Know Thyself - E124 - Dr. Lisa Miller: The Neuroscience of Spirituality, Synchronicity & The Awakened Brain

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

Visit https://marekhealth.com/knowthyself and get a 10% discount on the Optimization Package (use code KNOWTHYSELF)Author and researcher Dr. Lisa Miller unpacks the science of the Awakened Brain and how humans are innately wired for spiritual experiences. She discusses the root causes of the mental health crisis our planet is facing, and how by reconnecting to this innate spirituality we have the power to heal on a global level. She describes depression as two sides of the same door, revealing the opportunity hidden within our suffering. She discusses how transcendent experiences are explained on a neurological level and the 4 major finds of her research. She reveals the science of synchronicity, surrender, and our ability to be 'trail angels' who help others along their journey. She also shares a guided practice to open yourself up to life's wisdom and live in harmony with the divine will.André's Book Recommendations: https://www.knowthyself.one/books___________0:00 Intro1:42 Defining Spirituality as a Scientist3:45 The Cause of the Mental Health Crisis6:00 Is Spirituality Limited to the Brain?12:00 The Awakened Brain: Being in Sync with the Universe16:52 Children are in This State Naturally20:54 Mirror Neurons and Past Life Regressions24:51 4 Major Findings on the Awakened Brain30:39 Science of Synchronicity & Surrender37:35 Guided Practice: Open Yourself Up to Life’s Wisdom43:10 Her Most Shocking Discoveries44:30 Depression as the Doorway to Spirituality51:24 Integrating Achievement & Awakened Brain56:00 Conclusion___________Lisa Miller, Ph.D., is the New York Times bestselling author of The Spiritual Child and a professor 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.Website: https://www.lisamillerphd.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.lisamiller/___________Know ThyselfInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/Website: https://www.knowthyself.oneClips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKgListen to all episodes on Audio: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927André DuqumInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/

The best clinical science can say is that spirituality is not a belief. It is an inborn human seat of perception in 30 years as a scientist. The most breathtaking finding that I've seen is this. The spiritually engaged brain vibrates at the wavelength of all life. It can be through synchronicity. It can be through a gut instinct. But we have knowing in many forms. So the awakened brain is our inborn capacity rather than fear uncertainty to be an open system.

And this is our greatest strength. hear from people, well, how do I do that? There is a practice that I have found to be highly effective. It was a gift to me. Should we share it? Yeah. So there's a very popular view right now that somehow if I want something, and if I really align myself, it'll be just as I perhaps ordered on Amazon.

But what if the most important parts of our lives are not strategically planned? They're not what we want. They're better than what we want. This is our birthright. And shouldn't every child have this opportunity? Hey everyone, welcome back to know thyself. Our guest today is a professor and founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Teachers College in Columbia University.

She is a graduate from Yale, one of the leading national experts on health and spirituality and the rising, emerging understanding and conciliance between science, our brain, and spirituality. And her work has profound implications. I'm really looking forward to diving into Dr. Lisa Miller. Thank you for being here. It is so lovely to be here to enter into your world. We welcome you with open arms. How do you define spirituality?

Let's start baseline. Well, if I put on my scientist hat, I would say that the most judicious thing to say as a scientist is that scientists can only identify threads of lived human spiritual life, not define spirituality all told. but we are quite accurate in showing what dimensions of lived human spiritual life exist, have innate biological underpinnings,

have profound consequence unto the rest of our lives, and change over the course of our lives. So to that avail, I can say of the many dimensions studied by scientists, The two that are innate, profoundly life-changing, and evolve over the course of our lifespan, are a deep transcendent relationship. What we call that may change across cultures, traditions, faith traditions, but we are all born with an innate capacity for a transcendent relationship. And the second dimension that is all of ours is that just as we might feel the presence, of the universe or God, Hashem, whatever our word is in our own lives, we feel that ultimate love towards one another. Relational spirituality. Whether or not I've ever encountered one day

of religion in my life, every single one of us, 7.2 billion people on earth are all spiritual beings when it comes to the inborn capacity for transcendent relationship and that presence that felt awareness of God or the universe in one another and in earth. That felt experience of our oneness is the taste of that, the experience of that, I think, transforms us on contact. And right now we live in perhaps one of the most individualistic cultures that has ever existed, and we're seeing the effects of that in real time through depression and mental illness. Could you share any context for just how bad and disconnected, it currently is right now on the planet?

Well, you've hit the nail on the head. If you want to look across the past 100 years, we've never had a time where suicide was as pervasive and as shockingly prevalent amongst young people. The rate of death by suicide has become the number one killer of Gen Z. So it's not cancer, it's not COVID. it now rivals auto accidents as the most likely way that a young person will die. Someone in high school in that college, it's now pressing down in the middle school.

