Speaker 1: Very often, depression is a hunger to developmental depression, and
Speaker 1: your soul, your natural spiritual awareness, is hungering to engage
Speaker 1: and expand. So depression is not lost time or downtime
Speaker 1: or wasted time. It is the invitation to an ovationing.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wealth. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Our guest on this episode is doctor Lisa Miller, a
Speaker 2: professor and founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at
Speaker 2: Teachers College, Columbia University. She's a leading national expert in
Speaker 2: spirituality health and thriving in development. Doctor Miller has also
Speaker 2: authored one hundred peer review articles on spirituality and mental
Speaker 2: health in youth and family. She is a grant funded
Speaker 2: clinical scientist, Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and former
Speaker 2: President of the APA Society of Psychology and Spirituality. Today,
Speaker 2: Lisa and Eric discuss her book, The Awakened Brain.
Speaker 3: Hi, Lisa, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful for what you're putting into our world
Speaker 1: in the type of depth and open handedness and open
Speaker 1: heartedness that you're trying to help us make as a
Speaker 1: new normal.
Speaker 3: Thank you. We're going to be discussing your book, The
Speaker 3: Awakened Brain, but before we do that, we'll start like
Speaker 3: we always do with the Parable. In the Parable, there's
Speaker 3: a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 3: and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they
Speaker 3: think about it for a second, and they look up
Speaker 3: at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins,
Speaker 3: and the grandparent says the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 3: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 3: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 3: that you do.
Speaker 1: In every single second we make a choice, you can
Speaker 1: feel it. We can chill the surly wolf one and
Speaker 1: we can feel the loving expanse of wolf too. And
Speaker 1: it is a choice. It is a determined choice where
Speaker 1: we take the tuner and move to the channel. Is
Speaker 1: it the channel of selfishness and limitedness and zero sum game?
Speaker 1: Or is it the channel where love begets loved? And
Speaker 1: if I'm just a little bit generous, the universe comes
Speaker 1: back one thousand and fold. What's the choice right now,
Speaker 1: this second.
Speaker 3: So when you say that that it's a choice, right,
Speaker 3: I think we have a choice to choose what channel
Speaker 3: we want to try and listen to, right And you know,
Speaker 3: I know there's been lots of times in my life
Speaker 3: where I try and turn the channel to the connected side,
Speaker 3: the expansive side of things, and it feels like there's
Speaker 3: nothing to tune into there, and then I find myself
Speaker 3: kind of back over in the other And I think
Speaker 3: we're going to talk a lot about the role of
Speaker 3: spirituality and depression in this podcast, right, But that's part
Speaker 3: of what entrenched in depression feels like for me. I
Speaker 3: make the conscious effort to change the channel, but there's
Speaker 3: nothing coming through at least it feels like on channel.
Speaker 3: So I don't think you're talking about that we do
Speaker 3: something and immediately feel a particular thing. I think you're
Speaker 3: talking more about a conscious effort to at least try
Speaker 3: and look in that direction. Would that be a way
Speaker 3: to say it?
Speaker 1: So, Eric, I'm coming to you as a clinical scientist,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't dare open up my mouth about depression
Speaker 1: if I hadn't walked that very heinful. At times, you
Speaker 1: just felt like dread, like the boogey man was over
Speaker 1: my shoulder. I've been depressed. I know what this is.
Speaker 1: So I come to this not just as a cool
Speaker 1: clinical scientist, but as someone who's really suffered and had
Speaker 1: this experience of major depression. And what I would say
Speaker 1: is that it is a journey, right, a gentle journey
Speaker 1: with ourselves through which we can cultivate two forms of perception,
Speaker 1: and the one that will get us up and out
Speaker 1: in time is a deep relationship with the universe, who
Speaker 1: I call God, the higher power. Will you use your
Speaker 1: word Jesus Hashamalah. But it is the de force in us,
Speaker 1: through us, and around us. And yes, medication can be
Speaker 1: very good, and yes treatment as usual can be very helpful,
Speaker 1: but alone it is insufficient. With help. The upside the
Speaker 1: porthole to the landscape of the good wolves, and that
Speaker 1: is the expansive capacity what I call awakened awareness. And
Speaker 1: it turns out through the lens of science, this porthole
Speaker 1: for expansive awareness where we feel the loving sense, the unity.
Speaker 1: The next guy who comes around the corner, well, he's
Speaker 1: God's child too. We're here to help him and him
Speaker 1: and her. That capacity is cultivated, and it is cultivated
Speaker 1: although it is our birthright as a form of our
Speaker 1: awakened brain.
Speaker 3: So something I'm going to be doing a little more
Speaker 3: often is ask you, the listener, to reflect on what
Speaker 3: you're hearing. We strongly believe that knowledge is power, but
Speaker 3: only if combined with action and integration. So before we
Speaker 3: move on, I'd like to ask you what's coming up
Speaker 3: for you as you listen to this. Are there any
Speaker 3: things you're currently doing that or feeding your bad way
Speaker 3: that might make sense to remove, or any things you
Speaker 3: could do to feed your good wolf that you're not
Speaker 3: currently doing. So if you have the headspace for it,
Speaker 3: I'd love if you could just pause for a second
Speaker 3: and ask yourself, what's one thing I could do today
Speaker 3: or tonight to feed my good wolf. Whatever your thing is.
Speaker 3: A really useful strategy can be having something external, a
Speaker 3: prompt or a friend, or a tool that regularly nudges
Speaker 3: you back towards awareness and intentionality. For the past year,
Speaker 3: I've been sending little good Wolf reminders to some of
Speaker 3: my friends and community members, just quick, little SMS messages
Speaker 3: two times per week that give them a little bit
Speaker 3: of wisdom and remind them to pause for a second
Speaker 3: and come off autopilot. If you want, I can send
Speaker 3: them to you too. I do it totally for free,
Speaker 3: and people seem to really love them. Just drop your
Speaker 3: information at oneufeed dot net slash SMS and I can
Speaker 3: send them to you. It's totally free, and if you
Speaker 3: end up not liking the little reminders, you can easily
Speaker 3: opt out. That's one you feed dot net slash SMA.
Speaker 3: And now back to the episode. So let's talk about
Speaker 3: the word spirituality. It's used throughout your book. You talk
Speaker 3: about there being a biological basis for spirituality. You say
Speaker 3: that there's nothing as protective against depression as spirituality. So
Speaker 3: what does that term mean to you? Because it's one
Speaker 3: of those words that is similar to love in that
Speaker 3: it means a thousand different things to a thousand different people.
Speaker 3: So what are we talking about here?
Speaker 1: That's right, Eric. People hear that word and like, what
Speaker 1: do you mean? Find that what do you mean by
Speaker 1: spiritual life? And many people when they hear the word
Speaker 1: spirituality actually think religion, and they don't think any religion.
Speaker 1: They think the religion that was delivered to them by
Speaker 1: a torch bearer who was a human being who might
Speaker 1: have been quite voible. So let's back this up and say,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. You know, every single one of us,
Speaker 1: through the lens of science, is a naturally spiritual being,
Speaker 1: just as we're physical and hot edded and emotional beings.
Speaker 1: We can look through the lens of a twin study
Speaker 1: and say, yes, twins rays together, twins prays depart. How
Speaker 1: much of spirituality is inborn versus environmentally formed? And it
Speaker 1: turns out that spirituality is our birthright, hardwired. It is
Speaker 1: one third and eight two thirds environmentally formed, which means
Speaker 1: that every single one of us on earth is a
Speaker 1: naturally spiritual being. There's a natural spirituality and more specifically,
Speaker 1: a capacity to be in a sustained relationship with the universe.
Speaker 1: My word is God, a higher power. But this loving
Speaker 1: force that's in us, through us and among us in AA.
Speaker 1: When we say we're handing it over, we're not handing
Speaker 1: it over to mister nobody. We're handing it over and
Speaker 1: it is hot by this buoyant loving force that is
Speaker 1: our birthright. And if we support it it is two
Speaker 1: thirds environmentally cultivated, nourished, then we have a strong spiritual war.
Speaker 1: That is the inborn awaken religion. I didn't answer you.
