The Liz Moody Podcast - The REAL Science of Spirituality: Proof Of Life After Death & The Key To Feeling Happier

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

Hear the scientific proof of a connection to something larger than ourselves from the world’s leading expert on the psychology of spirituality, Dr. Lisa Miller. Whether you're a skeptic or have a deeply held belief in a higher power, you'll walk away with a lot to think about. Dr. Lisa Miller, Columbia University professor and bestselling author of The Awakened Brain, shares that we’re all facing a spiritual crisis linked to our current mental health epidemic. She explains 20+ years of neuroscience research proving that all humans are born with innate brain circuitry for spiritual connection. Ignoring this part of ourselves can lead to feelings of being lost, depression, addiction, loneliness, and poor decision-making. But when we activate our "awakened brain," everything changes. 🎧 This episode is a must if you’ve ever: Felt emotionally disconnected despite doing “everything right” Wondered why traditional mental health tools sometimes aren’t enough Experienced grief, signs, or synchronicities you couldn’t explain Wanted a deeper, science-backed connection to your intuition or higher power We explore how to rebuild your spiritual awareness without dogma or religion—using simple, brain-based tools anyone can try. ✨ Homework: Try Dr. Miller’s “council of guidance” practice from this episode. Close your eyes, set a question on your heart, and invite in your higher self, ancestors, or spiritual figures. Notice what comes through—and journal about it. For more from Dr. Lisa Miller: Her Book Her Website Her Instagram Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome. Buy our cute sweatshirts, conversation cards, and more at https://shop.lizmoody.com/. Use our discount codes from our  highly vetted and tested brand partners by visiting https://www.lizmoody.com/codes.  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. This episode is brought to you completely free thanks to the following podcast sponsors: LMNT: visit DrinkLMNT.com/LizMoody to get a free LMNT sample pack with any order. Osea: get 10% off your first order at OseaMalibu.com with code LIZMOODY or LIZMOODY10. Masterclass: go to MasterClass.com/LizMoody for 15% off an annual membership. Wildgrain: head to WildGrain.com/LizMoody for $30 off the first box - PLUS a free item in every box. OneSkin: visit OneSkin.co and use the code LIZ for 15% off your purchase.  The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represent the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 379 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You say that we have these inborn spiritual characteristics in our brain. What do you mean by that? Liz, we put people in the MRI machine, and no matter what faith tradition they may be from, Hindu, Jewish, Catholic, the same neural correlates run when we are in a deep relationship with our higher power. We all engage the same circuits of our brain when we are in a deep transcendent connection. Women have known this throughout time. The problem is women often feel silenced to say that at work. in a parent circle at a school.

Spirituality is essential to women for thriving, for mental health, and even for outward performance. You're going to sense a few times in this conversation that I'm a skeptic who does not want to be a skeptic. Do we have any proof outside of belief about life after death? Yes, Bruce Grayson has done beautiful work on continuity of consciousness or awareness after death. Decades of studies, he waits in ERs for people to flatline. He prospectively identifies people. Hi, I'm Dr. Lisa Miller. I started the Spirituality Mind, Body Institute at Columbia University, where I've been a professor

for 20 years studying spirituality, mental health, and flourishing. We are in a massive mental health crisis. Rates of anxiety, depression, and burnout are sky high. You say that a strong sense of spirituality is the most protective thing against these conditions. Liz, I would even say that we're not having a mental health crisis. We are having a spiritual crisis. And downstream of a spiritual crisis is a mental health crisis, a frame of the social fabric, problems with ethics. But the core of our challenge is to really renew the spiritual heart.

And that's where right now we can absolutely transform our society and transform ourselves. Why do you think that? Well, we have 20 years of peer review science, very good, tough-nosed peer-review science that show that Every single one of us is a naturally spiritual being. We're inborn with the circuits in our brain for spirituality. But we need to build and strengthen, almost like a muscle, our spiritual brain in order to be healthy, have good mental health, social health, physical health. Spiritual health is inextricable from a whole person health and thriving. You say that we have these inborn spiritual characteristics in our brain.

What do you mean by that? Liz, we put people in the MRI machine. And no matter what faith tradition, they may be from Hindu, Jewish, Catholic, but doesn't matter what tradition. The same neural correlates run when we are in a deep relationship with our higher power or the force, the universe. Whether someone is Catholic, Hindu, Christian, spiritual, but not religious, we all engage the same circuits of our brain when we are in a deep transcendent connection.

Some people use the word God or Jesus, the universe, or force. It doesn't matter what our word is, the exact circuits run in our brain. Our brain is effectively a docking station for transcendent relationship. Is the idea that because our brain has these circuits, this is something that we need or evolve to have? Because our brain is built this way, we are endowed with a capacity to see into the deeper nature of life. The deeper nature of life is real. And so every day of our lives, we have the opportunity to be. in a dialogue, a lived relationship with the deeper sacred force. Women know this. Women have

known this throughout time. The problem is women often feel silenced to say that, to have really their voice be heard from a spiritual perspective at work in a parent circle at a school. But spirituality, while it is extremely important to men and women, is even more important to women. Spirituality is essential to women for thriving, for mental health, and even for our performance. When you say we're silencing our spiritual voice at work in parenting at home, what do you mean by that? What is our spiritual voice? To come to a board table and say, I have a deep inner wisdom I just know. I know we've gone over these numbers a hundred times, but in my heart, I perceive, in my prayer life, I receive direction, in a dream, to speak into what I call our

awakened awareness. Traditionally, in what has really been a very male-centered society in the 20th century, schooling has been entirely from the perspective of achieving awareness. And it's important. We all need it. Men and women, tactics, strategy, research. We need it. I'm a scientist. I love it. But achieving awareness enough is completely insufficient for a meaningful and deep life. And women know that. We need every bit as much, alongside achieving awareness, our awakened awareness. Awakened awareness is our inborn capacity to receive direction in prayer or meditation, to feel the profound unit of love, to have a hunch or see a synchronicity, and know that that is real information, to make the biggest decisions of our lives

