Know Thyself - E169 - Lisa Miller: The Science of Spiritual Awakening: How to Reconnect with Your Soul

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Clinical psychologist and bestselling author Dr. Lisa Miller joins us to reveal the groundbreaking neuroscience that connects spirituality with mental health, purpose, and human flourishing. Drawing from decades of research at Columbia University, she shares how spiritual awareness literally changes the brain — rewiring us for resilience, compassion, and meaning. From the awakened brain to the power of awe, Lisa bridges empirical science with lived spirituality, showing how we are biologically built for connection with something greater than ourselves.www.bioptimizers.com/knowthyselfUse code KNOWTHYSELF for 15% off!https://livemomentous.com and use code KNOWTHYSELF for up to 35% off the best creatine in the gameAndrés Book Recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list___________00:00 Intro03:40 What Is the Awakened Brain?07:10 How Spirituality Changes the Brain10:50 Depression as a Doorway to Awakening14:25 The Biology of Faith and Meaning18:05 The Parietal Lobe and the Sense of Oneness22:00 From Egoic Mind to Spiritual Awareness26:15 Dorsal vs. Ventral Attention Networks Explained30:10 How Prayer and Meditation Rewire the Brain34:00 The Neuroscience of Love and Connection38:25 What Happens in the Brain During Awe42:10 Synchronicity and the Science of Guidance46:00 Raising Spiritually Connected Children50:20 Addiction, Recovery, and the Search for Spirit54:35 The Brain as an Antenna for Consciousness59:15 Science Meets Mysticism: Where They Overlap1:03:30 The Future of Mental Health and Spirituality1:07:40 Reawakening the Innate Spiritual Brain1:12:00 Living with Awe, Service, and Gratitude1:16:10 Closing Reflections___________Episode Resources: https://www.lisamillerphd.com/https://www.instagram.com/dr.lisamiller/https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcasthttps://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com

How did you make the most important decision of your life? Nine times out of ten, it's through some form of awakened awareness, a mystical experience, a deep gut instinct. We know the truth. This is who we are. We looked all around the world. We looked in India. We looked in China.

We looked in the U.S. And said, okay, every child on earth is born a naturally spiritual child. And yet, our mainstream education is foreclosing of natural spirituality. It is making our young people. sick. That's a travesty. We looked at people over 40 years and what we found was quite remarkable. We are on the cusp of a mass awakening. This is our collective developmental depression before a mass illumination. On the top of the Sistine Chapel, God reaches out to man and God's hand is very firm and strong with a fully extended finger and that of man

is a little limp and disaffected. All we have to do is straighten our finger to the divine. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Our guest today is a clinical psychologist and Columbia professor whose research maps spiritual life to measurable mental health benefits. She is a returning guest. She's the best-selling author of the spiritual child and the awakened brain.

And we love so much how she has this eloquent ability to map spirit and science. Dr. Lisa Miller, thanks for coming back. I'm so delighted to be back. It's so wonderful to see you. I would love to start by asking your intention and your promise for the listener of this podcast and this conversation today, what is the perspective shift that you think is going to be able to most support them in today's conversation? To authorize your deepest sense of spiritual awareness and then know that that is real information to guide your live action path. Great. Let's do that.

Let's do that. You've said many times that we've been educated out of our spiritual awareness. Can you set the context for what you feel like that is, both societally, how the paradigm of materialism has, and then how we in our life, through our developmental upbringing, have been educated out of that innate capacity? Through the lens of science, we can use a twin study to determine whether any human capacity is inborn versus environmentally formed. Height and weight, temperament, propensity for illness. So, for instance, temperament, whether we're introverted or extroverted, whether we're tightly wound or laid back, is half innate, half environmentally formed. IQ, well, you were born a very bright baby. Your parents said, oh, he's a smart baby.

IQ is two-thirds innate. one-third environmentally formed. Capacity through which we experience spiritual life, and more specifically, a transcendent relationship is inborn. It is innate. It is one-third innate, two-thirds environmentally formed, which means that every child on earth is born a naturally spiritual child. Nobody is left out.

We all have this endowment, capacity, for spiritual life. but two-thirds environmentally formed means that our culture, perhaps our faith tradition, our parents, and as we get older, the choices we make on our inner environment all way into shape our spiritual awareness. There are even neuro-correlate circuits in the brain, which we have identified, that are inborn in every human being that sustain and support spiritual awareness, by which I don't mean biological determinism, but rather body, mind, and soul as we receive, perhaps as a docking station, transcendent inspiration, whether through creativity, whether through a visitation or in our prayer or meditation life, transcendent relationship is something for which

every single one of us is built. We are all endowed with universal pathway circuits in our brain. Nobody is left out. Now, to your question, we're. We're all naturally spiritual beings, but one-third innate, two-thirds environmentally formed. What's in our culture? What's in the two-thirds? We looked all around the world. We looked in India. We looked in China.

We looked in the U.S. And said, okay, if spirituality is inborn, innate, if there are common genes all around the world through which spiritual perception is coded and unfolds and common circuits, universal circuits in the brain, then shouldn't there be. be phenotypes, experiential, phenomenological phenotypes found all around the world. And indeed, there are at least five. A perception that love is a mutative force. It is different from happiness or other positive emotions. Mutative being what for people that don't? Transformative. When we love things change and they change at arm's length. When we love things change equally

at a distance. Love is like gravity or magnetism. It is a force that changes things. The second phenotype is that every single one of us is born to perceive that we are distinct and we are one. We are a point and we are a wave.

We're all part of one family of life and yet exquisitely diverse. Love, oneness, a practice of transcendence through which we can reach the unit of love, through which we can perceive what is really there, which is a universe in which unit of love, like a golden thread, is built in to the fabric of reality.

A moral code derived from our access to the deep transcendent reality. And fifth, service, love of neighbor altruism. All five phenotypes are found in India, China, the states, with a distribution, right? Some of us feel it in a more pronounced way than others. Around the world, the more years of formal education we have, the more our natural spiritual awareness is cultivated in India, in China. But uniquely in the United States, number of years of education are actually inversely associated with spiritual awareness,

which is to say our mainstream education is foreclosing of natural spirituality. That's a travesty because we have educated children out of their birthright. We have deprived children of some of their most powerful forms of organic knowing. Intuition, mystical awareness, transcendent relationship with ancestors. These are forms of knowing that are built into our brain and body mind and soul are foundational to who we are. And yet our education system is completely dry. when it comes to nourishing the spiritual core. Do you see that directly happening

because we view education largely from the Western model of putting stuff in instead of drawing stuff out? Educate, as you suggest. Educate means to draw forward, right? The natural telos, the natural spirit of every single child. The second challenge in our education system,

perhaps the most daunting challenge in our education system, is that we have deliberately disintegrated spiritual awareness from learning. In a misunderstanding of what spirituality really is, our education system, almost out of paranoia, has extricated spiritual inquiry. And that has been to the great detriment of an entire two generations of young people. What has filled the air and water of our classrooms and in time our boardrooms is radical materialism. Latent, radical materialism. it's only real if you can touch it, if it touches the five senses.

What's wrong with radical materialism? To say that reality is only that which you can physically touch and measure is to disavow, to deauthorize our deepest seat of spiritual awareness, to nullify, null and void our transcendent awareness. Radical materialism is a huge problem. We have pollution in our air and water. And we have pollution in our culture. And it's so prevalent, just like pollutants in the air, our culture is infused with radical materialism, like a frog in water.