Speaker 1: Religion is environmentally transmitted. Yeah, So whether I'm Hindu, Catholic, Christian, Wilslim, whatever,
Speaker 1: I am that religious cultivation of the spiritual, the religious embrace,
Speaker 1: the prayers, meditations, text community. Religion is a gift of
Speaker 1: our parents and grandparents are our unity. You might choose
Speaker 1: a religion and immerse it's environmentally transmitted. They are two
Speaker 1: different things, although they go hand in hand. Religion and spirituality.
Speaker 1: For about two thirds of people in the United States,
Speaker 1: they say I'm spiritually it right right.
Speaker 3: You know, spirituality being a word I've used a lot
Speaker 3: on this podcast over the years. I taught a program
Speaker 3: called Spiritual Habits that were rebranding this time around. Slightly
Speaker 3: different program, but a lot of it's similar. And the
Speaker 3: reason I did is because that word, again has seemed problematic.
Speaker 3: I feel like I have to talk a lot about
Speaker 3: what I mean by it, and my view of spirituality
Speaker 3: might be slightly different than what you're describing, and so
Speaker 3: I'm just, in the spirit of dialogue, like to throw
Speaker 3: it out there and kind of kind of see I
Speaker 3: want to hear your view. Yeah, yeah, I mean my
Speaker 3: view is spirituality is about being connected to things that
Speaker 3: deeply matter, right, That for me is what it means
Speaker 3: to me. Now, maybe I'll tell a little story here
Speaker 3: that I think will be interesting. I love I got
Speaker 3: sober in nineteen ninety four from heroin addiction, and I
Speaker 3: got sober in Columbus, Ohio in nineteen ninety four in
Speaker 3: a twelve step program and higher Power and God meant God.
Speaker 3: It meant sort of the Christian God. It meant an
Speaker 3: interventionist God that would come in and help you get sober, right,
Speaker 3: And I did everything I could to believe that, and
Speaker 3: I got sober, But ultimately some bad things happened in
Speaker 3: my life and it sort of fell apart for me, right.
Speaker 3: And part of the thing that caused it to fall
Speaker 3: apart for me was I would looking at people that
Speaker 3: I loved who were dying, and they were people who
Speaker 3: came to AA, and they seemed to be doing the
Speaker 3: same things I was doing. They were going to meetings,
Speaker 3: they were calling their sponsor, they were praying, like they
Speaker 3: were making as good an effort as I thought, and
Speaker 3: they died, and it became very hard for me to
Speaker 3: believe that a higher power out there was choosing me
Speaker 3: over them. It came to be to me something that
Speaker 3: I was like, well, if that is the way of
Speaker 3: the universe, I don't think I want it, right, if
Speaker 3: it's a universe where some of us get picked and
Speaker 3: some of us don't. And so eventually that sort of
Speaker 3: breaking with spirituality led to me going back out and
Speaker 3: drinking again. And I didn't go back to Heroin, but
Speaker 3: I was out about four years and I realized I
Speaker 3: was just as sick inside, and I came back and
Speaker 3: I find myself in AA again in Central Ohio, in
Speaker 3: the same program. Right and I went, I have to
Speaker 3: find a spiritual path for me if I'm going to
Speaker 3: actually work the steps going to be in this program.
Speaker 3: I got to figure out what this means to me
Speaker 3: that I can actually really believe, right. And where I
Speaker 3: landed was I believed that if I lived my life
Speaker 3: according to certain principles, right, principles of kindness and love
Speaker 3: and generosity and not being so self centered and being
Speaker 3: honest and all these things, if I lived that way,
Speaker 3: didn't mean that good things would happen to me, right.
Speaker 3: It wasn't like I was doing the right thing in
Speaker 3: the universe was going to dole out to me the
Speaker 3: right goods, right. But I felt that I could both
Speaker 3: a stay sober as long as I did that, and
Speaker 3: b handle whatever life brought my way. So my spirituality
Speaker 3: in some ways felt colder, right, because it didn't feel
Speaker 3: like there was a force out there that was particularly
Speaker 3: loving or not loving. Now, from there, I went into
Speaker 3: Zen Buddhism, and I landed in a place where feeling
Speaker 3: the deep unity of everything, experiencing that and seeing like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is all actually really connected, you know, sort of
Speaker 3: broaden that spirituality out. But that's kind of where I landed,
Speaker 3: and so when I hear things about a loving force,
Speaker 3: I sometimes get hung up, right because I look at
Speaker 3: that and I go, but it doesn't seem that that
Speaker 3: force loves things equally. Right, There are lots of spiritual
Speaker 3: people in Gaza right now who are praying their ass
Speaker 3: off and are dying. And so that's just my sort
Speaker 3: of perspective. So talk to me about kind of what
Speaker 3: you're hearing in what I'm saying in comparison to your
Speaker 3: experience and what the science would tell us. That was
Speaker 3: a long diatribe. By the way, apologize listeners that this
Speaker 3: actually is Lisa's interview.
Speaker 1: Well, Lisa is interested in your journey, and thank you
Speaker 1: for sharing that, because Eric, that was very beautifully generous
Speaker 1: of your heart. So this is what I'd say. I'd
Speaker 1: say that there is a deep love in us, for
Speaker 1: us and around us. My word is God, that we
Speaker 1: are loved and held and we are guided, We are
Speaker 1: never alone. And our awakened brain, our inborn, awakened brain
Speaker 1: is built that we can engage if we choose, we
Speaker 1: say yes and build it if we say yes, whether
Speaker 1: it's through prayer or twelve Step or meditation or service
Speaker 1: to deepen our awareness, strengthen the muscle to see that
Speaker 1: we've loved and help and guided. You're loving God, What
Speaker 1: do you ask of me? Now? I just did not
Speaker 1: get what I wanted. I just lost the person I love.
Speaker 1: The fact that there's a loving God doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: get our deliverables. It doesn't mean that we call the shots.
Speaker 1: Do you know? I mean there's a movement out there
Speaker 1: that I just think is so tragic called manifestation. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's somehow it's so called spiritual to send out what
Speaker 1: you want at the ego level right and think that. No,
Speaker 1: that's not spirituality to me. It is a dialogue with
Speaker 1: a loving We don't practice eric to share this a
Speaker 1: little bit, we do practice right here.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's try it.
Speaker 1: And to invite you in your beautiful community, it's an
Speaker 1: invitation to in this ninety second practice, close your eyes,
Speaker 1: clear out your innerspace for five brass. I invite you
Speaker 1: to locate a time where you wanted something so badly
Speaker 1: it was him or her or them, to say yes,
Speaker 1: it was that job, that opportunity, internship, that red door
Speaker 1: was yours and you did everything right A plus B
Speaker 1: plus ce technically research to everything strategically, you go for
Speaker 1: your red door. You grab the handle, but it's stuck,
Speaker 1: and you can't believe it stuck because A plus B.
Speaker 1: Let's see you did everything right. You kick the door.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're angry, it doesn't seem fair in time, you
Speaker 1: might be depressed, but only you have no choice. It's stuck.
Speaker 1: Has it stuck? You turn? You turn fifty eighty one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty degrees in over there over there is
Speaker 1: a wide open yellow door. You might have said yellow
Speaker 1: doors don't exist. You don't never heard of yellow doors.
Speaker 1: A wide open yellow door. Someone who made you feel alive,
Speaker 1: someone who touched your heart in a way that you've
Speaker 1: never felt before, a job where you're seen beyond what
Speaker 1: you've known in yourself. That yellow door was not what
Speaker 1: you had wanted. It was better than what you've wanted
Speaker 1: and better for you. So as you sit back now
Speaker 1: and there's that stuckbred door in the hairpin turn and
Speaker 1: the wide open yellow door, how really are the most
Speaker 1: important things in our lives? Form? Is it narrowly through
Speaker 1: planning and strategy, or is there a time where there
Speaker 1: are opportunities bigger and beyond what we knew were possible?
Speaker 1: Where we were to become something that we didn't even
Speaker 1: know existed. Because manifestation is very small. That's a small
Speaker 1: way to live. That's the red door. I want that
Speaker 1: red door, and if I can't do it with my hands,
Speaker 1: I'm going to send it out with my mind and consciousness.
Speaker 1: But that's appetite, that ambition, that's only based on your
Speaker 1: appetite today back historically, what your parents said, you wanted,
Speaker 1: what you thought you wanted. The yellow doors, the guided
Speaker 1: yellow door has information that we have yet to discover.
