Good Life Project - Lisa Miller, Ph.D. | The Surprising Science of Spirituality

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

Whether you consider yourself a spiritual person, or not, your brain - yes, you - is wired for spirituality in a way you never imagined. It is activated, turned on, and greatly benefits, from spiritual experience. And, it’s not just your brain, it’s your body, your health, your relationships, your work, your life. Which begs the question, “what even IS spiritual experience?” And, beyond feeling more deeply connected to some notion of Source, God, or oneness, how does it affect us? And, is there science that explains it? That’s where we’re headed with today's guest, acclaimed researcher, and pioneer in the science of spirituality, Dr. Lisa Miller. Dr. Miller is a professor of twenty years in the Clinical Psychology Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is the Founder and Director of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, the first Ivy League graduate program and research institute in spirituality and psychology, and has held over a decade of joint appointments in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical School. Her innovative research has been published in more than one hundred peer-reviewed articles in leading journals, including Cerebral Cortex, The American Journal of Psychiatry, and the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.Dr. Miller is the New York Times bestselling author of The Spiritual Child and her newest book, The Awakened Brain, explores her groundbreaking research on the science of spirituality and how to engage it in our lives. In my conversation with her today, she uncovers more about the innate spirituality that's within all of us, dives deeper into the research that connects spirituality to wellbeing, and awakens the question that's inside us all, which is how do I live a meaningful and purposeful life? And, be sure to listen and join in when she guides me through a powerful thought experience, in real-time, that reveals insights about my own spiritual sense that surprised even me!You can find Lisa at: Website | InstagramIf you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Adam Gazzaley about neuroscience, psychedelic and spiritual experience.Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKEDVisit Our Sponsor Page For a Complete List of Vanity URLs & Discount Codes.Solo Stove: Make more backyard memories with solo stove's award-winning fire pits, stoves, & grills. Right now, you can get big discounts on all fire pits during Solo Stove's Summer Sale. And use promo code GLP at SoloStove.com for an extra $10 off. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

there's a strong spiritual core within a healthy, strong whole person. And that's not just people who are pious or devout. It's not for the priests or the monks or the best meditators. We all have this. It's an innate spiritual core. And when we engage our spiritual core, life unfolds entirely differently. And that's a scientific statement based on peer review science. So whether you consider yourself a spiritual person or not your brain yes you is wired for spirituality in a way that you never imagined it's activated turned on and greatly benefits from a spiritual experience and it's not just your brain it's your body your health your relationship your work your life which begs question, what even is spiritual experience? And beyond feeling more deeply connected to some notion

of source or God or oneness, how does it affect us? And is there hard science that explains this? That is where we're headed with today's guest, acclaimed researcher and pioneer in the science of spirituality, Dr. Lisa Miller. Dr. Miller is a professor of 20 years in the clinical psychology program at Teachers College, Columbia University. She's the founder and director of the Spirituality Mind-Body Institute, the first Ivy League graduate program and research institute in spirituality and psychology, and has held over a decade of joint appointments in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical School.

Her innovative research, it has been published in more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and leading journals, including Cerebral Cortex, the American Journal of Psychiatry, and the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. And Dr. Miller is the New York Times bestselling author of The Spiritual Child and her newest book, The Awakened Brain. It explores her groundbreaking research on the science of spirituality and how to engage it in our lives. In my conversation with her today, she uncovers more about the innate spirituality that is within all of us, even if we have no idea it exists or we don't use the word spiritual to describe it.

She dives deeper into the research that connects spirituality to wellbeing and awakens the questions that's inside all of us, which is how do I live a more meaningful, connected, and purposeful life? And be sure to listen and join in when she guides me, which I didn't expect, through a powerful thought experience in real time during the conversation that revealed insights about my own spiritual sense that surprised even me. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. We'll be right back. You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk.

The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. I'm deeply fascinated by your work and also your personal journey. My dad actually was one of those rare birds who he actually graduated from Columbia and became an experimental psychologist and taught for 50 years. And, but most of the time, actually five, Oh yeah. It's gotta be pretty close to that. Yeah. But most of the time he was actually running his own research lab on human cognition. So I've been sort of exposed to all sorts of different explorations of how people work, of human behavior, of the learning process for years, and also just the research process.

And in that world, I also came to learn over time that anything that seems to stray from what's considered valid science often raises eyebrows to the point of creating almost an outcast feeling. I'm so curious, when you step into this world and you're clinically trained, classically trained, you end up studying with Marty Seligman at UPenn, who in his earlier days was certainly a maverick in the space introducing a lot of the ideas of positive psych. When you step out into that world and then not too far into your own trajectory, you start to explore notions of spirituality. I'm curious more broadly, I want to get into what led you to do that, but I'm also fascinated when you're just considering your own career trajectory and how you're stepping into and building your presence in the world of academia and you start to do this, how is that received?

You're an insider. You understand the culture of academia. And this was my view. My view was that I truly wanted to be an academic, to be in hot pursuit of the truth. That's the only reason I had. And there was absolutely no other reason to be an academic. Everyone in my college math classes went on to make 10, 20, 100 times more money than me. I was only there to pursue truth. And so within that perspective as a 25-year-old, a 30-year-old, a 35-year-old, I really didn't want a fake career, which for me would have been pursuing a question that didn't grab my heart. So I wanted something that in my deepest, deepest inner wisdom resonated as some pathway, some trailhead to truth that wasn't immediately obvious to the naked eye, that somehow through the lens of science, whichever method that

might be, whether it's epidemiology or MRI studies, whatever the method, I wanted to be able to use this unique lens and point of focus to see something that wasn't apparent in mainstream culture that was important. And in my own life, what I had seen, whether it was in my own journey, the journey of my family, the journey of the family surrounding us as a child, was that when things were really, really painful, I mean awful, the way through was the spiritual path that met wonderful psychiatrists and wonderful psychologists who'd helped people I love very much. But what really saved the day was the spiritual path. And I can share with you, I've never shared this in a podcast before, but there's a relative I just loved very, very, very much. And she was suffering terribly and had been to all of the best psychiatrists and all the best psychologists. And we called the top doctors and the top cities and

was not getting better. So we went to the rabbi and we said, rabbi, we have this relative. We love her so much. Can you help? And sure enough, it was that. It was rejoining a spiritual community that reversed things for her. So I thought, you know, mental health, silent on spirituality, it's like you leave a gaping hole right in the middle, like this huge donut-sized hole. It made no sense to me. It's not what I'd seen work. And when in time I became a clinical psychologist and a clinical scientist, I found myself smack on an inpatient unit during the high holidays.