Where do I live? I've so habituated to it. I don't even know. We live in radical materialism. What's wrong with radical materialism? It is making our young people sick. It is making our young children feel isolated and disconnected because of our young children. because a transcendent perception allows us to see and feel that we are loved, that we are guided,

and that we are never alone. The naturally spiritual brain, the circuits with which we are all endowed, allows to see that we are loved and held, the bonding network, that we are guided, a shift from dorsal to eventual attention network, and that we are never alone, the parietal that puts in and out hard boundaries. When we silence this form of awareness, when we lay atrophy, the spiritual brain and the child, we have deprived that child of a sense of love and guidance. We've deprived that child with a form of perception and decision-making, which allows for creativity, which allows for a deep goodness,

and which allows for new knowledge. I think of how these faculties, which are both innate and also need to be cultivated, have atrophied so largely across the world. And the good news, which you're here to bear, is that we can continue to build these up. up and rediscover and reconnect in this moment, in this present day. Yes. And that's what I love so much about your work is because you do highlight how this disconnection

really leads in so many different ways to the mental health crisis that we have and that the good news is that we have, one, the awareness and the remembrance that we have these faculties and we have the hard wiring for this transcendent way of connecting and that we can cultivate it. We have the antidote within us. we have the antidote to the mental health crisis is already within us. A strong spiritual awareness is 80% protective against addiction, 70% protective against dangerous risk taking. And in a study of studies, a strong spiritual awareness when shared is 82% protective against completed suicide,

which is the number one killer of high school students right now. A high school student is more likely to die by suicide than by an auto accident or any form of illness. Suicide is the number one killer of high school students, and yet we have the antidote because a strong spirituality, when we share spiritual life, it is 82% protective against completed suicide as shown in a meta-analysis, which means if I had a little pill and I said this pill here is 82% protective against the number killer of high school students, who wouldn't give that to their child? What school wouldn't dispense that at lunch? And we throw down melatonin and all sorts of other supplements. And yet, they can be sold. Why is it then that the greatest antidote to the mental health crisis is left

to lay fallow? And it's because our deep spiritual awareness has yet to be fully seen and realized. This is immediately before us. I'm tremendously hopeful with it. empirically driven hope, that we can realize our natural spiritual nature. And we will solve the mental health crisis and even more. We will usher in a new state of awareness that will solve our other problems and lead us to a new, more awakened society. It seems like when we look throughout history and we observe the progress of the scientific horizon and timeline that we're currently on and the discoveries of this microscopic world

that people, like the gap of the gods, right? And this microscopic world that we just never thought could have existed. And then it becomes real to us. And then it becomes accepted, a part of the widely accepted paradigm of how life works. And you say right now we live in radical materialism. And with it has bared many fruits, of course, many downfalls as well that we've just been exploring. And part of that, I think, is obviously in leaving the dogmatism of religion, which

provided us nutrient dense behaviors in many different ways, feeling connected to a transcendent purpose, community, ritual, all these different aspects that have been, you know, essentially thrown out the baby with the bathwater. For those that are feeling spiritual, call to being spiritual but not religious. And we live in a time and an education system that is done so, really thrown out the baby with the bathwater. Where do we go from here? If you ask people, how did you make the most important decision of your life? Was it through listing out the pros and cons over 20 pieces of paper? Was it by research and strategy?

Well, sure, you might have looked into this and studied up. But when it really came to pulling the cord, how did you make the most important decision of your life? Nine times out of 10, it's through some form of awakened awareness, a misdemeanor. experience, a deep, deep gut instinct, our inner wisdom, we know the truth. So everybody already is, most people already have made the most important decision of their life out of spiritual awareness. The question is, can we start to bring voice into society around our spiritual life? Can we speak to one another in a free and open way as you're leading right here in the center of society, can we instantiate a new normal where we speak from our deepest spiritual awareness?

And when we do, we accelerate the momentum. There was a beautiful study done by one of my colleagues, Andy Newberg, who found that if nine people are in a state of deep transcendent awareness, and the 10th person walks in, he or she or they more rapidly move into a state of transcendent awareness, as measured by the rapidity with which their mirror neurons come up online, which, means that we are effectively holding sacred consciousness for one another, that the brain, which in the 20th century, the brain in the 20th century was viewed very much in the metaphor of the time, like a factory that produced thoughts. What was real was the material brain

and what was secondary or epiphenomenal was the thought. In the 21st century, increasingly the brain is seen as a conduit to consciousness, as an antenna, through which we've receive sacred consciousness. This model of the brain of an antenna explains how we can have premonitions, how we have visitations, how it is that we can know before being told. The notion that when we meet together, we raise nine antennas so that when the 10th person comes in, they more quickly move into a field of amplified spiritual consciousness is completely consistent with the 21st century vision of the brain. The brain is an antenna.

It's a really liberating reflection, I think, that entrainment is real and that by the growth and liberation of your own self, you become, like, that fragrance carries with you everywhere you go, and it can help but rub off on people in a positive way. Yes. I'm curious your thoughts on that a bit more, because I feel like so much of our striving and efforts, which of course, those actions and planning is like necessary in so many regards. But to reflect on how perhaps the biggest, most impactful thing we could do is to realize our own awakened self and what that effortlessly does to those around us.

May we do a practice? Yeah. This is called the Road of Life. Great. I invite you to take three breaths, clear out your inner space. Things are feeling a little less human these days, aren't they? But isn't the whole point of progress to make things more human? That's why, at TD, when we design a product, whether it's an app for making trading easier or monitoring your account for fraud, we ask one simple question.

How does this help people? That's how we're making banking more simple, more seamless, and more intuitive. But most importantly, that's how TD is making banking more human. Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and sit. Play, post, taste, view, and enjoy, via rail, love the way. I invite you to locate a time where you wanted something so badly. That job, him or her or them to say yes, that home, that red door was yours. You researched, you strategized A plus B plus C.

You went for your red door. and because you'd done everything right, A plus B plus C, it was in the bag. You reach for your red door, but it's stuck. And you can't believe it stuck because tactically, strategically, you'd done everything right.

But only because that red door was stuck and it might have been very frustrating, even depressing, infuriating. You had no choice, you pivot. You pivot 2040, 60, 110 degrees. over there. Over there is a glorious, wide open yellow door, a sparkling, radiant yellow door.

You might have said you'd not known of yellow doors. You might have said you'd not known of yellow doors. Never heard of them. On the other side of the yellow door is someone who makes you feel alive, is a job in which you have a boss who sees you beyond what you knew in yourself, as a community where you feel nourished and you belong, the yellow door was not what you had wanted. It was better and much better for you. And as you sit back now and you think of the stuck red door and the hairpin turn,

taking you to the wide open yellow door, was there anyone there at the hairpin turn pointing to the yellow door, giving you information a trail angel. It might have been a counselor or a teacher. It might have been a dear friend who for the first time shared a very personal story, a grandparent. The trail angel that let you know about the yellow door, and it may even have been someone you met for two minutes at a party or the diner. And as you sit back way back now, stuck red door, hairpin turn, trail angel and wide open yellow door that has so much to do with who you are

and where you are today. How really are the most important parts of our lives found and developed? Is it narrowly through tactics and strategy? Sure, we have to do our part. But are we ultimately far less makers of our path and more discovers of our journey. Stuck red door, hairpin turned trail angel, white, open yellow door that has so much to do with who you are. Where in your road of life is your higher power, force, God, the universe? Is your higher power in the wide open yellow door and the stuck red door? is your higher power in the arrival of the trail angel and your capacity to be an open system in touch with the greatest force in us, through us, and around us.

Have you been on a spiritual path, a sacred adventure all along? That was wonderful. I love the journey from the maker of a path to like the discovery of your journey. and the shift I think you're providing, I feel, and that is to be able to pay attention to like the synchronicity and the trail angels and the people that are around us that are opening doors

that we might not have previously thought of or perceived. And I would just love for you to share on how we can open up our perception to like be able to witness and pay attention to and yeah, recognize these things around. us as opportunities to explore a new, a new way. Our living, breathing universe, our loving, guiding, who I call God.

So synchronicity is an expression that we live in a symbolic universe. We are constantly being guided. We are constantly being directed to, yes, opportunities for our own flourishing, but ever more opportunities for fellow travelers as well. Have you ever been a trail angel? Can you remember having been? been a trail angel for someone, feeling called, showing up, perhaps without even planning, being compelled to say something or do something.

Have you had that experience? Yeah. Will you tell the story? Yeah, I mean, I think more and more recently, just by virtue of people feeling connected to this podcast and community, I get approached sometimes when I was just traveling for the past month. And so I got plenty of opportunities to meet people in person that have been impacted at touched by this work in some way.

So, yeah, there was a couple times where I was just at a restaurant and somebody came up to me and shared a conversation or asked for some advice and in those moments, you know, the best I can to just be present, fully receive and see them. But then also, yeah, there were a couple times where I got to have a conversation for 20 or 30 minutes that they felt was supportive for them. And I felt honored to be able to give back in some way. And yeah. And you were their trail angel.

In those moments, do you ever feel inspired or compelled to say something that force or universe puts on your heart? Yeah, I would say whether it comes up spontaneously or just because it's experience that I've gone through. Yeah, there's definitely, there were moments for sure where I felt called to say something that I think would really support not just what they want, but the journey that they're on in a sense. You know, so not just the strategy, but things that help them on the journey of their path a bit more. So you're busy, you have many projects, and yet when someone says, may I speak with you, you clear 20 minutes, you arrive fully present, and you say, yes, I will serve the greater force in life. I will speak, that which God or the universe lays on my heart, an open system, a trailing. So how do we recognize synchronicity is in the guidance of the universe? How do we see and know the guidance of the universe?