Speaker 1: That is a dialogue with a living universe that is
Speaker 1: an open system, a way of being where we're connected
Speaker 1: to the great sacred presence in us, through us and
Speaker 1: among us, the unit of reality. So what I think
Speaker 1: is that we don't get our red doors, shakee goodness.
Speaker 1: We don't get our red doors because our lives are
Speaker 1: actually an adventure and sometimes it's hurts, and sometimes we
Speaker 1: lose people we love, and sometimes we're betrayed, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it hurts m we can't even believe it. But that
Speaker 1: is the meat and that is the grist for the
Speaker 1: mill of walking through yellow doors. And they are divine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, reminds me of a story I love. It's an
Speaker 3: old Taoist story, right about the farmer and the horse. Right,
Speaker 3: it's a it's a similar sort of thing of you know, farmer.
Speaker 3: The farmer has a horse and it's his most valuable possession.
Speaker 3: It runs away one day and his neighbor comes over.
Speaker 3: He's like, it's terrible, I'm so sorry that that happened,
Speaker 3: and the farmer says, well, you know, it could be good,
Speaker 3: could be bad. And then a few days later, right,
Speaker 3: the horse comes back with like three other horses, and
Speaker 3: now the guy's immeasurably rich. And the neighbor comes over.
Speaker 3: He's like, oh my god, you're so fortunate, you're so lucky.
Speaker 3: You know, we'll see, right, you know, who knows. And
Speaker 3: then his son is out riding one of the new horses,
Speaker 3: throws gets his leg broken, and the neighbor again, who
Speaker 3: just is not getting any wiser, right, we're all getting
Speaker 3: it at this point. The neighbor is not yet goes, oh,
Speaker 3: it's so terrible, I'm so sorry about your son. And
Speaker 3: the armor. We know what he's going to say, all right,
Speaker 3: we'll see. And then a few weeks later, the army
Speaker 3: comes through and conscripts every able bodied young man and
Speaker 3: his son isn't taken. And right, this story goes on,
Speaker 3: and it kind of goes on and on and on, right,
Speaker 3: and it just kind of goes on in that way, right,
Speaker 3: And so you know, to me, the yellow door thing, right,
Speaker 3: my biggest yellow door is I had a solar energy
Speaker 3: company that I poured my heart and soul into and
Speaker 3: I wanted and it failed. And out of the failure
Speaker 3: of it is this podcast started. And I am a
Speaker 3: way better podcast host and far happier doing what I
Speaker 3: do in the world now than I ever would have
Speaker 3: been doing that. And I think we all have those
Speaker 3: sort of things in them. And term I'm going to
Speaker 3: use here is narrow superituality. Right, I'd be saying that
Speaker 3: we're being open, right, We're being open to what else
Speaker 3: might emerge, right, And to me, it's.
Speaker 1: That the universe is alive.
Speaker 3: The universe is alive, There's no doubt about that. And
Speaker 3: like I said, it's sort of interconnected, right. It even
Speaker 3: the most fundamental levels of science, we are sort of
Speaker 3: seeing things are interconnected. And the more we learn about
Speaker 3: ecology and systems theory, which is permeating all aspects of science,
Speaker 3: we're realizing more and more that to take anything on
Speaker 3: its own, outside of its relationship to everything else is
Speaker 3: to see a very limited viewpoint.
Speaker 1: So your awareness of this unit of reality that is
Speaker 1: a foundationally loving unit of unit of love. Your awareness
Speaker 1: is an awareness of something that's real the universe. We
Speaker 1: live in, this matrix, in us, through us, around as
Speaker 1: we live in a big embrace of a loving, conscious universe.
Speaker 1: And we are like rays of the sun, emanations of
Speaker 1: this great source. So when we realize this and pay
Speaker 1: attention to this, and I mean, like, you know, when
Speaker 1: I'm in traffic and I want to land on my horn,
Speaker 1: or when someone was just incredibly rude to me, and
Speaker 1: I have a choice to be rude back, or to think, wow,
Speaker 1: they must have had a really harsh day, or wow,
Speaker 1: have had a really harsh life, or wow, how could
Speaker 1: I be so loving that when someone's totally shitty to me,
Speaker 1: I'm loving back, right. That is knowing that we're emanations
Speaker 1: of this loving conscious source. That's a choice, your beautiful
Speaker 1: two wolf story every minute, and it is a habit.
Speaker 1: We build this habit, but it also is a habit
Speaker 1: that dials into a seat of perception where we feel
Speaker 1: in our heart we just know in our being that
Speaker 1: we're part of this loving unit of reality of which
Speaker 1: you speak. That's our awakened brain, that's our birthright, that
Speaker 1: is our natural spirituality, And in every tradition it has
Speaker 1: a different name. Right. That is the upstream deep seat
Speaker 1: of awareness, our awakened brain. That we are in a
Speaker 1: unit of loving reality. That downstream is given many different
Speaker 1: names and tellings and stories. Whether we say we are
Speaker 1: handing it over, or that is God talking to us,
Speaker 1: or I am one with all creation, or that is
Speaker 1: the force of life and into a crow and mountain sun.
Speaker 1: However we tell it, we are still connecting to this
Speaker 1: deep unit of loving reality. So can we hold you
Speaker 1: know in one hand this deep truth and in the
Speaker 1: other hand, realize that we also have different zipped up
Speaker 1: biobody suits and different GPS coordinates, that we are a
Speaker 1: point and we are part of the wave. And live
Speaker 1: out the narrative of our separateness of bumping into each
Speaker 1: other in the subway and both wanting the same money
Speaker 1: at work and both wanting the same role in a play.
Speaker 1: And look at these so called moments of scarcity and
Speaker 1: so called competition in a way that actually has in
Speaker 1: our deeper heart and expanded reality. Okay, I didn't get
Speaker 1: the lead, but maybe there's something else. There's a calling
Speaker 1: for me. There's a yellow Dora.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's go back aways here, and we've mentioned the
Speaker 3: science of this a couple times, right, but let's go
Speaker 3: back to what first put you on this trail of
Speaker 3: being interested in trying to see the role of spirituality
Speaker 3: in our overall well being? Like, what even put you
Speaker 3: on the trail?
Speaker 1: Eric? When I was starting to I've been a clinical
Speaker 1: scientist and a psychologist for twenty five years. When I
Speaker 1: was starting out, actually even a little longer than that,
Speaker 1: there was absolutely zero talk of spirituality in mental health,
Speaker 1: in psychotherapy, in patient units, in private practices, no one
Speaker 1: talked about spirituality. And so as a new psychotherapist, I
Speaker 1: was on an impatient unit where people were having the
Speaker 1: hardest months of their entire life. The pain was unbelievable.
Speaker 1: They had faced right the losses. They were biologically driven,
Speaker 1: perhaps in some cases to depression or bipolar It was
Speaker 1: true of the suffering. And in a psychotherapy climate that
Speaker 1: didn't talk about spirituality, the patients were letting me know
Speaker 1: what they They'd knock at my door and whispered, can
Speaker 1: I see you? And see you? Meant leave the practice office,
Speaker 1: walk down the linoleum hallway, go into the kitchen, into
Speaker 1: the pantry and sitting by the pots and pans, total pain, Miller,
Speaker 1: will you pray with me? That happened to be from
Speaker 1: a woman who is Catholic, but of other faith traditions
Speaker 1: eric some were Jewish, some were hinduo some were spiritual
Speaker 1: but not religious. Some were in terrible pain and reaching
Speaker 1: for ultimate reality in the language of life, you know
Speaker 1: what is real, what is true? And I started to
Speaker 1: realize that depression was actually a banging at the door
Speaker 1: for an opening of our spiritual heart. That depression was
Speaker 1: actually yearning for more. And the more wasn't to be fancier,
Speaker 1: or more rich or have more something. The more was
Speaker 1: the more of our deep being, of connection to this
Speaker 1: unit of loving reality of which were apart. The more
Speaker 1: of depression was, Hey, there is in you an ache
Speaker 1: because you've yet to arrive at the full expansiveness of
Speaker 1: where you are being called and pulled. That there was
Speaker 1: an arc, you could say teleology, a thrust in depression. Basically,
Speaker 1: the ignition depression is the ignition to rev the engine
Speaker 1: and to become more to in ourselves feel more. So
Speaker 1: I saw that and I spent the next twenty five
Speaker 1: years of my life developing a science MRI studies, genotyping studies,
Speaker 1: epidemiological studies, so that the mental health field could get
Speaker 1: a picture of the deep relationship between spiritual emergents and depression.
