Speaker 1: But it turns out that science and spirituality certainly can
Speaker 1: go hand in hand, and that science as a lens
Speaker 1: and we can point at a great post of questions,
Speaker 1: including the impact of lived spirituality in the human life course,
Speaker 1: or perhaps the origins or ideology of lived spirituality. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome doctor
Speaker 1: Lisa Miller, the founder and director of the Spirituality, Mind
Speaker 1: Body Institute. Her innovative research has been published in more
Speaker 1: than one hundred peer review articles in leading journals, and
Speaker 1: she is the New York Times bestselling author of The
Speaker 1: Spiritual Child and most recently, The Awakened Brain. In this
Speaker 1: chat today, we mostly focused on the Awakened Brain. And
Speaker 1: what I really like about Lisa is that she's a
Speaker 1: really nice combination of rigorous scientist and a really spiritual
Speaker 1: person herself. We had a really nice chat that was
Speaker 1: personal and it felt like talking to an old friend.
Speaker 1: I also like how we nerded out over this satistics
Speaker 1: and all the little nuances of this emerging science of
Speaker 1: transcendence and spirituality. She's a real pioneer in the field
Speaker 1: and it's my real great delight to bring her to
Speaker 1: this audience. So without further Ado, I would like to
Speaker 1: introduce you to doctor Lisa Miller. Well, doctor Lisa Miller,
Speaker 1: it's so delightful to have you on the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: It's so great to be here, Scott. Thank you for
Speaker 1: including me, including the awaken Vrain. I've so enjoyed following
Speaker 1: your work, and I think we are transcendent first cousins.
Speaker 1: I think so too. I'll take that. I really like that.
Speaker 1: I've been really enjoying your work and reading in your
Speaker 1: latest book, reading your Journey to such detail. It was
Speaker 1: very read like more like a novel than a science book,
Speaker 1: you know, so that was really fun. I actually learned
Speaker 1: that from my students that you know, oftentimes in the
Speaker 1: first ten years of my twenty years at Columbia teaching,
Speaker 1: I would teach about things and then I'd ask everyone
Speaker 1: in the class what they thought. And one day I
Speaker 1: was going through my course reviews and I said, great, class,
Speaker 1: loved it. But you know, you ask us what we think,
Speaker 1: But what does doctor Miller think? And it dawned on
Speaker 1: me that I think there's a culture within science of
Speaker 1: don't look at the man behind the curtain, or don't
Speaker 1: look at the woman behind the curtain. And the Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz that somehow, you know, even the way that
Speaker 1: we write is in the distant third person. So it
Speaker 1: seemed to me that to really write a book about
Speaker 1: spiritual experience was to be behind the curtain and talk
Speaker 1: about the scientist as walking a journey in life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. And you make it dramatic as well in
Speaker 1: your storytelling. Something surprised me though. You had this dramatic
Speaker 1: story about how you were saying. I loved your enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: First of all, I loved the enthusiasm where you're like, I,
Speaker 1: I couldn't wait to see the brain scanned results. I
Speaker 1: couldn't wait. The high spiritual brain was healthier and more
Speaker 1: robust than the low spiritual brain. And the high spiritual
Speaker 1: brain was thicker and stronger and exactly the same regions
Speaker 1: that we can and wither in depressed brains. And you're
Speaker 1: excited was you should have been. And you had some
Speaker 1: cynic or someone who he was like, oh, you were right, doctor.
Speaker 1: The whole thing was direct. But then you said one
Speaker 1: thing you said, you know, you said, this isn't what
Speaker 1: we expected to see. Why isn't that what you expected
Speaker 1: to see? That's why you went into the whole field
Speaker 1: right is too because you believed in the power of spirituality.
Speaker 1: That's what I didn't understand that line at all. Well,
Speaker 1: it's probably I think what was meant was that it's
Speaker 1: not what the team at large had expected to say.
Speaker 1: You believed in it. Absolutely. I was not surprised, although
Speaker 1: I wasn't surprised by the direction of the findings. I
Speaker 1: wasn't surprised that there were indeed robust neuro correlates of
Speaker 1: spiritual awareness and that those should be neuroprotective against the
Speaker 1: next bout of depression that I could see in the
Speaker 1: other levels of analysis for the epidemiologic data, through the
Speaker 1: clinical course data, and it had been my experience, so
Speaker 1: I truthfully, Scott, there had been also a sort of
Speaker 1: premonition that I had about that. But the team, I
Speaker 1: think was quite surprised. So that's what was meant there
Speaker 1: by the we that said it was so much more
Speaker 1: vivid and magnificent than I had even sensed. So even
Speaker 1: in science, I don't know if you've had these moments
Speaker 1: where you have an intuitive sense of where things may
Speaker 1: be going and you've yet to see the results and
Speaker 1: they could point in either direction, but you do have
Speaker 1: a sense. This was sort of one hundredfold more magnificent.
Speaker 1: And it was one of those moments where I think
Speaker 1: of science as a form of witness, you know, just
Speaker 1: as in a church or a temple, someone can stand
Speaker 1: up in the first person give witness. We look at
Speaker 1: the chorus of human experience, and it was a witness
Speaker 1: as to who we really are, and it was it
Speaker 1: was a sacred moment in my life. Yeah, it certainly was.
Speaker 1: And I got chills just reading the story for you,
Speaker 1: you know, because it is very exciting and it's very
Speaker 1: important to the field. But I was just thinking, like,
Speaker 1: but doctor Moll, you've been saying this since, you know,
Speaker 1: the days you were hanging out with already taking walks
Speaker 1: with him. So I was like, sure, surely you weren't surprised,
Speaker 1: But no, thank you for that clarification. That makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense to me. Sometimes some things are so
Speaker 1: feel so obvious to me, like that, of course they're
Speaker 1: going to find this X y Z. And I'm shocked
Speaker 1: that other people in the field are like cynical about
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, no, are you sure that hypothesis has sound?
Speaker 1: And you're like, just feel it, you know, it's true. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you've been absolutely a fellow pathbreaker, and I
Speaker 1: guess that's very kind of you to say it's very true.
Speaker 1: And my view is that all of the sort of
Speaker 1: skepticism and even at times, you know, unexamined, unscientifically founded,
Speaker 1: sort of poop pooing, that just means the work needs
Speaker 1: to get done. So we don't do philosophical psychology. We
Speaker 1: do empirical psychology. And the proof is of the numbers.