I find that very often people have a whisper of a hunch. They do notice out of the corner of the eye. Very often we see out of the corner of our eye of synchronicity. But then often let it pass. How do we seize that gift? The first step is to authorize ourselves as knowers to say, hey, that very unprobabilistic confluence, that highly unprobabilistic confluence, that looks like a synchronicity to me. I authorize myself as a spiritual knower to take that seriously.

And second, reflect on why now is the synchronicity laid before my path? What is going on in my journey? What has been on my heart? What was I just thinking? That is deeply one in the same with this so-called external event. And then the third point is it having reflected on what this may mean, and it might be in five minutes or five months, act on it. When we act on a synchronous city,

when we say yes to the guidance of the universe, take a stand and act, we then are collaborators in the miracle. And life expands infinitely because now we are effectively the arm of source. If you think about the same, Sistine Chapel, right? On the top of the Sistine Chapel, God reaches out to man, and God's hand is very

firm and strong with a fully extended finger. And that of man is a little limp and disaffected. All we have to do is straighten our finger to reach the divine. Hey, guys, a quick share. Did you know that there is one phase of sleep that almost everyone fails to get enough of? And this one phase of sleep is responsible for your body's daily rejuvenation. I'm talking about deep sleep. Not getting enough of it adversely affects cravings, metabolism, willpower, premature aging, and more. A big reason we don't get enough deep sleep is because over 80% of the population is deficient in magnesium. Magnesium, which increases GABA, encourages relaxation on a cellular level, which is critical for sleep.

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Link in description, as always, back to the episode. I think about how there is this struggle that many of us face at different points in our life. When we proclaim we want something and we really desperately want something in our life, and yet we keep hitting, we keep meeting the reality that it's not coming to fruition. And I've heard you speak to many times how what we proclaim or verbally say that we want

is, of course, always going to be informed by today backwards, by our history, by our memory, a recombination of things that we've been exposed to in the past. Red doors. Yeah, red doors. Are inherently archival. Right? And so if life is going to unfold better than we could imagine, we have to be willing to be surprised in a different way in a different path. And I would actually love to bring this into your

personal life because I've heard you share a few stories that I've really been exemplary of this. One was your own journey through becoming a mother and struggling to conceive a child and in your journey with that. And taking seriously the synchronicity. Yeah. Extraordinary synchronicity. Would you share your journey along that? Do you feel called to? Yes. Of course, yes. And in the awakened brain, I share how learning to take synchronicity as real information, learning that mystical experiences are the most profound, valid form of knowing, allowed us to find our child on the other side of the earth. My husband and I, for five years, wanted to become parents. And being a scientist, I went to the best in vitro doctors in the whole country. I went to the team on the East Coast

with the highest rates of conception. And when that didn't work out, I thought, well, we should go to the team that invented in vitro, then we'll become parents. But nobody came. And this chase through what I call achieving awareness, tactics, strategy research, was not leading us to becoming parents. You know, good doctors, caring doctors, smart doctors. And yet something in my heart knew that for us, in our journey, we were in the wrong

office. So in this very depressing process, not becoming a parent was profoundly depressing. And every failed in vitro felt like going to a funeral. It was absolutely the most extraordinary, excruciating form of grief. One can imagine chronic grief. My husband was so flattened by this. I mean, there were nights where he would just lie in bed. He wanted so much to be a father. But in our suffering, in the depth of the existential probe brought by suffering, what I've come to see actually as a developmental depression, I started to notice glimmers of love, glimmers of guidance coming through people I'd never met before on a bus. This one fellow sat down next to me on the bus and said, hey, lady, quite unusual man, you look like just that type of lady that would go all around the the world adopting kids, big smile, and then he got off at the next stop. The gentleman had boarded and exited the bus for one stop, and he was a fully able man

who rides a bus for one stop. The day after, perhaps the most excruciating, synchronicitis are not always what we want to hear. Synchronicities are not always a friend of the ego, right? The synchronicity doesn't say you get what you want. It announces where you're going. Perhaps the most painful synchronicity was when I came home after in vitro from the team who had invented in vitro. And there, as I walked towards our front door on the front step, was a little smudge.

I looked closely. It was a dead duck embryo. So clearly I'm coming from an in vitro and there's a dead duck embryo on my doorstep. What else could that mean? far too unprobabilistic to have happened by chance, and my heart sank. And I knew this in vitro would not hold, and I was not this time going to be a mother. Very depressing. And so I went right from the front step to my office, fell asleep on the couch, and took a nap.

Tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck. I heard tapping at my door, a sound I'd never heard before. I go up to the glass door, open it up. And there's the mama duck. who's brought me a worm. She lost her baby, and she knew I lost mine. Two little dead embryos. What does that mean that all of life

is part of the synchronistic symphony? This trail angel that day was Mama Doc. It wasn't what I wanted to hear, but it said, you are loved, you are not alone, and you're on the path. Synchronicities continued lining our journey, the guy on the bus, the duck, many. And perhaps the greatest trail angel of all was my own mother. You know,

honey, I just wanted you to know our neighbor adopted the most beautiful little boy from Russia. Just letting you know. Well, in my heart, something was softening. And I sensed that parenthood was not necessarily a child who looked like me or had our personality, but that parenthood was something far more profound, that spiritual parenting was about profound love and commitment, and that there was a child out there for us, was the message coming through. My husband and I traveled to a woman, a clergy person's daughter, who had united 800 children with their parents. Lining her office were beautiful photos of children and their families, all little children,

babies, teenagers who'd finally found their parents, beautiful families had been formed. And she leaned forward and she said, what do you want in a child? I said, oh, well, I don't care if it's a boy or a girl. I certainly don't care what race or ethnicity the child is. Just a child who can love. And my husband leaned forward and said, yeah, all that, but kind of a girl. So the clergyman's daughter looked at us both and said, I got it.

In this journey, the more the synchronicity, directed us, the more we got the picture, that there was a child out there for us. And not as we'd planned, not as a quick and easy conception, even though we were healthy and even though there was no medical reason, we were not conceiving. But there was a child out there for us. I started having mystical experiences. One night, I sat up in bed, time and space opened up, and a very profound presence. I mean, not scary,

but quite profound and loving. Came time and space opened up in a numinous way. And the voice said, if you were pregnant now,

would you adopt? And I said, truthfully, in my heart, you don't lie to a presence like this. No.

No, I wouldn't. And there was not a sense of judgment. There's not a sense of punishment, but simply that this for now is as it is, and time and space closed back up. We continued on our journey, more synchronicities,

more guidance. And the presence came back a second time. The presence returned. Exact same experience. I sat up in bed in the middle of the night, time and space opened up, and a very sacred, very serious and profound presence came and said, if you were present, if you were pregnant now, would you adopt? And I knew in my heart, I said, I'm getting closer. I was aware that there was some form of ego death, some sort of muting of this radical control and achieving awareness that I was moving out of a illusion of control. But I'm not there yet, no. Again, not judgmental. It is as it is. Time and space closed. Each time I look over and my sweet husband's, you know, out cold, totally asleep. So we then, to,

Twice the mystical presence had come, the sacred presence had come. And I received from my big cousin Jane a call. I'm Lisa Jane, Big Jane. I have some dear friends in the Lakota community, and they have allowed me to invite you to a healing ceremony. I know you're looking for your child. I think you should come to the healing ceremony. It felt so aligned and so true.

Big Jane, my cousin, Big Jane, was clearly a trail angel. So I canceled all my clients. meetings at Columbia and my class hopped on a plane and flew out to South Dakota to participate with much gratitude in the Lakota healing ceremony. In the Inipi that night, the medicine man's wife led the ceremony for the women, where the medicine man led the ceremony for the men. So we went around the struggle of women, and it was quite hot. Each woman was invited to share why she had come. The first woman said, my son, he's 40 and he's not coming home. I'm worried for the family. The next woman said, my son is 14. He's starting to use drugs and alcohol. I'm concerned for him.

I'm concerned for his health and that he stay in school. We went around the circle. As we went around the circle, each woman had come to pray for her son until we got to Big Jane. Big Jane, it was most welcome, for me. She said, this is my cousin, little Jane, Lisa, and she has come looking for her child. I'm wondering if we could help her. And for the first time, I felt I was in the right place. After five years of in vitro offices, medical offices, I knew I was in the right place. The women in the in the need looked me in the eye. They understood. And I said, yes, we can help you. The medicine man's wife then led us through ceremony, and we sent the prayer of us as a collective, the superordinate, the we prayer, up through the top of the anipi.