Speaker 3: And so talk to me about some of the early science.
Speaker 3: I think you started epidemiology, right, that was your first
Speaker 3: sort of process of looking at this and what did
Speaker 3: you find.
Speaker 1: So, as you suggest, epidemiology is the view out for
Speaker 1: ten thousand foot aerial window when you're looking at the
Speaker 1: airplane and you see patterns of cities. Epidemiology is patterns
Speaker 1: amongst people. And what we saw from the distant view
Speaker 1: of epidemiology was that people with a strong personal spiritual
Speaker 1: life were eighty percent protected against the diction, were sixty
Speaker 1: percent protected against depression, were eighty two percent less likely
Speaker 1: to take their life going through our epidemic suicide. So
Speaker 1: there was nothing in the clinical sciences for how like
Speaker 1: protective against the diseases of despair as a strong spiritual core.
Speaker 1: That was the first past. But you know, Eric, I
Speaker 1: thought back to the patients on the impatient unit, and
Speaker 1: I just knew that, yes, spirituality is healing, Yes spirituality
Speaker 1: is protective, but how do we build it in the
Speaker 1: first place? And why was it that in the most
Speaker 1: scruciating hour people were saying, help me reach for the
Speaker 1: deep love that's in us. Helped me reach for the
Speaker 1: ultimate sense of being held. And it dawned on me
Speaker 1: that maybe it wasn't so easy, and it's not like
Speaker 1: the other spiritual people that don't get depressed, then there's
Speaker 1: unspiritual people who do get depressed. That was not the case.
Speaker 1: That actually it was a deeper, richer story, and in
Speaker 1: time we were able to move from epidemiological studies to
Speaker 1: MRI studies and found that, hey, you know what, the
Speaker 1: very same people with a very strong spirituality today that
Speaker 1: even have a thick, strong, awakened brain today didn't get
Speaker 1: there easy. They were two hundred and fifty percent more
Speaker 1: likely to have suffered, to have had a major depression
Speaker 1: in the past ten years. Depression is the gateway of
Speaker 1: spiritual awakening. We are hardwired so that our suffering brings
Speaker 1: us deeper, opens our heart more profoundly to be able
Speaker 1: to feel the loving presence in us to us again,
Speaker 1: my words God or higher power. But you can say
Speaker 1: the unit of loving universe, this capacity to know and
Speaker 1: feel what is real. We are built to see it
Speaker 1: and feel it because it's real. But we get there
Speaker 1: through suffering the bottom cracks. We can't believe how much
Speaker 1: it hurts. And as I said, Eric, I've been there.
Speaker 1: I mean, is there any meaning in life and our
Speaker 1: people just inherently random? Is there's no moral compass building
Speaker 1: to the world. And if we really take seriously these
Speaker 1: times where we don't know, it's a tough pill. It
Speaker 1: is a tough pill. So what I want people to
Speaker 1: know is that depression is not only held in a
Speaker 1: medical model. Yes, there are times where piece needs to
Speaker 1: be fixed in our brain, but very often depression is
Speaker 1: a hunger to developmental depression and your soul, your natural
Speaker 1: spiritual awareness, is hungering to engage and expand. So depression
Speaker 1: is not lost time or downtime or wasted time. It
Speaker 1: is the invitation to an awationing.
Speaker 3: And so these people that were in this unit, yes
Speaker 3: we're talking about people who were showing up again and
Speaker 3: again and again like serious mental illness, right, but you
Speaker 3: saw in them a hankering towards spirituality. So what was
Speaker 3: the difference in what was not allowing spirituality to be
Speaker 3: protective in their case? Right? Because they may have been
Speaker 3: interested in it, but it wasn't protecting them right because
Speaker 3: they were If we were going to be gauging people
Speaker 3: on being ill, right, they were the most ill. They
Speaker 3: kept coming back into impatient again and again. So what's
Speaker 3: the difference in someone there who's got an inkling in
Speaker 3: that direction and someone who's actually able to use a
Speaker 3: spiritual worldview to heal themselves or to protect themselves against
Speaker 3: mental illness?
Speaker 1: That's right to her? I was hearing the yearning and
Speaker 1: just the emergence nation mergence of the spiritual heart, hungry
Speaker 1: to grow and expand. But it was uns support it
Speaker 1: because remember one third in night two thirds environmentally form
Speaker 1: no one was walking with them. And there I was fine,
Speaker 1: you know, but I realized there was so much more
Speaker 1: that needed to be done. So could we actually do
Speaker 1: another practice because I think this opens up a bit
Speaker 1: of what might support people in doing this work. Sure, yep, great.
Speaker 1: This is a practice that when we are in terrible
Speaker 1: pain and want to turn to the universe, turn to God,
Speaker 1: turn to our higher power. This is a nice place
Speaker 1: in which to convey. I'm going to invite you to
Speaker 1: take five press clear out your inner space, in your
Speaker 1: inner chamber. I invite you to set before you a table.
Speaker 1: This is your table. And to your table you may
Speaker 1: invite anyone or deceased who truly has your best interest
Speaker 1: in mind, anyone living or deceased to truly has your
Speaker 1: best interest in mind. And with them all sitting there,
Speaker 1: ask them if they love you, so that I love you.
Speaker 1: And now you may invite your higher self, part of
Speaker 1: you that is so much more than anything you may
Speaker 1: have or not have, anything you may have done or
Speaker 1: not done, your true eternal higher thoughts, and ask you
Speaker 1: if you love me. And now finally you may invite
Speaker 1: your higher power. Whatever your word, however you know your
Speaker 1: higher power than to ask as they love you. And now,
Speaker 1: with all of those people sitting there right now, what
Speaker 1: do they need to let you know? What do they
Speaker 1: need to share? What do they need to share with you? More?
Speaker 1: And when you're ready, I impacked you pack. This is
Speaker 1: your counsel and they are always there for you. Who
Speaker 1: shows up may change, ending on where we are in
Speaker 1: our road and which you pass. What is honor.
Speaker 3: That is a nice practice.
Speaker 1: And they're real. They're not imagined. You are detecting something real,
Speaker 1: You are imaging something real, So that is handing it over.
Speaker 1: We are built to have an awakened relationship with those
Speaker 1: who truly have our best interest in mind, our higher selves,
Speaker 1: our higher power. These are sacred, transcendent relationships. They're always there.
Speaker 1: They're walking with us, alive or deceased, our higher power.
Speaker 1: Some people say I saw light on the water. Some
Speaker 1: people say I saw a white light. Some people say
Speaker 1: I saw Jesus. People see it different, but whatever they
Speaker 1: see is an image of some deep, loving presence that
Speaker 1: is real. That is a unitive and there for all
Speaker 1: of us, one presence for all of us, and then
Speaker 1: seven billion different images.
Speaker 3: So far, with the science, we've sort of seen that
Speaker 3: viewing the world this way offers protective benefit, or that
Speaker 3: suffering often leads us as an opportunity to start to
Speaker 3: view the world in this way, which then gives us
Speaker 3: these positive benefits. So it's clear that this as a view,
Speaker 3: you know, the science seems pretty clear that this is
Speaker 3: healthy for us. Right, talk to me about where you
Speaker 3: go next, right, which is into some of the fMRI
Speaker 3: studies and what is that showing us?
Speaker 1: So, Eric, the practice we just shared is literally handing
Speaker 1: it oth. We are taking what's on our heart. What
Speaker 1: do they need to tell you now? And you can
Speaker 1: bring questions like why is this person so cruel to me?
Speaker 1: Or why is my boss so luminating at meat? And
Speaker 1: take these questions to your account. This is literally handing
Speaker 1: it out to the higher we are built for and
Speaker 1: we can guide ourselves up to the edge where we
Speaker 1: do hand it. So this is how we're build, and
Speaker 1: we're built from day one because this is our birthright.
Speaker 1: It should naturally be neurocircuits. There is a docking station
Speaker 1: in the brain, body, mind, and soul. So there are
Speaker 1: certain circuits in the brain that sustain this awareness. And
Speaker 1: I don't mean to apply biological reductionism again, I'm not
Speaker 1: seeing the brain makes this up. I'm saying that we
Speaker 1: are connecting with something real and its landing path is
Speaker 1: the brain, the docking station, and there are So we
Speaker 1: invited people together the Spirituality, Mind Body Institute at my
Speaker 1: institute at Columbia and our colleagues at Yale Medical School.