And again, I'm Jewish. So there we were of the high holidays, people with recurrent major depression who felt so ashamed and unworthy that they sat in little balls, you know, people so explosive with decades of bipolar that they couldn't hold it in when they were angry or transgressed. And when it was asked, you know, what are we doing for the high holidays? And the answer there on the inpatient unit in the nineties was nothing. Everyone who was Jewish in the entire unit, I looked around the circle in our community meeting and they sank into their worst level of symptoms. So the depressive looked more ashamed and more withdrawn and the bipolar gentleman

exploded and marched out. And I thought, the patients know what they need. And every one of us is only two weeks away from being a patient if the worst things happen to us. So what is it that we need? And I showed up as then an intern, not a rabbi, but someone who had sat by the side of my parents and grandparents for the high holidays. And I facilitated a Yom Kippur service on the inpatient unit. And what I saw was that through the prayers that they'd known their whole lives and through the sense of spiritual community, not just any community, but a spiritual community of the heart, I saw tremendous and immediate reawakenings of what I would say, the brightness of the core person or the spirit.

And that wasn't happening with decades of treatment. So after that experience confirming that, which I'd seen in my whole childhood and young adulthood, my career became about pursuing the place of spiritual awareness in the whole person, which in time through the evidence has come to show that there's a strong spiritual core within a healthy, strong whole person. And that's not just people who are pious or devout. It's not for the priests or the monks or the best meditators. We all have this. It's an innate spiritual core. And when we engage our spiritual core, life unfolds entirely differently. And that's a scientific statement based on peer review science. They're not Dr. Miller's favorite ideas, but peer review science. Yeah. So it's interesting to me. You describe an upbringing that had, it sounds like strong and regular exposure to faith,

to religion. So I grew up as a, until very recently, I spent my entire life in New York and I grew up in a Jewish household as well. We were Jewish by tradition and, you know. And three or four days a year, we'd go to temple for the high holidays. And that was kind of it. And so for me, my association with faith, it didn't have anything that I would have identified in my earlier life, especially as a genuine spiritual connection. It was more of an obligation and there were more of a set of traditions where we would do certain things on a regular basis,

just because that's what you did to be a part of a community. And it certainly sounds like later in your life, you have teased out the distinctions between spirituality and religiosity. If you can think back, was that distinction apparent to you as a kid as well, or were they just conflated into one thing? So you're absolutely right, Jonathan. And let's put that way up front, that two-thirds of people in the United States say, I am spiritual and I am religious, whether Hindu or Jewish or Muslim or Catholic, it's through my faith tradition that I experienced my spiritual life. And 30% of people in the United States say, I am spiritual, but I am not religious.

It is through nature or music or relationship that I feel a deep spiritual presence, a love, a connection, being part of something more that is loving, holding, and guiding. So not something more meaning the state or a group that does bad things to people, but something more meaning part of a deeper connection to life that's loving, holding, and guiding. So you're absolutely right. Now, did I know there was spirituality with or without religion? Or did I know there was spirituality dressed up in different faith traditions? And the answer was yes, and here's why. And Jonathan, I really appreciate this because we're going places I've never discussed before. I grew up as a religious minority. I was the only Jewish kid in a predominantly Christian community,

and the majority of people who I knew growing up were incredibly loving of me. I remember being invited to Bible study, and there was no attempt to convert me. It's just, will you join us for Bible study? You've spent the night with, you know, I was 10 years old with my classmate and it was time for Bible study and everyone else there was of a evangelical tradition. And as we opened up, the mother of my friend was so careful to make me feel loved and included. She said, we have here, Lisa Miller was once Lisa Friedman. We have here Lisa Friedman and Lisa Friedman is a Jew. And of course we know that the Jews are part of our long, important, loving heritage. It's very special. And so we invite her

here and they invited me to lead a prayer in the way that my mother had taught me. And so my experience with people of different faith traditions was that there was a big blast of love and spirituality. And they happened to dress that up in Christianity and some of them evangelical. And I was a Jew, but I was loved. And it's that deep sense of human love that's actually a spiritual love

that we can bring to each other that allowed me actually, to be honest, to go through a long 20 plus years in academia where most people didn't see things this way. I wasn't used to people seeing things my way. Yeah. I mean, especially when you then bring that into the world of academia, right? It's not like spirituality was left out of the exploration. It was certainly not centered a lot and there were a lot of raised eyebrows. But even if you wanted to go there, from at least my understanding of the literature,

there was a pretty longstanding conflation between religiosity and spirituality. There wasn't really a distinction made and it all tended to point towards God. I mean, if you look at a lot of the traditional essays that are still used to this day, many of them aren't about a more generalized transcendence. They speak to your relationship to God. So teasing it out. Yeah. In 1997, which is fairly recently, there was the first published article that on empirical ground teased apart religion in a very convincing way from a form of deep, inherent, what I might call natural spirituality. And that was a study, which was a twin study. Ken Kendler at the time was the leading genetic epidemiologist to use the twin study method. And

he took this hammer and he looked at everything from personality to likelihood of diagnosis in one's life to temperament. And it was really jaw dropping when he brought the twin study methodology to exactly the point you're raising, Jonathan, which is, is there a difference between spirituality and religion? Anything here more than environmentally transmitted? Is anything here innate? And what Kenler found was that religion, of course, is the gift of our ancestors, our community, our parents. It is entirely environmentally taught. It is environmentally transmitted, religion. But spirituality, and exactly the way in which you speak of it, Jonathan, was innate. It was one-third innate, two-thirds environmentally cultivated, which means that every single one of us, just as we're physical and

emotional and cognitive beings, just like we have two eyes and a nose, has a inherent natural spirituality. When Kendler found this, it was the first time ever, certainly to the best of my knowledge, that a scientist had identified innate natural spirituality with or without religion. So again, if two-thirds of people in the United States say I'm spiritual and religious and 30% say I'm spiritual but not religious, with or without religion, we are talking about the same core natural human spirituality. And the most pressing point to come forward, I thought, from that finding was that if we are talking about the same core natural human spirituality. And the most pressing point to come forward, I thought from that finding was that if we are all natural spiritual beings with the same core endowment, of course, on the fringes, there's human variability, just like music talent, right? I dance, but you might compose, but we all have the same basic apparatus.