So that was simply not the case. And if we track over the decades, how did we get here? The ascension of the diseases of despair in general, addiction, depression, but foremost suicide goes hand in hand with the attenuation of spiritual life. and in particular as you opened, collective spiritual life. So what's the antidote? If I said, here's a pill, it'll fix it, right? We do have the antidote.

In a meta-analysis, so a study of studies, you round up all good studies, tragically 2,000 completed suicides and 5,000 match controls, there was an 82% decreased relative risk of completed suicide four-fifths, less likely to take our life. When spiritual life is shared, shared in the sangha, shared in the Mingan, fellowship, the squad. So we could do this.

We could do this starting this evening. We could engage one another, come together, and not just have the two of us in the room, but welcome in ultimate presence in and through us. Some people say the third presence, I would call it the first. Our faith traditions do this. it's immediately available to us, shall we? Yeah.

I'm curious, when we use the word spiritual or spirituality, how do you discern, I suppose, what materials would say you could boil down to biochemical kind of reactions? When you're using the word spiritual, do you ever refer to metaphysical, non-material realities? Because I know so much of your work has been bringing forth what feel like. metaphysical experiences into understandable brain chemistry and kind of bridging the gap between the two. Oh, that's such a magnificent point. So we certainly can track the neural correlates in our brains of transcendent relationship. We can certainly point on the MRI machine and say,

okay, whether I live in China, the U.S. or Brazil, the same neural correlates run when I am in a deep transcending connection to the force of life. There's one force of life and there's one human portal. That does not mean that all of spirituality can be boiled down to the brain. I am by no means a biological reductionist. That merely means body, mind, and soul. In the monoist view of the human, we are soul, we are mind, we are body, there is at once a neurotrace as there is a phenomenalogical experience, as I would say there is ontologically in the structure of being the stuff of consciousness or spirit, all at once, all at once. Now, in the awakened brain in my book, I spend the first two-thirds pointing out our natural spiritual nature, the capacity through which we can perceive

and receive transcendent awareness. But the final third is this dedicated to this very exciting emerging science done by generally extremely rigorous scientists. on the foundational nature of consciousness running in us, through us, and among us, where suddenly we can stop borrowing the 20th century, somewhat reductionist view of the brain as a maker of thoughts, right, like a Ford Motor Factory, the brain somehow produces thoughts or toasters or something like that.

Instead, to the brain being an antenna or a conduit of consciousness, that opens up the possibility that we are both emanations of consciousness, like raised from the sun. We are in relationship to consciousness, receiving, perceiving, contributing back. There's a dialectic going on. That's very, very far to your point from radical materialism or biological reductionism. And it's important to point out that the best clinical science can say is that spirituality is not a belief. It is an inborn human seat of perception.

We are born to perceive into the spiritual reality. And that's where clinical science stops. And then we can pivot and say, how does the brain, what is our evidence that the brain is connected beyond the brain in the box, beyond the atomistic limits of the skull. And there there's a cascade of magnificent research going on. on. May I sure one of my favorite studies? Please, yeah. Perhaps my favorite study is really a

foundational, founding study of what we now call post-material psychology. Post-material meaning a consciousness-based psychology. It was done by Asterhoff. Actorhoff invited a traditional indigenous healer to be in one MRI machine. The patient was down the hall, and in some cases

across the street, and a second MRI machine. As a traditional healer started to do his or her work, a consistent pattern came up on the fMRI machine, tracking blood flow. Within an instant, the same pattern came up on the MRI screen of the patient, implying one thing, consciousness, in two places. The material footprint is what shows up on the MRI. I mean, how do I understand that one thing, consciousness, healing consciousness, I would say spirit, in two places?

Well, there's several explanations, but one of them is that there's a send and receive between the healer and the patient at a distance, that the brain is a form of an antenna or a conduit. But I think that it's very dangerous for the new consciousness-based science to make the same. same mistake as the materialist science of the 20th century, which is really to claim radical anthropocentrism, that we are in the center sending consciousness back and forth. From once this consciousness come, well, no one really answers that, but it's kind of suggested that we make consciousness, or we're the king and the queen. It seems to me that if we're really on a search, that we shouldn't feel nervous or somehow out of fashion to step out of the outdated vogue of radical anthropocentrism.