Speaker 1: We said come on into our MRI web, and effectively,
Speaker 1: if we invited them to host council as you and
Speaker 1: I are just did here now herelessers, which is to say,
Speaker 1: tell us the time, were you in a deep transcendent
Speaker 1: relationship as we just work relational, spiritual? And what we
Speaker 1: found was that about you know well, was what the
Speaker 1: national average might predict. About two thirds of people were
Speaker 1: in a transcendent relationship like holding council as told within
Speaker 1: their faith tradition. In the third chair, they sakh or Jesus,
Speaker 1: or they saw their ancestors and knew their ancestors walked
Speaker 1: with them. Those about two thirds of people, and about
Speaker 1: a third of people said I saw light on the water,
Speaker 1: I saw forest, I saw infinity, I saw Mount Rainier
Speaker 1: and chair of three they were spiritual but not religious.
Speaker 1: And whether or not someone was religious or and spiritual
Speaker 1: or spiritual and not religious, and whether or not their
Speaker 1: religion happened to be that they were Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Christian,
Speaker 1: the same neurocircuits ran, there is one awakened brain, and
Speaker 1: we all have it. Well, it's there for all of
Speaker 1: us if we choose to engage it. We are all
Speaker 1: born with a wiring to awaken one third and eight
Speaker 1: and then it is a choice to practice and cultivate
Speaker 1: our natural awakened awareness. So what was so beautiful is
Speaker 1: that there's one spiritual brain. I mean, this should make
Speaker 1: religious war beyond obsolete. This should make disputes about ultimate
Speaker 1: reality viewed as well. That's actually downstream of who we
Speaker 1: really are, and who we really are is we're all
Speaker 1: spiritual beings that now force through human variability, just says
Speaker 1: those with music. You know, there are people who for
Speaker 1: whom this comes more easily. There are people for whom
Speaker 1: this is more pronounced. But just like we all hear
Speaker 1: music and love music and move with music, it's there
Speaker 1: for all our natural spiritual awareness. And just like music
Speaker 1: practice builds, we literally, by way of analogy, build the muscle.
Speaker 1: We strengthened the awakened brain. The second set of findings
Speaker 1: from our MRI studies is that people who sustain and
Speaker 1: focus on building their spiritual awareness over in this study
Speaker 1: eight years over time showed a stronger awakened brain. There
Speaker 1: was a thicker cortex across regions of the awakened brain,
Speaker 1: which are regions of perception and reflection and orientation that
Speaker 1: prive opportunius occipital, which means that sustains spiritual life actually
Speaker 1: builds are deep and deep into our awareness. As you
Speaker 1: are just sharing for your meditation practice and for your journey,
Speaker 1: it becomes a go to place in you north.
Speaker 3: So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode Integration reminder.
Speaker 3: Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
Speaker 3: and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute
Speaker 3: to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a
Speaker 3: detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause
Speaker 3: and reflect. What's your one big insight so far and
Speaker 3: how can you put it into practice in your life. Seriously,
Speaker 3: just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It
Speaker 3: can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop
Speaker 3: and be present, can't it. If you want to keep
Speaker 3: this momentum going that you built with this little exercise,
Speaker 3: i'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders
Speaker 3: SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with
Speaker 3: insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They are
Speaker 3: a nice little nudge to stop and be present in
Speaker 3: your life, and they're a helpful way to not get
Speaker 3: lost in the busyness and forget what is important. You
Speaker 3: can join at oneufeed dot net slash sms and if
Speaker 3: you don't like them, you can get off a list
Speaker 3: really easily. So far, there are over one and seventy
Speaker 3: two others from the one you feed community on the list,
Speaker 3: and we'd love to welcome you as well. So head
Speaker 3: on over to oneufeed dot net slash sms and let's
Speaker 3: feed our good wolves together. So people who are nourishing
Speaker 3: this part of themselves are seeing consistent changes in the brain. Yes,
Speaker 3: that look similar, regardless of exactly what the flavor of
Speaker 3: this thing.
Speaker 1: Is beautiful, Yes, So they could be Hindu, or they
Speaker 1: could be spiritual not reliders. They could be Jewish, they
Speaker 1: could be devout, appreciate. It doesn't matter. We're doing the
Speaker 1: same deep thing in terms of the capacity to perceive
Speaker 1: the transcendent relationship that we are loved in hell, guided
Speaker 1: and never alone. Just as you and I sharedan council,
Speaker 1: we are loved in help, guided, and never alone. When
Speaker 1: we build our awakened brain over time, we are protected
Speaker 1: against recurrence of depression. We are neuro protected through sustaining
Speaker 1: our spiritual life against recurrence of depression. We still have
Speaker 1: hard times. There can still be moments of sorrow and sadness.
Speaker 1: But the deep downward spiral to major depression is less
Speaker 1: like why because we develop a spiritual response to suffering.
Speaker 1: I just got fired, my husband just left me, I
Speaker 1: just lost my money. That hurts, and that hurts like hell. Right,
Speaker 1: But I don't necessarily need to say I am such
Speaker 1: a loser. The depressigen in Howard spiral, it always happens
Speaker 1: to me, I am unworthy or turned to habits which
Speaker 1: are destructive. Instead, I make a choice love in my language,
Speaker 1: loving God, what do you ask of me? Now? In
Speaker 1: another language, I meditate and I feel that ah, I
Speaker 1: actually am part of all the love that is part
Speaker 1: of all creation. Or in another practice, I might go
Speaker 1: to the anepia, the sweat lodge and realize that there
Speaker 1: are messengers in prow and in some and in one another.
Speaker 1: So we are love hell and never alone. And a
Speaker 1: spiritual response to trauma, post traumatic spiritual growth, despaired depression,
Speaker 1: developmental depression is our birthright. We are built to be more,
Speaker 1: not less, through these times of tremendous strength.
Speaker 3: There's something you say in the book that I wanted
Speaker 3: to explore a little bit because it was another thing
Speaker 3: that I got kind of hung up on, and it
Speaker 3: was you say, in a secular, materialist world we make meaning.
Speaker 3: But in my developing spiritual awareness framework, meaning is revealed
Speaker 3: and we interact with it. We are in dialogue with life, right,
Speaker 3: and our times of doubt, struggle, and depression often serve
Speaker 3: as portals to our aw way in life. Because the
Speaker 3: idea that in a secular world we make meaning, I
Speaker 3: feel like that we are always making meaning, right, But
Speaker 3: there are ways of making meaning that are more conducive
Speaker 3: to a open, loving perspective in the world. But you're
Speaker 3: suggesting that there is actually an external meaning to us,
Speaker 3: which there's the inner skeptic in me that goes I
Speaker 3: don't know if I believe that's true, right, So talk
Speaker 3: to me about why you see it that way, or
Speaker 3: are we basically talking about the same thing. We're just
Speaker 3: using slightly different words.
Speaker 1: I might charge here, which is to say that inside
Speaker 1: every one of us is a table of knowers. We
Speaker 1: have multiple ways of knowing. We have logic and we
Speaker 1: hammer things out. You know, I want to get this job,
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to go through this door first.
Speaker 1: We have empiricism. We you know, I need to get
Speaker 1: the data to figure out which car I want to buy,
Speaker 1: or do I really want to take this risk? And
Speaker 1: then we have intuition, our gut instinct, We have mystical awareness,
Speaker 1: and we have spontaneous direct knowing just now, and we
Speaker 1: had synchronicities far too unprobabilistic to have happened by chance.
Speaker 1: We see the deeper meaning in a synchronosity. So there
Speaker 1: are multiple ways of knowing, and these are all valid.
Speaker 1: They all yelled hard data, but we have way of
Speaker 1: emphasized empiricism and logic and just knowing. I just know
Speaker 1: it in my gut surefire. I mean, have you ever
Speaker 1: known something in your gut and just it was right?
Speaker 1: I mean, you took it, you went with your gut,
Speaker 1: and that was bedrocked. Have you ever had that type
Speaker 1: of experience.
