Waking Up Your Spiritual Brain: Part 1  🔗 **Source:** [Waking Up Your Spiritual Brain: Part 1](https://share.snipd.com/episode/67dbc012-4e5c-45ec-a9a3-0c641b342560) ## Highlights - **Grief Transformed By A Family Ceremony** - Lisa Miller describes 12-year-old Ileana whose father's murder left her isolated and clinically depressed until a ceremonial honor revived her sense that his spirit was with her. - After a Dominican ceremony honoring her father, Ileana attended a dance, met a boy with her father's unusual name, and said, “My father's watching over me.” Transcript: Lisa Miller Ileana was only 12 years old. She was in middle school. This was in New York, and she came in one day all by herself the clinic. Generally, of course, young people are accompanied by a grandparent or a parent. Someone breaks them. This little girl was hunched, her arms wrapped tight. And when I invited her in to say, what has brought you here? The first thing she said was, two men had walked into her father's store. Her father owned a corner deli. Two men who he knew had walked into his store, robbed him, and then taken his life. Her father was her sun, her moon, her stars. She was devastated. Ileana was beyond bereft. She could barely move through the day. But equally, she was living in her new setting with her mother and her mother's mother. Both women had escaped themselves very perilous and painful situations. And they were quite understandably guarded and had yet to benefit from therapy. So in this setting, Ileana was really basically on a lockdown, a social lockdown. She wasn't allowed to go out and see friends. She wasn't allowed to go to the school of dance. She'd gone from being the apple of her father's eye to living in a very cold, restrictive environment. The treatment of the day would suggest help her renegotiate her condition, help her make sense of what had happened, address the trauma, the brutality of her father's death, and the Wrongness, the moral and spiritual injury of her father's death. But all of the treatment as usual was not moving the needle. I mean, you know, every day that a patient comes into the clinic, we do a quick assessment, one to ten, how are you? And she was never above a five. It was a four, it was a three, it was a five, never above a five. Well, one day she came absolutely skipping it, night and day. It was a whole different presentation clinically. It was as if the lights had been powered back on. And I said, please, please come in, Ileana. Tell me what is on your heart. What has happened? And she said, bouncing in her seat, joyfully, she looked me in the eye. She said, you're not going to believe this. You're not going to believe this. I was finally allowed to go to a dance. And I met a boy and he was so polite and he was so nice. And we talked for 20 minutes, which is a long time in eighth grade. And you're not going to believe it. Guess what his name is? Shankar Vedantam Ileana told Lisa that the boy she'd met had an extremely unusual name. And it turned out it was the same unusual name of her dead father. Lisa Miller And she said, well, don't you see, Dr. Miller? My father's watching over me. My father's protecting me. My father's right here with me. Shankar Vedantam I understand that shortly before she went on this dance, Ileana's grandmother had organized a traditional Dominican ceremony to honor her father. Describe the ceremony for me, Lisa. What happened there? Lisa Miller Ileana's family had a beautiful tradition that was coming from the Dominican Republic, a blend of many faith traditions in which they honored the deceased, much as many, many traditions Do. What was important to Ileana was that when they held the ceremony to honor her father with prayers, with candles, with photos, Ileana, through the ceremony, knew her father's spirit Was alive and real and in relationship to the family. So that shortly thereafter, when she met a boy at the dance who shared the very same name as her father, she had a depth of spiritual understanding that her father walks with her. She says, my father is looking after me. ([Time 0:02:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4b8abd7c-e34e-4225-b05e-7466dc2bd665)) - **Yom Kippur Service Calmed A Psychiatric Ward** - On an inpatient psychiatric ward Lisa Miller improvised a Yom Kippur service that produced dramatic mood shifts among patients, including a previously explosive man leading prayers. - The makeshift kitchen sanctuary and an old family prayer book created a shared spiritual moment that calmed and uplifted participants. Transcript: Lisa Miller Shankar, I worked on an inpatient unit in Manhattan where so many of the patients suffered terribly. Some had recurrent, very deep major depression. Some struggled with addiction, others schizophrenia. The time in which I happened to be an intern on the unit was the time of the Jewish holidays. This hospital happened to serve a great number of people who are Jewish. As the holidays approached, one morning in our community meeting, a gentleman raised his hand. He was someone who was known as very explosive as he struggled with bipolar. He'd