And let's build a science built around source, that there's a source of consciousness. I say, God, you use your word. Yeah. Yeah, I love the invitation to, just reminder, to not make the same mistake that the materialist reductionists have in the new emerging science. And yet, the pendulum has swung one way, and we're seeing a lot of emerging science, you discussions around non-locality of consciousness and quantum entanglement and these things that point to our interconnected nature that are really important to discuss because right now we're run

largely by this materialist notion of reality and mainstream understanding of science. And so... Can I say one thing about that? Yeah. So there's a very popular view right now in mainstream culture that somehow if I want something, which is really a hedonic perspective, I would. like to lose weight. I would like to have a child. Is this what you refer as the achieving mind in your book?

Yes. I want something. Right. And taken at the level of consciousness, I'm going to send that out and it's going to come back. And if I really align myself and I really send it out, it'll be just as I perhaps ordered on Amazon, right? And that's a very limiting, very limiting journey. Because what I want is only based on today's information backwards. It's all historically driven. Your memory? Yes. But what might be in store if I'm in a dialogue with the force in life

or the oneness of all being, seeing what unfolds before me, has information that I've yet to discover. So giving up what I want should be a relief. and instead life is this grand spiritual adventure who knows who's going to come around the corner next how amazing what's in store for today you never know but it's better than what you think you wanted even if it's distasteful or hurts it's better i think coming to terms with the impermanent nature of existence and reality how each moment is whether or not we want it to unfolding in a mysterious way We don't know what's going to unfold next, right?

And yet, like, you're talking about this pervasive kind of psychology of planning existence to a T and controlling it and try to Amazon order our relationships and career. And you're inviting the embracing of spontaneous existence, the awakened mind. Yes. And so let's kind of go into a little bit too, because the surrendering to the reality that each moment is, like, unknown. and if we want to experience a life greater than we could ever imagine, then it has to, by virtue, literally happen outside of our stored base of memory

and what we have known, you know? Magnificent, yes. Yeah. So now embracing and what is the awakened mind and your experience and how you've studied it? So the awakened brain is our inborn capacity to be an open system. And each day, I don't know what.

what's going to happen. Each day, I can't control what's going to happen, which is simply an ontological fact, or I cannot control what's going to happen. But rather than fear uncertainty, rather than be frustrated I don't have control or that I let this ball slip out of my hand or I didn't get him or her or them or that job, what is life showing me now? What is the universe revealing to me now? It can be through synchronicity and seeing the patterns laid before us, the guideposts. It can be through a dream or a mystical experience. It can be through a God instinct.

But we have knowing in many forms, we have many inborn organic epistemologies. We're intuitives, we're mystics, religions, and empiricists. When I really open my awareness to be an open system and receive and perceive God's guidance, the universe, direction,

that's sure footing. That's not risky. That's not, certainly not airy-fairy. That's the most sound bedrock I could be on. So shouldn't we be teaching our kids that in school? I sat around in school waiting to talk about this for 20 years.

In the first 20 years. How amazing for a child to learn your life is a grand sacred adventure. You don't know where you're going and you don't need to. It's not about some pre-chosen, predetermined terminus. It's about this discovery that you are on.

And what's certain is that you can be rooted in a stance of quest. You can be rooted as an open system in dialogue with the universe. Fair not. Yeah. And we simply just don't know what we don't know, right? These latent perceptual faculties that we are all, that we all have, but have for various reasons been shut down, ignored, shamed. What do you feel are those innate perceptual capacities that we simply have overlooked societally?

That the child already has. Yeah. And so just as a sidebar, if I'm a parent in my 30s or 40s, my greatest opportunity is to allow my child to flourish in their natural birthright, to not shut down and tell them that experiences aren't real, whether by omission or commission. And the second greatest opportunity I have is that my natural, the natural spirituality and the child will reawaken me. That's really a powerful point. I was just with a friend who, she was playing chess. with her kid who's like six or seven. And she was just telling me just that how like parenting and spending time with her child

and as it's growing is connecting her so much to her own inner child and how healing it is. So the child is like a portal for spirit and awakens everyone in the room, whether we ask or not, whether we know it or not. And you can track, you know, through the lens of science, if nine people are in a deep state of prayer and the 10th person walks in, they more quickly move into a transcendent state of awareness as measured by the rapidity with which their mirror neurons come up online, which means that the naturally transcendent child, like an antenna, hosts consciousness. And we all in the room awaken around the child. At such a powerful point because a lot of us aren't aware of the power

of mirror neurons and how not metaphorically, but literally physical. basically the act of awakening as a being not only gives people unconsciously the permission to do the same, but also it brings forth that possibility in so many ways. And we just had Rupert's Spirit on the podcast. He said the greatest service one can render humanity is to recognize the nature of one's own being. In that state of self-recognition, of self-realization, you become a candle in a dark world. And so I would love for you to share like, Can I make an addendum and the nature of your child's true being? Yeah, which is a kind of reflection of our own, right?