Speaker 3: I've had that. But I've also had plenty of experiences
Speaker 3: where I was absolutely certain I was right in my
Speaker 3: gut and it turned out to be very wrong. I mean,
Speaker 3: I was convinced that Heroin was absolutely what I had
Speaker 3: to have for a number of years. That felt deeply intuitive,
Speaker 3: It felt at a cellular level. It was also deeply misguided.
Speaker 3: It was a response to my trauma not a response
Speaker 3: to my awakened awareness, to use your terminology, right, So, yes,
Speaker 3: I've had both.
Speaker 1: But does it feel the same though.
Speaker 3: No, I've been able to tune in over time to
Speaker 3: these things that are more a response to trauma, have
Speaker 3: a desperation to them, or they have an energy of
Speaker 3: sort of clinging that's in them that is very intense,
Speaker 3: and the other is more subtle and more open and
Speaker 3: more quiet. Right. But I think it's taken me a
Speaker 3: while to sort of be able to sort of sort
Speaker 3: those things out. So yes, I do notice a difference now,
Speaker 3: but I don't think I could for a certainly a
Speaker 3: fair amount of time in my life, I don't think
Speaker 3: I could tell the difference.
Speaker 1: You honed your inner instrument, you hone yourn, yes, and
Speaker 1: you learned the resonance of something that was life giving
Speaker 1: and instinct that was expansive, and an instinct that came
Speaker 1: from another place. So what I would say is that
Speaker 1: we are built to be able if we cultivate and
Speaker 1: gently and caringly give it attention, cultivate an awareness of
Speaker 1: different forms of knowing, and that just as when we
Speaker 1: shared the road of life practice with the yellow door,
Speaker 1: there are yellow doors built for us. I don't think
Speaker 1: that we go out there in the world and are
Speaker 1: narrowly makers of our past. I think we are discovers
Speaker 1: of our journey. That's not fatalism. I don't mean fatalism.
Speaker 1: I mean there's a living, dynamic dialogue between us and
Speaker 1: the force of life. So the contemporary narrow view that
Speaker 1: I just can't emphasize enough of, so called manifesting, is
Speaker 1: literally getting on Amazon and ordering the life you want.
Speaker 1: And that is a much smaller life than the universe
Speaker 1: has in mind for you. The universe has yellow doors
Speaker 1: in mind for you. The universe has people that love
Speaker 1: you and the way you've had and been loved. The
Speaker 1: universe has ways that you can give that you didn't
Speaker 1: even do yet. That's a bigger life, and we get
Speaker 1: there true being in dialogue. Hey, what is life showing
Speaker 1: you now? Not just hey, I didn't get what I want?
Speaker 1: Why didn't I get what I want? Slamming my head
Speaker 1: on that red door? Versus Okay, what is life asking
Speaker 1: of me? Now? Who do I need to become to
Speaker 1: be able to love radically enough to stay in this marriage,
Speaker 1: or love this child who hates me? Or you know,
Speaker 1: who do I need to become, and the endgame is
Speaker 1: not tit for tat and somehow faring equal like the
Speaker 1: Red Door story, that's achieving awareness. That's zero sum game,
Speaker 1: you know. But it's not a zero sum game. The
Speaker 1: awakened life is a life where it doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: you get back. It's all about your emergence and becoming.
Speaker 3: In my habits that matter program. One of the very
Speaker 3: first core ideas is intention, and that word has gotten
Speaker 3: strong out in the manifest world to a certain degree. Right,
Speaker 3: you set your intention and then you will get these things.
Speaker 3: And in my mind, intention is not about what I'm
Speaker 3: going to get or what's going to come to me.
Speaker 3: It's all about who am I going to be? Who
Speaker 3: is the person that I am, and what are the
Speaker 3: behaviors that are going to allow me to be that
Speaker 3: person in the world. It's a complete sort of flip
Speaker 3: of the way the law of attraction has used the
Speaker 3: word intention, and it's a complete focus on who do
Speaker 3: I want to be? In general, and really in almost
Speaker 3: every situation we find ourselves in. Right, who do I
Speaker 3: want to be at dinner tonight with my children? Who
Speaker 3: do I want to be with my coworkers? Who do
Speaker 3: I want to be with my partner, who's the person
Speaker 3: that I want to be. And that's kind of what
Speaker 3: intention is to me. I think it's fundamental to any
Speaker 3: sort of well lived life.
Speaker 1: That's a masterpiece, that's a spiritual journey. Right, it's not
Speaker 1: a show. It's without a becoming. It's magnificent, beautiful.
Speaker 3: I want to dig into a couple other areas here
Speaker 3: a little bit. And one is you said that it
Speaker 3: seemed that this was the place where psychology had become stuck,
Speaker 3: bound by three limiting assumptions, right, One is that the
Speaker 3: brain creates thoughts. Second is that all meaning is interpretation.
Speaker 3: And three that we feel better by rearranging our thoughts,
Speaker 3: by disputing the thoughts that make us unhappy and replacing
Speaker 3: depressing thoughts with a new framework that helps us tell
Speaker 3: a brighter story. And I've been very interested in this
Speaker 3: idea because, over the course of six hundred episodes, right,
Speaker 3: one of the things I've been asking people all about
Speaker 3: is the relationship between thought and emotion. Thought cause emotion
Speaker 3: to emotions cause thought. And to me, it has become
Speaker 3: very clear that it's a bidirectional thing, right, that it's
Speaker 3: actually not one or the other. I can look in
Speaker 3: my own life and see both. I can see times
Speaker 3: where my thoughts cause a certain emotion, and I can
Speaker 3: see times where there's just an emotional weather and all
Speaker 3: my thoughts get filtered through that. Right. It's like I
Speaker 3: wake up and before I even have a thought, there's
Speaker 3: a sort of mood system that's there.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So this is kind of going back and forth between
Speaker 3: these two. And you say something at one point about CBT,
Speaker 3: and you're saying that it's also in a colleague of
Speaker 3: yours study about depression and rumination, and you say, women
Speaker 3: that are depressed are capable of having positive thoughts, but
Speaker 3: they feel the benefit of those positive thoughts less intensely
Speaker 3: than women who aren't depressed, Right, And I find that
Speaker 3: a fascinating thing because it's saying that if you just
Speaker 3: change your thoughts, that's not the whole game. So say
Speaker 3: a little bit more about that, because I think all
Speaker 3: of us can look in our own lives and if
Speaker 3: we look at the clinical data, CBT has its effectiveness.
Speaker 3: There is a place for working with your thoughts in
Speaker 3: a skillful way, right, There's no doubt about that. But
Speaker 3: it's certainly not the whole story exactly. So what do
Speaker 3: we not understanding when we think that's the whole game.
Speaker 1: It's such a rich I mean, we could talk for hours,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe I'd love if you invite me back.
Speaker 1: We'll keep going. Let's do this piece today, which is
Speaker 1: I have a colleague who I just cherish, Alaria Mkulioff,
Speaker 1: who's a shaman. He is the last Elop shaman. So
Speaker 1: he lives on the Lutian Islands in Alaska, the last
Speaker 1: of his lineage, and he wrote the book The Wisdom Keeper,
Speaker 1: and he says things that I say in The Awakened
Speaker 1: Brain in a traditional way. Awake and Branda talk about
Speaker 1: awakened awareness and a chieting on us. What Alaria Mkulioff
Speaker 1: says from the Shamami tradition is that Western society has
Speaker 1: it upside down. We prioritize the head, so to speak,
Speaker 1: the thinking of the head, and then common you'er the
Speaker 1: head to direct heart. But traditionally Shamanic understanding is that
Speaker 1: you cultivate the heart as an instrument of knowing. The
Speaker 1: heart perceives what is true, the true North Star, and
Speaker 1: then sends direction to the head to implement. So let's
Speaker 1: look at Western culture if we let the hand guide
Speaker 1: the heart. I want this? How am I going to
Speaker 1: get that? Why doesn't he like me? Those are the
Speaker 1: thoughts the head. How am I doing compared to her
Speaker 1: or him or them on social media? How am I
Speaker 1: doing compared to the Joneses? While those understandings and drivings
Speaker 1: of head, calculations of the head commandeer a heart that
Speaker 1: has craving, It has headativeness or envy, that has yearning
Speaker 1: and dissatisfaction. That is a setup or misery. What if
Speaker 1: we flip it around as is hand in traditional shamanic culture,
Speaker 1: the heart what is true? What is really valuable? What
Speaker 1: is my path? What is the nature of our lives?