There's a part of our brain that is spiritually perceptive and receptive. Well, the first thing that I think of is back to the impatience and how suffering is ameliorated through the engagement of our natural spiritual brain. If we can take our spiritual brain and our deepest, darkest, painful moments, awaken our spiritual brain, that is the path road to not just recovery back to baseline, but renewal. So that's what I think. Jonathan, truthfully, right now, this mass dual pandemic that in the aftermath of COVID, we still have the comorbid pandemic of depression and despair and addiction and even suicide. I think as individuals, there is no time better than in our deepest, most painful moment than

to dig in and ask the more profound questions of life. What have I done with my life? And how much do I really control my lot? Or maybe am I asking the wrong questions of life instead of what do I want and how am I going to get it? Maybe the question, the conversation we can bring to life is, hey, what is life showing me now? That's a dialogue with life.

It's a lot less egotistical. It's a lot less solipsistic. It sort of says, we're on a journey, but we're not on a journey marching forward on an inert stage, stuffing ourselves with everything we want. We're living in tandem with a living world, with each other and with nature. Actually, what is life showing me now? It says, how do I walk together with life? One of the things that you talk about and that you share about, I think, has become evident through our conversation is this notion of, on the one hand, an awakened brain has a certain protective effect when we meet depression or adversity. There's this other really fascinating relationship between the experience of despair as almost a gateway to the awakened life or to the spiritual life the science on the brain is

clear on exactly that point bottoming out is the knock at the door for the awakening of our spiritual awareness suffering is an invitation to a deepening of spiritual life and we see this through the lens of science if we look at people who say, my personal spirituality is deeply important to me, they are two and a half times more likely, 250% more likely to have suffered deeply in the past 10 years. And yet having in their darkest, most grueling, despairing moment, deepened and connected more profoundly to spirit, to source and into your life, having awoken spiritually and built a strong spiritual core, that very same person is then 75% less likely to have a deep depression in the next 10 years. And that goes up to 90% in people who face the most grueling circumstances, who grow up under a rain cloud of mistreatment or genetically predisposed for depression, spirituality is even more, it is growth and awakening, a deepening of spiritual

life that prepares us for the station in life that we need to inherit, to be more loving and accepting as parents, to be more kind to those who work for us, to be more creative in solving real problems that press upon our global suffering. So what is despair? Despair is the gateway to a deepening of spiritual life. We are hardwired as such, but we still need to say yes to this transformative moment. And when we do, we strengthen our awakened awareness. And not only are we girded against a subsequent depression, life gains a deeper dimension. Life literally opens up by an entire dimension. And we realize that we are loved and held buoyant. We are guided by an intelligent universe

and we are never alone. And not only that, we show up for one another to be loving, holding, guiding, and never leave anyone alone. That is real awakening. And it comes to us through suffering. By saying that, I want to make clear also that you're not inviting people to go out and seek suffering. You're basically saying- Oh, good point. Right. You're saying, look, we are all going to have moments where we're brought to our knees. We're all going to have moments where we suffer. By the design of life. Right. This is not something you need to go out and seek to become as a gateway because you want to reach this state. It's going to happen to you. And when it does, effectively what I'm hearing is

you're saying as brutal as it is, and we don't disacknowledge the very real pain that comes with suffering, that there's also this window of possibility to open a door to something spiritual, to some sort of shift, to some greater sense of connectedness that is available to us if we see it in that moment, which may change the quality of the experience in some meaningful way, both in the moment and potentially for the rest of your life. Jonathan, your point is tremendously important. It's not self-inflicted suffering. If I poke a needle in my eye, I'm not going to wake up spiritually. It is the suffering that is a signal of the emergence of an awakening, a growth that we need to embrace to inherit our next higher

station in life. Suffering is a signal. Suffering is the knock at the door. It's the ignition, the sound of the ignition that we are growing into something. Our old life doesn't fit us anymore. We're pressing up against our old life. It is way too constricted, almost like a cage. And our heart, our soul, our deep inner life needs to grow and expand, be more loving, more connected, more attuned to the nature of life so that we can inherit our next station in life, to lead, to care, to love, to be more inventive. So spirituality is often found through suffering. It can also come through moments of great joy, the birth of a child or illumination. But what our studies show, whether it's for an MRI study or a long-term epidemiological clinical course study, is that very

often is through deep moments of despair is awakened a deeper, truer understanding of what life really is and who we really are to one another and to the source of our life. And when we start to expand our awareness, when we wake up, when we awaken spiritually, we see into life in a much more profound way that is protective against the next unwanted event. Because life is no longer so much about getting what I want, but rather as in taking this moment and seeing what is being indicated, what is being shown. How can I lean forward into my spiritual path? And those are such important and powerful questions. I actually want to circle back to those. Mayday, mayday.

We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die.

Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.

I want to go deeper into this one point that we started with because I want to understand a little bit more. I'm fascinated by this. When you say there's an innate basis, and it's a third innate and two-thirds environmental behavioral, what are we talking about when we're talking about innate? Is there a genetic expression or representation for spirituality that exists within all of us? Yes. So we have identified some of the single candidate genes. But to answer in full your question, what a twin study can do is capture the extent to which something is innate before we even know which specific genes are

there. Just all told, broadly put, over the vast human population, the differences between us are, which is to say the thing itself in the end, is one third innate. Now that has been replicated in some studies to be a little bit more than a third, but it's by and large about a third innate. And what did Kendler mean more specifically by that? Kendler had used items in a twin study that he had taken from a fellow Ron Kessler, who for many years was at Harvard and Michigan doing population-based studies. The items were based primarily at that time, to your point, on a Judeo-Christian sample. The items that showed themselves to have an innate basis to them, one-third innate basis, were I turn to God for guidance in times of difficulty.