Speaker 1: And that is the best friend of someone who is
Speaker 1: a weed whacker and a pathbreaker like yourself. You know
Speaker 1: that that is empiricism as our friend. Every mistic needs
Speaker 1: a little empiricism. I love that. I really do love that. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we started with the dramatic moment. Let's let's rewind
Speaker 1: a little bit and let's go back to your days
Speaker 1: at University of Pennsylvania. Cross paths through there too, didn't
Speaker 1: something I did? I did. I ran the Imagination Institute
Speaker 1: with Martin Seligman. I love it. So when you were
Speaker 1: working with Marty, were you as a grad student in
Speaker 1: like PhD? Right, So, I was a doctoral student in
Speaker 1: clinical psychology and it was right at the time that
Speaker 1: Marty was starting to imagine the positive psychology movement, and
Speaker 1: it was so interesting, as you did Marity so well.
Speaker 1: Martin Seligman was as an undergraduate when he was at Princeton,
Speaker 1: a philosophy major, and he was really kind of a
Speaker 1: classic psychologist, and that he drew out of Aristotelian values
Speaker 1: in philosophy really the first template for the positive psychology movement,
Speaker 1: and others have gone their own direction since then. But
Speaker 1: he was really a pathbreaker, and we'd speak, we'd have long,
Speaker 1: long walks where we talk in a and we agreed
Speaker 1: on many things. But there was one point where I
Speaker 1: love Marty as as a mentor and as a figure
Speaker 1: who I admire as an uncle figure. But we never
Speaker 1: agreed on what spirituality is. And Marty at the time
Speaker 1: thought that it was sort of the epiphenomenal, the feeling
Speaker 1: you get from right action in a truer Restutilian sense.
Speaker 1: And since then that was the nineties, we now have
Speaker 1: buckets full of science. We have mri s studies showing
Speaker 1: the neural correlates of spiritual awareness. We have long term
Speaker 1: clinical course studies showing it is a pathway to renewal,
Speaker 1: not just back to baseline, but that we are made
Speaker 1: bigger inside when we have a spiritual response to trauma,
Speaker 1: post traumatic spiritual growth. So spirituality is an empirical area
Speaker 1: of focus has really burgeoned in the past twenty five years.
Speaker 1: But I'll tell you, Marty showed me what a scientist is.
Speaker 1: And Marty's idea was he said, if you're going to
Speaker 1: be a scientist who reads or a scientist who writes,
Speaker 1: better be a scientist, right, have imagination, read outside the field,
Speaker 1: and always see how things could be overturned to be better.
Speaker 1: He was such a role model for me. I love that, yeah,
Speaker 1: and role model for many people for sure. But I
Speaker 1: love this this conversation you had with him because it
Speaker 1: really is a precursor to your modern day two modes
Speaker 1: sort of distinction between achieving awareness and awakened awareness. But
Speaker 1: that that goes back to those conversations you had with
Speaker 1: him where he was really Marty loves to control, let's
Speaker 1: be honest, understanding how we can have control, how we
Speaker 1: can have hope, right, how we can have you know,
Speaker 1: these are these are he loves those things. But you
Speaker 1: you came on you like I think maybe there is
Speaker 1: a different motive. That's all nice that's all nice. I'm
Speaker 1: not against control, but maybe there's a different mode of
Speaker 1: consciousness that's more vast and meaning oriented and loving. And well,
Speaker 1: I love that you did this. I love that you
Speaker 1: said this. I love that you had these ideas because
Speaker 1: you're a path breaker in the field because of that.
Speaker 1: So can you take us back to these conversations you
Speaker 1: have with Marty about this? It was so wonderful. So
Speaker 1: we would walk for hours, you know, he was so
Speaker 1: generous to his as, you know, having professional colleagues with them,
Speaker 1: and we would walk for hours and we sort of
Speaker 1: think things through. And a model that I've been working
Speaker 1: with is that there's different modes of consciousness that we
Speaker 1: can effectively put our hand on the gear shift as
Speaker 1: if it were a stick shift car and move by choice,
Speaker 1: which is a very Marty idea, that we can move
Speaker 1: by choice between levels of perception. Yes, Marty idea. He
Speaker 1: gave that to the field with learned optimism, you know,
Speaker 1: learned helplessness. Right, it's a choice. So at the time,
Speaker 1: though the model I had imagined was and again, I
Speaker 1: love scientific imagination. I tell my students it's the most
Speaker 1: important skill you can have. All the scientific imagination had
Speaker 1: brought forth that there's a mode of work that I
Speaker 1: called sort of Dionesian, and it was being in the flow,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of a little bit like cheek
Speaker 1: sent ma high and it was being in the And
Speaker 1: then there was the view that there was an Apollonian
Speaker 1: state where you had a clarity and you were hands
Speaker 1: on and you were a doer. It's what grew into
Speaker 1: achieving awareness in the awaken brain. But then there was
Speaker 1: this other mode of experience that I called at the
Speaker 1: time the Olympian state, where we stand on top of
Speaker 1: a mountain and there's tremendous perspective and that little nagging
Speaker 1: thing falls in its place along the landscape, and we're
Speaker 1: aware of the highest truth and my word is God.
Speaker 1: And I saw it as a transcendent spiritual state in
Speaker 1: which we received inspiration. Whereas at the Apollonian level, what
Speaker 1: I called the achieving level, we put A and be
Speaker 1: and C together and it is a very important pursuit.
Speaker 1: We strategize about our lives, We tactically figure out where
Speaker 1: we're going, We prepare ourselves, we go to school and
Speaker 1: gain certain skills and information. But to really have a
Speaker 1: breakthrough in life, and I mean yes, creatively, yes, innovatively
Speaker 1: in our work, but even more importantly in our next
Speaker 1: step is a soul on earth? What are we going
Speaker 1: to do with ourselves? That type of breakthrough came. I
Speaker 1: felt the most powerful use of our brain was receptive.
Speaker 1: It came as a catch in the catchers. It was inspired,
Speaker 1: like the touch on the Systeine Chapel, and that form
Speaker 1: what I called at the time Olympian I've come to
Speaker 1: call awakened awareness because it is awakening to something real.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that psychology very often stops with
Speaker 1: the human as a closed system, the hermetic human, and
Speaker 1: it feels as if we are in connection with something more.
