When the world tilts, Mary Magdalene doesn’t run—she steadies.Discover how her grounded presence offers a blueprint for navigating life’s storms with spiritual sea legs.
"They rewire the way you perceive reality. You stop seeing in pieces—who’s right, who’s wrong, what you like, what you dislike—and start seeing pattern. Wholeness. Interconnection. You stop reacting and start responding. You lose the addiction to certainty."
This is beyond the scope of this post, but from a neurological perspective, you just described the switch from left hemisphere thinking to right hemisphere perception. This is not to reduce the spiritual experience to a merely scientific explanation, but to understand the underlying processes that allow us to get our spiritual “sea legs.” Nor is it a shortcut to spiritual maturity, the intentional practice is still necessary, but I think we are at a unique time where spirituality and science are converging. With this convergence, I’m hopeful that spirituality can be more of an accessible source for healing for many and that it might be able to be more effectively drawn from in clinical settings. And as you mentioned, that the healing can lead beyond the psyche to a deeper reality even if it starts with the therapeutic application.
On the other hand, we'd learned back when I was getting my biology degrees (back when growing crops and pottery were new things ["Seriously. Bake mud so hot you can keep /water/ in it once it cools. It's gonna be big!"] :D) that around the 12th week of fetal development, an embryo with a Y-chromosome will often get a burst of androgen hormone production that will interfere with the corpus callosum between the two hemispheres of the brain, for whatever peculiar reason. :-/
The end result, often, is either a very strongly left-brained (language, logic, analytical thinking), right-handed male or a very strongly right-brained (creativity, spatial reasoning, and emotional processing), left-handed male.
Females, on the other hand, do not undergo this, and we can draw on both of our hemispheres just about instantaneously, which is where things like "women's intuition [= aw, how /cute/!] :D" and "women think different! :(" (differentLY, but yes) come in.
Even Leonardo da Vinci, with his amazing art, based a lot of that on his scientific-method observations of the physical world and living things and people within it (gotta love Leo! He was awesome :D).
Is that disruption still considered a valid theory today? If so, is that what meditation does for males; help to make new connections, in all sorts of senses of the term? :)
Nancy, the idea that male brains are more strongly lateralized, favoring either the left or right hemisphere, and that female brains are more bilaterally integrated, was a common theory in earlier neuroscience. Newer research complicates that view. Some studies do show small differences in average brain connectivity between men and women, but the effect sizes are modest, and individual variation is huge.
Your point about women being able to access both hemispheres more readily has some basis. On average, female brains may show more inter-hemispheric communication. But most cognitive tasks use both hemispheres, regardless of sex. And the old left-brain versus right-brain model is an oversimplification. For example, language is often left-dominant but not always, even in men.
So yes, there may be trends, but they don't neatly explain differences like "intuition versus logic." Brains are highly plastic. Practices like meditation and focused attention shape the brain more than prenatal hormones alone.
If meditation helps men reconnect fragmented processing, it helps women deepen and refine their natural integration. Either way, it’s about training the mind to operate as a whole.
Also worth saying—framing this entirely as brain wiring misses the bigger picture. Consciousness isn't just brain activity. That’s like mistaking the radio for the music.
The brain reflects patterns of attention and perception, but it doesn’t generate awareness the way a factory produces a product. It’s more accurate to say the brain filters or channels consciousness. Meditation may change the brain, but it’s not the brain that wakes up. It’s awareness learning how to see itself clearly.
So while neuroscience can describe the how, it’s limited when it comes to the what and why. The deepest shifts don’t come from better wiring. They come from remembering we’re not the wires in the first place.
Nancy, if you’re looking for up-to-date and easy to read information on the application of neuroscience and the brain hemispheres, I’d recommend “Wild Creature Mind” by Steve Biddulph.
“That’s not failure. That’s the sea.” This I found so comforting. Thank you for a new way to experience….all this.
It’s not peace that saves us…it’s presence ❤️. Great words
Beautiful 🥰🌹🇨🇦
Ocean 🌊 is so big.
My boat 🛶 is so small
Beautifully said. There are no shortcuts to becoming like Mary.
The resurrection of the Magdalene tower. The structure that holds our sea legs, our mermaid. Rooted.