become very angry, maybe toss a chair, yell and march out. Of all people who raised his hand in a full community meeting, 30 people in a circle under the flickering lights, he raised his hand and said, what will we be doing for Yom Kippur? And the unit chief, a very nice man, sort of looked at his foot and said, I'm sorry, we don't have anything. The rabbis will be going home to their own families. What? What? Nothing for Yom Kippur? And he became more and more upset, explosive, tossed the chair and walked out of the room. Shankar Vedantam So I understand that you decided to arrange an informal Yom Kippur service on the ward. Describe the scene for me. Lisa Miller Well, I'm not a rabbi, but I did have at that time about two and a half decades of experience with Yom Kippur services. So I approached the unit chief who gave me permission and said, sure, if you want to come in on Yom Kippur, that's your decision. I found in a box in my apartment a beautiful weathered prayer book that had been my grandmother's. That day when I arrived to the unit, the patients were all dressed beautifully. No hospital gowns or gurneys. Our so-called sanctuary was back room, the kitchen, with its linoleum table and its fluorescent lights, but it felt sanctified. And there we were. There were four Jewish patients, and by their side each had an aide who very graciously joined in our ceremony. As we started to move through the prayers, it was the gentleman who had been so explosive and so-called chaotic who was holding the cadence of our prayers, who was davening, as we say In Judaism, moving and swaying with his body and with the lyrical music of his voice, holding our collective prayer. Shankar Vedantam His voice holding our collective prayer. Lisa Miller He was far from chaotic. He was our spiritual leader and guide. The woman who had struggled so deeply with shame and guilt and depression, perked up and said, I want to say something. I've always known that at Yom Kippur, we can ask for forgiveness. But sitting here with all of you reading these prayers, I realized that we can be forgiven. All around the table, whatever had caged in their soul was superseded by the radiance in this moment of their spirit. It was extraordinary. And so I realized, Shankar, that something was happening in a spiritually grounded religious ceremony that was not happening in treatment as usual. Once the word got out that Dr. Miller talks about spirituality, patients who weren't even my own patients would pull me over to the corner. One woman who I happened to be Jewish, she happened to be Catholic, turned to me one day and said, Dr. Miller, I have some very heavy news. They will be sending me away upstate, which means no longer will she be living in Manhattan, struggling through the revolving door of treatment, but is really being sent away. She said, will you come with me? I need to talk to you. And come with me meant walk down the hall, leave the offices, enter the kitchen, go way, way back into the pots and pans closet. And there in the way, way back, Dr. Miller, will you pray with me before I'm sent upstate? We prayed she and her way. I prayed in my way. And what I saw was a great peace and a comfort coming over her. I didn't know how to pray her way, but I knew how to be with her in a common state of spiritual love and support. The next day I showed up Shankar. Her bed was made. She was gone. I shared this story with one of the unit chiefs who's a very good person and was, I think, trying to speak in my best interest. The unit chief said, what you did was beautiful. It was completely right. Don't ever tell anyone you did that. ([Time 0:07:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/26d3a6e3-821c-4a77-a6d1-0568a65b1e68)) - **Common Brain Circuits Underpin Transcendent Experience** - Miller reports neuroscience shows common neural circuits for transcendent awareness across faiths: quieting/default-mode disengagement, bonding, ventral attention, and altered parietal boundaries. - These circuits together produce feeling loved, guided, and less bounded, the core perceptual content of spiritual experiences. Transcript: Lisa Miller Shankar, just as there are neural correlates for depression or anxiety, just as there's neural correlates for hunger or craving or thirst, it turns out that there are neural correlates For spiritual awareness. Now, if you think about it, it would seem to make sense that we all have a common visual system. We all have a common auditory system through which to perceive. And it turns out through now 15 years of MRI studies, we all have a common set of circuits through which to perceive the transcendent. Now, it doesn't matter if I am Hindu or Jain or Jewish or Muslim or Catholic or Christian or spiritual and not religious. We all share the same core neural circuits of transcendent awareness. Of course, as in any form of perception, there's human variability in the intensity or in the nuance with which we experience perception. Shankar, what's extraordinary is that perception of the transcendent calls on the same neural circuits, no matter what tradition I may be, or even if I am