Speaker 1: And I'm saying in the awaken and that we can
Speaker 1: identify the neural correlates of transcendent awareness. But I want
Speaker 1: to go even further and draw on sister and brother
Speaker 1: areas of inquiry and the consciousness studies work and say
Speaker 1: we are perceiving something real, that inspiration came from somewhere.
Speaker 1: So psychology too often stops. I think we will say
Speaker 1: I am grateful, but we won't say I'm grateful to whom.
Speaker 1: It could be a person, it could be from our
Speaker 1: higher power, the object of the preposition is missing, and
Speaker 1: so I am grateful to God. I'm grateful to my
Speaker 1: higher power. I'm grateful to the source of all life,
Speaker 1: to whom am I grateful for this magnificent life, because that,
Speaker 1: I feel sets us up to be in dialogue with
Speaker 1: the source of life. That sets us up to be
Speaker 1: able to not just control our path and get what
Speaker 1: we want, but really be surprised, really be inspired, really
Speaker 1: go somewhere we didn't think we'd go, and that wow,
Speaker 1: it even turns out to be better than my wildness dreams. Sorry, poetic,
Speaker 1: did you feel this? Is this? Like? How did this
Speaker 1: come to you? These ideas? Have you had a lot
Speaker 1: of these kinds of spiritual experiences as a kid, even
Speaker 1: an undergraduate? You know, what are the moments that led
Speaker 1: up to this revelation in grad school? Yes, I think
Speaker 1: like every child. My first book was called The Spiritual Child,
Speaker 1: and it was on the scientific basis that says we
Speaker 1: are neately spiritual beings. So just as we're born physical
Speaker 1: and emotional and cognitive beings, we are inherently spiritual beings.
Speaker 1: And that indeed that body of science mirrors my experience
Speaker 1: as a child. So as a child, I can remember, Scott.
Speaker 1: I can remember, you know, being in dialogue with God
Speaker 1: who everyone won, God many names, higher power, Jesus, the universe, force,
Speaker 1: you know, source. But I remember that felt experience, could you. Yes,
Speaker 1: there were moments like when I was scared of flying
Speaker 1: and I was on the airplane and and I heard
Speaker 1: a voice saying, just relax, You'll be fine, and I
Speaker 1: trust me, And those kinds of moments that's so moving, Yes,
Speaker 1: and that voice when when I say I saw something,
Speaker 1: I heard something. The way I expressed is it was
Speaker 1: absolutely clear, and it was in my mind's eye. I
Speaker 1: didn't think the guy next to me was saying that. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a perception and it is a powerful Godly inspired
Speaker 1: gift and it comes in and lands with a sense
Speaker 1: of knowing that that's exactly what it is. So you
Speaker 1: were a child when we knew that. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Even yeah in college as well helped me get over
Speaker 1: my fear of flying in college on an airplane as well.
Speaker 1: Or yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, mostly college, not even
Speaker 1: as a kid, I didn't fly too much. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is so it's so interesting. You're such an
Speaker 1: interesting sort of hybrid model of scientists. And spiritual seeker,
Speaker 1: and obviously study the science is spiritually, but not all
Speaker 1: scientists who study the science of spirituality are particularly spiritual themselves.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't necessarily come for the wrong for the ride,
Speaker 1: you know, So you're an interesting hybrid model. So how
Speaker 1: do you So that's thank you, Scott. So I see
Speaker 1: science as a form of witness. Right, we can stand
Speaker 1: up one by one and it's a polar or mosque
Speaker 1: or a church and tell our experience, and it is testamony,
Speaker 1: it is witness, the chorus of human experience. Our study
Speaker 1: samples are the voice of us and collective and in
Speaker 1: that sense, I see us as scientists as bearing witness.
Speaker 1: So science for me is a very sacred endeavor I mean,
Speaker 1: is to discover what's true. Absolutely, So you are a
Speaker 1: very your truth seeker and a spiritual seeker. Do these
Speaker 1: things ever contradict each other? And then you have to
Speaker 1: kind of find some way of reconciling them. They've never conflicted,
Speaker 1: they've never conflicted. And well, but I think that's because
Speaker 1: you know, in our twentieth century Caulture, there is a
Speaker 1: tendency for some posts to say I'm a scientist, I
Speaker 1: only believe what can be shown out by science, and
Speaker 1: science simply has not proven spirituality. And then on the
Speaker 1: other hand, there were people who would saying, a deeply
Speaker 1: spiritual person, I don't care if science can't prove the
Speaker 1: science can't tell us everything. But it turns out that
Speaker 1: science and spirituality certainly can go hand in hand, and
Speaker 1: that science has a lens and we can point it
Speaker 1: at a great post of questions, including the impact of
Speaker 1: lived spirituality in the human life course, or perhaps the
Speaker 1: origins or ideology of lived spirituality, and we can even
Speaker 1: identify the neuro seat of spiritual perception and which of
Speaker 1: all the threads of spiritual life are the ones that
Speaker 1: are really tidal wave of changing in our lives. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of richness. In a way, it only
Speaker 1: augments the spiritual path because it's this mass witness, this
Speaker 1: math testimony. So let's let's unpack some of these findings.
Speaker 1: These major you have a lot of over the course
Speaker 1: of your career, so this may take a couple of days.