Perhaps. You know, I think that parents really sweat it. They're like, you know, if I don't have my spiritual game on, if I'm not fully aligned, am I going to damage my child's flame? Am I going to mute their flame? And I think that the child's flame burns bright. And as parents, all we have to do is witness. You know, parents get very, very nervous.

You know, am I not going to have the right words? Am I not going to know how to respond when my child has an awakening? And all we have to do is witness. We're ambassadors. We show the child around this holy land. We don't need to have answers. I also think that as parents, when we open up about our own spiritual paths and we let our flame be seen, the child knows that spiritual life is real, we talk about it, our relationship goes to that depth,

and that they can always get back to source. And that means having the will to open up the window and be transparent to our children. children. You know, I was on a terrible mood today. I was obsessed with rumination today, and I'm so sorry because I missed you while I was ruminating. Would you sit with me while we meditate together? Would you sit with me and join me in a prayer? You can finish the prayer today. And in that way, you are showing the child that in and through all of our relationships is always divine presence. And who we are to one another is a divine appointment. What do you think about those mirror neurons and how our neurology doesn't quite discern the difference between imagination and reality?

Well, we count on it for MRI studies. The most classic MRI study is to ask someone to share a very profound memory. And as we share this memory, to fill it out with sensory information, what it was like. like when it felt like where were you, anchor yourself physically, mentally. How many, how many patients did you do these studies with when you had them under the fMRI and you were doing this, having them? Well, we've had many studies with different numbers in different studies, but when we share memory in the MRI, we elicit the same neural correlates as if we were actually there,

plus memory. and what we find is that these memories are very, very, very real. So it opens up a question that neuroscience hasn't examined yet, which is do we go back there in the field of consciousness? You know, have you done past life regression? I've done a couple of sessions way back. Did you feel you went back there? I don't know.

I felt I went back there. It was very, very real and it was different than, telling a story or a memory from this life. When I did past life regression, there was a cadence and a momentum to the experience that had a life of its own. There was a real sense of consciousness moving through my landing pad of a brain, not a constructive sense of coming up with a story or filling in a story or connecting the dots, but really of receiving, you know, a horse on fire.

Like, it really tore through. And I would say that the way I understand past lives in my own direct experience is that we can access what is actually germane and alive. It's not a parlor game. It's not a dalliance to go picking around our past lives. It is, we are brought where effectively we are now. So it's through the wormhole. Where those energies are still alive within us. And whether it was in linear time 1846 or 1486,

we are in that nexus of consciousness that I think in linear time is eternal. So I think of time as like a clover. And at the moment we're at the center going through multiple centuries or decades. Do you think we can go into the future? Like... Future life.

Through our consciousness? Yes. I don't know. I don't know either, but have you had visions of things in the future? I think I've definitely had like premonitions and strong intuitive pulls that thought and like were turned out to be very real and true. And I think largely released the urge I used to have, which is like the logical understanding or I suppose empirical validation of like, whether or not it existentially is true in reality. Because I don't know, I've just come to terms with not knowing.

I think. Experiencing. Yeah, just experiencing. And that balance, right, between like only, again, societyally valuing what we can empirically kind of deduce versus the ontological, you know, experiences and firsthand innate interior experiences. And so when you guys were in these studies, you had four major understandings that you guys were able to pull through when they were guiding the science of the awakened brain. Yes.

And I would love for you to walk through those because I think those findings are very important and bridging our understanding of spiritual experience and the science of it. So we invited people to share a profound transcendent connection. and the people who participated in our study were from all different faith traditions and outside of faith tradition. So Catholic, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, spiritual but not religious. And no matter what tradition they may be from or what language they used, as they shared their experience of a direct transcendent connection, the same neurocorrelates ran through our fMRI study, which means that irisone, perspective of how our innate spirituality is cultivated, however we call or name the transcendent, however we access the transcendent, a walk in nature, meditation, prayer. When we are in connection with our higher power, there is one awakened brain, and we all have it. There are four

dimensions to the awakened brain. The first and only the first is shared in common with mindfulness, which is we stop the racket, we quiet the default mode. You know, what did I say? Is he going to remember I said that? Did the check clear? You know, that sort of rumination comes when we quiet the default mode network. That is only one of the four dimensions. And it is shared with the very helpful practice of mindfulness,

which is to simply bring presence and quiet and attention. The next three dimensions are unique. to awakening. The next three dimensions have to do with spiritual connection. The first is that the bonding network comes up online, and we are aware we perceive that we are loved and held. It is the same bonding network that's engaged from where children and our parents or grandparents' arms. Now, from a reductionist point of view, we would say, okay, the bonding network runs you feel as if you were being loved and held. But from a 20th century view of the brain as a conduit, an antenna,

it's possible to interpret the finding as saying the transcendent presence engages our bonding network. And we therefore perceive the transcendent is loving and holding us. And that's a view of the human as an open system. The next dimension is that we move from having a very narrow attention span, dorsal attention, the bowling alley point of view. I got to get this job. I've got to write that letter.