out of awakened awareness. I just knew in my heart. You know, I added up 18 reasons yes and 15 reasons no, but in my heart, it was absolutely clear. That type of knowing is women's greatest strength. And if we ignore it, it is even more to our peril than men's. When women ignore our spirituality, we're 50% more likely to become depressed than men, starting with puberty. Wow, that's really interesting. And you also say that two-thirds of depression is,

spiritually related. Talk to me about that. Yes. I have absolutely nothing against medication. There's time where depression needs medication and depression can be at times in medical illness. It's about one-third of the time. But two-thirds of the time, depression is a yearning and existential hunger for more to feel a deeper connection, to feel more love, that we feel cut off or isolated. Depression can be a knock at the door for a deeper spiritual awakening and our brain. And our brain, brain is even built that way. We looked at people to recover from depression through a strengthening of their spiritual life. And then, you know, what God are you showing me now? What is the universe revealing to me now? How might I be even more loving and even more forgiving? These relational

spiritual challenges that come our way, whether they're betrayals or deceit, whatever we face in life. When we take a spiritual response to life's pains, real pains and disappointments, we literally strengthen our spiritual brain and are queued up next time to have a more profound spiritual understanding of what life throws our way. You're going to sense a few times in this conversation that I'm a skeptic who does not want to be a skeptic. I'm a skeptic who is raised super, super skeptical and almost judgey over components of spirituality. I think my parents were a bit judgy over components of spirituality.

spirituality, and I often long to embrace these things and struggle with that. So you're going to sense that a few times in this conversation. One question I have is, is your overall assertion that a higher power is real, that there's divine guidance in the universe, et cetera, or is your overall assertion that these are really good coping mechanisms and will live better human lives if we can train our brain to believe these things? So science confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt. out the assertion that we are built to see life as having a deep spiritual nature. And when we do, we thrive, we have better mental health. We're 80% less likely to become addicted. We're 70% less likely to be depressed. Increasingly, science has tackled the more profound inquiry onto the

deeper nature of life. I can share with you as some absolutely jaw-dropping, very rigorously conducted studies. A profound foundational spiritual reality, that spirit is foundational, consciousness is foundational, and that were beautiful manifestations. You, I, the beautiful plants of spirit or consciousness. The primary to existence is spirit or consciousness. That view suggests that the brain is not a factory that somehow makes thoughts, but the brain is an antenna that can receive thoughts. The brain is a conduit to consciousness. We can have direct inspiration, hear the voice of God, know what our best friend is thinking at a thousand mile distance, have a gut instinct that turns out to be absolutely on target. Why? Because the brain

is not a closed box, like a factory from the 20th century. The brain is an open system. It's much more like a raised antenna. Increasingly, the 21st century science shows. Here's a magnificent experiment. It was done by a woman. She worked in a community hospital and noticed that indigenous healers who used foundationally spiritual consciousness-based practices were having an impact on her patients. And so she had two MRIs. In one MRI, she put the traditional spiritually grounded healer. In the second MRI, often in a separate building, was the patient. As the healer started to do his or her work, a consistent pattern came up on the fMRI, tracking blood flow. What circuits were engaged?

Liz within an instant, the same pattern emerged in the patient at a distance. One thing, healing consciousness, in two places, healer and patient. Consciousness is non-local. We are built like a raised antenna. We are built to be knowers. And even the child is born a or children say things that stun, stun us as mothers. Many mothers say their children will predict something. We're going to a party. There's going to be an alligator there. And they show up, and sure enough, the family's done something eccentric,

brought along an alligator. There's always a story. Every mother has one of a child knowing beyond what he or she's been told. And that's because their antenna went up and they tapped into this consciousness. What we think is so surprising, and even called paranormal or pre-year-old. We give it these names that suggest that knowing of that sort is outside the box. But the view that the brain is an antenna that can receive consciousness means that all forms of knowing, intuition, premonition, mystical experience, hearing God's voice, knowing before

something happens, none of those seem counter-scientific when we think of the brain as tapping into consciousness. How does the notion of a higher power square against things like the Big Bang theory and evolution? So what's so beautiful is that in the MRI, the same circuits that run when an evangelical, devout Christian is speaking to God are the same circuits that run when someone who's spiritual but not religious is connecting with who they call the universe or source. So I've never heard anyone argue for two sources of all life. Most people would say, yeah, there's one source of all life.

and whether you call the force that created the Big Bang, the creative source or the initial force, or beautiful terms all over the world, right, including when Anichi, Hashem, God, Jesus, you pick your word. But the force that is propelling life, that creates life, we all sense and feel. Women, traditionally, are the transmitters of spiritual awareness to our children.

Men matter and fathers are important. But when we look at the data, the intergenerational strengthening of spiritual awareness comes from the mother. And when the mother does pass the torch, that child is 80% less likely to become depressed. If the torch is past two generations, grandparent, to mother, to child, that child is 90% less likely to become depressed. Why? Because spirituality is not just picked up in a book when we're 24. spirituality is lived, spirituality is spoken. When we're driving our SUV and the child has had a horrible day, sitting in the car seat, and it's pickup. How we download that experience is a spiritual opportunity.

Where was she looking? Was she looking at your clothes? Or was she looking at your eyes at your soul? Every moment is an opportunity as a mother to convert your child's awareness into the deeper, more sacred understanding of who we are. By doing what? Pick an age child, and I'll give you a scenario. Let's say like baby, pre-verbal. So my children, after many years of prayers and tears, five years of prayers and tears, we're all born

within three years. We had three children within three years. Two came through my body and one came through the stars. We adopted one of our beautiful children. So there they were, one, two, and three, and I hadn't slept in two and a half years. Liz, I'm telling you, I used to drive over the meridian in the middle of the road. I was young. So you say three children.