Speaker 1: But one finding I want to start off with is
Speaker 1: this finding that low levels of depressive symptoms were related
Speaker 1: to high levels of personal devotion. Find that's so fascinating
Speaker 1: and can you can you tell me how you operationalize
Speaker 1: the construct personal devotion? Yes, thank you, Yes, that's my
Speaker 1: nerdy question. I'm so appreciative you read the book you read. Oh,
Speaker 1: I have so many notes you references. Thank you so much. Fun. Okay,
Speaker 1: So basically what blew my mind was in nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: I was a post stock at Columbia and the Medical School,
Speaker 1: and I'd been thinking about spirituality and religion because I
Speaker 1: saw it in my clients and it had been part
Speaker 1: of my own life, and I'd seen how life unfolds
Speaker 1: differently when there's a spiritual relationship or family holds a
Speaker 1: spiritual relationship. So it was very frustrating to look through
Speaker 1: all of the social sciences and realized that there was
Speaker 1: within science at that time ninety five ninety six, effectively
Speaker 1: a theological debate of how will we as a field
Speaker 1: of science define spirituality? And you know, one person said
Speaker 1: it is absolutely a sense of peace and connection, and
Speaker 1: the next person would say, no, no, it is that
Speaker 1: felt sense of unity and compassion. And everyone had a
Speaker 1: different definition, which they're certainly in their journey and titled to,
Speaker 1: but they were not scientifically derived definitions. So it was
Speaker 1: just this gift heavy. It was just amazing when I
Speaker 1: read an article by Ken Kemler that had been published
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety seven, and his first article was in
Speaker 1: the American Journal of Psychiatry and kin Keller at the
Speaker 1: time was the leading genetic epidemiologist who applied the method
Speaker 1: of twin studies. Twins race together, twins race depart. We
Speaker 1: can factor out the degree of commonality as a function
Speaker 1: of genes and environment and see the extent to which
Speaker 1: any trade is heritable versus environment. Warmed, okay, And so
Speaker 1: he'd taken this hammer and hit about everything that psychiatry
Speaker 1: cared about. He'd hit depression and bipolar in schizophrenia, schizophrenia,
Speaker 1: of course is about ninety percent heritable, and finding that,
Speaker 1: of course debunctiments. Your mother had paid you. It was
Speaker 1: a schizophrenogenic mother. So he was really doing interesting groundbreaking
Speaker 1: work by applying the twins steady model. Well, he finally
Speaker 1: applied it well. He was radically innovative in the field
Speaker 1: through him finally applied it to spiritual life and in particular,
Speaker 1: using the Virginia twins, he looked at the extent to
Speaker 1: which heritability or environment accounted for three factors of spiritual life.
Speaker 1: One was denomination, One was adherence to creed, which he
Speaker 1: termed personal conservatism, not in the political sense, but in
Speaker 1: the adherence to one's own tradition. And the third dimension
Speaker 1: was personal devotion. Now, how Canler come to this dimension
Speaker 1: of personal devotion? He had used the scale that Kessler,
Speaker 1: who was first at Michigan and then a Leather, had developed,
Speaker 1: and used it in a way that had never been
Speaker 1: used before. He took this scale of personal devotion alongside
Speaker 1: the other two and applied it, basically, put the twin
Speaker 1: study method upon it. Around it And does our denomination
Speaker 1: have anything to do with their genes? No? Does the
Speaker 1: degree to which we adhere to denomination have anything to
Speaker 1: do with their genes? Nearly no. But the capacity through
Speaker 1: which we have a personal sense of connection to our
Speaker 1: higher power is about the third heritable. So, inher splitting
Speaker 1: scientific terms, in looking at the variants amongst people, one
Speaker 1: third of the variability amongst us that can be attributed
Speaker 1: to broad hairtability, which means, for our friends, that we
Speaker 1: are all born with a natural capacity to be in
Speaker 1: relationship to our higher power, but two thirds environmentally shaped.
Speaker 1: Also says that our parents our pastor, priest, among rabbi,
Speaker 1: our friends, by the locker, doctor J's son, all the
Speaker 1: way in to shape this innate capacity. One third heritable.
Speaker 1: We are naturally spiritual beings. Two thirds environmentally formed. Parents,
Speaker 1: think about what you're showing and teaching your kids, because
Speaker 1: every minute is a living minute of spiritual formation, and
Speaker 1: that accelerates an adolescence and emerging adulthood. So our teenagers
Speaker 1: are on a quest. Our teenagers on a hot quest,
Speaker 1: and it's hardwired and it's foundational to who they'll be
Speaker 1: the rest of their lives. I have three teenage kids,
Speaker 1: and I watch this. What is my meaning? What is
Speaker 1: my purpose? Actually? What is the meaning the purpose? What
Speaker 1: is the nature of reality? And if there's moments, say
Speaker 1: sophomore year in college, where we actually don't know if
Speaker 1: there's any meaning in the universe and we really don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean the skin in the game that is an
Speaker 1: existential despair. And it's what I've come to see is
Speaker 1: developmental depression. That is invitation. It's really the ignition of
Speaker 1: spiritual emergence in this precious moment of growth that is
Speaker 1: laid adolescence, early adulted. And it's fifty percent you'll love this.
Speaker 1: Longitudinal twin studies show there's a fifty percent increase in
Speaker 1: the heritable contribution across the middle delayed adolescence into an
Speaker 1: emerging adulthood of personal devotion. The items there are I
Speaker 1: turn to God for guidance in times of difficulty, When
Speaker 1: I have a tough decision to make, I ask, really,
Speaker 1: what does my higher power want me to do? It
Speaker 1: is a dynamic, lived, transcendent relationship where on the plane
Speaker 1: you hear the voice of God in your mind's eye.
Speaker 1: There is a relationship two way. Yeah. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: similar pattern as IQ terms of increased territability as we age.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting. Yeah, I T as you know, is
Speaker 1: actually even more heritable. Right, so that's what person inherrible,
Speaker 1: especially as you age it gets up to eighty Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, this spiritual capacity exists independent of personality.
Speaker 1: That exists independent, But it's very very very very very
Speaker 1: tiny associated with IQ like zero point one. It's really
Speaker 1: it is. You know, I love the term common sense
Speaker 1: because common needs. We all get it. Well, this is
Speaker 1: our most magnificent common birth rate. Yeah. I'm an individual
Speaker 1: differences researcher. I found quite high correlations between openness to
Speaker 1: experience and lots of dimensions of self transcendent experience. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say they're non trivial at all, you know, I
Speaker 1: would say they're actually only dimension of that's version extraversion
Speaker 1: high strongly, it has to be my favorite one. That
Speaker 1: HAPs to be my favorite dimension of personality personally, well,
Speaker 1: because you are innovative, our creators, science poets are shamans,
Speaker 1: our priests and rabbis, people who are porous and open
Speaker 1: and take in life those who are more open open systems.