spiritual, but not religious. What are those circuits? Well, there are four. The first, and only the first, is associated with quieting the mind. It's shared, of course, with mindfulness, the disengagement of the default mode network, the racket that spins round and round. But mindfulness, as helpful as it is to bringing us present, presence alone is not sufficient for transcendent awareness. Presence is perhaps the threshold of the door through which we might then cross to experience transcendent awareness. And there are three circuits on the other side of the door seen in all people of all faith traditions at a moment of transcendent connection. First, the bonding network comes up online, the same bonding network engaged when we are babies in our parents' or grandparents' arms through which we feel and know that we are loved And held. The universe, God, Hashem, Allah, Jesus, whatever one's sacred word loves and holds us. We are absolutely held. That is not a belief. That is a perception. It is a felt perception. The second circuit to come online is attentional. We see a shift from the very narrow, top-down, dorsal attention. Why did I say that? What's going to happen next? Am I going to get fired? Did the check bounce? What could I have done differently? The narrow assumption of radical control, what do I want? How am I going to get it? Yields and gives way to the ventral attention network where suddenly the lights come back on. There's a broad landscape before us. And we ask, what is life showing me now? At which moment many people say a new direction pops, a door never seen before opens, An inspired sense of guidance. We are loved and held. We are guided. We are guided. And third, we are loved and held. We are guided. And the parietal that puts in and out hard boundaries. That lets us know, Shankar, that you sit in one city and I sit in a sister city. That we each have our exquisitely beautiful, diverse bio body suits. We have different GPS coordinates. We are a point and we are a wave. We are distinct and beautifully diverse. And we are part of one unit of whole, one family of life. Loved, held, guided, and never alone. Held, guided, and never alone moves together. These three circuits move together. It's not that we're loved, but we're not guided, or we're guided, but we're not. The awakened brain moves together with these three circuits. ([Time 0:22:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9291ad8e-d81f-4fc4-a8ad-6111f8b8db9b)) - **Sustained Spiritual Life Links To Thicker Cortex** - Sustained spiritual practice correlates with greater cortical thickness across the awakened-brain regions and opposes the thinning seen in recurrent major depression. - Miller's JAMA Psychiatry longitudinal study found thicker cortex in people keeping a strong personal spiritual life over eight years. Transcript: Lisa Miller Every human being on Earth is born with a natural capacity for spiritual awareness. We know this through twin studies. We can look at twins raised together, twins raised apart, and factor out commonalities of function of shared environment, shared genes. So for instance, temperament is about half innate, half environmentally formed. IQ is about two-thirds innate, one-third environmentally formed. The capacity through which we experience transcendent relationship is innate. It is one-third innate. Every single one of us is born with the natural neurocircuits for transcendent awareness. But one-third innate, two-thirds environmentally formed, means that our parents and grandparents, the 10,000 exchanges at school, our pastor, priest, Amon, rabbi, our relationship To nature. And as we get older, we choose our environment, both outer, the company we keep, the service that we offer or not to our world, and the inner environment, whether I meditate, whether I pray, whether I reflect or read sacred transcendent text, two-thirds environmentally formed means that, yes, we are all naturally spiritual beings, but we have the opportunity Of our lifetime to cultivate our spiritual awareness. When we do, we see literally a thicker cortex across the regions of the awakened brain. Sustained spiritual life, prayer, meditation, service, right action, often within a faith community, often service outside a faith community. Sustained spiritual life is associated with cortical thickness across the regions of the awakened brain. Now, by sustained spiritual life, in this study, which we published in JAMA Psychiatry, we looked over eight years. People who sustained a strong spiritual life, who said, my personal spiritual life is highly important to me, over eight years, showed a thicker cortex across the regions of the awakened Brain. Shankar, what makes this particularly helpful as we think back to unit six is that when we sustain our spiritual life, the cortical thickness is seen across the regions, the very same Regions that are not thick but thin in people with recurrent major depression. People with sustained spiritual lives show cortical thickness across the very same regions that are not thick but thin if we are struggling with recurrent major depression, which