Speaker 1: Unit of love? The heart perceives the ultimate direction. What
Speaker 1: is God showing me now? What is the universe guiding
Speaker 1: me to see? Turn right here? I've always turned left?
Speaker 1: The universe says turn right. That is the knowing of
Speaker 1: the heart, and the head then discerves how might I
Speaker 1: best serve my divine direction? How might I best love
Speaker 1: this person who's very difficult? The head implements that is
Speaker 1: an alignment, that is a spiritual past, that is a
Speaker 1: stance of quest, because we go after what's true from
Speaker 1: the direction of heart and we figure out how to
Speaker 1: do it with the head. I agree with Hilaria, and
Speaker 1: we have it backwards. The bottom line is that that
Speaker 1: formulation of the head guiding heart isn't awakened life. It's
Speaker 1: opening up to what is the universe asking of me? Now?
Speaker 1: Where am I being guided? Now? What am I to
Speaker 1: contribute here? You know, when you get tap tapped, this
Speaker 1: one's yours that see universe tapping you?
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: A lot of though, what we've learned is that even
Speaker 3: people who are making a rational decision are doing it
Speaker 3: based on emotion. The emotion is telling them what to do,
Speaker 3: and then their brain figures out how to justify it.
Speaker 3: So it's almost as if, I mean, maybe it's the
Speaker 3: way you're describing that the head is driving the heart,
Speaker 3: but it almost sounds like it's a heart that's not
Speaker 3: working very well that's driving everything. Right, when you talked
Speaker 3: about I want this and I want that, like, that's desire, right,
Speaker 3: and desire we tend to think of is coming from
Speaker 3: the heart, But it's a heart to me that has
Speaker 3: been co opted by you know, different types of desire,
Speaker 3: mimetic desire, which is I know what I want based
Speaker 3: on what you want and craving and fear. It's almost
Speaker 3: as if I mean, I agree that it's the cultivation
Speaker 3: of the heart. And my experience has been when that
Speaker 3: heart gets going in a certain direction, the brain will
Speaker 3: follow it because that tends to be in my experience
Speaker 3: what it often does. It's trying to justify what the
Speaker 3: heart says.
Speaker 1: Anyway, So I guess I would say that every emotion
Speaker 1: is informative. If I take my finger and touch a
Speaker 1: hot stove out, that hurts because I'm touching something real.
Speaker 1: Heat and emotion is touching something real. If I feel craving,
Speaker 1: it's because I'm touching something real, which is I'm deploying
Speaker 1: headed a eye. If I feel empty, because I'm deploying
Speaker 1: something real, a false bearing or a false sense of self.
Speaker 1: So emotions are our friends. They're telling us information. And
Speaker 1: if we can look at these emotions, whether they feel
Speaker 1: awful or when they come from a place it feels
Speaker 1: like the first wolf, right or the second wolf? Where
Speaker 1: does it come from? This emotion of your two ways?
Speaker 1: You know you're very important terrible? I think no matter
Speaker 1: where it comes from, the emotion is revelatory. It is
Speaker 1: the best information we have onto how are we engage
Speaker 1: in our inner being? To your point, and if what
Speaker 1: we're feeling is craving and surliness, it is helpful information
Speaker 1: that we might redirect and reposition our deep seat of intervening,
Speaker 1: turn the channel to a more expansive spiritual what I
Speaker 1: would call a waiting channel.
Speaker 3: So this brings up another sort of interesting question that
Speaker 3: I'm curious what you think about, because I've dealt with
Speaker 3: depression in my life a variety of different ways, right,
Speaker 3: But I often think of it into broad camps. Camp
Speaker 3: One is that I take it seriously and I attempt
Speaker 3: to resolve it somehow, right, and sometimes that is useful,
Speaker 3: but sometimes that seems to be a dead end. And
Speaker 3: I take the opposite view of it, which is that
Speaker 3: I don't take it seriously. I treat it as a
Speaker 3: passing mood system. Right. I often call it the emotional
Speaker 3: flu like I don't quite know why I have this,
Speaker 3: in the same way I can't pinpoint who gave me
Speaker 3: the cold virus. I don't know where it came from,
Speaker 3: but it's here. I know the ways to take care
Speaker 3: of myself while it's here, so I'm going to do
Speaker 3: those things. But beyond that, I'm not going to attribute
Speaker 3: a ton of meaning to it, because when I do,
Speaker 3: I seem to spiral further down the hole sometimes. And so,
Speaker 3: you know, on one hand, the fact that we say
Speaker 3: depression and emotion is revelatory. Yes, I think it can be,
Speaker 3: but it seems to me that there are times that
Speaker 3: I don't know what they're about, and I've found it
Speaker 3: better to not make a big fuss out of it
Speaker 3: and let it sort of pass. But that's to sort
Speaker 3: of ignore its revelatory character. Now we could say that
Speaker 3: that's taking a broader perspective, right, a wider lens, a
Speaker 3: different lens on it, right, which is to say that,
Speaker 3: you know, as a human being, there are mood systems
Speaker 3: that come and go for you know, maybe it's something
Speaker 3: I ate that I didn't like, or any number of
Speaker 3: different things. I didn't sleep well enough three days last week.
Speaker 3: But what do you think about that? Do you think
Speaker 3: that we should explore every emotion every time or is
Speaker 3: there a place to simply say, like, Okay, you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do the things that I know help
Speaker 3: in this circumstance, and I'm going to leave it at that.
Speaker 1: Lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely, so Eric in my journey, I
Speaker 1: would say that not all depressions are the same. So
Speaker 1: when I'm getting a virus in addition to having a
Speaker 1: headache and a stomach ache, I can feel depressed as
Speaker 1: a symptom of that virus. Right, And that hue, that
Speaker 1: sense of depression, I think I'm getting sick. It's a symptom.
Speaker 1: The brain's an organ and just as I know I'm
Speaker 1: an upset stomach and a sore throat, the brain is
Speaker 1: affected by this virus and I'm feeling depressed. That hue
Speaker 1: of depression is different than when I feel existential anxiety
Speaker 1: or when I feel a yearning to figure out what
Speaker 1: is the purpose in my life? So we have this
Speaker 1: huge word depression right right, how the Eskimos have many
Speaker 1: names for snow right, Our culture is a little tone
Speaker 1: deaf when it comes to depression, and we've yet to
Speaker 1: have many names for the different hues of depression. And
Speaker 1: there are feelings of so called yes, use the same
Speaker 1: word depression that I'm feeling sort of out of sorts
Speaker 1: and down and low because I have a virus. And
Speaker 1: then there's a very different feeling that deserves a different name,
Speaker 1: and I'll call it for the moment existential yearning or
Speaker 1: spiritual hunger, or feelings of worthlessness, not because I'm not
Speaker 1: cute enough and rich enough, but because somehow I've yet
Speaker 1: to emerge into a being that I feel called to
Speaker 1: be or that I'm born. And that is a developmental
Speaker 1: depression that's on our side. It's repelling us into a
Speaker 1: quest and they steal different And I think you are
Speaker 1: attunement to knowing the difference between different hues as you
Speaker 1: are describing of emotion, different gutted stinks. I think we
Speaker 1: can draw a tune to wait a minute, what kind
Speaker 1: of so called depression is this? There's actually many different
Speaker 1: shape of feelings that come from different places and are
Speaker 1: propelling us to different places. You know, from a scientific
Speaker 1: point of view. Even the people who came up with
Speaker 1: the DSM Diagnostic Manual on Depression themselves ran the study
Speaker 1: and said, you know what, in this so called category,
Speaker 1: there are actually many different subtypes and some have a
Speaker 1: lot to do with sort of the body feeling low,
Speaker 1: but others have to do with a sense of being
Speaker 1: in self and purpose. So this big, huge term, this
Speaker 1: catch hall category, this basket that we call depression actually
Speaker 1: has tremendous heterogeneity, many different types and they are different.