Speaker 1: In fact, is the only dimension of personality that goes
Speaker 1: hand in hand to be open to experience with awakening
Speaker 1: and transcendent awareness. Yeah, with harder bumps in life because
Speaker 1: we feel yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. It seems like there's
Speaker 1: a just like a constellation of personality variables that are
Speaker 1: relevant to bring in. I'm going to just mention some
Speaker 1: more absorption. Seems to we see very we've found in
Speaker 1: our data set's very high correlations and highly sensitive people,
Speaker 1: especially the aesthetic appreciation aspects of being highly sensitive tends
Speaker 1: to be very relevant as well. So there need to
Speaker 1: quality what I said, which was among the big five, Okay, gotcha? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the big five personality factors that end up in large
Speaker 1: epidemiological studies. Of those, it is only openness to experience,
Speaker 1: and of course that goes hand in hand with absorption.
Speaker 1: What do they correlate like point six point five some Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's at least at least sometimes. So the correlation
Speaker 1: between like with all, it depends what facet of self
Speaker 1: trenscendency you're looking at. But with all A w A,
Speaker 1: David Yiden and I found a correlation between like the
Speaker 1: all experience and openness to experience that was like extraordinarily high.
Speaker 1: You know, So that's that's cool, that's always cool. Collaborate,
Speaker 1: we should collaborate. Hell yeah, do you know? But I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, do you know David Yidden in his work?
Speaker 1: So I've crossed paths with it. It's beautiful work, you
Speaker 1: know because through Marty, Oh exactly exactly, because like I
Speaker 1: just keep thinking of him when I think of you,
Speaker 1: because like you were, you're the og of You're the
Speaker 1: og of working with Marty and pioneering this whole field.
Speaker 1: And then he's David Diden's that the pioneer and you know,
Speaker 1: the young pioneer, right, you know, what I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: I just keep thinking of how you all need to
Speaker 1: or we all need to come from. I come from
Speaker 1: the creativity world into your world, do you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying? Like I start creativity for twenty years, then
Speaker 1: I come into your world through through the root of creativity.
Speaker 1: And how are how are we wired for creativity? And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of in the whole Venn diagram, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of overlap between how we're wired for creativity
Speaker 1: and how we're wired for spirituality. You know here here
Speaker 1: and so that is the muse as inspiration. I would say,
Speaker 1: that's sport, that is chapel. Yes, yes, absolutely, And of
Speaker 1: course doctor Keltner's work is very relevant and has made
Speaker 1: the case that we're wired for spirituality. But this is
Speaker 1: you're right, It wasn't obvious to the field, and there
Speaker 1: was a lot of pushback on the field for many years,
Speaker 1: going back to even my my hero Abraham Maslow. He
Speaker 1: kept making that argument over and over that like it's
Speaker 1: part of human being. Human is having these spiritual ways
Speaker 1: of being and higher cells. And you know, people pooh
Speaker 1: pooh that in the within the field in the fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties, even though all the hippies in San Francisco
Speaker 1: embraced it. They love Dbraham Maslow, but you know, he
Speaker 1: got a lot of pushback from his academic colleagues, you know.
Speaker 1: So it just seems so obvious to me though that like, like,
Speaker 1: who could be cynical about that? But I guess it's not.
Speaker 1: I guess it's not to everyone. Well, I think there's
Speaker 1: a common twentieth century way of thinking that we're moving
Speaker 1: past we're bridging past that now. But it used to
Speaker 1: sound like this, which is depression is biological. Addiction is biological.
Speaker 1: Spirituality is not biological. That was thinking. But it turns
Speaker 1: out there's indeed a broad host of biological correlates that
Speaker 1: go hand in hand with spirituality, and even more foundationally,
Speaker 1: there's a neurosceed of perception that I'm calling the awakened
Speaker 1: brain that goes hand in hand with spiritual awareness. Yes,
Speaker 1: well that is kind of an outdated perception, but I
Speaker 1: think what is helpful, like as we move into the
Speaker 1: twenty first century, is to perhaps think of body, mind
Speaker 1: and soul as one that you know then you know, yes,
Speaker 1: it is both a spiritual experience. There are biological correlates
Speaker 1: and there is a way in through a choice and
Speaker 1: use of mind. So I think we're getting to more
Speaker 1: of a monolist perspective. Now, that doesn't mean biological reductionism.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that the brain makes all this stuff.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the industrial view. The brain makes thoughts,
Speaker 1: just like the conveyor belt makes cars. I think we're
Speaker 1: moving into a view of the brain in the twenty
Speaker 1: first century that does the brain receive consciousness? Does the
Speaker 1: brain reify consciousness turned into I mean, why is it
Speaker 1: that through certain practices neurons become strong and thick. Is
Speaker 1: that the reification of consciousness? So we don't quite know
Speaker 1: what the brain is or how it works, you know,
Speaker 1: patterns that we can observe to go hand in hand
Speaker 1: with experiences or behaviors. But it's such an exciting, fascinating
Speaker 1: time to be a scientist and to be an emerging scientist.
Speaker 1: And our students really have a great moment. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I love your students. Love I love like the students
Speaker 1: and teachers college in your program and coming to the
Speaker 1: Spirituality Mind Budy Institute. It's wonderful. Thank you. I adored them.
Speaker 1: I just oh my gosh, it's just their enthusiasm and
Speaker 1: their love to learn about this field, you know, like
Speaker 1: that's it. That's what we need, is we need apprentic
Speaker 1: people who do apprenticeships on this topic and then go
Speaker 1: out there and become the ogs someday themselves. Right, That's
Speaker 1: exactly what we want. That's why we're doing this. So
Speaker 1: it's so exciting when you see so much enthusiasm. Well,
Speaker 1: they love you and I appreciate your speaking with them,
Speaker 1: and you know they do go out and their lives
Speaker 1: are lives of service. That's spiritual activists. They in fact,
Speaker 1: when they convene our students at the Spirituality in my
Speaker 1: Money Institute, they are as close to an ideal society
Speaker 1: as I've seen. You know, they're very careful to not
Speaker 1: impute their ideas on others. They're very interested in each
Speaker 1: each other's journey. It's lovely to see the way we
Speaker 1: can live. And a lot of them are gen Z
Speaker 1: and millennials, and I think that the roots of spiritual
Speaker 1: society are strong in gen Z. I think gen Z
Speaker 1: has de facto way of being non egotistical, not a
Speaker 1: closed system, an open system and aware awake system. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and I love the distinction you make between those two
Speaker 1: kinds of systems. It's beautiful. I want to go a
Speaker 1: little bit back in your story to your Yale days,
Speaker 1: because my my office at Yale as a grad student
Speaker 1: was in the basement next to a water heater. My
Speaker 1: office was and I and I actually am wondering I
Speaker 1: have I have? Was I in your old contemplative room
Speaker 1: that you could that have been my We had the
Speaker 1: same office. That's incredible. It was meant to be. It
Speaker 1: was meant to be, you said, being with doubt and sadness,
Speaker 1: questioning what I believed. I had many moments of doubt
Speaker 1: and sadness in that room too. By the way, being
Speaker 1: with doubt and sadness questioning what I believed brought me
Speaker 1: beyond a one track intellectual way of being, intellectual way
Speaker 1: of knowing the world, and into a felt awareness of life,
Speaker 1: which eventually returned me to a sense of buoyancy and belonging.