And as the prayer rose up, you could see it in your mind's eye. It was numinous, much like the opening. That night after five years, a call came to my machine back home in New York. We have found the Miller's child. There are many wonderful girls, and we can find you a girl, but this is the Miller's child, and this is a son, praying for sons. From the other side of the world, our son was found. Sacred consciousness in South Dakota and our little baby on the other side of the world. The same night, clearly, far too unprobabilistic to have happened by chance.

It was a form of sacred healing. It was a form of deep consciousness moving our dear clergyman's daughter to find our boy. So we named our boy Isaiah for one world, Lakota, in honor of those who helped find him. Our beautiful boy. Now, if I had ignored the trail angel, if I had ignored the synchronicity, he'd still be in an orphanage. Actually, right now he would have been adopted into the army where hundreds of thousands of boys have been killed. We said yes to the synchronicities. Thank you, God.

Thank you, source, guiding source of all life. What appeared as a synchronicity was showing us direction to our child. We must say yes to this guidance, and we must know it as real. So beautiful. Our beautiful boy. Our spiritual child. Ah, the presence came back a third time. I got home, a video came. There he was, our spiritual child, arms slung around the nurse, speaking in his language, big smile, nine months.

Happy little boy. I fell in love. I felt a soaring, euphoric love the second I saw this little boy on video with his radiance, he seemed to glow. I felt an expansive love I'd never felt before. It was becoming a spiritual parent. I love this little boy more than I'd loved everything else, added up times a thousand on the other side of the world, though we'd yet to meet in person. And that night that I'd seen him in video, I went to bed and woke up to the presence. The president said, if you were pregnant now, would you adopt?

And I said, absolutely, resolutely, this is our spiritual. son. That very night, we conceived his spiritual twin, who was my husband's kind of a girl. You can't write it better than that. Because it's written by source by God. Yeah. And it was the path to becoming parents of spiritual twins. And it was also the path of shedding illusions of radical control that we somehow get pregnant or make life. Just because you run in vitro and put all the pieces together doesn't mean that we humans have made life. The breath of life is divine. It's a gift.

We can't force it. And the edges, therefore, of life and death are where we realize that we do not have radical control. Materialism is a very incomplete vision of the world. And there is a far more profound force of life guiding us that brings an adventure. that is so beyond our imagination. How do you make sense of this presence where this question arises in your being if you were pregnant, would you adopt?

In the moment you say yes to adopting this boy across the world, you get pregnant the same night after five years of trying and not succeeding. I'm just curious what you make of that presence of the undeniable fact that there's, is the timing beyond our comprehension or our own kind of desires. When you look back at that time now, like how do you make sense of it if you do?

Well, clearly, I had yet to be ready to inherit the mantle of what a spiritual parent really is. There had to be a wearing down of my ego. There had to be a dismantling of my illusions of control and hyper-research, strategic, tactical thinking. And I think that the despair and the depression of the grief of each failed in vitro of not being parents when all I did was go to baby showers for my friends, that stab in the heart opened up an existential probing that led to an augment. We widened the lens on the deeper nature of life and were prepared to receive divine inspiration and guidance. In our case, it was the struggle for five years to become parents, but when in a chronic or painful way we don't get what we want,

there's actually an opening through which we expand our awareness and start to see there is guidance, that we actually, at every moment, are loved, guided and never alone. We start to use our spiritual brain. We awaken. First off, thank you so much for sharing this story. It's just so powerful. And it makes me think, because you've mentioned it throughout your journey, of how depressing that journey was throughout five years, and how depression really is misinterpreted from a culture that lacks context for it.

And the way you're speaking to it is like an opening, the other side of the coin, the beginning of an awakening. And I'm just curious because everybody's listening, whether they're in a chapter of their life right now or inevitably at some point, they confront this. this struggle and this inner depression and lack of clarity and feeling like they're not moving progress in life in the way that they would hope. What context would you give depression from that sense? Depression is the signal depression and it's real. Depression hurts. Depression is no joke. It hurts and sometimes it seizes us. It feels awful. And yet it is not reducing us. Depression is not a pothole in our path. Depression is an invitation. It is the first phase of guiding us into an awakening. Depression leads to transcendence. So the next time that we start to feel anxious or

depressed or we're not getting what we want or the ego is totally not able to control the world as we thought it was, that's not a bad thing. That is the beginning of an illumination. You might even say, wow, there's something really profound coming. I'm feeling a little depressed. The way I was yesterday isn't somehow enough. I'm feeling a not enoughness. The way I was yesterday somehow doesn't feel fulfilling today. I feel an absence or a loneliness or an emptiness.

That emptiness is the expansion of your soul looking and probing for a deeper, more profound. ascension of greater spiritual awareness, and we can track that in the brain. We find that when people feel the yearning, the hunger, the existential enwee, and struggle, it is the precursor, it is the, if you will, the enunciation, that there's a spiritual expansion coming. If we say yes to it and walk the full path, we can chart in the brain that the very same people who have an augmented spiritual awareness today are two and a half times more likely to have suffered with a deep struggle, depression, in the past 10 years. Depression is the gateway to an awakening.

Depression leads to transcendence if we take the full journey. What is the purpose here? Why is this child not coming? In this despair, might I be more open to see what guidance is before me? Once I've realized that my tight-fisted control isn't yielding what I want, isn't earning me what I thought I could grasp. Maybe, maybe there is a way in which the universe is starting to take me elsewhere for something bigger beyond my imagination.

Because an awakened journey takes us somewhere that we don't even know exists. The yellow door takes us somewhere beyond our imagination. Awakened mystical experiences, intuition, synchronicities have, information that has yet to unfold before us. That's an expanded life. And that's a spiritual adventure. Hey guys. A quick share. I have been loving this company momentous for their rigorous testing when it comes to the purity and efficacy of their products.

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Back to the show. Can you break down what's actually happening in the brain in that process? Yes, yes. We looked at people over 40 years, together with my colleagues at Columbia Medical School,

we looked at people for 40 years, their children and grandchildren, to ask questions, what really over the life course is the path between spirituality and depression. We know that spirituality is very protective against depression, but really in the longer human journey is the nature of the relationship between spirituality and depression. And what we found was quite remarkable. In adolescence, there is an emergence,

oftentimes a very depressing, I call it developmental depression, a struggle, what is my meaning, my purpose? What's the nature of life? Is life empty or full? Is there a deep sacred reality or is it all a material accident? This is what you face at 19, yeah? Unavoidably. Unavoidably. It's written into our body, mind, and soul. When we say yes to that struggle

and in that existential probing, start to notice illumination, whether it's the light on the ocean, whether it's a felt sense that love, right when I think I'm going to fall through a black hole, I'm caught. Who is that? That's the universe.

That's God catching you. do I go left or right and then a synchronicity yells right, go right. I do, and the proof is in the pudding. When we discover the dialogue between our consciousness and that of source, we are participants in the journey. We are on a sacred adventure. The adolescent is perfectly poised to discover this journey. What happens when we look through the lens of a long-term clinical course study is that in adolescence, is an emergence of a depression that opens into a spiritual awakening. If we support the adolescent, if the adolescent emerging adults says yes to this, a strong spiritual awareness is formed, really the spiritual core of the whole adult, which then becomes 75% protective against

the recurrence of a deep major depression. And the protective benefits go up to 90% when we are otherwise at high risk. High risk because of our genes, high risk because of our family environment or community. 90% protective against recurrence of depression is a strong spiritual core. That's extraordinary. There's nothing in the clinical or social sciences as profoundly protective as 90%. There's nothing as profoundly protective as spiritual life. Then we find looking across the human life course. If we come back to the very same people, and now they are just entering

later early, early midlife, you know, 40, 45, we find that over those now, you know, 26 to 12, 14 years, right? Day in and day out, people have practiced their own spiritual life, whether it's through meditation, service, right action, prayer, their faith tradition,

people who over sustained periods of time, the better part of a decade, sustained spiritual life, show cortical thickness across the regions of the awakened brain, which is to say day in and day out, spiritual awareness strengthens the neural correlates of the spiritual brain. Yes, spirituality is our birthright written into our brain.

Yes, spirituality is endowed, naturally at birth with inborn circuits in our brain. But it's up to us to practice and strengthen the muscle. And indeed, we find that there is cortical thickness across the regions of spiritually aware brain. What are those regions? Well, the parietal, which puts in and out hard boundaries, shows cortical thickness when we sustained a spiritual life.

And the parietal shows the engagement during a profound transcendent relationship. Similarly, we see cortical thickness across the occipital and precunious regions of perception and orientation. What's remarkable is that the regions of the brain to show cortical thickness through sustained spiritual life are not thick, but thin, and people with recurrent major depression, suggesting that sustained spiritual life is actually neuroprotective against recurrence of depression. the more sensitive we are, the more prone to depression, the artist, the shamans, the musicians, the more essential it is to strengthen our receptive spiritual capacities because a lot gets in. If we can direct the instrument to source, to spirit, then we have a spiritual response to the rocky landscape of life. It's not that we won't hit potholes, it's that we have a spiritual response to struggle and suffering such that we don't go down the downward spiral of major depression.