And that close in age, everybody's like, we got it. You're very, very, very tired. Profoundly tired. So there we are early morning at the coffee shop, and I trip over a baby's chair and go flying and snap my elbow. I broke my elbow. It was pretty painful. And in that moment of being physically in pain,

I think I might have been a little discourteous to the barista. So right in front of my kids. And I felt badly for having been rude to him. And I felt badly that my kids saw me be rude to him. So we're all piled back in the... SUV. And I have this haunting sense that I've just been the worst role model to my children of relational spirituality, of civility. So I turn my head over my shoulder. I'm like, you know what, everybody? And they're in their car seats, buckled in. It's project, right? We got to go back.

So I pull all three kids out of our car seats. We go back to the barista. We wait in line. And I say, sir, I'm really sorry that I was grumpy and short. I said, I think I may have broken my elbow, but it's not your fault. I just make sure you like with your elbow dangling by or that. You're like, I'm so sorry I was rude to you as your elbows like flopping about. Well, and kids everywhere like one on my half. He remembered, of course, that I'd been a little snappy. And he looked at me and smiled.

They said, oh, that's okay. He said, you're actually one of those really nice ladies. And what they saw was that we can fix things, human to human. Pile back in the SUV, car seats buckled back up. And now the part two. And part two is every bit as important as part one. Part one is we apologize to each other human to human. Part two is that we turn to our understanding of the higher power and ask for realignment, reopening of the heart, reconnection to our deeper mission. And so I turned my head and in our family, my word is God, and I say a prayer. And in our

family, the prayer sounds something like, you know, loving God, please forgive me for being unkind to your child, please renew my heart. Please may I align our family today to serve you in love. Amen. And what they saw was that everything can be fixed both interpersonally and with the higher power. Okay, I'm glad that we fixed it with that young guy. He's probably 17 behind the counter. It's equally important take-home message for the kids that life has bigger goofs.

life has plenty of bigger mistakes than being short with the barista. And when ruptures happen, both levels need to be fixed. The interpersonal level where we apologize, where we make amends, even if it certainly don't expose ourselves to dangerous or harmful people, but to reach a place of forgiveness within ourselves and if possible with one another. And then to draw ourselves into alignment with the deeper nature of life, to renew our alignment with love, with trust, with if one perceives it as such, God or the higher power.

Forgiveness is at both levels. Walking around our society right now, 40% of people have unmetabolized trauma. Many of them are well-therapized. It feels low to me, which is crazy. That feels like a low number based on my experience. Well, that's very perceptive because on college campus is the rates of trauma range from 40 to 70%. When we look under the hood, very often people have worked through their problems interpersonally and have been in years of therapy, but have yet to reach an alignment with their spiritual nature.

Have yet to get forgiveness or feel a sense of connection to the universe to connect and feel worthy before God. They have spiritual injury. Behind moral injury, 70% of the time, is spiritual injury, feeling disconnected from soul. source or the higher power, feeling unworthy, which is a very chilly place to be before God. And that only has a spiritual answer, which we can readily bring to ourselves and one another. And we will get into practices to increase our spirituality. I want to stay on my skepticism for a second. Okay. The thing that I struggle with the most about believing in a higher power is how many completely terrible people that this universe seems to be rewarding and how many innocent,

good people that are suffering hugely at any given time. How do you reconcile that? I can answer that from the view of science. From the view of science, we are born with the capacity for natural spirituality. It is innate, circuits in the brain. But it is one third innate, two thirds cultivated, strengthened by way of analogy like a muscle. When someone harms another person, I ask, have they engaged? have they cultivated, have they made the effort or been given the gifts to strengthen their

natural spiritual awareness? What is our natural spiritual awareness? What is this built into our brain? We are born with three circuits and we all have them. The ability to see and know that we are loved and held by life itself, the universe. This is the bonding network, the same bonding network that is engaged when we're babies in our parents' arms. The second shift in attention is from, I've got to have it, tunnel vision, really the headbeamed. I want it so much, I want it, got to get it, to the floodlight.

The next is a shift from the dorsal top down to the ventral, broadened attention network, and we see new guidance, new opportunity. We are loved and held. We are guided. guided beyond what we had thought five seconds ago was even possible. And finally, the parietal that puts in and out hard boundaries shows us that we are separate, but we're also part of one fabric of life, one family.

We are loved and held. We are guided. We are never alone. The capacity to see this maps right on to an all-present, all-knowing, all-loving God. We are built to see this. Why is that God letting children starve? So the question I would then ask as a scientist is, have we as humans lived up to our possibility to realize our spiritual nature and create a spiritual kingdom on earth? Have we as human being strengthened our perceptual capacities yet to cultivate the type of society, the type of civilization that realizes our natural spirituality?

And I would say we're very much in process. We have everything we need. We were endowed with everything we need to be spiritually aware. It's up to us, one third innate, two thirds cultivated, to build the muscle, do our job to realize our spiritual nature in ourselves and as we raise our kids. But foremost, how we treat one another. But if God or this higher power is all powerful, why can't they swoop their hands and stop babies from dying? So at this point, I move from science to personal view, which is that we have. choice and choice is our opportunity to realize and step into an autonomous form of spiritual

devotion or spiritual awareness. But that's my view as a human soul on earth. As a scientist, I can say we're built to see into the spiritual nature of life, but it is up to us to strengthen that capacity, meditation, prayer, reflection, poetry, sacred reading, groups of women processing experiences on how we can be more loving to one another to our kids. Every time we're good to one another, we strengthen the awakened brain. Every time we're kind and treat someone in a way that's loving and guiding and never leave anyone alone, we strengthen our spiritual awareness. The same part of the brain through which I talk to God and feel loved and guided by God is the same part of the brain through which I see ultimate sacredness in you.