Speaker 1: So you raising really interesting there, And that's the you know,
Speaker 1: the I think it's relevant to the field of post
Speaker 1: traumatic growth. You know, that's that's popping up now in
Speaker 1: what weeds. Can these moments of despair, sadness, contemplation really
Speaker 1: turbo charge our spiritual you know, activate those spiritual regions
Speaker 1: of our brain. So I you know, I think it
Speaker 1: is so foundational to emerging as an adult. I remember,
Speaker 1: after going through what I've come to see as a
Speaker 1: developmental depression, I realized that the suffering of me, you know, terrible.
Speaker 1: First of it's real depression. It's a sophomore and the
Speaker 1: word sophomore slump does not do justice to this experience.
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, feeling, oh no, it's coming, it's coming,
Speaker 1: and just like a shadow figure, this horrible sense of
Speaker 1: dread would come over me. And I was nineteen, and
Speaker 1: then I feel terribly anxious. And then I'd wonder what
Speaker 1: is the purpose of life? Does God exist? And this
Speaker 1: inquiry was really painful, It was really painful. And do
Speaker 1: we exist? I mean, you know, we're transient, We change
Speaker 1: ourselves change, there's you know, we're seventy percent guests, little
Speaker 1: tiny microbes, and you know, do we even exist? And
Speaker 1: is there anything fundamental and that is enduring in family
Speaker 1: or friends or lovers? Is there anything that stays? And
Speaker 1: it was really you know, taken seriously, what is the
Speaker 1: existence that we live? What is the purpose written into life?
Speaker 1: Or is there any that process was excruciating, and I
Speaker 1: asked the questions of my head. I would look through
Speaker 1: data empirically, I would logically play this through. I took
Speaker 1: just buckets full of classes Philosophy, Nietzsche, the existentialists, and
Speaker 1: everywhere I went at Yale, I was looking for the
Speaker 1: answer to the question what is the meaning of life?
Speaker 1: That's what I'm here for. I'm here for four years
Speaker 1: to figure out the meaning of life so that I
Speaker 1: can go live one based on meaning. It was a
Speaker 1: foundational quest and I couldn't find it in the way
Speaker 1: that we were approaching texts at the time. In the
Speaker 1: classroom we were reading, you know, I went to World Religions,
Speaker 1: and we read in this very armor length way, as
Speaker 1: if we were looking through a foggy marror. We read
Speaker 1: about other faith traditions and their history and their figures.
Speaker 1: But there was never an engagement of experience. Let's try
Speaker 1: a contemplative practice. Let's explore winning your life. Have you
Speaker 1: had a felt of sense of guidance that was too
Speaker 1: unprobabilistic to happen by chance? These down to brass tax
Speaker 1: questions about the transcendent reality were never addressed at the
Speaker 1: level of heart or felt experienced phenomenologically. And so I
Speaker 1: left sophomore year thinking wow, you know, and I looked
Speaker 1: horrible because there was you know, I was just weighed
Speaker 1: down by this. And then that summer I remember standing
Speaker 1: on banks of the Gulf of Mexico and seeing light
Speaker 1: in the water and feeling this euphoric, loving sense. Of course,
Speaker 1: of course there's love built into the world. Of course,
Speaker 1: we're held that journey of nagging with the head, questioning
Speaker 1: with the head, but only receiving a convincing answer through
Speaker 1: an inspired moment, a mystical moment, an intuitive moment, a
Speaker 1: receptive moment, an awakened moment, and our cantrisman that seemed
Speaker 1: to me to have been the work to figure out
Speaker 1: that inside of us we are knowers. Right many epistemologies,
Speaker 1: we are knowers. We are logicians, and we are emparisis,
Speaker 1: and we are mystics and we're intuitives. And when we
Speaker 1: can get all forms of human knowing in dialogue around
Speaker 1: the table and the skeptic gets to be there too, nice,
Speaker 1: then we really challenge and discover, challenge and discover. It's
Speaker 1: what I call quest. So the skeptics at the table,
Speaker 1: the skeptics, not the bouncer at the door. No one
Speaker 1: is the bouncer at the door, you know. And I
Speaker 1: think the problem with our opportunity and education is to
Speaker 1: invite students to the table of human knowing. Nice, there's
Speaker 1: some things very poetic about your soul as well as
Speaker 1: the mind of your science. Right back at you. Actually,
Speaker 1: I have said that I feel like I'm a politic soul.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you for saying that I feel seen.
Speaker 1: I feel seen. Can I tell you about a tweet
Speaker 1: that I wrote the other day? Oh please, and I
Speaker 1: will take me seriously. I said, this is going to
Speaker 1: sound super woo woo, but I've noticed that when my
Speaker 1: being is infused with the energy and spirit of love,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm vibrating more resonantly with the universe.
Speaker 1: I have a sneaking suspicion that the universe is inherently loving,
Speaker 1: and that hate disrupts that flow. I wrote that, and
Speaker 1: I get you know a couple of people good. That
Speaker 1: doesn't sound scientific. Will you tell me if there's any
Speaker 1: scientific evidence for any of that. So you are absolutely right,
Speaker 1: and science mirrors that wisdom that you directly. I'm doing that.
