the area and thinking is not clear and rational. Again, these issues can be handled so that there is no longer the left response on the Bilateral Meter.

At school, even organized games become a serious matter involving school prestige and personal status, and the sheer fun element is remorselessly squeezed out. The involving and exciting nature of sport is misunderstood even at the level of professional sports coaching. Relaxation techniques are used as a panacea to nervousness (e.g. subliminal affirmations under light trance, autogenics and meditation with biofeedback). This does have some value as a resource, to be able to switch off and save mental energy when appropriate, but this emphasis further serves to discourage a person in the withdrawn state from experiencing high arousal and confronting the resulting anxiety and the causes of it, and from learning to be able to reverse anxiety into an involved, free-flowing consciousness. The use of such techniques in stress management and personal enhancement has the same limitations.

However high arousal is the essence of full involvement, where skills are practiced without inhibitory second-thoughts and nervousness. People participate in sports as an opportunity to experience pleasurable high arousal safely, and they spectate for the same reason. Attention should be on helping the individual to enter and maintain high involvement; this requires helping him or her to overcome reactive, neurotic response-patterns which embody irrational thinking (including false assumptions, over-generalizing, exaggerating, negativity, others expectations) and to handle underlying fear and trauma. Alongside this, the individual needs to be taught how to retain his involvement whilst simultaneously accessing an objective awareness - this demands proper integration of the left and right hemispheres.

These principles would apply to any creative and skilful activity. The need for high arousal in performance is recognized in other ways, e.g. the coach will give the team a pep-talk and try to 'psyche' them up. In acting it is realized that stage fright can enhance performance. But these states are both prior to actual involvement; there is the hope and expectation that a reversal will occur to translate that tension into full involvement as soon as the play gets going. However there is the remaining fear that a reversal back to a withdrawn or nervous state may occur at any time and an inhibitory detachment resulting in 'stage death'.

Participants in high risk sports such as motor racing and rock climbing experience exhilaration when facing and overcoming danger (providing they are taking risks within their experience and competence, they are able to retain the involved state). The process of transferring anxiety and fear into pleasurable excitement composes the very essence of participation.

Most people will be able to identify an activity which they attempted initially with a degree of fear, only to find that as they mastered the skills involved, a pleasurable sensation ensued. For some it might have been their first jump off the 3 metre board into the swimming pool, their first attempt at public speaking, or driving a car for the first time. For others it might have been the first attempt down a stretch of white water in a canoe, a parachute jump, abseiling down a cliff face or surfing large waves. There was a reversal from interpreting high arousal as anxiety to interpreting it as excitement.

A good deal of interest has centered on the achievement of altered states of consciousness in sport. High arousal can be felt to be a 'peak experience' of flowing involvement, where time loses all semblance of meaning. The individual experiences total happiness, accompanied by a loss of the fears, inhibitions, weaknesses and insecurities that often plague most of us. These are moments of great maturity and fulfillment, in which there is a sense of unity, inner strength and wholeness of being. The person experiences a total fascination and awe of the matter at hand, as though he were 'absorbed' in the experience. This is the same process as experienced by mystics, artists and any person who is able to live life to the full in this way. This is an integrated, whole-brain state, without any inter-hemispheric inhibition.

But a reversal of this state may occur, brought about by an unanticipated or previously unexperienced threat, a near miss whilst driving, falling off the board or whatever. Or the circumstances may re-stimulate an earlier bad experience and pull the person from involvement back into anxiety. Such reversals between anxiety and excitement - between withdrawal and involvement - may be short lived or permanent. Loss of form in sport is inevitably the result of such motivational reversal, where the player becomes unable to sustain participatory arousal, and his attempts at high-arousal become nervous anxiety (right brain emotional charge). Awareness, responsibility and confront reduce, accompanied by left-brain thought processes (lying, blaming, justifying, criticizing, pretending, etc).These issues may be addressed in one-to-one therapy and this process is much enhanced by the use of Bilateral biofeedback monitoring.

Learning to use a Bilateral Meter for counselling purposes, provides a tool that revolutionizes the effectiveness of psycho-therapeutic procedures, laying bare the primal, root experiences and decisions of the client. The conventional GSR Meter will help to open-up a case and get it started; the Bilateral Meter will get to the bones of the case and help to resolve it quickly.