Final finding, right? Depression and adolescents can lead to an awakening. Once the spiritual core is formed and sustained for a decade, we find cortical thickness across the regions of the spiritual brain. What's ever more fascinating is that if we look prospectively and say, what does a thick, strong, awakened brain today, say about how we're doing a year from now, we find that cortical thickness across the regions of the awakened brain is predictive of lower symptoms of depression. Cortical thickness across the

regions of the awakened brain is protective against diagnosis of major depression a year later. There's nothing in the clinical or social sciences that is 75% protective prospectively against depression, 90% if we're otherwise at high risk. being sensitive and open and creative. This is who we are. What region specifically is most related to the subjective experience of a transcendent connection? The parietal.

The pridal lets me know that you sitting your chair and I sit in mind and yet at the same time that we are distinct. We are also part of one field of consciousness, one unit of reality. The pariah puts in and out pulsing, in and out, hard boundaries. So we then know we are a point and we are part of a wave. We are magnificently diverse and unique. And we are part of one unit of sacred consciousness field. We are all built to know this.

Every one of us is built to see into the unit of reality. The unit of reality is real. And therefore every day of our lives, we can choose to engage. engage our awakened brain to see and know that in our own distinct, unique path, we are playing out a unit of symphony. What is the most interesting finding you have gotten from doing these various countless fMRI studies to see how there are infinite access points into that transcendent connection through various religions or, you know, different experiences? What does that reflection kind of evoke within you? The most interesting access point.

I shared with you that as we look around the world, there are five phenotypes of natural spirituality. Love, the unit of reality, a practice of transcendence, a moral code derived from our direct experience of unit of reality, which is compassion and service. Of all five universal phenotypes, of our deep natural birthright, natural spirituality, there is all five phenotypes are associated with, cortical thickness of the awakened brain. When we realize and practice all five phenotypes, we strengthen the awakened brain. What is the cortical? The cortex is the thin layer that is uniquely in humans. And it is effectively processing power.

Okay. So the thickness of that correlates to those five phenotypes? Yes, which is effectively the proliferation, good brain, strong brain, high processing power brain. there is one phenotype which has by far the greatest impact on the strengthening of the cortex of the processing power, the capacity to see and know the deep loving unit of reality. The brain, of course, is our lens through which we can see reality. And when we strengthen, build the cortex, strengthen the cortex of the awakened brain, it becomes the lens, the go-to place through which we see life. starts to look like a unit of reality. And we know that people show up for a reason. The uniqueness

of who you are showing up in my unique life is part of the grander symphony. We understand each other's narratives as all coursing through one unit of reality. And our possibility then becomes to serve and love one another. When we strengthen the cortical regions, when we strengthen the cortex across the regions of the awakened brain, it becomes the lens, the go-to place. through which we understand life. Of all five phenotypes, there is one that is most grandly associated with strengthening the cortex

across the regions of the awakened brain. There is one phenotype which is most impactful on strengthening the muscle of the awakened brain. Guess what it is? My guess out of those five would, I would say probably because, is it service?

Yes. Okay, great. Yes. What was your sense? Well, my sense is that service is the lived experience of unitive consciousness in a sense. So you're putting into action what you experience, which is self as other. So that is inherently transcendent and kind of the lived reality of that. Absolutely.

It is the walk of unitive reality. Yes. Living out the sacred unitive reality. reality, being it, doing it, serving. It's no wonder. I call it prayer and action. Yeah. No, I mean, that makes sense.

And every tradition says, as you do unto others, you do unto me. Yeah. That there is no difference when it comes to the brain between the vertical, I turn to God and the horizontal. I see God and you. It makes sense. Then if services, you said prayer and action? Prayer in action.

I mean, you. you sitting across me me sitting across from you everybody listening we're essentially God and drag you know we're like we're so you think of life the universe God experiencing itself through you as you

so prayer and worship being you know being what service essentially is to others is it also makes a lot of sense that in the most heavily individualistic culture we are seeing these spiritual centers

atrophy because we are viewing strongly this illusion of separation between self and other would make sense that those centers are adrophying because we are doing the opposite of prayer. Well, and Mother Teresa shared that in the first half of her life, she had profound mystical experiences. But in the second half of her life, everything went dark. She didn't have that illumination, and yet what sustained her was profound service, her walk of unit of love. Yeah. Have you seen No Greater Love, the documentary on her? I think came out a couple years ago.

I'd love to see that. You would love it. I highly recommend for everyone to check it out. It's great. Super, just very inspiring across the board. We have this notion that service needs to be these grandeur acts instead of the plentiful, bountiful, small opportunities we have in our daily experience, the presence that we grant another person. Taking a spider out of your house and letting him live.

Every act of relational love is actually an act of transcendent relationship. Yeah. Like the table practice we did last time. Yeah. When you speak about these centers, which are like the biological anatomy, which correlate, the neural correlates to these spiritual experiences, and you refer to earlier in this conversation, that our brain can perhaps be perceived, not as a generator of thoughts,

but as a transducer, conducer of thoughts. What do you think, from the perspective of like the 25th century science, understanding, our understanding of spirituality, what do you think would be the most kind of shocking findings that are perhaps a bit more contentious or not widely accepted today? Beautiful question.

What a magnificent thing. So in the 20th century, the metaphor of the brain was as a factory. In the 21st century, increasingly, the metaphor is an antenna, a conduit to consciousness. But I think the antenna is actually something of a bridge model. The antenna is just like the atom had bridge models along the way before we got to finer-grained, you know, subatomic understandings. Well, I think that the brain may actually, in the 25th century, be very very, viewed as a reification, a coming into form of consciousness. Why?

Because when we meditate, when we pray, there's synaptogenesis. What's that? New neurons are formed across the regions of the spiritual brain, which means that the more we engage in sacred consciousness, the more the brain proliferates across the regions of the landing pad. In other words, I think that the foundation, nature of reality as sacred consciousness will become a common understanding over the next hundred years. And when it does, we'll understand our reification or coming into material form

as like a ray from the sun, an emanation of consciousness, that we are dressed up divinity, as you put it, so beautifully. So that everything we do is a spiritual act. In every way we touch a fellow living being, whether it's a human or a spider or a mountain or a plant, we are in every moment making a spiritual decision. So just as we are loved, held, guided, and never alone, we choose at every moment if we are going to be ambassadors of spirit. Are we going to be loving? Are we going to be guiding? Are we going to leave no one alone? That includes the spider and the plant in the air and the water and certainly every human being on earth. To me, it's one of the most passionate subjects that I have on this podcast and this platform

because it feels like consciousness research and studies are perhaps maybe more than any other field of study going to contribute to what actually takes us and transitions us from the materialist paradigm into what comes after. I can share a beautiful study. Please. It was like a study conducted by Actor Hoff. Actor Hoff worked at a community hospital in Hawaii, and she saw that traditional healers who connected to source to divinity

were having tremendous healing effects on the patients. And so Actor Hoff wanted to understand the role of pure consciousness in healing. She put, Actor Hoff invited the traditional healer into one MRI and into a second separate MRI, often located in an entirely different building, the patient was welcomed. As the traditional healers started to do his or her or their work,

a consistent pattern came up on the fMRI, tracking blood flow engagement of the brain. Within an instant, the same pattern showed in the patient's MRI at a distance. One thing, healing sacred consciousness, in two places. Non-locality, superposition,

whatever language we use, consciousness, sacred consciousness is healing. We are conduits. Of course, we don't make sacred consciousness. We're conduits. No matter what tradition

a healer may be from, consistently, if you ask from where do you draw the healing power, they will say from source. I've never met a healer who thought that they created the sacred consciousness.

Do you think it's a potential inherent limitation of just instrumentation that is bound to time and space to measure something that is transcendent or more fundamental than time and space in a sense. I'm just asking because I feel like in exploring what consciousness is

and how it moves our needle of what it means to be human and the hard problem of consciousness is such as hard because of our inability to be able to explain how seemingly unconscious complexity could spawn a conscious experience of itself. I'm just curious what you think the progress will be like in the next 10 to 15 to 50 years. I found as a scientist that the adventure of research is actually driven by the illumination of culture.

So as we evolve and become more expansive and aware and conversant and share sacred consciousness, science will keep pace. but I don't think it's science that's leading culture. I think culture is leading science. Recently, my father crossed over. And when my father crossed, I felt his loving presence immediately. Immediately.

