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Pam King: We are discovering through psychology and neuroscience that we have the innate capacity to transcend. So many of us have felt or known or hold memories of connection to something beyond ourselves. This is what Dr. Lisa Miller and I think of as the science of spirituality.
Lisa Miller: Loved, held, guided, and never alone.
We are wired to be able to perceive that. And when we do, everything in our world is reordered. And in fact, of all the dimensions of live spiritual life, that which most strengthens the awakened brain is love of neighbor to one another. We are able to draw closer to God.
Pam King: I’m Dr. Pam King, and you’re listening to With and for a podcast that explores the depths of psychological science and spiritual wisdom to offer practical guidance towards spiritual health, wholeness, and thriving on purpose.
What does science have to say about spirituality? Far from the tired and angry debates. about the compatibility of faith and science. Dr. Lisa Miller, clinical psychologist and researcher, has made the case through years of research collaborations that spirituality is a birthright to the human species. In her best selling book, The Awakened Brain, she notes the glorious complexity of the human spiritual brain, revealing an innate capacity for transcendence.
But she’s not content to stop at these psychological capacities. She wants to help people with practical, tangible, evidence backed interventions that lead to their thriving and spiritual health. Lisa not only gives words, but explains scientifically why spirituality is so transformative. She challenges us to reimagine religion, faith, and spirituality as an experience of love from beyond us.
Her research suggests that spirituality has less to do with the dos and don’ts of religion, and rather offers a richer experience of how to encounter the love of God. Even if you don’t believe in God, spirituality provides access to powerful transcendent emotions such as awe and joy that help our resilience and are necessary for thriving.
These emotions broaden and build our capacities and help us develop narratives around love and goodness. In this conversation with Lisa Miller, we discuss the neuroscience of spirituality, how paying attention to our inner mental and spiritual life builds awareness and resilience. We talk about her findings that the science of spirituality provides evidence that we’re wired for transcendence.
How transcendent love fortifies our brain in ways that buffer against depression and anxiety. How spirituality is not an individual endeavor. On the contrary, human connection and spiritual guides are vital for healthy spirituality and even a thriving democracy. And we explore all of these experientially, working through the ideas with practical exercises to increase our awareness.
We started the conversation by diving in headfirst with Lisa guiding us through a meditative practice that she calls the hosting table. It’s a guided imaginative practice that enables us to mentally gather key people in our life to a counsel in our own mind. Now, this is where the Within Four podcast is not just your typical podcast where we offer insights or information or stories.
Lisa actually offers a practice. If you’re in a place where you can stop anything else you’re doing, pull over the car, close your eyes, that’s great. If you can’t Do your best and listen along and come back and allow Lisa to guide you through the exercise at a later time. With this in mind, I invite you to prepare yourself to participate in a guided practice.
With warm and kind curiosity, we’ll ask of each person that comes to mind a very deep primal call. In all of our lives. Do you love me?
Lisa Miller: I’m going to invite you to close your eyes and clear out your inner space. Take five breaths
in your inner chamber. I invite you to set before you a table. This is your table into 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 you may invite your higher self, the part of you that is so much more than anything you may have or not have, anything you’ve done or not done, your true, eternal higher self, and ask you if you love you.
And now finally, you may invite your higher power, whatever word is yours, however, you know, your higher power and ask them if they love you.
And now with all of those people sitting there right now, what do they need to share? What do you need to know? What do they need to tell you now?
Thank you, Lisa. So this is your counsel. And they are always there for you. Who shows up may change depending on where we are in our road. And we can ask what’s on our heart. The capacity to be in a deep transcendent relationship is our birthright. And that with whom we communicate is
Pam King: Really, what a gift.
So wonderful to invoke one’s mind and imagination to bring together these realities and to hear their voices speaking, you know, in the moment where life is at and the affirmation that in my worldview, God is working in us and through us and that we can trust that voice of God within us.
Lisa Miller: I’m grateful that it resonated and it aligned with a deep worldview you’ve already lived within.
I think this practice, which was a gift from the late Dr. Gary Weaver, he worked with people who were stuck. Who had experienced some form, not just of trauma and moral injury, but even spiritual injury. So they felt unworthy before God. They felt unable to connect to God, which is a very cold, chilly place to be.
And when the great blessing came, I’ve seen him share this practice. It was an answer to really something that had been in my heart for years, which is how am I going to help those within my work, my students who are struggling to reconnect to who I call God. And this was a beautiful practice in the language of life that helped people get back.
Pam King: Absolutely. I so appreciate how it is both simultaneously personalized to allow people’s spiritual community to be present to them and, and sanctified at the same time in terms of connecting with one’s sense of understanding of the transcendent and connecting with oneself, not just those out there, but with one’s.