Is to say that spirituality and depression appear to be two sides of one coin. ([Time 0:27:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ced739e3-71b9-4cfb-b06f-2ad6390138b3)) - **Measure Spirituality Within Familiar Scientific Designs** - To study spirituality scientifically, Miller recommends adding one rigorous measure of personal spiritual importance to familiar, top-quality datasets. - She used standard methods and one added variable to publish across psychiatry journals and invite mainstream engagement. Transcript: Lisa Miller So Shankar, I started publishing in a way that I hoped would speak to the field because out of every 10 variables in an article, nine of them were familiar. I used very tried and true beloved top-notch data sets. I drew on the variables and the measures that everyone else in the top peer-reviewed journals used. I set up the design that was familiar to people. And having effectively replicated nine out of ten elements of a study, I added one variable, which was how personally important is spirituality or religion to you? And over time, that item expanded into scales and measures of spiritual life. But I always added one and only one variable. What is the nature of your spiritual life to a study that otherwise looked very familiar? And in this way, we were able to publish in top peer-reviewed journals, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry, Because the studies had the blue housekeeping seal of all the markers that we had come to trust as a field. Reliable measures, familiar statistics, dotted I's, cross T's, everything was meticulous and in keeping with the field, except for the step of advanced spiritual life. Every single article, as you know, Shankar, is submitted for peer review. Peer review is conducted blind to who the authors are. So there's no sort of cult of personality or vogue or one lab over another. And science also, in the peer review process, requires that two or three scientists within or closely adjacent to the area of inquiry weigh in on the method, weigh in on the conclusions, Offer recommendations for expansion of the study. We were able over now three decades to publish our lab, often in collaboration with fellow labs, about 200 peer review articles and chapters. And the field around us has grown. We've tried to be collaborators in building a field as well. ([Time 0:31:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ad2c20b5-8471-46dd-bb4b-e4653be520ed)) - **Spirituality Is Innate While Religion Is Transmitted** - Miller distinguishes spirituality (innate, one-third genetic, two-thirds environmental) from religion (primarily transmitted culturally). - She cites twin studies and Ken Kendler's work to show spiritual capacity is universal but shaped by upbringing and practice. Transcript: Lisa Miller Know, Shankar, one of the most important findings was put forward in 1997, replicated in 1999 by Ken Kendler at Virginia Commonwealth. And what Kendler identified was that spirituality is innate. It is one-third innate, two-thirds environmentally formed. Religion is environmentally transmitted, almost entirely. So there's enormous confusion in a country where for 40 years there has effectively been an ice age on spiritual and religious discourse in the public square, where people in the classroom Or boardroom or at a dinner party don't know how to talk about spiritual and religious life without imposing or don't know where the line is, there's a tendency to simply shut down. So in that context, I have found in the 10 years I've spent sharing the science on spiritual life, resilience, and mental health, I have seen enormous confusion, Shankar, over the difference Between spirituality and religion. Through the lens of science, religion is a gift of our parents and grandparents. We might choose a faith tradition and immerse ourselves. Religion is environmentally transmitted. Spirituality is innate. The capacity for a transcendent relationship as tracked by discrete and specific neural circuits that are universal in every human brain. So now when I'm asked, hey, you know, what about the fact that people have done all these bad things in the name of religion? I can say, well, my question as a scientist is, are they acting in a way that is consistent with natural spirituality? Is this person conducting themselves in such a way that is consistent with being loving, guiding, and never leaving anyone alone? So if I hear a comment, hey, wait a minute, how can you say spirituality is so good when all these bad things have been done in the name of religion? I say, well, is the practice of that so-called religion consistent with natural spirituality? ([Time 0:36:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fcd4c159-d931-4c23-bb93-c32bbadaa7fe)) - **Spiritual Life Strongly Reduces Suicide Risk** - A strong personal spiritual life is highly protective against suicide, with studies showing roughly an 82% reduction in completed suicides among youth. - Miller frames spiritual connection shared in community as comparable to a highly effective preventive intervention for young people. Transcript: Lisa