On my father's... What's his name? My father's name was Sidney. My father was a theater director. He loved story. And in every season of his life, he would direct a show that spoke to his passage. So whether it was death of a salesman or look homeward angel, he often directed

plays that said something about what he was struggling with in his own journey, his own, what he was metabolizing in his path. And so in the final days of his life, as we gathered around him as the family encircled my father in the hospital on his deathbed, we spoke of the chapters of his life through the shows that he had produced. And he said, he said, sat up in bed with a joy. His reality was a narrative reality. For my father, as a director, art, was a symbolic statement, not a two-dimensional statement, but a living, breathing, symbolic statement of real life. So then in his final day, the last day my father could speak, he sat up and said, I am going to join the ancestor story for a man who understood life through

story. He passed within the next two days. He no longer could speak. The last thing I saw was in his final moment, he lifted his hand to say goodbye, which was deeply moving. It was the last little out of effort. He raised his hand. Goodbye. And ahead at home, I've felt a deep loss, but also profound love, gratitude for this father. It had really been the light by which I now see the world. I pull into my driveway and I hear, look up, look up. And there, a rah, a row, is a is a family of geese, the ancestors that fly between this world and the next. One goose swoops down towards me, comes back up and joins the flock. But it wasn't goodbye. It was actually, you are free. One goose swoops down, joins the flock. And I knew that my

father from his limited body was now free. From that day forward, I have spoken to my father every day. He remains the light by which I see the world. Within the week after my father's crossing over, my father was a wonderful grandparent. He was wonderful to all five of his grandchildren who all spoke at his funeral. He knew and loved them for exactly who they were, very diverse, five grandchildren. In the week after his crossing, he came to each of us in a way that we would understand. To his youngest grandchild, my youngest daughter, my youngest daughter is an adventure. She was living in Tanzania, climbing Kilimanjaro, and as she landed from my father's funeral, the man driving her had an unusual breakdown of the car.

The car lost a wheel in a tiny village. They stepped out into the countryside, and there for all the villagers to behold, as they rounded up, was the sight of a white giraffe. Why a white giraffe? Because quite unusual sight, a white giraffe. Grandpa said it had always played a game with the grandchildren. What animal are you? And grandma was a loving little hippopotamus. She loved to be a hippopotamus.

And Grandpa, 6'5 and very lean was a tall giraffe. So for his youngest grandchild, Grandpa came as a giraffe. But not any giraffe. He came as a bright white albino giraffe, which was quite unusual. It was actually mythic for the village. To his oldest grandchild, Isaiah Lakota, who had been found with the help of the Lakota. Grandpa Sid came in a way. Isaiah Lakota has long.

long been an animal whisper. He talks to animals, come here, geese, and they cross. Isaiah Lakota is in touch with all his relations, all of our relations. In the Lakota tradition, the crow flies from this world to the next. Mom, something really incredible is going on here. I said, what, Isaiah Lakota? Our yard is full of crows, and they've hung out here all day, like four hours. Grandpa had come as a crow. And to me, the scientist, he came as pure energy, pure spirit, pure light,

and showed me now how he can move. And as I thought, Dad, can you draw closer? The light jumped, not progressed, but jumped materialization to rematerialization towards me. And as I thought, Dad, I love you, I'll miss you. The light moved far away. He showed me my father in the first week since his crossing, that he could be near and he could be present, and that he was now pure,

sacred consciousness, pure light. He came to each of us in the way that we could know that our relationship with my father is eternal. By understanding of who we are has expanded through the journey of my father crossing over, and now understand that we are not just continuity of spirit or consciousness, but that we persist in deep relationship with one another after we cross. And yet at the same time, I had a deep awareness. My father all his life practiced Tai Chi. He was one of the first in the community to learn Tai Chi in the early 70s. Suddenly one day, I had an awareness that my father had been reincarnated. And it was remarkable. He was a little Chinese baby.

And at the same time, I could still access him as Sid in relationship. One thing, consciousness in two places. The continuity of spirit of Sid and the reincarnation of that spirit and the little Chinese baby. This is an expanding universe that we're part of. It's never too early to plan your summer story in Europe with WestJet, from rolling countryside to cobblestone streets. Begin your next chapter. Book your seat at westjet.com or call your train.

Travel Agent, WestJet, where your story takes off. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. The Everyday with Amazon. There's so much there that I could, that I'm excited to explore. But I just, I can see and feel what he meant to you as a human being.

And I think the legacy that we leave is like the impact that we leave on our loved ones. And you can see how they still live on just through the emotion that you carry and how that changes how you move with compassion and empathy through the world. And I both have the very logical side of me that loves to explore how it could possibly make sense that consciousness transcends this physical body after it dies and what happens when it expands and maybe takes a new birth and whatnot. And do you, I'm just curious, do you feel that urge to try to understand the mechanism behind these things, or does it just feel true to you and that's enough, like, ontologically?

I find that the meaning and the expanded meaning of sacred consciousness spirit comes to us during times when the double doors open. That is very often at the edges of life and death. You know, from the view of science, we found that in the same way that a close connection to God, or the higher power protects against depression. A sustained felt relationship with our ancestors, here my father, is equally protective against depression. So what is depression but the withering of our spiritual awareness? And what is sustained transcendent relationship?

It is our nature. Every culture, Day of the Dead, ancestor worship, knows that we remain in deep connection with our family members as they cross. And yet uniquely in the United States, is there some sort of silence or awkwardness around this profound reality? And just as a symptom of radical materialism, it leaves us in a state of profound grief, never-ending grief, downward spiral to depression, when in fact that grief is an invitation to connect with our ancestors. My youngest child is an adventurer. She climbed Kilimanjaro.

She hiked the entire distance of Japan. And because she's only 22, as a mother, I often hope that she's okay. So I pray to who I call God. And then I also pray to the ancestors. And quite specifically, I reach out to my grandfather, my grandfather Bill, her great-grandfather, Bill,

who was a very rugged outdoors person. and he would be dropped in the territories of Canada to ice fish for a week and then picked up again by an airplane. So I was surprised when my daughter said, I'm climbing Kilimanjaro, but everyone else has reneged. No one else is coming, just me and the guide. And I thought, well, I said, you know, usually people climb a mountain in groups. No, mom, you know, no one else wanted to go. It's me in the guide. So I prayed to God, and I prayed to say, Grandpa Bill, can you please?

watch over her. Well, sure enough, I said, one more thing, Lila, if God forbid the guide passes out or is ill or God forbid dies, you need to help them as much as you can and then turn around and retrace your steps. Sure enough, it turns out that she meets the guide and the guide has shown up with one other person from the village. And the person has never climbed Kilimanjaro, but was this joyful fellow, almost Shakespearean, called Jerry. Jerry's full of life and he's a good soccer player. Never climbed the mountain. So Lila, the guide, and Jerry ascend the mountain. They get to the 90% point of Kilimanjaro when the guy says, you know, this has never happened before, but I can't go on? Lila said, can we take you down the mountain? And the guy said,

no, no, I'm okay. I just need to hold at this altitude. Well, sure enough, Jerry, was able to ascend, Lila and Jerry, both novices, the very top of the mountain. Who's Jerry? Jerry's like a puck figure from a shagher. He was this joyful fellow who rolled in the snow at the top of the mountain. Lila ascends and takes a photograph of a soul raven at the top of Kilimanjaro. Birds don't normally fly that high. That's very high of above the clouds.

the profile of the bird was quite unique. It was the profile of my beloved grandfather, my grandpa Bill, who watched over her. So ancestors are helping us all the time. Why would we want to pull the screen, shut the door on these loving, protective, guiding relationships? And as a parent, I'm counting on the ancestors

to watch my children. From the perspective of a parent, what do you think in your journey with Isaiah and writing your book, The Spiritual Child, what do you think is the most important thing we can keep doing, start doing, and stop doing to continue to protect and cultivate the child's innate openness?

There are two. And the first is authorize our children as knowers. If your child says, you know, I just had this feeling that there would be an alligator at the party, and there was. or I just knew I could feel Grandma coming to visit. I felt her love. Wow.