So it wasn't I believe in God. It was the perception of being in relationship, a transcendent relationship. When I have a tough decision to make, I ask really, what does God want me to do? Now, those questions, again, they were anchored in a population-based study, which at that time in the late nineties was primarily Judeo-Christian. Since that time, we can take the core notion of a transcendent relationship and extend that across a much more broad and inclusive range of cultural, religious, and human perceptions. So for instance, Ken Wilber, I think, put this beautifully. There are three broadly put ways in which we can be in relationship to the transcendent. And one is

indeed the Judeo-Christian heritage in which we are dietically in a conversation as I speak to you and I hear an answer in my heart. I'm not psychotic. I don't think being in my ear, I hear an answer. I perceive it in my mind's eye, whether visually or acoustically, there's an awareness. Wilbur pointed out the deep transcendent relationship is also right there in our Eastern faith traditions, where we are aware of being part of a oneness of existence. So I am not alone as a splintered little being, Lisa on a chair here outside New York. I am part of the great field of love and consciousness and oneness and creation, whatever language might be yours. I'm part of what exists.

People often say in nature, they feel that way. And not only does the transcendent relationship apply to a sense of oneness, it also applies to the experience in many of our rich indigenous traditions where we see source or God, one Anicci creator in and through all living beings so crow and sun and earth and water so whether it's in the first person the oneness the second person you and i talking or the third person crow wind sun these are all transcendent relationships and they actually what we finally figured out in our mri studies they all call on the same neural correlates. So the Spirituality and Mind-Body Institute at Columbia with our colleagues at Yale Medical School invited people into the functional MRI, the movie camera MRI, to watch actual blood flow,

brain in action. And whether I am of an Eastern tradition, a Judeo-Christian tradition, an indigenous tradition, spiritual but not religious, this transcendent relationship moved the same neural correlates. And that's an awakening of our natural spiritual brain. That's the common core of spiritual awareness we all have. And we see that through other types of studies too. Like when young adults come of age, no matter if they're in Uganda or Thailand or Canada or the US, they start asking the same questions spontaneously. What is the purpose of my life? Not just, you know, am I going to be a pianist, a doctor or a parent? It is in the ultimate sense. And it doesn't matter if they have religion or don't have religion, they start asking. And it doesn't matter if they're from a

theistic or non-theistic dominant culture, They start asking. And they also want to know what right action is all around the world. So we're incredible. We're amazing. Look how we're made. I mean, it's so beautiful. that there are certain experiences, certain questions that we all dance with. And the other part of my curiosity around this also, and I know you've devoted a lot of work to this, is so you say when Kendler's study came out, it becomes this eye-opening moment where it's like, oh, there may be an innate basis for this thing. Actually, there is an innate basis for this thing. Yes. And then the question in my mind is, how early do we actually become aware of this? And when does it express itself? And you've done

a lot of work with kids and adolescents. You were part of a group of investigators that published a really fascinating study in 2019 on spirituality in adolescents. And it was fascinating to see that even at an age where I think a lot of adults would sort of almost roll their eyes and say, come on, in an 11-year-old, in a 12-year-old, in a 13-year-old, they're spiritual beings. And you've done really interesting research that shows, well, yeah, and we can actually see it. And not only can we see it and measure it, but it affects them in really powerful ways that are good for both them and for society. So Jonathan, that I think is probably one of the most beautiful and profound implications of this science, that a little tiny baby comes not a blank state, not a blank slate at all.

A little tiny baby comes not as a blank slate, but already as a knower. That's pretty amazing. And perhaps the only other capacity to be identified of such by mainstream science is language. We come with something called natural language. So whether I grow up speaking Chinese or English or French, the switches are thrown in different directions, but the switches of a common language faculty are thought to exist in all little people, all young children. Well, so too, we have an inherent spiritual capacity that sure, the two thirds embrace can start to shape our natural spiritual core with a specific language or set of symbols or

practices. But whatever the faith tradition, there's that deep, sane core in the very young child of spiritual awareness. Some research teams have tracked the voice of this natural spirituality in young children. Some research teams have documented the questions or assertions that children make across different traditions or outside of any faith tradition that represent the voice, if you will, the common inherent knowing of natural spirituality. And here's an example. A young child will perceive that we can know something without being told.

There's such a thing as direct knowing. As adults, we might call that intuition, a gut instinct, mystical awareness, but we can spontaneously have information in some models tapped from the consciousness field without being verbally told or reading it on paper. The young child perceives direct knowing unless socialized out of it. I think this is a form of direct awareness that while in every child is probably about 80 to 90% of the time socialized out of us through mainstream education. Where on the page do you see that? Back up how you know that. But I just knew, well, how could you just know? Who told you that? So at the inner table of human knowing, we're

wired with an intuitive and a mystic and a skeptic alongside the logician and the empiricist. Every single one of us has an internal capacity for multiple forms of knowing, multiple epistemologies. And that includes logic, empiricism, as well as intuition and mystical knowing, and of course, the skeptic. What happens in K-12 education is that the logician and the empiricist are invited to the table, the inner table of human knowing, but the mystic and the intuitive are left out. And so much so is that table unbalanced that there is yet the prime, most powerful job of all given to the skeptic, who is the bouncer at the door. So by the time we graduate from K-12, we have a skeptic as a bouncer at the door and at the grand table of knowing.

The two poovahs are the logician and the empiricist. So much so that knowing through deep intuition, knowing through mystical experiences, knowing through synchronicity are wiped off the table as highbrow forms of knowing. And that is to our detriment. That is tremendously to our detriment. We're playing with half a brain. And yet these are capacities because they are our birthright to which we all have access. If we say, yes, let's just entertain the curiosity that this could be real knowing, that this could be

ontologically valid knowing, that this form of knowing, gut instinct and intuition, a mystical experience, a synchronicity could bear fruit. And the experiment within our own lives is, hey, I was just thinking about that guy. I had not seen him in a decade. I was just thinking about him. And he just walked across the sidewalk in front of my car. Far too improbabilistic to have happened by chance. Any good scientist doesn't throw out that such a remarkable confluence. Let's just be curious. May we invite our curiosity? Hey, ding, noted. What might unfold today or tomorrow having to do with this confluence between my inner thoughts about that fellow and the fact he just walked

across my path? Maybe something about him or how he played in my life is up on top today, is germane for this moment. Be curious, be a scientist. And very often when I teach this to students at Columbia, they become riveted because they very quickly start to see that there is no hard difference between inner and outer in the unfolding of daily events. There's one consciousness field in and through us and around us, and they are delighted and fascinated. At first, they're skeptical and kick it pretty hard. It violates everything that they were taught by omission. But it's very exciting to them. One student came in