Speaker 1: So I'm so glad you're opening this up because there
Speaker 1: are times where really what we need is medication and
Speaker 1: that's it. And then there's other times where whether I
Speaker 1: am or am not on medication, I am as well
Speaker 1: being called to cross the bridge to the next station
Speaker 1: in life where depression is a developmental knock or to
Speaker 1: awakening and it growth. And I think we start to
Speaker 1: in our long journey draw tune to the different feeling
Speaker 1: at hand, and that's a richness in all lives that
Speaker 1: you describe it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really well said. I mean, I think one
Speaker 3: of the biggest insights I've had over the last couple
Speaker 3: of years is how much tiredness feels like depression. Yes, right,
Speaker 3: And I just didn't really get it. I didn't really
Speaker 3: get it right. And so there are a lot of
Speaker 3: late in the evening if I've had a really busy
Speaker 3: day where that feeling is there, and it makes a
Speaker 3: world of difference what I call it, Because if I say, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm tired, then I know, go to sleep and you'll
Speaker 3: wake up and it'll be different. But if I say
Speaker 3: I'm depressed. All of a sudden, I'm bringing a cascade
Speaker 3: of meaning into this thing, right, because that word is
Speaker 3: very weighted for me given my past. Right, you know,
Speaker 3: depression means there's something wrong. Depression means that something needs
Speaker 3: to be done. Depression means that could be headed towards
Speaker 3: bad territory. There's a lot of meaning there. Tired is
Speaker 3: a word that carries far less freight in my mind. Right,
Speaker 3: It's just like, oh, you're tired, go to bed. Right.
Speaker 3: It's taken me till I was fifty years old to
Speaker 3: really notice how similar they are. And given the nature
Speaker 3: of how we sometimes we were talking about thought causing
Speaker 3: emotion or emotion causing thought. Emotion will cause thoughts, so
Speaker 3: the thoughts that come out of that can be very similar.
Speaker 3: It's because it's just a habitual response. Emotion feels like this,
Speaker 3: here come the thoughts, right. But at the minute that
Speaker 3: I sort of realize what the emotion is is a
Speaker 3: different thing. I can then look at those thoughts and
Speaker 3: just go, oh, ignore them. Right, in the same way
Speaker 3: that when I'm sick, or even better examples of I
Speaker 3: don't sleep well the night before, I know that lots
Speaker 3: of things the next day are going to look lousy
Speaker 3: to me, and I don't seem to have the skill
Speaker 3: to like completely turn that off. So all I do
Speaker 3: is go, yeah, that's just let that all go today,
Speaker 3: don't even pay any attention to all that noise because
Speaker 3: you're really tired, and tomorrow you'll feel differently, right. And
Speaker 3: I think you've used this sort of a tuning an instrument, right,
Speaker 3: which is I think what a lot of this is
Speaker 3: is this paying very close attention to our own experience.
Speaker 3: And that's one of the things I always loved about
Speaker 3: Buddhism was this idea of like, don't believe what I
Speaker 3: say because I said it, try it out, pay really
Speaker 3: close attention in your own life. And that is a
Speaker 3: skill that I think is to use a phrase of
Speaker 3: yours that we're going to talk about in the post
Speaker 3: show conversation, that's a questing mindset, right. It's a mindset
Speaker 3: that says, let me be curious about what's happening here,
Speaker 3: and let me be willing to look at it from
Speaker 3: different ways.
Speaker 1: Eric Kylie Eden say that whether it's through Buddhism or
Speaker 1: meditation or prayer, that you are sharing the validity of
Speaker 1: our observing eye. The higher part of ourselves looks down
Speaker 1: upon the inner landscape of our emotional life, the chairman
Speaker 1: of the board that we are over our own lives.
Speaker 1: We all have a chairman of the board. We all
Speaker 1: have an observing eye. And I think one of the
Speaker 1: great moments where we come out of depression is when
Speaker 1: we free ourselves from the tossing seas and this quick
Speaker 1: sand in the morass. We say, wait a minute, there
Speaker 1: is a part of me that is real, and I
Speaker 1: call it the soul that looks down upon my inner life.
Speaker 1: It says look at that, or wow, that's kind of
Speaker 1: a nuance. Er oooth that one hurt, you know, but
Speaker 1: it's disidentified. There's a greasy space, there's a distance, and
Speaker 1: we have the natural authority to step back from the
Speaker 1: flow of our emotion, to sit in the throne, to
Speaker 1: be the chairman of the board and say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I have a choice in my relationship to the flow
Speaker 1: of my inner life. I have a choice in how
Speaker 1: I want to relate to what's coming at me. And
Speaker 1: I even have a choice in what I call these things.
Speaker 1: The fact that the doctor calls the depression depression depressions
Speaker 1: doesn't mean I have to I can call that. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a viral foul mood. You know, I'm chilling, sick,
Speaker 1: a sore throat, and I feel like I have a
Speaker 1: viral fault. And this over here, No, this is an
Speaker 1: existential yearning. I can feel a spiritual growth. Spiritual growth
Speaker 1: can feel when we expand like a half empty glass
Speaker 1: of spirituality. What is the hollowness? And me, Now, that's
Speaker 1: a real hollowness that is helping us. That's for us.
Speaker 1: That's not a disease that's pecking at us. That is
Speaker 1: a calling of growth, and that's for us. So those
Speaker 1: are very different feelings and I can name them existential
Speaker 1: yearning and awakening versus viral foul mood.
Speaker 3: So listener and thinking about all that and the other
Speaker 3: great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going to
Speaker 3: isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what
Speaker 3: would it be? Not your top ten, not the top five,
Speaker 3: just one? What is it? Think about it? Got it?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: I ask you, what's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little
Speaker 3: thing you can do today to put it in practice?
Speaker 3: Or maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember,
Speaker 3: little by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change
Speaker 3: happens as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive
Speaker 3: heroic effort. If you're not already on our good Wolf
Speaker 3: Reminder SMS list, I'd highly recommend it as a tool
Speaker 3: you can leverage to remind you to take those vital
Speaker 3: baby steps forward. You can get on there at oneufeed
Speaker 3: dot net slash sms. It's totally free, and once you're
Speaker 3: on there, I'll send you a couple text messages a
Speaker 3: week with little reminders and nudges. Here's what I recently
Speaker 3: shared to give you an idea of the type of
Speaker 3: stuff I send. Keep practicing even if it seems hopeless.
Speaker 3: Don't strive for perfection, aim for consistency, and no matter what,
Speaker 3: keep showing up for yourself. That was a great gem
Speaker 3: from recent guests Light Watkins. And if you're on the
Speaker 3: fence about joining, remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe.
Speaker 3: If you want to get in, I'd love to have
Speaker 3: you there. Just go to oneufeed dot net slash sms.
Speaker 3: All right back to it. Well, that is a wonderful
Speaker 3: place for us to wrap up. You and I are
Speaker 3: going to continue in the post show conversation. You've got
Speaker 3: another practice to let us through. And we've talked about
Speaker 3: achieving awareness and awakened awareness, and you talk about how
Speaker 3: integration is the key, right, how do we integrate these things?
Speaker 3: And you then also talk about something called a quest orientation,
Speaker 3: which is the questing brain is the way we integrate
Speaker 3: these two things. So we'll be discussing that a little
Speaker 3: bit more in the post show conversation listeners. If you'd
Speaker 3: like access to the post show Conversation ad free episodes,
Speaker 3: a special episode I do each week called teaching Song
Speaker 3: and a poem and the good feeling that comes from
Speaker 3: supporting something that you value. Go to one ufeed dot
Speaker 3: net slash join and become part of our community. Oh
Speaker 3: I should mention too, we have monthly community meetings now
Speaker 3: and maybe doctor Miller will join us for one of
Speaker 3: those in the future. So thank you so much. This
Speaker 3: has been a really enjoyable conversation. Thank you for your
Speaker 3: work and thank you for taking the time to share
Speaker 3: it with us.
Speaker 1: Eric, thank you for shying the Awakening brain, and thank
Speaker 1: you for connecting so deep.
Speaker 2: If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
Speaker 2: consider making a monthly donation to support the One You
Speaker 2: Feed podcast When you join our membership community. With this
Speaker 2: monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits.
Speaker 2: It's our way of saying thank you for your support now.
Speaker 2: We are so grateful for the members of our community.
Speaker 2: We wouldn't be able to do what we do without
Speaker 2: their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.
Speaker 2: To learn more, make a donation at any level and
Speaker 2: become a member of the one you Feed community, go
Speaker 2: to oneufeed dot net slash Join the One You Feed
Speaker 2: podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting
Speaker 2: the show.