True self and inner voice.
Lisa Miller: And this is a practice. I mean, I’ve done with bankers and lawyers in Midtown. I’ve been with kids under the Brooklyn bridge who are homeless. Done this with, of course, healers and teachers with thousands of people in the U S army. There’s, we’re all built the same.
Pam King: Spirituality is ancient, but the science of spirituality is nascent. This makes it. An expansive and exciting moment, but there’s also that feeling of urgency and hope that when the world appears to be tearing apart at the seams, we can turn to what Lisa calls our human birthright, a capacity for transcendent spirituality and wakefulness.
It’s a moment for curiosity and openness and exploration,
Lisa Miller: and it turns out that this. Gift that we’ve all been given, that we just use to hold counsel and be in a deep, sacred, transcendent relationship even has a docking station in the brain that I call the awakened brain. It is our natural neuro docking station for transcendent relationship.
And whether I am Sikh, Jain, Hindu, Christian, Catholic, Jewish, spiritual, but not religious, we all use the same neuro docking station. And there’s One spiritual brain and we all have it. I mean, there’s of course human variability and we can strengthen different components, but the setup’s the same for all of us.
Just like we all have a natural capacity to move our bodies or to sing. This is in us. We’re built with a natural spirituality and we even know that through MRI studies. I’m so thrilled to have you
Pam King: talk more about you awaken brain. What you have done with research has been obviously so pioneering and groundbreaking.
And I think the language that you’re giving us enables people to really conceptualize clearly and then begin to pursue awakening their brain. And some people do this in the context of religion. Some people do this in the context of nature. But you are giving us an ability to both see and understand and pursue this part of being human.
That, as you note in your book, for thousands of years, being spiritual and religious has been part of human history. But the science of spirituality is really new. And what you are uncovering is helping us understand what humans have been doing for a really long time. And it might be my opinion that some of our forms of spiritual pursuits have been missing the point and the way they have been concretized and institutionalized are not always so helpful to this human capacity that we have of transcending and having this awakened brain.
Lisa Miller: Beautiful. Thank you, Pam. I think the most important piece of science that I have found people to experience is very empowering, is that every single one of us is born with natural spirituality. There’s an innate Human capacity and every single, just as we have two eyes, two ears and a nose, we are born with a neuro docking station, the capacity through which to experience a transcendent living relationship as we just did in the practice shared. And we know that this is innate because we look through a lens of twin studies and we can see any human capacity through a twin study the extent to which it’s innate or environmentally formed. So temperament was about half innate, half environmentally formed.
IQ is about 60 percent innate, 40 percent environmentally formed. Well, this capacity to perceive and feel and know a transcendent relationship is one third innate. We are all born with the wiring hardwired, but two thirds environmentally formed gives way to a tremendous impact of our environment. And that, of course, includes the environment of our childhood and adolescence, the first two decades of life.
And parents should care very much about their two thirds embrace, their enormous impact on the formation of their own children’s spiritual core. And onward, living independently, we increasingly choose. Our environment, we choose the company we keep, we choose the community values. We choose the inner environment of our lives, whether we pray and meditate, we choose our values.
And, you know, increasingly, although this is our birthright, it must be cultivated. And it is an opportunity. opportunity of our lifetimes to do that. We wanted to know what this innate capacity looked like. We knew what the experience was, uh, because Ken Kendler in the late nineties had identified a live transcendent relationship in a primarily Judeo Christian sample.
The statements where I turn to God for guidance in times of difficulty, when I have a tough decision to make, I ask what really does my higher power want me to do? My word is God, whether someone’s word. Most sacred word is God or Hashem or Jesus or the universe, no matter what, it is still this innate human capacity through which we experience our higher power.
Kendler identified this and we thought, okay, we know there is an innate capacity in every human being. What does that look like? What is the neurodocking station in our brain? And so as closely as we could, we spent a whole year planning our research team, a collaboration between the Spirituality MindBody Institute at Columbia and two labs at Yale.
We all got together and for a year figured out what the method would be through which we could operationalize in the scanner, the human experience of the transcendent relationship and watch through the MRI goggles, what the blood flow, the neural correlates, live action fMRI might be.
Pam King: Lisa’s research worked with a kaleidoscope of spirituality, asking individual research subjects to share about their own story of transcendence. The findings were so interesting as she looked at the neurological correlates of these spiritual stories. When comparing brain scans between each participant, she found that every participant’s brain lit up in the same ways, a common feature of how we experience spirituality.