The same part of the brain through which I'm loving and guiding to you. It's one story. As you do unto others, you do unto me. The brain is built that way. Is part of being spiritual believing in life after death? A beautiful scientific study showed that a child is born perceiving continuity of spirit or consciousness after death. A child assumes continuity of spirit or consciousness after death, unless told otherwise, socialized out of their natural perception. Natural, implicit spiritual cognition.

That's interesting. A child also tends to assume that he or she can directly know. We don't need to be told. We can raise the antenna, is the assumption of the child. Do we have any proof outside of belief about life after death? Yes. Bruce Grayson has done beautiful work on a continuity of consciousness or awareness after death. He's done decades of studies in which he's really, one of the very few scientists to look prospectively, he waits in ERs for people to flatline.

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You know, Liz, my father died just this year. And I have felt him and been in dialogue with him ever since. my father died on April 3rd and within the month came to each person in the family in a way and form that they could perceive and understand. So for instance, my daughter was off in Africa, loves animals, had been sleeping on the Serengeti, and the village in which she was staying was absolutely found a jaw-dropping that for the first time ever who should arrive but a magnificent, albino, giraffe. Why is that remarkable? Because Grandpa Sid, who just passed, was six-five, and we'd always called him the special giraffe. That's interesting. To my son, who I found Isaiah Lakota, with the help of Lakota, my son said, Mom, you're not going to believe this. I was home all day. And there was a whole family, a flock of crows, the raven flies from this world to the next

in the indigenous tradition, and they stayed with me all day, the ancestors. And then in my experience, I'm a scientist, my father showed me with light that he could move wherever our minds connected. So if I thought, want to hold you close, dad, the light came close. If I said, I know you're moving on,

I saw the light move. He moved in ways and patterns that don't exist when sunlight hits the earth. Our ancestors, those were, we love, can in spirit materialize in a way that makes sense to us. They're speaking to us through symbol. What do you picture? Do you picture your father in his fully realized form, or is he, you know, seeping into the molecules of the universe slowly? What do you picture? So what I find fascinating is that we are born with a region of the brain called the parietal. The parietal puts in and out hard

boundaries. So we can at once be two women in two chairs, and we can have something in the middle that feels like a collegianship, a friendship, a sisterhood, right? And then we can have all-out oneness, right? The parietal sort of takes us from being a point to a wave, interbeing, from being two distinct beings to being deeply connected to being one, right? And I think the parietal mirrors the nature of reality, which is that we are both a point and a way. wave. Quantum physics has shown us to be both a point and a wave. I think my father, for perpetuity, is my father, Sidney, with his magnificent humor, his warmth, his irony, his personality, and he's part of everything at once. And what's really been very moving that I've discovered

is that when I connect with my father now, we talk, I ask for his guidance, he says, just the thing, like he always did. Can I get emotional? There's also a sense now that when I connect with my father in spirit, I'm connecting with my father onto God, the father, and mother. There's a sense in which in both being my father, he's also the portal to the ultimate, parent, the divine. And that's what I mean about where we're a point and we're a wave. He's still my dad, Sidney, but he's part of everything. It's interesting because framed that way, when our loved ones die, they get even. even greater importance in our journey versus having lesser being taken from us in a way.

He's even more present. My father was wonderfully attentive and always there when I picked up and called him on the phone. And yet now that he's in spirit, he's even more immediately available. He's even more intimately in a sustained daily walk part of my life. It's interesting because I want to, because you're getting emotional, say I'm sorry about your father, but also it seems like you've been experiencing this beautiful new relationship with him, you know? Liz, that's exactly true. That's exactly true.

And there's a beauty and a profound love that's always there. Most of the world through time realized this. You know, we have Day of the Dead. We have ancestor worship. Most of the world knows our loved ones in spirit walk with us and they're always there. when we cut that off, it actually can be very, very depressing. And I don't think it's depressing just because mentally we decided to cut it off or we're angry or something like that.

I think it's depressing because we've cut ourselves out from the deep spiritual nature of life and relationship. That relationships, once written, are truly there forever in the same way that we don't erase archaeology, that the relationships we make are spiritually ingrained. they're indelibly written in the universe. I experienced my first big loss this year. Who was it? It was my cat, but it was my cat of 15 years.

And I just, I mean, my father-in-law also passed, which is also horrible. It's been a year of loss. I've never experienced grief before that. And so it's been a really interesting journey for me. But that's a beautiful and comforting thought. Do you feel your cat? I want to. I don't.

No. And I've talked to a lot of my friends who do feel. signs and I've like joked like I want to become one of those signs people. I dream about her a lot. And then I'm always really sad because she's alive and there's always this point in the dream where I realize that she's not alive anymore. And I'm like, why am I enjoying this so much? Why does this feel so special? And then the me and my dream is like, oh, because you don't get it anymore. I don't see signs other than that. I want to. If you can teach me how to see signs, I would love that. Is it possible in spirit your cat comes to you in dream world?

You tell me. Does she feel life like? Does it feel like her? Yeah. Are you playing or is she connecting? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm doing all this stuff I would normally do. And then I realize, oh, she's dead, you know?

So she is there alive in the spiritual world, in dream life. Yeah. And she's only dead in material realm at the end of the dream when you step into the perception of the material realm. Yes. So even in the daytime. in the heart, in the spiritual realm, she may be with you. Do you think there's a way we can notice signs or open ourselves up to them, even if we fall on the more skeptical side?

Yes. In fact, it's a wonderful thing. My view of skepticism is that skeptics can have an even deeper spiritual life if you allow the skeptic to propel other forms of exploration. The skeptic can say, is this real synchronicity? signs and symbols real, I don't know about this, right? And then something catches your eye and you're curious, and the curiosity is divine. I wonder what that might be.