and said, I thought, what is this synchronicity BS? I thought, what is this professor teaching us? I got in my car. I drove home. I parked at my usual Walmart, I got out. And when I came back, someone had put a flyer on my car that said, do you perceive synchronicity? And then I got home and I thought, well, that's kind of a coincidence. It's not necessarily synchronicity, coincidence, synchronicity. What's the difference? Well, synchronicity claims there's a deep common unifying presence under two events, not just two random spurious events, that there's some common consciousness presence

that is shown in both events. One thing in two places. Then I got home and I played the machine and it was my sister. She said, call me back. So I called her back and it turns out my sister's reading the exact same book on synchronicity that I was required to read for class. One thing in two places. Yeah. And these things happen to us all day, every day. But what you're describing is we're taught to either ignore them or look at them as being, oh, it's just this wild coincidence. There's no way to actually link any of this stuff together. It's interesting to me also, because as you're describing this, and sort of the way that we almost shun intuition or some

sort of transcendent access to wisdom or knowledge, it feels like you also see certain people in certain academic or scientific domains, acknowledging it, yet trying to actually create a logical or scientific overlay. Like what popped into my mind immediately was like Daniel Kahneman's work, Behavioral Economist, where he's describing these two thinking systems, a fast and slow system. One is system two. One of them, you know, sort of like trying to deconstruct and create a scientific basis for the more intuitive, fast thinking system,

which just brings us to an insight or realization or an awakening without us being able to sort of like logically or analytically reverse engineer how we got there. It just kind of comes. And he and a lot of folks in the behavioral economics domain have tried to figure out what is the methodology under that? Is it just the unconscious connections that our brain makes between decades of massive data sets and we don't realize we're making it. You're giving sort of like another possibility here saying, maybe there's actually something bigger going on. So Jonathan, that is precisely the crossroads

where we stand now in science. And here's how I think about it. Most of our education and most of our discussion within mainstream science looks only at historical experience. In my book, The Awakened Brain, I speak of achieving awareness. We are exactly as you describe, high-powered computers, AI computers that quickly run all of the data from today back historically, perhaps in our own lives and maybe those in an actual computer of other lives. Achieving strategies, tactics, computations all rely on that which has already occurred. Our connection with the transcendent, our what I call awakened awareness, takes us at

the level of gut instinct, intuition, a dream in a direction with information we have yet to encounter. It is as if we are called or the awareness to be derived from this information is front loaded. And I'll give you an example. Would you be open for a brief thought exercise? Curious for a thought exercise? Yeah, course okay good okay great so jonathan may i invite you to just clear out your inner space take five breaths and for the sake of being able to engage that much more perhaps close your eyes i invite you to identify a moment in your life go back to a moment in your life where you had done everything right. You had prepared. You'd done your research.

You had examined thoroughly all the data. And strategically, your plan was right. And this may have been to get that job or that promotion that you duly prepared and tooled up based on all evidence or to solve a problem or take your organization to the next step. Perhaps it was personal, connect with someone, a partner, a friend, a new colleague, but you've done everything right. A plus B plus C for that red door. You may have taken weeks, maybe even years to build for that red door. And it was 99% yours. And there you go. You're up. You reach for the red door. You've done everything right. You grab the handle, but it's stuck. And you can't believe

it because you've done everything right. A plus B plus C. So you kick it, you maybe rattle it, and it's jammed. It could be infuriating. It could be perhaps as it falls off depressing, but only because that red door is jammed. You have no choice. You shift, you turn, you rotate 40, perhaps over that 120 degrees. And in your road of life, you suddenly see a bright, radiant, yellow open door. I mean, you might've said there weren't such things as yellow doors or you'd never considered yellow doors, but that was that job that was far more exciting, far more suited, or that person who woke up a part of yourself that gave you joy, that mentor, that friend, that partner, you never would have met them otherwise. Your whole life might be

different now because of that yellow door. Your whole life might be different now because of that yellow door. Your whole life is profoundly different now because of that yellow door. And at this hairpin turn from the jammed red door where you shift, turn, and move to the yellow door, was there anybody who gave a hand? Anyone who gave you new information, told you a story, a jewel from their own path that you'd never heard before. It could have been a friend of 20 years who for the first time revealed a story or a grandparent a bit from their own young adulthood. It could have been someone you met for three minutes at the coffee shop or on the subway, perhaps it's something of a trail angel and showed you how to navigate that U-turn, that hairpin turn to the yellow door. And as you sit

back now and you look at the stuck red door, the hairpin turn, the trail angel, and the open yellow door, how does life really work? Sure, we got to prepare. We've got to research. We've got a plan and A plus B plus C need to be lined up. But the notion that we can somehow control the biggest, most important things in our life appears to be untrue because control is a very thin layer of icing on a profound, deep pound cake of dynamism, flux, perhaps even uncertainty? And could it be that the bright yellow doors in our lives and the trail angels who point the way tell us that we are not narrowly mechanistic makers of our path, but discoverers of a journey. Our gift of curiosity, our gift of discovery, our gift of being living, walking scientists on the road of life perhaps suggests that life itself is conscious,

life itself abundant, life itself guiding. As you sit back, you see the stuck red door, the hairpin turn, the trail angel and the open yellow door. Take even two more steps back. Where in this picture is source, the consciousness field, spirit? Some say God, Hashem, Jesus, where is the source of life in your roadmap, your road of life? So for me, it's all around me. Tell me more. It's, and I've never associated a notion of God or something larger as a human-like being. It's a feeling, it's an energy. And it. And I feel like to me, when you ask that question, like where is source in that moment, in that experience, it is an energy that buoys me as I make hard decisions. And there's an intelligence to it. And it's also within me.