Is here, she, are they going to ask me out again? Focus really on what's dogging me to moving to a much bigger, broader range of perception, the ventral attention network, where the floodlights or the sunlight comes on. And suddenly something way over there, 140 degrees pops. Again, a reductionist point of view would say that we can scan a larger field and find something over there in the corner.

But a 20th century view of the brain as a conduit would say something over there at 140 degrees pulls our attention. We're in dialogue. And because the ventral has allowed us to open up a wider scope, we are prepared to receive engagement at 140 degrees situational awareness.

So we now are able to perceive that we are actually loved and held. We are actually guided. And finally, the parietal that puts in and out hard boundaries allows us to know that you're seated very peacefully in your chair, and I'm in mine, and we each have our own zipped up by a body suits. We are distinct. But we are also one. We are part of the great oneness. We are part of the family of life, we're part of the field of consciousness, we are emanations of source.

Whatever your language, the prattle lets us know that while we are a point, we are also part of the wave, that we are distinct in one. So when we engage our awakened awareness, we know that we are loved and held guided and never alone. Loved, guided, part of the oneness and won. that's not a belief. It is a seat of perception. It's a capacity in every one of us. Many people cultivate this because while we are all given the wiring to awaken, this gift is one-third innate, two-thirds environmentally formed,

which means as adults, our practice of meditation, our prayer life, our service to other people. When we help the guy across the way who needs some food, when we babysit for the family who looks like they're at Wits End, when we do something that is generous and shows love of neighbor, we awaken to the love written into life. When we help others along, we awaken to the guidance written into life. So just as transcendent practice is awakening,

love of a neighbor and altruism are profoundly awakening of our birthright. So the understanding of what's happening in the neurology and these felt senses of interconnectedness and spiritual experiences are really profound. And I'm curious what you feel the correlation is between allowing a greater intelligence to move you in a sense of more coherence and these states that you're talking to. Like you mentioned when you do these generous things, when you cultivate a mindfulness practice, you have this felt sense of interconnectedness. right? And it seems like we're going for many ways from the top down to the bottom up and the way of navigating life and and being open and inviting more of the unknown and the serendipitous and the synchronistic. So talk to me, I guess, about how when you cultivate this both innate faculty and capacity that we have within us and something that we can continue

to cultivate in our daily life, we can move more towards synchronicity and not solely rely on the rational. Synchronicity is very solid data. I would call it hard data. The synchronicity, of course, is when two mechanistically unrelated events actually reveal one deeper unit of common purpose or common entity. So I could be thinking of someone and they call. I could be wondering, you know, where shall we drive this summer?

And someone at the coffee shop sits down and says, have you ever been to the badlands? So synchronicity reveals that we are part of a symphony and that we're all playing a role. We show up for one another, just as people show up for us. Really, like rays of the sun or fingers from a hand, we are all emanations of source. Now, why is that so important? Well, you are a trail angel. You are. A trail angel.

When you feel in your heart, I'll give you an example, have you ever felt compelled to say something to someone? You don't know why. You don't know where it came from, but you felt compelled to say it. Yeah. Will you share the story? Oh, wow.

There's actually a lot that come to mind. What you said, how they responded. Yeah, I think the more that I've just become sensitive as a human being. I can, you know, sense the underlying energy in which words come from or, you know, the unspoken things within somebody's life. So I've also, I think, just dialed in more with like pattern recognition and like whether it's supporting a friend who's struggling with something and being able to, while the main

focus of what the perceived problem is is right here, seeing the link of the pattern of where it's actually a deeper underlying thing that needs our attention. So there's innumerable examples while being in conversation with friends where there's something that feels like whether it's a subconscious capacity for pattern recognition or a greater intelligence connection to source that's moving through me. Perhaps it's all the same thing. But you count on it. Yeah. Has it never gone wrong? If it's coming from love, usually it will never, it will go wrong.