Miller Are multiple pathways through which spirituality protects us against physical and mental illness. First off, the most remarkable finding in science is the scale, the magnitude at which spirituality protects against some of the most prevalent forms of suffering. The number one cause of death right now to rival auto accidents is suicide in Gen Z, in high school, in college. A strong personal life when shared, shared in the sangha, the mingin, the fellowship amongst friends or family, is 82% protective against completed suicides, four-fifths less likely To take our life. So if I told you, Shankar, there's a little pill, and you can pick up this little pill at Walgreens or the CVS at the drugstore, and it will protect your child, your grandchild, all the Students in your classroom, four-fifths against the leading cause of morbidity, of death in young people. Who wouldn't give that to their child? ([Time 0:41:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/62d3b406-5d5b-4a84-8460-828055d19e31)) - **Shift From Achievement To Awakened Receptivity** - Open awakened awareness by releasing strict achievement-driven expectations and ask, What is life showing me now? - Miller advises shifting from transactional aims to receptivity to discover unexpected opportunities and guidance. Transcript: Lisa Miller An entirely different landscape. We walk on sacred landscape when we open the aperture and let in the light through our awakened brain. Life unfolds in an entirely different way. Life moves from what do I want and how am I going to get it? Really quite a transactional way of life. And by the way, who are you? How are you going to help me get what I want? Relationships of transaction. What I call narrow achieving awareness. Out of that narrow rut to, hey, okay, I just didn't get what I wanted. I didn't get the job. My kid didn't get into the college. Hey, what is life showing me now? We move from what do I want and how am I going to get it and what did I do wrong and how could I get it next time to wait a minute, what is life showing me now? What is the universe directing? What am I being asked to do? Am I being asked to love more deeply? Am I being asked to listen to those with whom I work or my children? Am I being given an opportunity to serve? The life that is before us is so much bigger and full of portals and possibilities than we could a priori have spun or cooked up in our mind. In other words, when we can release the stranglehold of our expectations and plans and be less hardcore makers of our path, creating space to be discoverers of our journey, life unfolds In extraordinary ways. It is beyond what we might have imagined. In other words, when I can move from narrow achieving awareness to open up a relationship, a dialogue with life, I can be guided in places I didn't even know existed. I can find a job that I didn't even know was a job. I can meet someone at a party that I wouldn't have spoken to because they didn't meet my A prior criteria of a date. But if I'm open, why is the universe introducing me to this person now? I can discover a relationship I've never dreamed of. That's a much bigger life. ([Time 0:42:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4205643d-1443-4f59-b0f7-b81cdc754605)) - **Two Complementary Modes Guide A Meaningful Life** - Humans have two complementary modes: achieving awareness (planning, control) and awakened awareness (intuitive, receptive guidance); both are needed. - Miller argues contemporary culture overvalues achieving awareness, leaving people without a guiding North Star. Transcript: Lisa Miller Shankar, every one of us has a capacity for two types of reasoning. On the one hand, we have achieving awareness, the ability for strategizing, tactic, research, empiricism. Achieving awareness is extremely helpful at laying out a plan. And we come to achieving awareness with a great deal of practice we learned in school. The first thing I ever received on my desk in first grade, right there in the center of my first grade desk, was a planner. In school, I learned to plan, to organize, to some extent to control. Achieving awareness has tremendous instrumental value. It helps us pay the rent. Achieving awareness helps us move through a scientific problem. But achieving awareness alone is utterly insufficient for a meaningful life. Achieving awareness will get us on the A train and it might send us flying at great speeds. But when we disembark, we may not even know where we are. This is what we learn in school, how to do. But we all are also endowed with another form of perception, our natural awakened awareness. Awareness is the capacity to perceive through intuition, perhaps a mystical experience. Awakened awareness is a receptive form of perception. Awakened awareness asks the question, what is life showing me now? What did I just perceive, That whisper of a hunch. We need both. Awakened awareness sets our North Star. Awakened awareness sets our true direction. Achieving awareness rolls out the plan how to get there. ([Time 0:45:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1f2a076f-60cf-4e77-9075-adb08c0c4d78))