It's not all around me. It basically perfuses, it's outside and it's inside. And it's also within me. It's not all around me. It basically, it perfuses, you know, it gets outside and it's inside and it's just, it's just kind of there. Wow. Beautiful. In us, through us and around us, booing and there's an intelligence. Beautiful. So beautiful. So beautiful. And teach that. Teach that. So here's this flash occurred to me as I was doing this exercise and beyond a whole bunch of just interesting stuff. I'm having this conversation with you. You have this fantastic trajectory that you have developed as an academic, as a teacher, as a researcher, as a leader. In the last five minutes, I experienced you more as a rabbi, because what you were guiding me through is not something, which is so interesting because you have this deeply scientific overlay that was informing

what you just walked me through. Yes. We can point to the neural correlates. Right. But at the same time, I could easily have expected to be sitting with a spiritual teacher and ask them to close my eyes and walk through similar experiences or similar exercises. And what's interesting is that the question you asked at the end is sort of like, where is source or how do you experience it my sense is that based on who is doing the guiding the question at the end would have been different because you know you're sort of like you ask a more expansive question rather than okay so how can we reduce this now to something that historically we can

rationalize or justify historically yeah so it's sort of like, it's a really interesting playing with time and space exercise. I'm right with you, Jonathan. Indeed, invites us to revisit space and time. That if there is a unit of consciousness field that is indeed intelligent and buoys us up, and we are indeed hardwired to be able to perceive the intelligent guidance. We are hardwired to feel the booing that we're loved and held. This is how we're made and this is how the world seems to work. The proof is in the pudding. We say yes to these connections of awareness. We say yes to these moments or flashes of awareness. And when we say yes, we see that this awareness bears fruit. It plays out in linear time ahead of us. So the type of catch in the catcher's mitt of a deeply intuitive or

mystical or direct perception, as we just shared, is rich. It's high pixel and it will unfold in the next two weeks, the next two years, the next 20 years. It is full of forthcoming information. But the hit at the moment is that this is important, this is booing, and this is an intelligent source offering guidance, direction. The parts of our brain that track with that are that literally the bonding network come up online. We are aware that we're loved and held just as we were loved and held as babies. The attention network shifts from a narrow top-down dorsal to a bottom of ventral. We can see new things and many people say they pop guided. And then something that I think would help us so much at this time as a society is that the parietal puts in and out hard boundaries,

which means that we are beautifully distinct and unique and live at different GPS coordinates and wear different red and blue jerseys and have different bio body suits. And at the same time, we are part of one field of consciousness, white caps on one ocean, one field of life. Can we treat each other like we're part of one field of life? I mean, the way we treat each other out there, it's barely above legal, you know, but could we treat each other as soul brother, soul sister? Yes, you in the different bio body suit with the different color jersey at the different GPS coordinate, we're the same field of life. You can feel that in the way that you in this moment, we're sharing multiple levels of knowing, you know, Jonathan, you are very to multiple levels of knowing. Well, when we, if we could all dial in and use multiple levels of knowing the brightness, the numinous, the on switch of the heart, when you meet someone who's

wearing not a red Jersey, but a blue Jersey, you're not a blue Jersey, but a red Jersey and is looking different and walking different. Yeah, that's your sister or brother. Not because it's a nice idea, but because literally, ontologically, in the nature of human construction and reality, that is your brother or sister. And you know what? They could have been born out of your same mother. It's the seed of compassion if you're open to going to that place. And we're certainly in a moment right now where we need more of that. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required,

charge time and actual results will vary. In your book, you reference this really interesting research that came out of University of Mexico. I think it was in the um like 1990s if i remember correctly from grinberg where they were looking at having two subjects meditating completely different rooms and what happened i mean as i'm reading this i'm like is this real but again it speaks to and maybe you could describe what what actually happened in that experiment but it reinforces this notion that there is something that we have access to a level of interconnectedness that is

somehow wired into us if we open ourselves to the possibility of that. Achterhoff published a study, which I think is perhaps one of the most paradigm changing. Achterhoff published a study, the evidence from which supports a real paradigm shift. And here's what she found. She had two MRI machines separated in separate buildings. In the first MRI machine, Achterhoff invited a traditional Hawaiian healer. And as he or she started to engage in their healing practice, a consistent pattern came on the fMRI. What's remarkable is that an instant later, in the second MRI in an entirely different building where the patient lay, in the second MRI surrounding the patient in an entirely different building, in an instant, came on the same pattern on the second MRI. One pattern picking up one use of the brain,

I might say the brain detecting one field of consciousness in two different places. So the idea that, you know, we wake up in the middle of the night because our child is crying, even if we can't hear them, we may wake up a parent, you know, I hear this from parents. I woke up in the middle of the night. My son was in Afghanistan. He'd just been terribly wounded. It was two in the morning and I knew something was wrong. So the parent's in her bed in Pittsburgh and the child is on the other side of the globe.

Her adult child's on the other side of the globe. When we are bonded in our families or with our partners or people with whom there's an extra bonding of love. One thing in two places, if you will, superposition, connectedness of feeling is all the more pronounced. But in truth, we are all connected. We're certainly all emanations of one source. You could go back to the Big Bang or you could go back to whichever monkeys became Adam and Eve, but we are all connected. So I'll share with you that on the eve of the war in Iraq, I put a very young child in my house, my very young child to bed, and she woke up screaming in the night. Now she didn't scream

in the night in the weeks before, and she didn't scream in the night very much after. But when we drop bombs on other people, the sensitive child, the child who comes spiritually aware, who's connected both to the reality in which we're a point and to the equal reality in which we are white caps on one ocean, we are part of one wave of human life, of creation, we are part of one wave of life. The sensitive child dials in both to the distinct and to the unit of reality and wails at the pain inflicted on so-called other children at a different GPS coordinate. This is how we're made. And we are trained, I mean, doggedly trained into a mechanistic model that only supports the level of reality at which we are distinct

material in a point. But the level of reality at which we are distinct material in a point. But the level of reality on which we are unitively part of one loving field of consciousness is equally real. Some say more, some say less. I say they're both real. It's not a contest. But when we are aware of both levels of reality, we love more, we guide each other and ourselves better, we make much better decisions. The most creative inspired moments are not made because we added A plus B plus C one more time, but because of the profound reshuffling of meaning that comes from a flash. 70% of scientists say their very best discoveries came through a mystical experience, a dream, a moment that they would call inspiration.