If it's coming from ego and trying to prove something or I suppose for my own. own agenda outside of the true genuine service, and I think it has. Can you feel the difference? Absolutely, yeah. So I'll give some examples. I'm in the healthy grocery store, and there's a woman, you know, at the healthy grocery store, I like to look in other people's carts for good ideas, and, you know, she has abundant healthiness, a beautiful, you know, beautiful shard and beautiful kale and coconut-based yogurt,

And I look at her, and there's something 20% sad or distant, I can't identify, but what comes through me, what I feel told to say is you look so healthy. You are so healthy. So I deliver the message. And the woman bursts out crime. And she says, I have cancer. I'm starting chemotherapy tomorrow. Our eyes full of tears.

And I said, well, they're going to take it out. You are healthy. And she said, thank you. I needed to hear that. I didn't come up with that, right? And she said, I have cancer. I'm having surgery tomorrow. I said, they're going to take it out.

You are healthy. And she's very moved. Okay, she's moved because that message from source was that you are strong, you are healthy, and that which had made you ill, invaded you was going to be removed. If I hadn't said it, she wouldn't have had her helpful message. And so on note, really on key, are these messages that come through us that I've come to count on that process. You trust it.

I trust it, and when I'm stuck and I don't know quite how to help someone else along, I pray and meditate and ask for guidance. So for instance, a woman I know was well into the third trimester and lost a baby. What do you say to her? And I wasn't sure how to be supportive and walk with her through that very painful loss. And so I prayed. I said, please God guide me and use me as a vessel to share what will support her in her journey, in your child. And sure enough, and we're all built this way, the right words come.

come. And I see her then a few weeks later and she said that those words on your note, they were exactly, I read it to my husband many times what we needed to hear. So God sends us working for each other. The universe has this beautiful symphony and we're all in it. The cultivation of the trust for both supporting other people but then also for our own life's journey is it's such a freeing sensation to know that you're never alone. Like you always have that felt sense of connection to something greater. And I think it's Terrence McKenna that has a quote. He said, the secret to life is you hurl yourself into the abyss and realizes a feather bed.

Wow. You know, and there's just this, there's this free fall into the unknown of life. And you're caught. Yeah, and you're held, which is beautiful. Loved and held. Yeah. You know, there's sometimes people will say, I don't know. how to receive.

If we're saying, okay, spirituality is not a belief, it is a seat of perception, it's in you. I hear from people, well, how do I do that? And I think that every tradition has a way in, but there is a practice that I have found to be highly effective. It was a gift to me. Should we share it? Yeah.

Are you open to that? Yeah, I am totally. Okay, this is a practice that was shared with me. So I share it forward. I always thank the teacher from the late Dr. Gary Weaver. May we practice? Yeah. Okay. I'm going to invite you if you'd like to close your eyes and clear out your inner space.

If you would five breaths. I invite you in your inner chamber to set before you a table. This is your table. And to your table, you may invite anyone living or deceased who truly has your best interest in mind. anyone living or deceased who truly has your best interest in mind and with them all sitting there ask them if they love you and now you may invite your higher self the part of you that's so much more than anything that you may have done or not done anything you may have or not have your true eternal higher self and ask you if you love you ask you if you love you

And now finally, you may invite your higher power, God, spirit, whatever word is yours, however you know your higher power. And ask if they love you. Ask if they love you. Now, with all of these people sitting here right now, what do they need to tell you now? What do they need to share? What do they need to let you know? Thank you for that. It was beautiful.

It's just so nice to feel the many human beings that are in our lives alive or dead that we can feel held and supported by. That I feel held and supported by. And it's like so much gratitude for, I think sometimes we think non-physical angels or people that are like not in bodies. Like those are like the spiritual beings to connect with. And there's so many examples of the physical human angels that are in our life that want to support us and love us and want to see the best for us. So that was beautiful. Thank you for sharing. Was there someone who surprised you or you were particularly enjoyed sitting at your table?

I mean, there's a lot. Yeah, from my family to previous mentors and brothers and friends of mine. Yeah. You had a big table. Big table, yeah. Lovely. Holding it down. Lovely.

Yeah. And that is such a, even when we were speaking to earlier with mirror neurons, it feels like that practice, it like gives us the experience of actually being there, you know, and actually feeling held and supported where people feel proud of you and are rooting for you and genuine love. And that's always available to us because we can always visualize that within us, you know. And so that's an amazing tool. Thank you for sharing. It's my view. that they are there. And they're there, even if they're embodied and right now in Detroit.

