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A little over a year ago, roughly coinciding with the 15th anniversary of my near-death experience, my good friend Larry "Doc" Pruyne completed a short film about me. It tells the story of my flower mandala images, my work as a psychotherapist, my personal journey of near-death survival, and the connections between them. As NDE anniversary number 16 approaches on February 21, 2009, I wanted to post his film here.

Larry knows my story better than anyone. He is the person who drove me home from the hospital that nearly killed me, and our friendship has been mellowing and deepening ever since. My life and his have intertwined in many ways during the past 16 years, and this film represents, in part, the product of that interweaving. It was a reluctant collaboration: Larry came into it with his own ideas of about how to tell the story, and of course so did I. The film mingles our two points of view not only about my story but also about art, healing, transformation, and storytelling itself. It is a snapshot both of the period during which it was shot and of our friendship. As we evolve, perhaps it will, too.

healing image is also the prototype for a series of films Larry is working on that that deal with art, artists, and the artistic process.

Contact:
Lawrence "Doc" Pruyne is a filmmaker and writer in the Boston area, with over 800 articles and stories published. His film healing image has been widely displayed for college audiences and at festivals, including a Best Short at the Somewhat North of Boston Film Festival. He can be reached at docpruyne1@verizon.net.

Discussion:
Art, Healing, and Transformation group
Flower Mandalas Project group
Cultivating Creativity group

Request the 15 Flower Mandalas screensaver: Fifteen Flower Mandalas

Images © 2005-2009, David J. Bookbinder
'healing image' film © 2008, Lawrence Pruyne

Dying Pansy I

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few of us would wish for: a massive stroke. What she learned from it about the right and left brains seems relevant to all of us, and I'm passing it on here.

Her experience also sounds loosely parallel to two experiences I have had, and it has echoes in my experience of making art and being affected by it.

In my case, after a week at a meditation retreat, the death by suicide of a close friend, and two weeks with pneumonia, I had the sense Bolte describes, for about 45 minutes, of being one with the mass of particles and energy that make up the cosmos. It was as if everything looked like a pointillist painting, and so did I, though things still looked literally the same. Nevertheless, I felt in a continuum with the sand, the surf, the wind, the dogs running on the beach, the mist in the air, the sunlight. The sensation lasted until I'd had several brief encounters with people on the beach, and then I returned, mostly, to my more conventional view of reality. The other was my sense, during a near-death experience, of being bodiless and identityless and being utterly at peace in the threshhold between living and dying.

Both of these experiences are somewhat echoed when I am deeply involved in making art, and when I am fully tuned in during counseling sessions. I have a sense of being tapped into something much larger and more universal than myself, and to being a conduit for a vast energy that joins us all.

What transcendent, "right brain" experiences have you had? I'd like to hear about them, either here or in the Art, Healing, and Transformation group.

Thanks!

More anon,
- David
David J. Bookbinder, LMHC

Discussion:
Living in the Right Side of the Brain
Art, Healing, and Transformation group
Flower Mandalas Project group
Cultivating Creativity group

Request a flower mandala screensaver: Fifteen Flower Mandalas

© 2008, David J. Bookbinder