Lisa Miller: And we figured it out. There was a very, very good method. It had been developed over 15 years at Yale by Rajita Singh, and it basically showed that when we tell a story with palpable details, Whether it’s a story about craving a piece of cherry pie or the surprise birthday party when we were seven and really so much you can almost smell the room you’re there.
We evoke the same neural correlates as when we actually lived that experience. Plus. We did this with people’s sacred stories of the transcendent relationship. We invited 18 through 25 year olds to come in and tell us about a time where you felt a deep personal connection to God. I turned to God for guidance in times of difficulty.
And what we found was that whether someone was Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Catholic, spiritual, but not religious nature is my cathedral. The same neural correlates ran. The
other thing we found was that the components of this deep transcendent relationship were components put together that made a great deal of sense because the experiences that people shared were experiences of, you know, I’m, I’ve just been turned down at six out of seven medical schools. I feel like such a loser.
I’m completely depressed, but walking on the sidewalk, I look up and I see light in the And I know that God will make me a healer in the way I am intended. A profound reshuffling of meaning. Loved, held, guided, and never alone. Or, you know, we’d gone out for three years in college. I had a promise ring. We were getting married that summer.
And the week before graduation, he called it off. I felt so unlovable. I felt like such a loser. I thought, I will never love again. I’ll never be loved. But then I went home. Sitting in the pews of my childhood house of worship. By my parents and grandparents, I felt this great love of my family and I felt God’s love and I knew, yeah.
A love again, that profound reshuffling of meaning round and round and round, ruminating, ruminating, and then spiritual engagement, engaging with God and those who truly have our best interests, our parents and grandparents, the profound reshuffling of meaning and the components that support that capacity to be moved and guided and loved are the bonding network, loved and held.
This is where loved and held. As children, guided, we move from a very narrow bowling alley, gotta have it top down, dorsal to bottom up, ventral attention network, world lights up, loved, held, guided, and never alone. The parietal that puts in and out heart boundaries, we’re part of one sacred wave of consciousness.
We’re a point, we’re a wave. Loved, held, guided, and never alone. We are wired to be able to perceive that, and when we do, everything in our world is reordered. And in fact, I even think that we literally move through life being sacred consciousness and entirely different life.
Pam King: Lisa’s work is beautifully and resolutely directed toward developing a healthy, awakened spirituality that can support religious people across faith traditions. helping everyone cultivate hearty resilience and curiosity and loving presence. What really emerges from her work, for me, is how this can provide a sturdy agency, the felt sense of power and engagement with the world, as well as reciprocity that were built for loving connection with others, with the world, and with God.
The awakened brain is so helpful and phenomenal, and that it is really gives a purview and an understanding. How spirituality is not just
Pam King: enriching, promotes well being, offers a fullness of life for the individual, but it guides us towards this desire to be connected to one another, to the natural world, and really orients us towards contributing to a flourishing world.
And the ideas about thriving that I get really excited about are not self help. Yay, let’s grow, let’s be American and get, you know, do more faster. But a form of thriving that enables us to become our best selves with and for others or and to contribute to a flourishing world. So this notion of awakened brain, I think is so beautiful in that it uncovers
Not just this capacity to transcend, to experience something that someone might call spiritual outside of the material realm, but it proactively gives us agency and guides us towards a life beyond ourselves.
Particularly the natural world. I mean, Pam, you’re so wise that, you know, we are built to be in deep relationship and felt relationship with that natural world. I can tell you a story I share in the awakened brain. My husband and I really struggled with infertility for years. And it was an extremely rough road.
It was very depressing, tremendously depressing. And it was so depressing that our friends sort of would check in on us. They were so worried. Yeah. And. I want to be a mother so much. My husband’s dying to make a family. And so I found myself researching doctors with higher rates of conception. And you know, we did IUIs and we did IVFs.
And when that didn’t work well, then we’ll figure out the team that invented in vitro. We’ll go to them and I found them and they couldn’t have been nicer and more capable. The whole way that I was sort of doggedly going after this, I knew in my deeper inner wisdom, There was something else in this impasse for us to figure out.
So I was using what I call achieving awareness, tactics, strategy, research, you know. What do I want? The goal’s a baby. How do I get there? Find the doctor with the best rates. You know, very narrow strategic thinking. And it wasn’t working. It wasn’t working. And there was nothing physically wrong with me.
There was nothing physically wrong with him. It was an impasse. It was an energetic, I would say spiritual challenge. And the way that we moved through this time of total pain and desperation was very gradually to start to open up from being what I might call a closed system, I got to get this, I got to close the deal and get the baby, to an open system.
Okay, what is life showing us now? And when we’re open, that’s a synchronicity. That is a gift. I consider that God talking to us through one another. That’s guidance.