I wonder what an unlikely confluence that there's a cat that looks just like my cat. My first dog, I adored my first dog. His name was Snoopy. He had very distinct coloring. He was white with brown patches, very distinct. And in the past week, I have seen seven dogs with the identical. coloring. Right as I've been connecting with the presence of those who've crossed, we can open up our heart, we can ask for signs, we can take a moment and meditate and open our heart and receive

and perceive what they might say. We can ask a question in a quiet moment and see what awakens in our heart. And then there is a guided practice. I'd be happy to share. Sure, yeah, I'd love that. This is a practice that I have found very helpful at opening up our transcendent relationships. Okay. Good. I invite you to close your eyes and take five breaths. I invite you 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. And with them all sitting there, ask them if they love you. And now with them all sitting there, ask them what's on your heart? What say you? And now you may invite your higher self, the part of you that's so much more than anything you have done or not done, anything you might own or not have, your true eternal higher self. And ask you if you love you. And now finally, you may invite your higher power, whatever your word,

God, Hashem, higher power, universe, however they appear and ask if they love you. And with all these people sitting here right now, what do they need to share? What do they need to let you know? What do they need to share right now? Then you're ready. I invite you back. This exercise is predicated on people that you're confident love you. there's people listening to this podcast who feel really alone, who don't feel confident that there are people out there that love them dead or alive.

What would you say to those people? So we've done this practice with thousands of people, very diverse, you know, people in business and in the military, homeless kids, all sorts of people, right? And almost never does no one show up in any chair. In thousands of times of doing this, there's only once that someone had an empathy. table. And that became an invitation to how to live and how they want to live to start to invite people to their table. Anyone show up? Yeah, my grandma, my cat. Your cat did show up. Yeah. You're going to think I'm obsessed with my cat. I'm obsessed with my dog. I get it. I deeply get it. My soulmate. Yeah. That's what I feel like. A thought that I had was faith in.

is in a push-pull relationship with proof. And I feel compelled to try to get you to give me proof, which feels contrary to the practice of what we're trying to talk about and cultivate here. Thank you. That's beautiful, because there's so many people who are in a push-pull between skepticism, wanting proof and having an experience, right? And can we trust our experience as hard data?

in a society where we've been taught from day one, it's only real if you can touch it, if it's material. Materialism, not just materialistic, like buying stuff, but only that which is real is that which can be touched. Materialism is the intuition that we feel, the mystical visual that comes to us of the cat, of the grandparent. Is that real?

Even with like the near death stuff, I always struggle with like, is my brain producing these images, producing these thoughts to help me cope with life on this planet? It's a beautiful question. The skeptic can propel the mystic, and the mystic can propel the skeptic. The skeptic's not the bouncer at the door. The skeptic doesn't say, I'm not going to try the practice,

or I'm going to not blindfold my eyes to synchronicity or not take them in any of it. Yeah. The skeptic says, hey, wait a minute, is it real? Or can I trust this, right? And then the proof is in the pudding. see what comes. How remarkable that your cat came and your grandma came. Maybe there was some way you felt or something they said that later today will come forward. Oftentimes we'll see a synchronicity and say, well, can I really trust that? Is that real? And then, sure enough,

three hours later, the synchronicity is confirmed. You know, there's a way in which the skeptic can put us on watch and we're even more alert and more aware when the synchronicity is confirmed. We're even more jaw-droppingly in awe when a mystical experience or a visit in a dream is confirmed. I mean, if you were to walk outside now and see a cat that looked exactly like your cat after your cat just visited you, that would be a remarkable alignment. Yeah, I would be unwell. That would be a lot. I love my dog.

She's every bit as much a member of our family as anyone else. So I have the deepest understanding of what you're sharing about your cat. This feels like a good time to zoom out and sort of define what we mean by spirituality. Yes. There are three components to spirituality as you define it. And you sort of alluded to them. But can you kind of spell those out? Through the lens of science, spirituality is not a belief.

It is an experience. And it is not just an experience that somehow is made up in our head. Spirituality is a receptive perception of the deeper nature of life, of spirit. transcendence, whatever one's word is. In every human brain, there are circuits designed to receive and perceive this transcendent presence, who I call God. You might call universe or force or Jesus, whatever your word. And the circuits are identical in all people. We are built to be in relationship, transcendent relationship, both to our higher power, to the deeper soul level of one another. and to the deep spiritual presence in and through all life.

You know, the deer who crosses your lawn or the eagle overhead or the plant by your side in your home, in your kitchen. All are conscious beings. So every bit of life is conscious. Every bit of life is alive. And we are built to be in a transcendent spiritual relationship with our higher power, with fellow human beings and fellow living beings. rampant isolation, suffering the feeling of emptiness or loneliness, is when we start cutting ourselves off mentally from these connections, when we stop talking to people or stop feeling like we're bringing our finest selves or most tender heart to one another, when we sort of cut down a tree and don't

care, when we don't treat animals well. When we don't live by the values of our deep spirit spiritual heart, it corrods us. It makes us lonely. It makes us feel empty. And the felt isolation right now in our society is real, not because there aren't people everywhere. There's people all over the streets. The felt isolation right now in our society is because of the cognitive walls that we've put up by cutting each other off. Are there any hard, fast rules of spirituality? Like if one of them is connection to nature, life's flow, like, do we all need to be vegetarian to be spiritual? The one axiom of natural spirituality that we see through science is that as we are feeling from God, or our higher power, loved, held, and guided, we turn to one another and are loving, holding, and guiding. That you can't only do spirituality vertically. How we treat each other is a spiritual decision. So to be loving and guiding to one another literally awakens and strengthens the same.

regions of the brain that we use when we talk to our higher power, when we feel in a meditation, that great buoyant, unit of experience. And those are the parts of the brain that are going to make us feel less depressed, less stress, more fulfilled and satisfied in our lives. If we open up the windows and we see the light, we literally are living in the light. If we close the shades and we don't see the light, we are living in the dark. What we do with our mind determines the extent to which we perceive and receive the spiritual nature of life. If we shut ourselves down or if we let ourselves atrophy, it's pretty chilly. It's pretty cold.