The rollout through empiricism and logic of the study itself was quite straightforward, but the question that guides the entire study, the question that breaks through to new terrain came through transcendent awareness for 70% of field changing scientists. That's amazing. As you're describing this level of interconnectedness also, and reflecting back on the earlier part of the conversation around, and what you continue to share around how we're sort of, you know, we're born with this sense of expansiveness and awareness, and our brains are literally wired to perceive others around us. It's systematically educated out of us. Where my brain is going is I wonder if part of this has become a system of training because the ideal for success, certainly in a Western population,

is achievement-based. You check these boxes, you accomplish this, you accumulate this. But if we're doing that against a backdrop of an assumption of scarcity, that means that along the way, we're going to have to ignore a certain amount of possible harm that we're doing to systems, to people, to communities along the way. To tolerate that as a human being would be so unbearable that the only way that we could do it would be to somehow shut down the part of ourselves that acknowledges that I am you and you are me. And as long as we live in that system, it becomes reinforced. And you're inviting us to effectively re-examine all of that. And I think our way out of feeling horribly guilty at the pain that we've caused others is to

honor the possibility of forgiveness and redemption and learning and evolution. So I tell this in my own story to start at home. When I was a child in the Midwest, I had a steak for breakfast with eggs. I had a steak for lunch at school and I had a steak for dinner, right? And animals were killed left and right. And at this point in my life, I do not want to kill an animal. And it is intolerable to me that so many mothers and babies were killed that have been my sisters and brothers on four were killed. It is hideous. It is intolerable. And yes, I was a little child, but I kept that going. I mean, in college, in my twenties, I ate meat and I no longer in my heart, in my own path, find that tolerable. So how do I live with that? And I think the way through is to say, that is where I was then.

I would like to ask forgiveness. Forgiveness, yes, of myself in the animistic sense, but really forgiveness to those who I harmed at the level of soul. I am sorry. My word is God. I'm sorry, cow, right? To apologize. We can be renewed. We can be redeemed. And I think we get stuck right here. We get stuck. We have dropped bombs on Vietnam. We have dropped bombs on Iraq. We've dropped bombs on so many people. But as you say, with such depth and clarity, I am you and you are me and we are one. So how do we get past that horror? And I think it's to forgive ourselves, but also

ask forgiveness of those who, again, inner and outer transcendent and material, those who have died, I ask your forgiveness. When I kill an animal on the highway, I ask forgiveness of that animal. I ask forgiveness of God for the wreckage that we do. So I think that we do have a way forward, but we're stuck by our own shame and sort of the dirtiness of our past. And the great thing about awakening is that it is to unfold out of the depth of love, our deepest intention forward in linear time. It is renewal.

It is redemption. It's not just back to baseline. It's been more than we were before. Which is so interesting also, right? Against the backdrop of the culture that we now live in, which is in no small part, cancellation culture. And I've always looked at this and to me, the biggest horror of this is that you take redemption off the table. You take forgiveness off the table. You take the ability to step out of whatever it is. And maybe your belief system involves not doing harm to animals or not.

But we've all done things that are either harmful or dumb, whatever it is. We've all made mistakes. We've all made bad decisions that have affected others and affected ourselves. And when you, part of the human experience is that you're running experiments all day, every day, and some of them are going to be okay. Some of them will be more towards in the direction of right action. And some of them are not. And the way that we grow and learn as human beings is to run those experiments and to be open to how they land and how they make us feel and to grow and evolve from them. The culture that we live in now, I feel like increasingly

doesn't permit that. It doesn't allow space for us to actually run the experiments, to grow as human beings and know that if we make mistakes along the way, there's a way back to wholeness, which is to continue to explore and grow. It's sort of like there needs to be a path for that. And increasingly, I feel like in culture, we're cutting that off, which makes it harder to get back to that place of wholeness or of using your language, being awakened and feeling a vaster experience of our own humanity and humanity around us. And that powerful love connecting us with one another. I mean, a love-based way of understanding renewal in one another. I agree with you. I think that cancel culture is nothing more than tit for

tat, but can we, instead of just throwing anger back at each other, say, I love you. I mean, radical, unconditional love. I love you. And I want to know you. Will you tell me your story in the first person? And I'll tell you my story in the first person. And I think love is not just like a pretty idea. I think love is actually a force in the world that creates renewal. It's not just an emotion. We might pick it up through the, like when I put my thumb or finger on a hot stove, I pick up heat. Well, we might pick up and feel as love and emotion. But I think that which we pick up is the force of regeneration. It's the force that brings together the stars. It is a force of cohesion that the human brain picks up and

experiences as love. It's a powerful force. You might listen to this conversation and start to think to yourself, yes, and this conversation is also intended for a certain type of person who's open to these ideas. So it fascinates me that you function largely in a world that is still steeped in traditional science and academia. And in fact, over the last couple of years, you've been doing this fascinating collaboration with the Pentagon, where when you think about the ideas we've been talking about and you think of this massive military and strategic and governmental institution, I think the initial impulse is to say, how on earth can these things coexist? And yet you've been going deep into this, developing this concept of the awakened campus

with them, which is now growing into a global concept. I'm so curious about what that work has looked like. Jonathan, the Army, to their credit, has taken a data-driven approach, really a research-based approach to how to build the most fit whole soldier possible. And that doesn't mean only in terms of performance. That means in terms of walking his or her own journey in life. So I will share with you that I experienced the chief, the vice chief of the army, the secretary, the four stars.

I experienced them as extraordinary avuncular figures that care for the hundreds of thousands, in fact, millions of young men and women under their care. I literally visualize them as the head of the Thanksgiving Day table. That's how much they care about their soldiers. And when I visited the Pentagon, I was in a small room with the chief, the vice chief, the secretary, and the four stars were there. They felt like profoundly generative uncles. They truly cared about their soldiers. And the way that the Pentagon chose to go forward in caring about their soldiers with their vision of people first was to use science, was to use the roadmap of science, the data-driven

approach. They looked at what we now have, which is two and a half decades of good top shelf peer review science. And what's the bottom line? The bottom line is that a strong spiritual core is like the hub of a wheel for a whole healthy person. And that could be with or without religion. That could be from any of our rich faith traditions. That could be spiritual, but not religious, but a strong spiritual core stabilizes the wheel of the whole person. That's simply what the science says. Whether we're talking about resilience against mental health, addiction, and depression, or the character strengths and virtues, optimism, grit, even forgiveness, relational values. And so the

army said, well, how do we take this roadmap of basic science and make institutional transformation to move out of narrowly transactional relationships, like what can you do for me and fulfill this mission and do this task and be as well transformational onto these young men and women's lives. Now, that's a pretty extraordinary leadership position in our society to say, we're going to use the roadmap of young adult spiritual development to inform how our institution of 2 million people in the army receives, trains, supports, and promotes young adults. It was so innovative that it was actually academia to say, hey, can we learn from you? And the two-star general chief of chaplains and the chief of behavioral health both spoke for 500 university leaders in our awakened campus

to essentially share this DNA of how any institution can be one that is spiritually supportive of the natural young adult developmental process, which is a foundationally spiritual process. It is through the lens of spiritual discovery in late adolescence and emerging adulthood, whether it's a soldier or a college student or someone in an entry-level job. Emerging adulthood is foundationally, through the lens of science, a time of spiritual discovery. What is my purpose? And I don't mean in my own life alone. I mean my ultimate purpose in relationship to reality or source of all life.