Speaker 1: I'm doing the dance. Here's the science that when we
Speaker 1: are particularly when we've come through a road of trials
Speaker 1: so you know and ask questions and broken through. When
Speaker 1: we're in a deep spiritual sense of connection, when we
Speaker 1: are awakened to the spirit and then through all life,
Speaker 1: the brain gives off a certain wavelength is captured by
Speaker 1: EEG and it gives it off right in the back
Speaker 1: of our head where many traditions, for instance, the yamaka
Speaker 1: goes the right posterior back of ahead. High amplitude alpha
Speaker 1: is given off. And the more that we have engaged
Speaker 1: in pretendent awareness, daily spiritual awareness, knowing each other brother
Speaker 1: and sister, knowing events as non random that is, openings
Speaker 1: and guidance. The more we see life spiritually and live
Speaker 1: that way, the more that becomes the new normal, the
Speaker 1: set point, and the more we live that way, the
Speaker 1: more we give off high amplitude alpha. To your experience, Scott,
Speaker 1: high amplitude alpha goes by another name in another field,
Speaker 1: and it's human's residence. It's the wavelength from the Earth's
Speaker 1: crust up one mile all the way around the Earth.
Speaker 1: Nature creation vibrates at the same wavelength as the spiritually
Speaker 1: engaged brain which I call per means what you experienced
Speaker 1: so immediately, which is we return to oneness, We return
Speaker 1: to our nature nature, We are indeed one with all life,
Speaker 1: with spirit that gives life. So take that, Twitter trolls,
Speaker 1: listen to doctor Lisa Miller scientific valid what I said, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's so cool, beautifully and so accurately, which was you
Speaker 1: were vibrating with all life. You were indeed the oneness
Speaker 1: of all life. Can I say, I want to send
Speaker 1: you an article like not to give you homework, and
Speaker 1: I don't expect you to necessarily read it, but I
Speaker 1: want to say an article called what does that? I
Speaker 1: wrote called what does God feel Like? I'd love to
Speaker 1: read that and tell people where they can find it. Oh,
Speaker 1: you can just google us my name Scott bar Kaufman,
Speaker 1: what does God feel Like? And the article should show
Speaker 1: up in Google. We can all read it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love that, so everyone can read it. Yes, please please.
Speaker 1: The research is interesting that you're finding because it's just
Speaker 1: that that spirituality is a domain general mechanism, and you're
Speaker 1: distinguishing it from religion, from specific ideologies, so being able
Speaker 1: to pull apart ideology from the spiritual module that we
Speaker 1: all share as a human humanity is actually quite revolutionary.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's how many thousands of years of humanity
Speaker 1: has that no one pulled those things apart. You know, people,
Speaker 1: how many wars have people fought over? You know, whose
Speaker 1: spiritual center is getting the right messages and who's getting
Speaker 1: the wrong ones from which source? You know, as opposed
Speaker 1: to we all got that part of the brain. You know,
Speaker 1: this is revolutionary. There is one spiritual brain and we
Speaker 1: all have it exactly. So the universal language is numbers, right,
Speaker 1: that's all the world. And what do we know from science?
Speaker 1: We know that the capacity for spiritual awareness is our birthright.
Speaker 1: There's an innate spiritual brain in every one of us.
Speaker 1: Religion is the gift of our ancestors, our community, the
Speaker 1: books we read. It is environmentally transmitted. Now, for two
Speaker 1: thirds of people in the United States, their natural spirituality
Speaker 1: is embraced by the en environmentally transmitted religious tradition of
Speaker 1: their family and one which they discover, but the religious
Speaker 1: tradition that may help support mold guide their natural spirituality
Speaker 1: is a gift of environment. Spirituality is in every one
Speaker 1: of us, and a third of people in the United
Speaker 1: States will say I'm spiritual, but I am not religious.
Speaker 1: I am spiritually aware in nature when I'm with my
Speaker 1: family with music and art, creativity, artists, Yes, totally, totally.
Speaker 1: Creating is often a spiritual experience for people, you know,
Speaker 1: in general, and creating our lives right as you say,
Speaker 1: and key to our lives. Yeah, yeah, and absolutely key
Speaker 1: to our lives. Yeah. It's a way of being. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: a way of being. And so too is natural spirituality
Speaker 1: exactly where the most powerful part of our brain is
Speaker 1: receptive because how many people focus on the doing part
Speaker 1: of that stuff, you know what I mean? And that's
Speaker 1: it makes my eyes roll sometimes. So Scott, I want
Speaker 1: to emphasize the point that you shared. I think it's
Speaker 1: very important. But if one spiritual brain ergo, religious war
Speaker 1: is incredibly outdated, and it is such a joy to
Speaker 1: share this science all around the world where either religions
Speaker 1: are not getting along or we don't do religion here
Speaker 1: or whatever. We all have a spiritual brain and it
Speaker 1: is allowing us to return to our nature, which is
Speaker 1: the open system, the oneness with all life. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: quotes you're saying religious war is outdated. That is the
Speaker 1: best quote in like the history of humanity. You just
Speaker 1: gave him my favorite quote of all of humanity. So
Speaker 1: no big deal. My willing that is that is our
Speaker 1: fate right, religious war is outdated? Yes, yes, so incredible
Speaker 1: because you know, also like Andrew Newberg's work. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you ever collaborated with him, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: and you know there's there's a a cadet of reason
Speaker 1: boy as well. Yes, yes, And I've I've published papers
Speaker 1: on him on the on the creative brain, and it's
Speaker 1: lots of similar regions and things and some differences, and
Speaker 1: so you know, the default mode network is is that's
Speaker 1: actually an interesting sort of thing. I've been trying to
Speaker 1: reconcile between the creativity literature and the spirituality literature. If
Speaker 1: you really want to nerd out with me, is that
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the like the mindfulness world
Speaker 1: or whatever they they they they like treat the default
Speaker 1: mode network as though it's the enemy. And then in
Speaker 1: the creativity world it's considered the best things in sliced bread,
Speaker 1: you know, And obviously you know, no brain network is
Speaker 1: all good or all bad at all times and no times. Obviously, However,
Speaker 1: those literatures tend to be separate from each other. And
Speaker 1: I've been trying to argue that there are times when
Speaker 1: it's profound, quite profound to keep that default network active
Speaker 1: and really dive into your yourself narratives and your meaning
Speaker 1: making aspects. And then there are times when it's good
Speaker 1: to transcend it. But it's but it's not the enemy
Speaker 1: or or the angel. Well, I think you put that. Well,
Speaker 1: there's different moments in a creative process or a spiritual process,
Speaker 1: and there are times, you know, when I'm speaking about
Speaker 1: the spiritual brain, I'll say, we may want to quiet
Speaker 1: our brain so that we might then across the threshold
Speaker 1: into an awakened state where we receive inspiration. If I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about creativity, there's times to quiet in times where
Speaker 1: you've got to keep that working on the back burner
Speaker 1: and bam, then it comes right. So I think a
Speaker 1: great project for us all is to sit down and
Speaker 1: do a mapping. Yes, human transcendent experience as a process.