Yes, it's depressing. That's why science shows us that a strong spirituality is 80% protective against depression or told another way. If we let ourselves go and don't commit or contribute to strengthening our spiritual awareness, we're more likely to be depressed. Do we get those benefits even if we don't believe? what we're doing? When you do a visualization like we just did or a prayer or have a dream, the experience is real. That is not something made up in the mind or constructed like a story.

It is absolutely real. We're detecting the brain as an antenna, something real. And not only is it real, it's showing us that we're not alone. Your cat is with you. My table, my father came. And his message, my father's message, was experience is real. That's what he said to us and for us. And maybe that's the most important lesson then, which is that we can trust our experience as tapping into valid, solid bedrock. How do we know if we're getting the benefits? Is it just by trusting wherever we're at with it?

Is it by doing practices that are spiritual practices? if we were just like, yes, I want less depression, I want more fulfillment, I want to feel like there's meeting and purpose to life. What's our path to get there? Some form of spiritual engagement every day that feels right and true and authentic to you. And it could feel a little awkward at first. That's okay. You're exploring, you might modify. You could dust off a rusty prayer from your childhood. You could develop your own prayer that's from your heart in your own language. you could form a type of meditation, loving kindness meditation, or have a discussion with the force in and through nature.

What does that look like, like going into the woods? Going to the woods and say, you know, what say you tree. And see which way the tree tells you to go. Go that way. I'm a professor at Columbia. I've taken my students into the park and said, let's be with this tree. Which way is the tree telling us to go? and it's unanimous. That's really interesting.

Going back to like, can we eat me and be spiritual? Each of us has an inner compass. We have a spiritual compass, and we know when we're aligned with the force, and we know when we're not aligned with the force. And I trust the inner compass of every single person to know when they are aligned. I don't think there's an external, you know,

guru who's going to tell, say, oh, you're very spiritual, but you over there, I'm not so sure. You knowing your own heart. when you're aligned. This begs two questions for me. One, are compasses messed up in the modern world? Like, are there magnetic forces all over the place that are making our compasses not be aligned in the way that they would have been? I think our compass is well and good, but we need to pay attention. We have completely ignored our deep inner spiritual compass, looking externally. What does someone look like? What are

their ideas? What are their politics? What is their job? We're looking outwardly. But the deep inner spiritual compass always points in our true direction to our guiding star. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder. Yet so many of us want to eat healthier, but so few of us actually take the steps to make eating healthier easier. That's where Marley Spoon comes in. What I love about this company and what's different than all of the other companies out there that are doing stuff in the same arena is that you can customize your choices based on the effort that you want to put in. So if you want them to send you ingredients, so you can make your own 20-minute meal

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at branchbasics.com. That's code Liz Moody for 15% off the premium starter kit at branchbasics.com. And when they ask you where you heard about us, please make sure to mention the show. That is at branch basics.com and use code Liz Moody. The second question it brought up for me is you said there are no gurus. We're looking for our own inner knowing. And compass, yeah. What is the difference between spirituality and religion?

Great question. So through the lens of science, spirituality and religion can go hand in hand and do for many people. About two-thirds of people will say, I'm spiritual and I am religious. But they are not the same thing. Religion, whether I'm Hindu or Catholic or Muslim or Jewish, religion, the texts, the ceremonies, the practices, these are gifts. They're gifts of our parents and grandparents. We might choose a faith tradition. Religion is 100% environmentally transmitted.

Text, ceremony, teaching, community. Spirituality is innate. Every human being is born with a capacity for spiritual life. but spirituality is one-third innate, two-thirds environmentally formed, cultivated. So we have to say yes to it and do our part. Everyone's spiritual. It's not a question, am I spiritual or if I'm spiritual? It's how do I wish to cultivate my spirituality?

How do I wish to build this natural gift? For some people, it's through deep service. Mother Teresa had profound mystical experiences, and then they stopped. And for the second half of her life, Her spiritual life was entirely through service, relational spirituality. Some people experience profound spirituality and how they care for other people, or fellow living beings, animals, and the planet. One third of people have mystical experiences, a visitation from an ancestor, or they see or feel or hear the presence of God or Mary. there is some profound experience that is life-changing that they know in their heart to be real, a deep index of knowing.

If we want to have one of those, what can we do? Mystical experiences tend to show up as they are intended, as they come from perhaps the other side, if you will. But what we can do is when we have such an experience, pause. and really take note, be grateful, honor, ask what it means. Sometimes we have mystical experiences, and they get shut off and set aside. And I happen to know, you know, a very well-known grief expert who had a profound mystical experience around grief, but never told anybody. Putting these experiences aside can cut off what was intended, perhaps, to be an opening in our lives.

And children, children very often have mystical experiences. Children are spiritually aware. Children, if we really listen, will say profound jaw-dropping spiritual things. And we don't need to have a great answer as a parent to simply honor, hold space. Say, wow, let them know that's real. That matters. Our relationship goes there. And maybe we even have language for it.