These are the big questions that if we take seriously, build a foundation for an adulthood that is more functional, healthy, and ethical. So, you know, Vivek Murthy, our Surgeon General, said that the great epidemic of our time, that Surgeon General's advisory in this administration was around our crisis of mental health, and in particular, the diseases of despair, depression, addiction, and even suicide. But we have the antidote, and it is in us already. Basic science says that when we strengthen our natural spiritual core, when we awaken our natural spiritual brain, we are 80% less likely to become addicted using BSM diagnoses. We are 82% less likely to take our own lives when spiritual awareness is shared. So this is the crisis. This is the low of the low

that I think for our entire society is like the whistle blowing a wake up call. Let's use all of ourselves. Let's use all of ourselves and let's treat each other as if we all are spiritual beings. How do we get out of this lull of COVID? We can't get back to the way we were. We're not going to get what we want. We can get the yellow door. We can get something better than what we had before. We can wake up because it hurts too bad not to wake up. We have no choice but to wake up and start to see each other in a more loving, really spiritual way as souls on earth, equal rays emanating from the same sun. Let's wake up guys. We know this. I don't know why it's been such taboo. Someone said

we couldn't talk about it, but that was just a someone and And we can decide, we can remake culture any way we want. I guess my question is, where do we begin? What's the first step into this? Because essentially, you're offering us an invitation and bundled with a call to action. What's the first step in? I might invite you to go up to someone who really matters to you. Maybe you didn't see them much during COVID and say, you know, I really missed you. I love you so much, sister. I love you so much, brother. Relational spirituality with one another. Honor each other with all of the love that you really feel. Now that's easier at home base. It

might be awkward at first because we don't talk that way to each other. And I mean, I'm not saying like your best friend who you did see. I'm saying, you know, someone maybe at work or someone who you see in the cafe, you really do care about and you really did miss and you're so grateful they're alive and not dead from COVID. Why don't you go over to them? Maybe they're an elder and say, I'm so glad to see you. I'd seen you here every week before COVID. And now I see you again and that you're well, you know, I really love seeing you. It always makes me feel like, you know, the day is buoyant when I see you. So I treat each other as a soul on earth. What we see in our MRI studies is relational spirituality, love of neighbor, strengthens the same neural correlates as are used in a direct connection to source, the two feet on each other.

So when we pray to our higher power or meditate or feel connected to all life in nature, that strengthens the same regions of the brain that are strengthened when we show up and literally take out our neighbor's trash. When we show up to our 90-year-old neighbors and say, can I take out your trash and can I shovel your walk? It's all one story. It's prayer or prayer in action. It's service as an act of spiritual love. That's so powerful. And it's a simple thing that anyone can say yes to, as you were sharing that at this interesting moment of reflection, my automatic signature on all of my emails at the bottom of it, the one that just drops in without me thinking about it, is my sign-off is with a whole lot of love and gratitude. And when I first changed it to that,

I had this conscious thing where I said, do I really want this to go out to every single person? I send it to strangers, to business people, to people who are proposing deals to me. I don't actually know them. Like, is that the way that I want to sign off? Because it made me uncomfortable. And then I said, no, actually, that is the way that I want to sign off because I don't have to know you to just be love or to be grateful, to be in the most

digital and the most earliest relationship with you. And if it makes somebody else uncomfortable to be on the other side of that, I understand that and that's okay. But this is how I want to step into conversation from my side. That's been my sig line in my file in my email for years now. And it's an intentional thing.

And they're like just tiny, tiny, tiny little things like that that you can do, I think, that signal a different way to step into relationship with other people. I would say that's a tiny word that creates a huge difference because you've literally opened a porthole of a whole different form of consciousness. It's almost like a wormhole between parallel realities by saying with lots of love, you've opened up the field of love, like a picnic blanket spread out around you, like a picnic blanket spread out around you. You're inviting people into a field of love, of radical, unconditional love, which you are like an antenna, I would say, invoking. And that consciousness field of love entrains their brain, invites them into that way of deep being. So it might be a small

word, but it is a profound act. You have moved you and everyone who walks with you through the wormhole to the parallel universe where we walk together in the field of love. That is where we want to be together. There's two things that we can do to start. And the first has to do with how we treat each other, how we enact relational spirituality, walking on the earth, as you might say, spiritual values, walking the walk. The second has to do with our own development of our awakened awareness, the transcendent awareness through which we see ourselves and know ourselves and feel every moment that we are part of one field of life. So that when a goose comes by, we don't think, oh, nothing happened. A goose just walked by. When a stranger walks by, we don't say, oh, nothing happened. A man walked by. The young

child will scream with delight, there's a man at the door. There's a man at the door. And we run over and the UPS gentleman has brought a package. They aren't saying I got a present. They aren't saying I got a gift. They said, there's a man at the door. When we wake up to the precious, deep, common love, the deep, common spirit that is in and through us all, when we see ourselves more deeply, when we dial in more deeply to a profound, loving, guiding world, then every event to come through the course of the day comes forth from this loving, guiding world. We start at square one in an entirely different place. That is a perceptual practice, which we can cultivate in ourselves.

I love that. It can be through mantra work, through consciousness work, through prayer or meditation, watching how nature treats one another. So there's two pillars and they both use the same part of the brain. They're both using the awakened brain. One is how we treat each other. And the other is the deep perceptual look, the awakened look into life through which every living moment looks entirely different. So this is by no means a life hack. This is a profound orientation, a profound reorientation into life as a sacred event, a walk through a loving, guiding universe.

Yeah, feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? To walk in alignment with the path opened by the universe. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, say that you will also love the conversation that we had with Adam Ghazali about neuroscience, psychedelic, and spiritual experience. You'll find a link to Adam's episode in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you appreciate the work that we've been doing here on Good Life

Project, go check out my new book, Spark. It'll reveal some incredibly eye-opening things about maybe one of your favorite subjects, you, and then show you how to tap these insights to reimagine and reinvent work as a source of meaning, purpose, and joy. You'll find a link in the show notes, or you can also find it at your favorite bookseller now. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot

Flight Risk