I know Grandma adored you. I'm not surprised she'd want to check in on you and watch over you. Or if the child has a mystical experience, I'm so glad you told me. That might really open up into something directing your path. The child is chronically deauthorized as a natural spiritual knower by our radical materialist culture. As a parent, we are profoundly impactful on reversing the tide. Whatever we say as a parent is beheld as true by the young child. So if we authorize our young children as having authentic, valid, transcendent experiences, they will know that these are real. The second thing we can do as

parents is be transparent and bring voice to our own spiritual path so that the child sees the golden thread of lived spirituality through every day of our lives. How do we do this? There are four important ways. One, bring a language to your own spiritual experience and share it out loud. Ooh, look at this synchronicity. Way too unprobabilistic to have happened by chance. You know, I was just thinking of this family and there the whole family was in the supermarket. Point out the synchronicities. Very important to tell our own story, our own spiritual path. I remember when I was 16, and I didn't know if there was any meaning written into the universe. And it got worse and worse.

It really was very depressing until one day I saw light on the water. And I knew there was a sacredness written into life. Tell your story. When you do, your child knows, hey, the spirituality, the spiritual reality is valid. It has a language, and we talk about that here. our relationship goes to that depth. And then finally, pray out loud, meditate side by side, say poetry in the woods, offer the keys to the double door of transcendent practice.

When we do, we myelinate the tracks, we pave the highways so that the child can always get back to divine source. So speak a language, tell your story, right? bear witness to your child as a valid knower and teach a practice of transcendence. If we do, the child will know there is a valid spiritual reality. They will know there is a language and a roadmap to this reality. They will be able to get there through a practice of transcendence. And every day of our lives, they'll know that our family, actually our family of life,

is rooted in the bedrock of a common spiritual truth. What would a society and culture where that was embedded in the ethos look like from the time people are raised? So we'd be post-materialist, right? We would stop a fractured understanding of who we are as different, right? And rather see us as magnificent expressions of a common oneness. So we are exquisitely magnificently diverse expressions all dressed up in our biobody suit. and close, from source. That would be the go-to assumption.

And I think the young child is there. When my child, when my child was about, I sent her child, Leah, the kind of a girl, the spiritual twin of Isaiah, Leah, was about four years old. She was watching TV and she said, Mommy, is that woman on TV, you? And it was this beautiful black woman.

She saw the spirit. and felt like mom. So the child is deeply connected to the soul. Not conditioned to have prejudice of skin color. And outwardness and separateness, right? Yeah. No, I think that's to value, prioritize, and perceive the essence of a thing

rather than the form of a thing, I think is a powerful practice to continue to cultivate. And one of which I've heard you speak to is nature as your cathedral, which I love. You said that on the phone call the other day. day. Like nature is my cathedral. And nature and spending time in it is one of those things that helps us connect to the essence of things. A 20-minute walk in nature and trains the brain in the same way as prayer. We've returned to the deep divinity, the godliness in us, through us

and around us. We, just like as when nine people meditate and the 10th walks in the door, nature, the trees, the birds is, in fact, the expression. the coming into form of God. Yeah, there are the nine people meditating and we're the 10th walking in. Yes, the 9 million. What else happens to our brain or our perception as we immerse herself in nature?

Is there any other recent findings or interesting studies there? There's an emerging body of science through which the relationship between so-called our consciousness and the so-called other consciousness. And the so-called other consciousness of plants is shown to be in deep dialogue.

If two so-called separate beings, a human and a plant are in dialogue, then more foundationally, we are sharing one consciousness field. We are all tapping in to the unit of reality. There's a beautiful body of science, post-material consciousness-based science, which is generally conducted in extremely rigorous ways because it is paradigm changing. And post-material consciousness-based studies show that consciousness is in us, through us, and around us. We are much more of an antenna. Because the brain is an antenna, we can send and receive. We can send and receive.

I'll share with you some examples. If two people, particularly if we're bonded, are connected and then separated in Faraday rooms, so sheltered from sending signals, right? and one person receives a little flicker of light in the other sheltered Faraday room, the cortex of the person, the occipital cortex of the person who did not have light shining in their eyes will flash on as if they had seen light over 50% of the time. Are they both hooked up to fMRI or how are they tracking the second person? Oh, EEG.

EEG. So the point is that we share consciousness constantly. So this has been such a wonderful conversation tonight. You might have a thought, and on the red eye back to New York, I'll have the same thought. Why? Because we're now bonded, right? Now, if you think about intense bonding between twins or a mother and child, it accelerates the unitive, what Larry Dossi called one mind, the unit of awareness. Or Tikna Ha might have called interbe.

Yeah, you referred earlier as like the myelinated path between the strength of the connectivity between two beings is stronger. And I think that's really interesting what some new studies that are being conducted with the non-speaking, nonverbal autistic children and their caretakers. It's a wonderful series that telepathy tapes that brings to the four, a body of science that has actually been there for about 20 years. there have been pioneers who've worked so hard for 20 years doing studies. Rupert Sheldrick, Dean Radin, Diane Hennessey Powell, Marjorie Walcott, and a host of others. And I edited the Oxford University Press Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality in 2012. And again, edition two in 2024. In the Oxford Handbook are a number of articles by post-materialist consciousness researchers.

there is indeed a rigorous body of work, which is now ratified center field, Oxford Handbook of the field, to say yes, consciousness exists as primary. The material reality it exists, Newtonian mechanics exists, but it is a subset of a foundationally consciousness-based reality. So who are we? We are emanations of consciousness in dialogue with the source of all consciousness. And this is, if you will, a dialectic. We are both from consciousness and in dialogue with consciousness. And the new field shows this exquisitely. I get so excited and just juiced up whenever I see, like, how we live in such an exciting time. Because these emerging sciences, never have we before had the opportunity to spread information in conversations like these.

across the globe in an instant where somebody on the other side of the world who maybe feels really drawn to doing or contributing to this work now has the possibility of doing so because it's in their field of awareness. And what happens when great minds like these like yourself come together and start sharing and doing this work? And to me, it makes me feel very optimistic about what's possible in the next coming decades. We are on the cusp of a mass awakening. And all the so-called cacophony. These are the birthing prints. This is our collective developmental depression before a mass illumination.

Well said, in that context, I think, for anybody who was listening to this conversation earlier and has their own relative degree of depression or something they're navigating and they can see it from the context of a greater perspective. Yes. Like we could do with the perspective of where humanity. is at on its developmental journey, I think, gives us the necessary energy to see us on the proper timeline and then therefore respond proactively and effectively. It is such an important point that because there is a collective birthing of an awakening,

there is a collective developmental depression right now, which is a struggle, an existential probing, a sense of meaninglessness, a loss of bearings. Gen Z is exquisitely sensitive and emerging as adults into our new society. So of course, Gen Z will, as a collective, be feeling this universal struggle, this developmental depression, and be at the epicenter of the emergence of the illumination, the awakening. Put another way, the universe works through us. We are part of the universe and the evolving universe works through us. Through this time of struggle and death of the old emergence of the needs. knew, who would bear the brunt more than exquisitely sensitive Gen Z, who in the developmental

trajectory are in the epic of emergence? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And like you said earlier, we are the struggle and messy birthing process, which any birthing process is messy, where we're experiencing that collectively right now. And I think there's always the question of if we're going to make it because it looks so depressing and all the detrimental things that are happening widespread. But all these reminders that you've been giving us about realizing our innate faculties that we have the ability to continue to cultivate of what prayer is, of how service lights up these centers and cortical thickness in our brain. and so many different practices that you provide in reflections on who we are

and the faculties that we have, the abilities to continue to cultivate is so needed. It's like the work that I feel is most needed. It's the most fundamental thing that lies as the foundation of so many of the systemic issues we face. When we grow personally, there's a quaking, there's an existential dread on the cusp of an ego death. Our way of being is going to die off

and the soul is going to bring forward a new form of being. collectively right now there's a quaking and an anxiety, a tremulousness, because we are having a mass ego death. And what is it, our old way of being about to die off? It is radical materialism. Separatism, usury, power grabs, identification with the material. That's all going to die off. Radical materialism. Rapidly, I mean, you can feel the momentum to emerge is a deep awareness that was in our birthright all along.

for the unit of reality, for love, as built into the fabric of existence. We're on the cusp of awakening. I'm curious to hear your thoughts are our unique responsibility to contribute in the way that we feel most called towards the birthing of a more beautiful world, so to speak. It seems like as leaders are being born

based off of their own unique calling way they feel that their skill set and mindset has the ability to contribute. Yeah, what reminder what do you want to share for everybody who's waking up to their own unique individual contribution? Yes, that we are endowed perfectly for our calling. The soul has a trajectory, its own telos, its own path to contribute. And how do I know my calling?

What is my calling? Listen to the whisper of a hunch of your deep soul. Listen to your deep inner wisdom. What is not just my purpose am I going to be an outward engineer or an outward teacher? But as a soul on earth, what is your purpose? You are perfectly built to realize that purpose. And you're invited then to take an inventory both of your gifts, through which your endowments, through which to fulfill your calling, and also your necessary absence of gifts.