Yeah. Superposition, right? In the way that a father wakes up in the middle of the night, and he knows that his son who's been deployed has had something go wrong. Right. There's a sense of deep bondedness through which we are one and distinct. On that note, what do you feel like are the most shocking? discoveries you've personally learned about

non-locality of consciousness and quantum entanglement which we spoke to earlier in regards to this because there's a lot of strange things happening at that scale that we can't maybe fully rationalize but is very powerful nonetheless and so

yeah anything that really sticks out in terms of its potency in regards to studying those two areas. Well I'll share one from the road of life and I'll share one through the lens of science. How about that? Through the road of life, what's always struck me is that where there is, you could say, a karmic entanglement, positive or negative, well, put it this way. If I honk at someone in traffic,

I see them in the grocery store. If I lose my cool with someone at work, they show up on my summer vacation. There's a sense in which the consciousness tangles we create. our dictating material expression of how we see each other and reconnect. Maybe it's a new opportunity to untangle that node. But I think that basically once in contact, always in contact. That's from the road of life. Through lens of science, the most breathtaking finding that I've seen in 30 years as a scientist is this. when we look at people who through suffering difficulty have awakened.

So there's a lovely body of science that shows that very often struggle, suffering, depression, is the early phase of an awakening. Two sides of one door as you have so eloquently shared. Yes, that the yearning and the struggle and the existential emptiness actually reveals that our vessel and capacity. has become more capacious and now feels like a half-empty vessel. We are on a quest. So the yearning, the existential frustration doesn't mean we're off the path. It means we're on the path. A knock at the door, bang at the door for a more deepened connection with God, spirit, consciousness.

That is, I think, the majority of forms of human suffering. There are some where there's a biological depression, there's a piece broken and we fix it with medication. But most of the time, and I'm not against medication, but medication alone is insufficient. Most of the time there is an emergence that first presents itself. The ignition is struggle. It's developmental depression. When we take this journey and we awaken, what we find is that we've cultivated a path, a spiritual response to suffering that is forever more there for us.

We can always get back. If we invite people to come in this time not to the MRI machine but the EEG machine that captures energy given off the back of the head, or we're using the brain waves, what we find is that people to recover, people to move through despair

through an awakening, give off high amplitude alpha, specific wavelength. High amplitude alpha goes by another name, in another field. It's Schumann's resonance, the constituent wavelength of nature from the earth's crust up one mile all the way around the earth, which means the spiritually engaged brain vibrates at the wavelength of all life, of nature, creation. So the kingdom, Eden was not long ago

and far away. It's here now, and it is a choice to enter through our seat of being. And we readily then have available to the felt oneness is mirrored by the oneness of wavelength that to me is the most beautiful finding in science so powerful and there is a there's a part in in this book the awakened brain that i really love so this was advice howard thurman that you quoted gave to someone who was struggling to make a decision and desperate for guidance and thurman wrote a letter his handwritten response said you're like a little boy under the Christmas tree who has so many gifts he doesn't know which one to open first the main thing is you must wait and listen for the sound of the genuine which is within you when you hear it that will be your voice and that will be the voice of God and it feels like when

you're in those moments of depression despair where you're speaking to awakening is the other side of the door the making space for silence to discover that which is genuine within you to emerge is it's our primary task is to make space and see what's trying to emerge from within us and I know you've really shown so much of that and experienced that obviously in your own life where those moments of depression eventually gave birth to some of the greatest gifts in your life. Do you agree? I would say that depression forced me to go deeper on the spiritual path. That was certainly my experience.

My husband and I struggled for years praying and hoping for children. It was profoundly. We had the jobs we wanted. We had the friends. We wanted to be at the home we wanted. And it all felt empty and for not in our lives, in our path for us, because we wanted to be parents.

And one can, if you will, try to conceive, but humans cannot make conception, right? There has to be the breath of life. So we tried and tried, and five years went by, and nobody came. It was profoundly depressing. And that was a journey I share in the awakened brain of extraordinary ego death.

You know, you could control probably, you know, when it comes to the most important things in life, 2%, 5%. And the tidal wave of life is a force far greater than us and what we can do is start to ask, what is life showing me now? What is life revealing to me now? Not what do I want and how am I going to get it?

I want a baby. How are we going to get a baby? Well, let me research the best in fertility doctors. That didn't work. Let's go to Boston. In Boston, there's a team where their rates are 5% higher. Let's go there. This form of achieving awareness is being fed to us as children

and cultivates a form of perception of reality, which is really very anthropocentric, where, you know, we're basically Mighty Mouse in the middle of the universe, commandeering what we want. And if we don't get it, we must up our game. There's a better strategy. But what if the most important parts of our lives, who we love, where we end up finding that we feel alive, with whom, where, are not strategically planned based on yesterday's information, but are really discovered. These are our gifts. These are gifts of God, gifts of the universe. They're not what we want. They're better than what we want.