If your child comes up to you and says, you know, I had this experience that grandma showed up, grandma who's passed, grandma's spirit showed up. Wow. Grandma really loves you. Do you feel like she's watching over you? You know, a teenager will often say, you know, I had this mystical experience where all the universe was in a single blade of grass. If our teen says that to us, wow, that may really open up to have meaning in your life. Wow. Thank you for telling me. hold the space. We talk about that. It's real. Give it language. When we do that, it's the most profound message we can possibly send as mothers. It's saying that the spiritual reality exists and you are capable of tapping it. Do you think that religion has been a net positive or a net negative for the world? I think that religion can cultivate our natural spirituality. You know, two-thirds of people say I'm spiritual and I'm religious. So this inborn capacity, which could be cultivated in nature or through service, can also be very well cultivated through religion. The only question is, is the religion being practiced in a way that aligns with our natural spirituality? Is it loving

and holding? Is it guiding? Does it never leave anyone alone? And there are plenty of times that religion indeed does support natural spirituality. And then there's sometimes where it's not religion per se, but perhaps the torchbearer. And we don't make the fire. The fire is divine. We carry it. And when a torchbearer does not walk the walk, there can be a tendency to throw away the flame. And when people have religious or spiritual struggles, it's very often because they've met a foible torchbearer. How do you reconcile all of the terrible things that have been done to people in the name of spirituality or religion? Misguided torchbearers, because they could have also. been done in the name of a political movement or any other ism. It's the torch pair.

Where does the Bible fall into all of this? For many people, the Bible as part of their faith cultivates their natural spirituality. But it's not just the Bible. It's sacred texts of all faiths, right? Hold thousands of years of inspired guidance on how spiritually we can treat each other and what's the fallout if we go make this turn versus that turn at these junctions in life. It's almost like hypoxal life. This was my hope and dream as a child. I looked at all of these different houses of worship, you know, the cathedral and the mosque and the synagogue. And I wanted to go inside because they all felt the sparkly same sense of excitement to me.

And what I've found after 30 years as a scientist is that there's indeed one sparkly sameness of spiritual life that can be held in all of these different faith traditions and in the forest or by the ocean. Do you think these sacred texts are divinely channeled, though, because people use them to inform a lot of their decision-making, a lot of how they treat other people, and they'll point to things in these texts as reasons that they act a certain way? Do you think they're the message of God or a higher power? I can't answer that as a scientist. What I can say is that we are all built to have our own direct connection with God. And whatever our word or our understanding of God,

nobody has left out. Every single person on Earth, 8 billion people are all built to be able to receive and perceive. It's a receptive form of knowing, ultimate love and deep guidance. Nobody's not included. And if we feel cut off, every one of us can do things to cultivate this perception. Now, for the skeptic, you may find this very interesting. We're all born with certain inborn capacities of knowing. We have empiricism. I love it as a scientist, right? We have logic. You love that one. We have intuition, mystical experience, and skepticism, right? So the skeptic is not the bouncer at the door. The skeptic takes a seat at the table. We have the opportunity to seat the skeptic at the table alongside the mystic, the intuitive, the empiricists, and the logician,

and get all forms of knowing working together. Why is it that this week, of all weeks, I saw seven dogs with the exact coloring of my first dog, who I loved so much? Why is that? Right? That is an empirical statement. There were seven dogs far too unprobabilistic to have happened by chance. if I only saw maybe 10 or 15 all week that looked identical to my first dog.

That's an empirical statement. What does my deep intuition say or what might unfold synchronistically in the week or a few weeks ahead that sheds light on what was being revealed? Could you drive yourself crazy trying to be like, I saw a butterfly, what's the butterfly I mean? And then like going around your life being like, what should I do? Does it almost, is there a world in which this can take you away from your own and or knowing? instead of closer to it. Press your deep, deep inner wisdom about what's true and real.

Never follow anyone off the path. That capacity, we're born with the deep index of truth written into us. And when we're gentle and say, wow, I saw seven dogs with the same coloring as my dog, I wonder what that means.

Gently, leave that open. It might be open for a week. It might be open for six months. But we'll see what that means. That's an empirical. note, I might have an intuition about what that reveals. I might have a mystical experience where I dream and my dog is in my dream. I might feel profound moment of love or connection and then take that intuitive experience and throw it over to logic. I wonder why I'm feeling that

now here. When we use all of our different forms of knowing, these are organic forms of knowing, together. We literally myelinate the tracks between regions of the brain. We pave the highways so that we can be much more versatile and innovative in how we handle situations, how we make decisions about our lives. I mean, yes, even at work, we are more creative and productive. Are there practices that we can do to strengthen the parts of our brains that maybe have become weaker in modern society? Yes, it doesn't matter if you are religious or not religious. In the language of life, when we use visualization, we effectively raise the antenna and ask to receive guidance. What do you mean by in the language of life? So, for instance, when we shared the

council practice, we invited those who had our best interest in mind, our higher power and our higher selves. Those are real people. Those are real beings. And they showed up as they are, right, in the language of life. It doesn't need to be held in my faith tradition or the next person's religion, just in the language of life. We can invoke and request for guidance. And of course, the universe, God shows up as God will. We don't push the buttons. God shows up.

But we can create the conditions of asking a question of a spiritual visualization. Are there any exercises outside of what we would normally consider spiritual? that can help us develop our spiritual strength? Well, certainly service. Okay. Service is effectively loving, holding, guiding, never leaving anyone alone. When you show up at your elder neighbors with a hot meal or shovel the driveway or go to a mom who's absolutely overwhelmed because she has three young kids and say,

can I babysit for two hours while you go have some time to yourself, you are living out relational spirituality. You are doing it. And people who are kind, people who are just. good to one another are literally strengthening the neural correlates of spiritual awareness. So for the biggest skeptic who's listening, who's saying I am depressed, I feel disconnected, I feel burnt out, but all of this is a little hard for me to palate, a good first step might just be be of service to somebody else and see how you feel. Yes, absolutely. It is a spiritual

act. What would you say to somebody listening who's going through a really hard time right now, who's experiencing job loss or a health diagnosis or grief. And they're like, I want to believe in something greater, but my lived experience is terrible right now. Suffering is actually often a time that potentiates our possibility to break through to the other side. The brain actually in times of suffering is more sensitive and more able to say, okay, life, what are you asking of me now? God, what are you showing me now?