So I wanted to be a gospel singer, but to put it politely, my husband will say, you sing like a bird. So my gospel is through the currency of that with which, I was endowed, which is math and science, science is my gospel. That is my song. Science researches. Science is my song. It's very important the balance of strengths and not strengths to realize our calling. It's also important to know that every one of us has a calling, which is only ours to discern. No one on the outside knows our calling, and there's certainly no monolithic system of measurement through which we can determine our place in the world.

There's a deeply internal process, necessitating authorization that we listen to our soul, that we listen to our spirit. We must authorize ourselves to find direction. The most important checkpoint as we move forward is are we moving in alignment with natural spirituality? What is natural spirituality? We are loved and held, we're guided.

and we're never alone. And so too, the most powerful form of prayer is that of action. We show up for one another and fellow living beings to be loving, guiding, and never leave anyone alone. So when in doubt, do I turn left or right? Do I listen to this theory or isom? Do I want to act and run with the crowd or do something different? A checkpoint, if we ever need one, is this movement, is this isom, is this philosophy, theology, aligned with natural spirituality. Is it loving? Is it guiding? And does it never leave anyone alone?

And we can't go wrong if we hold that as our universal standard because it's written into our DNA, the circuits in our brain, and our every walk and breath that we are naturally spiritual beings, loving, guiding, and built never to leave anyone alone. I also can just attest to how important Sanga or community is on the process of getting clear on what our unique contribution is. It feels like from the model of an individualistic culture, we feel like we have to discover this all on our own and have the roadmap from A to Z, you know, at the get-go. And I think it's just been helpful because no matter where we're at, like I'm sure both you and I, we have our own individual hunches of, what's coming next in the way that we want to share. And then there's also this big mystery of what's going to come in the next five, 10, 15 years of how we're going to show up and express

in our own way. So there's still moments where I'm, you know, for sure, unsure of like what the next thing is going to take shape and how it's going to take form. And it's a spiritual adventure. Yeah, which is great. It's a huge yellow door before us. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's just comforting to know that we're all in the ride. We're all on that journey. Together. Yeah. What is a Sanga, a Mingan fellowship, but actually an invocation of sacred presence into our relationship? So in a partnership, there's not two people. There's three.

Sacred presence through us. And in a mingian, there's not ten people. There's great loving force, God, in and through us as well. So we're never alone. We're always loved and we're always guided. There's a buoyancy here. A Sanga, the fellowship, can help us together. Traditionally, in the 20th century, we would assemble as individuals coming together in a group.

But in a sanga, in a mingian, if we make society into a living, breathing, Sanga, or mingon, or fellowship, we are saying that every choice we make together, we will consult a source. We will invoke through meditation or prayer guidance. We will not act like Mighty Mouse that we're going to push the buttons and make decisions without first in collective. seeking the guidance and the buoyancy of source, who I call God. It's another way of explicitly choosing to live than we have in the past, which is, ooh, we have a tough decision to make here in the boardroom. Shall we sit here together in a moment of meditation?

Would anyone like to lead us in a prayer of open, receptive inquiry that we might be guided to make the best decision for everyone, every living, every living being involved? That's a win-win decision. And it's a yellow door. We don't even know what it looks like until we pray or meditate and receive. We don't need to make the big choices, but we do need to ask for the guidance

to make big choices. We can hand over tough decisions and see what comes. It goes back to receiving insight instead of forcing it to come to be, you know? And I think that the story you or the study, you refer to of the two people in Faraday cages

when one through mirror neurons, I'm assuming, or experiencing what the other person is across where it doesn't seem like they're connected through time and space, but they are entangled in that sense. I think we, and you've been speaking to throughout this conversation, have the capacity to be able to quiet and get into that place of stillness where what used to maybe have to be a yell or shout,

like those whispers can become more prevalent in our awareness and our consciousness. And then the choices of moving in a different direction five degrees, which will lead us in a completely different direction a decade down the road, we can start to listen and start to give weight to and respect a bit more. And to me, that's joining and participating in this journey of being human and the adventure of being humans. Instead of the mentally constipated dilemma of continually, trying to force life by our own desires and wills by past history, you know, as you mentioned,

being informed from today back, we get to join the ride, you know, and that to me is a more exciting fruitful way to live. God willing. Yeah, yeah. This is not a time to be afraid. I can understand why this moment in history feels unfamiliar. I can understand with great resonance how this might be a time of uncertainty. But that's what's exciting.

you're on a spiritual adventure and we're on it together. I can't wait to see where we're going. Is there any other last thoughts you have on the importance of cultivating a practice that allows us to continue to come back to and strengthen this connection to see the deep, sacred current of life? Yes. My own view of practice is I invite you to explore all hands on deck. Speaking for myself, when I open my day, I walk into nature, all four seasons.

And there, in the presence of God expressed in trees and birds and rising sun and moving clouds, I feel God's presence opening my heart and reconnecting with my soul. At the level of neurophysiology, I feel the engagement of the awakened brain. I first pray outdoors that I might pray with feeling to open a prayer before the prayer. and then I start my prayer thanking God the source of all life for the creation of which we are a part would you like me to do it?

Yeah, how you pray personally, yeah, great. Loving God, creator of all life, please open my heart that I might feel your great love and be present to you in love. And then I pray. And I thank God for the air.

Well, first I thank God for the sunrise. the night, the day, the day and night. Often it's at the cusp of the rising sun that I go outside to pray. So I first thank God for sunrise, night and day, day and night. The earth, the air, the water, and all living beings of the earth, air, water, and beyond. And having asked God to please protect the kingdom of life, I then feel I can turn to my own nuclear family. and I, by name, say each child and my spouse, the family that's here embodied and the family that's crossed over each by name, going back several generations. And then at that point,

I ask to open my heart to prepare for the day that I might serve God and love, be present to God's love, be a conduit of service, and hear how I'm directed and walk the walk serve through my hand in action. And finally, I close by saying, and please bless. you God, source of all life. Outdoors, whether it's in a beautiful summer day or a freezing cold February day, that's my path. Everybody has their own.

And I agree, it's wonderful when we can share in the Sanga, the minion. There are many, many ways to connect to the transcendent. You will find your way. That's mine. Seems like no matter what our practices connecting to a greater whole and that subjective felt experience of life

in a more vast context allows us to perceive and attend to it when it comes up throughout our day. We're then in dialogue with the source of all life. We're then in the living spiritual adventure of being in dialogue through synchronicity's, flashes of deep, transcendent awareness, relational spirituality, how we treat others and what we see come before us.

But no matter what our practice, no matter what our tradition, Hindu, Muslim, Catholic, Jewish, spiritual but not religious, nature is my cathedral. The same neural correlates are engaged. There's one spiritual brain and we all have it. The path to awakening is actually universal. It doesn't matter what words we use or what images we invoke. We are going to the same place, the place of source. And it is a real place. we are in some place very real when we're in a transcendent relationship. I love the field of your study and the work that you're doing to be able to see the conciliants between all these different experiences, which we might say come or spurred from different religious practices or beliefs in different things. But like the felt experience of opening is the same.

Whatever language we use or conduit we say or person that is the doorway or gateway to that experience. And I'm curious, actually, as to kind of like a note to leave people off on, whoever's listening to this, like, let us know in which way you feel you most consistently or powerfully are in dialogue with that field and with that space. I'm curious to hear the variance across the board and how people connect to that space. And I think it's both a beautiful reminder how much different, you know, things are, different doorways there are to that experience.

but also that they all, in many different ways, can get us to the same place. I think the diversity of practice is the ultimate expression that we are exquisitely diverse, that we are a point and we are a wave. The diversity of practice is the ultimate expression that we're wildly diverse and part of one unit of sacred source. Whatever your golden chariot to the sun, we're going to the same sun. Yeah, and we can cherish the essence across all these various traditions, which are really beautiful, but it is the essence, you know, it is the moon, it's not the finger pointing at it.

And I think that's a great note to wrap up on. So definitely let us know in which ways you guys are in dialogue and which practices have been most fulfilling for you. I'm very curious to hear. I'm excited to learn. Lisa, I love you so much. I love you so much. This is beautiful. Yeah, it's such a pleasure to have you.

and thank you for coming back on. And our community resonated so deeply with our last conversation. I have no doubt they'll do the same with this one. And yeah, it's a pleasure to continue to be in conversation with you. And we love the community. Yeah.

What a community. It's the best. It's the best. And I'm looking forward to being with more of yours. Thank you for coming visit us at Columbia. Yeah, I'd love to. Okay, we did it. We did it.

We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. Until next time, be well. Bye. We did it.

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