This reshapes the understanding of resilience. And it's important to learn how to sway in the storm.
Thank you for this. 🙏🙏
Your words like a calming chant to dance and sway with while the sea roils under the feet. You rock, Virgin Monk Boy… I’m grateful
As was said yesterday in our service, « you must be grounded before you can be guided ».
The example of Mary Magdalene can help us to be BOTH. 🙏🏻🙏🏻
Beautifully written, VMB!
Excellent post
Thank you! Such powerful wisdom for a Monday morning! ♥️
Wise.
So beautiful. Spiritual codependence!!! 🙏
This is really good!!!
"They rewire the way you perceive reality. You stop seeing in pieces—who’s right, who’s wrong, what you like, what you dislike—and start seeing pattern. Wholeness. Interconnection. You stop reacting and start responding. You lose the addiction to certainty."
This is beyond the scope of this post, but from a neurological perspective, you just described the switch from left hemisphere thinking to right hemisphere perception. This is not to reduce the spiritual experience to a merely scientific explanation, but to understand the underlying processes that allow us to get our spiritual “sea legs.” Nor is it a shortcut to spiritual maturity, the intentional practice is still necessary, but I think we are at a unique time where spirituality and science are converging. With this convergence, I’m hopeful that spirituality can be more of an accessible source for healing for many and that it might be able to be more effectively drawn from in clinical settings. And as you mentioned, that the healing can lead beyond the psyche to a deeper reality even if it starts with the therapeutic application.
On the other hand, we'd learned back when I was getting my biology degrees (back when growing crops and pottery were new things ["Seriously. Bake mud so hot you can keep /water/ in it once it cools. It's gonna be big!"] :D) that around the 12th week of fetal development, an embryo with a Y-chromosome will often get a burst of androgen hormone production that will interfere with the corpus callosum between the two hemispheres of the brain, for whatever peculiar reason. :-/
The end result, often, is either a very strongly left-brained (language, logic, analytical thinking), right-handed male or a very strongly right-brained (creativity, spatial reasoning, and emotional processing), left-handed male.
Females, on the other hand, do not undergo this, and we can draw on both of our hemispheres just about instantaneously, which is where things like "women's intuition [= aw, how /cute/!] :D" and "women think different! :(" (differentLY, but yes) come in.
Even Leonardo da Vinci, with his amazing art, based a lot of that on his scientific-method observations of the physical world and living things and people within it (gotta love Leo! He was awesome :D).
Is that disruption still considered a valid theory today? If so, is that what meditation does for males; help to make new connections, in all sorts of senses of the term? :)
Nancy, the idea that male brains are more strongly lateralized, favoring either the left or right hemisphere, and that female brains are more bilaterally integrated, was a common theory in earlier neuroscience. Newer research complicates that view. Some studies do show small differences in average brain connectivity between men and women, but the effect sizes are modest, and individual variation is huge.
Your point about women being able to access both hemispheres more readily has some basis. On average, female brains may show more inter-hemispheric communication. But most cognitive tasks use both hemispheres, regardless of sex. And the old left-brain versus right-brain model is an oversimplification. For example, language is often left-dominant but not always, even in men.
So yes, there may be trends, but they don't neatly explain differences like "intuition versus logic." Brains are highly plastic. Practices like meditation and focused attention shape the brain more than prenatal hormones alone.
If meditation helps men reconnect fragmented processing, it helps women deepen and refine their natural integration. Either way, it’s about training the mind to operate as a whole.
Also worth saying—framing this entirely as brain wiring misses the bigger picture. Consciousness isn't just brain activity. That’s like mistaking the radio for the music.
The brain reflects patterns of attention and perception, but it doesn’t generate awareness the way a factory produces a product. It’s more accurate to say the brain filters or channels consciousness. Meditation may change the brain, but it’s not the brain that wakes up. It’s awareness learning how to see itself clearly.
So while neuroscience can describe the how, it’s limited when it comes to the what and why. The deepest shifts don’t come from better wiring. They come from remembering we’re not the wires in the first place.
Nancy, if you’re looking for up-to-date and easy to read information on the application of neuroscience and the brain hemispheres, I’d recommend “Wild Creature Mind” by Steve Biddulph.
Interesting, and I’m not sure!
Timely! Thank you.