Speaker 1: I love this. I love this, just like they've done
Speaker 1: with the creative process. Yeah. No, that makes so much sense,
Speaker 1: so much since I've been talking to researchers in the
Speaker 1: field who study the neuroscience of like mindfulness, like Judson Brewer,
Speaker 1: and have tried to put together panels of my creativity
Speaker 1: colleagues and him discussing how to reconcile these findings. You know,
Speaker 1: but I think that the process model is going to
Speaker 1: be the best way of thinking about it because and
Speaker 1: the systems systems way of thinking, because I don't like
Speaker 1: how the field this is like my pet peeve and
Speaker 1: so you're activating in my pet peep right now, is
Speaker 1: how the field tends to be treat as though they're
Speaker 1: like it's either all good or all bad at all times,
Speaker 1: right or no times like the psilocybin research, right, like
Speaker 1: Michael Pollin's book The whole triumphant narrative was his book
Speaker 1: is that he quieted the default mode network. And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, hell no, why is that like the
Speaker 1: ultimate in life is that you quieted the default mode network.
Speaker 1: That really like upset me because I think that's not
Speaker 1: the most complex, nuanced narrative we can have about the
Speaker 1: neuroscience of it, do you know what I mean? It
Speaker 1: makes for a good story, but it doesn't make for
Speaker 1: a truthful nuance of the importance of that brain network
Speaker 1: for a full, meaningful life. It's so told from the
Speaker 1: level of experience. There's times to quiet our brain. But
Speaker 1: then I would say, so that we might then receive. So,
Speaker 1: you know, stop the racket. The check clear. What did
Speaker 1: he say to me? You know, stop the racket, so
Speaker 1: that we then might allow the muse to visit hear
Speaker 1: God's voice. That notion of a receptive faculty is more
Speaker 1: than just silence. It's not quiet in the brain. It's
Speaker 1: a prepared stance in being to receive. So you know,
Speaker 1: I've been to school, Scott. It's so beautiful where I've
Speaker 1: seen middle school boys get into a state of what
Speaker 1: that scho we'll call the spasio as their recept transcendent practice.
Speaker 1: Seventh grade boy closes his eyes and what is God
Speaker 1: telling me? Now? What is my higher power? Whether it's Jesus,
Speaker 1: hash allowed the universe, force spirit? What is being said
Speaker 1: to me? Now? Can we do a practice? Yes? Is that? Okay? Yes? Please? Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a practice. I always honor the teacher from
Speaker 1: whom it came, doctor Gary Weaver, who was a man
Speaker 1: who worked with court referred boys the ways that no
Speaker 1: one else wanted to work with. And the third time
Speaker 1: that these boys went before the judge, they had a
Speaker 1: choice of going to grown up prison or they could
Speaker 1: go out into the moab the desert with doctor Weaver,
Speaker 1: who loved these boys. These boys had been terribly abused
Speaker 1: and no longer had a connection to their higher power.
Speaker 1: There had been spiritual injury, you know, and moral injuries.
Speaker 1: When the world as we know it doesn't hold spiritual injury.
Speaker 1: More foundationally is when we feel unworthy before God, or
Speaker 1: we can connect to our higher power, or we no
Speaker 1: longer feel open system to all life. He knew with
Speaker 1: all the science now you know thirty years later mirrors,
Speaker 1: which is at the heart of trauma, is a damaged
Speaker 1: capacity to be in relationship to God and all life
Speaker 1: to system. And he brought these boys into the desert
Speaker 1: to help, which is what I find so valuable, help
Speaker 1: renew and reverse their spiritual injuries so that they could grow.
Speaker 1: We're going to do practice. Let's do it. Just you
Speaker 1: got me excited, Okay, let's do so. I'm going to
Speaker 1: invite you to clear out your inner space and close
Speaker 1: your eyes. Take seven breasths to open up your inner space.
Speaker 1: Sounds like screaming in the background. Those are peacocks. What
Speaker 1: is that? At the moment, I'm in I'm in Miami
Speaker 1: and I live with peacocks. Incredible. Now we have to
Speaker 1: start over. Five. I invite you to set before you
Speaker 1: a table. This is your table, and to your table
Speaker 1: you may invite anyone living or deceased who truly has
Speaker 1: your best interest in mind, anyone living or deceased who
Speaker 1: truly has your best interest in mind, and with them,
Speaker 1: while sitting there, ask them if they love you. And
Speaker 1: now you may invite your higher self, the part of
Speaker 1: you that is so much more than what you have
Speaker 1: or don't have, what you've done or not done, your
Speaker 1: true eternal higher self, and ask you if you love you.
Speaker 1: And now, finally you may invite your higher power, whatever
Speaker 1: word you may know, however you understand your higher power,
Speaker 1: and ask your higher power if they love you. And now,
Speaker 1: with all of those people sitting there right now, what
Speaker 1: do they need to share? What do you need to know?
Speaker 1: What do they need to tell you? Now, when you're ready,
Speaker 1: I invite you back. Wow, amazing, this is your counsel
Speaker 1: and they're always there for you. Incredibly powerful practice. What
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful practice. I don't know if I can continue
Speaker 1: this interview right now. I'm going to address you. Put
Speaker 1: both feet in and really the journey right you chose
Speaker 1: to explore that. I will say that this is our birthright.
Speaker 1: Those are real relationships. Our natural seat of transcendent relationship
Speaker 1: is loving and holding, It is guiding, and we are
Speaker 1: never alone. Oh my gosh, I just want to thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on my podcast today and
Speaker 1: enlightening everyone about how they can be more enlightened. I
Speaker 1: loved every minute of it, and thank you for this
Speaker 1: deep connection. Thank you, thank you. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: react in some way to something you heard, I encourage
Speaker 1: you to join in the discussion at thus ecology podcast
Speaker 1: dot com or on our YouTube page thus Ecology Podcast.
Speaker 1: We also put up some videos of some episodes on
Speaker 1: our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check
Speaker 1: that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
Speaker 1: the show, and tune in next time for more on
Speaker 1: the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.