And perhaps in kind of getting close to wrapping up here, you really talk so beautifully about the integration between both achieving and awakened mind. And in so many ways, in effort, you actually share that we've been educated out of our spiritual awareness. And so a lot of us have to do more work in the building of the relationship with the awakened state and those perceptual capacities. And then there's a cohesiveness and integration with that achievement, kind of mind and the rationality. And as we're riding this wave of life, we, with our intention, kind of carve out the tail, kind of the direction we want to go. But then you're inviting this kind of open palm to see what you want to receive from life as well. And so what have you learned

about the importance of the integration of kind of both understandings? We need both achieving awareness and awakening awareness. And to use. them in tandem. So I can ask a grilling question through achieving awareness. You know, what profession do I want to go into? Where do I want to relocate my family? How do I solve this algorithm? And plow through that logically, stepwise, and still not quite have a deep resonance that I've reached a solution. And when I feel stuck with my drilling pure logic, I can toss the question over to an awakened form of knowing. I can see if perhaps I have an intuitive response

or if in my dream life there's clarity and I wake up perhaps in the morning having traveled there and back with a certainty. There are other ways of knowing which are less cultivated than in our mainstream education system that are profound, surefire, hard data ways of knowing. Intuition, mystical, the skeptic is always welcome. The skeptic can help drive this inquiry, but when we can bring

into consort multiple forms of knowing, really multiple organic epistemologies, we develop a dialogue between ways of knowing. And this is our greatest strength. This is our greatest strength. We even see that people who walk through life receiving a mystical experience and then discerning its significance, or noticing a pattern in the universe empirically and then intuiting the deeper underlying truth. Milinate the tracks between regions of the brain. We effectively pave the highways so that we are more innovative thinkers. We are more situationally aware.

We are more creative. Yes, in our work, but most importantly in our lives. This is our birthright. And shouldn't every child have this opportunity? I feel definitely so. And I just think of how some of the most brilliant innovators in the past, like Newton, Edison, Godel, they had metaphysical practices that would help them tap into that state. And then it's like you kind of receive the insight of whether it's innovation is something you're working on or the direction of your life. It really feels like the balance of both is how life can make the most of you in a way.

And the awakened insight is indeed received. There's a receptive form of transcendent perception. Whereas often there's a more front-footed driving quality to empiricism or logic. And we need to bring both the receptive and the front-footed forms of perceiving and knowing into consort. I found what you shared about Schumann's resonance just so, so powerful. And I think people that are listening to this podcast certainly strive for the cultivation to like that level of coherence in one's life you know where you discover your own well-being you find that alignment and coherence and you know helping and serving the world i know i

definitely feel that on my path and um what are any last thoughts you have for arriving at that place whether it's through practices any insights that you feel like we haven't touched on yet um for people to to embrace the awake and brain mind and life well the deep rhythm of the universe is experienced by all living beings. So animals don't seem to miss a beat. I can say in my own path when I'm feeling deeply aligned, when I am connected with the heartbeat of the universe, I am working in tandem with fellow living beings. And when I am feeling surly and out of step and not aligned, I am not working in tandem with fellow living beings. So if, you know, In my meditation life, I'm too distracted to get down to it.

In my prayer life, I'm not getting there. Go outside to nature and let the animal be your guide. Let the animal be your teacher. Let the tree ground you into all infinity. Because they're always there. They're at your table. It's a really important reminder, and I've definitely found that the actual key to speeding up is slowing down, unusually first in life. So thank you for sharing that reminder. And of course the child will show up

in step. Yeah. The spiritual child. Lisa, I've really loved our conversation so much. Me too. And with just our short time today, feel very connected from when you first came here. And I just really appreciate your presence in the world and the work that you're doing. It's just so needed, important, and is a powerful reminder for us all about our own innate power. So thank you so much. Thank you for being a wellspring that's bringing life to our society. Thank you. I strive to be so. So to the degree I can contribute in that way, I appreciate it.

Thank you. Very much. Where people want to find more of you, we'll leave links down in the description below, but any other primary resource where you like to connect with people or point people towards your work? Well, on Instagram is where I share important discussions. It's d.org. dot Lisa Miller.

Great. Yeah. Everyone, thanks so much for coming out and checking out this episode on the Nell They Self

podcast. Please, as always, let us know in which ways this was uniquely impactful for you. And there's a lot that was powerful

for me that I want to continue to contemplate on. And Lisa, thank you so much. Until next time, be well. Take care.