Can I love more deeply, even in this moment of abandonment or betrayal? Can I learn to deepen my heart? Moments of pain can actually make us exquisitely sensitive, more compassionate. If I feel deeply hurt, I'm that much more compassionate to someone else who has been hurt. Maybe I find myself feeling angry, or maybe I find myself feeling short and grumpy with my partner. And those feelings, if I really sort of say, wait a minute, you know, I am being kind of grumpy. I am being kind of short with my partner. I am being perhaps a little edgy.

I can hand that over. I can take that to my prayer life. I can take that to counsel. I can take that and hand that over to my higher power and say what say you. So I'll give you an example. I went through several weeks where my poor husband, everything he did, annoyed me. And there was nothing that he did that was particularly wrong. It was just discomfort was inside of me.

But everything he did, I reacted to with a noise. And so I took that sort of edgy, not particularly friendly, a set of feelings. And I handed it over to my higher power, who I called God. And what came back was an image of my husband who looked sort of warm and well-fed and ruddy. and I realized I was starving him emotionally. So the image to come back from the universe from God was a direction. I could be more nourishing of my husband.

Where I feel I need to grow in my life is in the blind spot between who I really want to be and how I really think of myself living in the world and what I'm actually doing. And that blind spot, what I'm actually doing in the case of my husband, was starving him. And my higher power, who I call God, showed me an image of him well-fed emotionally.

And that was a gift to deepen my heart, to slow down and be more gentle and take more interest in him. Does it take away from your power to attribute that externally, though, versus saying that was coming from me. There's a part of me that knew this. My view of God is that the spirit forces in us, through us, and around us. I don't think there's an outer and inner. So the brain that detects consciousness is a brain that detects that which is outer and in us and is detected through us.

What do you think of psychics? I think that we all are psychics. I think that we can raise our antenna and at times are shown things that we need to see. And sometimes they're to the benefit of the people around us. Sometimes they're premonitions or dreams or visions. Sometimes they are lived experiences. There is this beautiful little nest of robins, babies, little blue eggs that hatched outside my daughter's window. And one day I just had this horrible feeling, just this awful feeling.

I couldn't shake it. It was like a scraggly feeling. And that night a raccoon came and ate the robins. It was a premonition and it wasn't a visual. It was a felt premonition. It was an emotional kinesthetic premonition. So we're all psychic. As a scientist, what do you think about astrology?

I'm not an expert on astrology. Every culture has had some map of the significance of the energetic field as demarcated by the location of stars across time. So I step back and I'm very interested in the possibility. that that deep spiritual energetic field that put Pluto here and Saturn here and this constellation here on July 4th, 17176, right, was the very same force that worked through the Declaration of Independence. So for all the astrology, Girlie is listening, you're like, I feel like there could be something to this. Oh, yes. And the point I'm exploring, is it possible that the deeper force that aligns the stars also aligns us? that we're part of the universe

and the same universe working through the stars is working through us. Is there any other science that you could share that would help convince a skeptic that all of this is real? Some of the most beautiful findings

that I've seen in science are that suffering really is the gateway to deepening. When we looked at people with a strong spiritual life, they were two and a half times more likely to have gotten there through the road of suffering,

dark night of the soul, through a betrayal, through suddenly one day just feeling horrible, through maybe the loss of a child or the loss of a parent. But we become more open and able to see. And these moments of terrible pain can actually be the moment's post-traumatic spiritual growth, where we actually start feeling these breakthroughs, this gentle, bright numinousness, this sense that I'm not going to fall through the abyss. Somehow I'm caught. And you know what? I'm not so alone because right when I felt completely alone, right when I felt horrible, like so horrible, this really nice woman sat down next to me at the airport, and I'd be talked for two hours.

She reminded me of my best friend growing up. All the universe is alive and everyone's a player. We're never alone. Are there any other myths about spirituality that you'd like to bust? There's an important one. I've spoken to thousands of people and I've seen now and then someone get tears in their eyes, raise their hands at the end of a science talk and say, but am I spiritual? And the answer is yes. Everyone is spiritual. No one is left out. And in a gentle way, there's an invitation for you to explore your

pathway into a connection with the loving, guiding nature of life. Which is a perfect segue into my last question, which is can you leave us with just one homework assignment, something that we can do as soon as we turn off this podcast to begin to tap into our spiritual selves? I invite. I invite you to think of a time where you wanted something so badly and did everything right. A plus B plus C. Strategically, tactically, you used your achieving awareness bull's eye on the nose. And yet that red door you wanted was stuck. And only because it was stuck, you did everything right. You pivoted from that red door that you'd wanted so badly, him or her to say yes, the job, the house, something shiny. But over there, because you pivoted, was a bright, shining yellow door wide open that led you somewhere you'd never imagined.

And is it possible that the impasses in life, the things we think we want so much, actually have to be stuck and closed so that we can pivot and find our path? What's on the other side of the yellow door may not be what you wanted. It may be better. Chills. Dr. Lisa Miller, your amazing book is called The Awaken Brain. Can you tell us about it in your own words and anything else that you want to spotlight? The Awaken Brain has practices in the language of life that we can all explore to start to open up to spirit or consciousness, whatever our word. And the Awaken Brain also has stories.

Most of all, the Awaken Brain is a story of discovering the science in our lab and fellow labs that absolutely can. confirms that every one of us is spiritual. And when we strengthen our natural spirituality, life becomes a far bigger, more inspired. It's an adventure. Thank you so much. It was so lovely talking to you today. It was wonderful. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Liz Moody podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, go ahead and follow on Apple or Spotify or subscribe on YouTube and hit that notification bell so you never miss a new episode. And if there's somebody in your life you think would benefit from this episode, send them a quick link. It is the best way to support the podcast, and it is so, so appreciated.

And if you're watching this, drop me a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts and what resonated most with you. Thanks again for being here. I feel so lucky that I get to grow and learn and share with you, and I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes.

It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.