Pam King: Absolutely. In my life, when I have been more diligent or active in contemplative practices that involve more meditation or durations of silence, which I interpret through your work as more bottom up intention.
And again, in my language, I might say, is that the Holy Spirit? Or I often hear people of faith say, how do I hear God? And I think your science of the awakened brain. It enables people to understand, wow, I’ve been bestowed this biology, this docking station, this hardware. I can do these spiritual practices that can expand my awareness and make me more open to how something beyond me is guiding me.
Pam King: Lisa’s approach is unique in that it’s so much about discovery. She calls it a sacred journey where there’s genuine learning and thrives in adventure. And she guided us through another practice to clarify this point. She calls it the Trail Angel Exercise. And it’s about opening to opportunity, surprise,
Pam King: and discovery.
Becoming fully available to each moment and its potential for leading us down a
Lisa Miller: path to love and thriving. I am much less a maker of my path than I am a discoverer of this very sacred journey of our lives. And it feels very different. It feels less cogitative, and more surprising and exciting. And we could do another practice.
Do you want to do another practice? Oh,
Pam King: yeah. Let’s do it.
Lisa Miller: Okay. Beautiful. Okay. So Pam, I’m going to invite you to close your eyes, take five breaths again, clear out your inner space.
I invite you to locate a time when you wanted something so badly and you We’re preparing a, let’s be, let’s see, that red door was yours. It could have been a job. It could have been an apartment, a home, a promotion, school acceptance. It could have been him or her or them to say, yes, you did it, right. You researched it.
You were strategic. You had a plan. And when you went for your red door, it was yours, grab the handle, but it was stuck and you couldn’t believe it was stuck because you had done everything. Right. You kicked the door because it wasn’t fair and it was shocking and maybe in time it even became. Depressing, but only because that red door was stuck.
You had no choice. You shifted. It could have been 40. It could have been 150 degrees. And over there was a bright, wide open yellow door and this shining yellow door you crossed. Over the threshold into an opportunity that you may not even have known existed. You might’ve said that yellow doors don’t exist, never seen a yellow door.
And on the other side was someone more right for you, a school where you found a mentor that opened up your whole professional path. You met a partner that made you feel alive or loved in a way you hadn’t felt before. There was. something on the other side of the yellow door that was not what you had wanted.
It was better for you than you had wanted.
And as you think about this time of the Stuckra door and the hair pin turn that led you to the yellow door, was there anyone on that hairpin turn up grandparent, counselor, a clergy person, a friend who. gave you guidance, who offered you information, who told you a story from their own journey. It could have been someone you even met for two minutes at a Starbucks.
This trail angel who came at just that time and spoke in just that way guided you to a 150 hair pin turn. And so as you look at this leg of life, how really are the most important parts of our lives found? How do they come forward? How are they created? Are they narrowly? Build air traffic control. Are we narrowly makers of our path or are some of the most important moments in our lives, the people who we love, the direction where we through which we find our home, birth or adoption or through marriage finding of our spiritual children?
Are we actually discoverers? Of our journey where we don’t get what we want, we get something so much better and it doesn’t always feel good. It can be very painful. But we love in a far greater way and we care and see into the deeper nature of life. And if you step now way back, shut red door, hairpin turn, trail angel, wide open yellow door.
Where in your road of life is God? Where is your higher power? What is the deep nature of life? And where is. Your relationship with your higher power? Is it in the open yellow door and the stuck ride door? Is it in the trail angel and your capacity to be open and in relationship with God, with guidance with the universe?
What are the synchronicities, the guiding moments, the dreams, the mystical experiences, the deep form of knowing and perceiving. We have. which is our birthright, through which we don’t just feel better to walk into a world that opens up through yellow doors to an entirely different terrain.
And when you’re ready, I invite you back.
Thank
Pam King: you. I’m so hopeful, both in noticing how that’s, there have been those moments, those red and yellow doors that, you know, yes, I would kick the door and I would apply all my, you know, education. to discerning, figuring, not discerning, figuring out what’s the best thing to do. And when that door doesn’t open, you’re like, what,
Lisa Miller: but there is a yellow door, a true journey.
You
Pam King: kind of have to dare to keep opening doors and that anticipates some red doors. That’s part of the process, but you can welcome them. And we’re often, I think, in our very linear culture, we like formulas, we like being prepared, we like lists, we like maps and directions, and that we might anticipate that things need to evolve a bit more and to be
Lisa Miller: open to see.
That’s beautiful. So to really be prepared. Is to anticipate and have readiness for awakened moments. This is a yellow door moment. Wait a minute, this red thing that was supposed to fly open and is stuck, you can almost feel the impasse. You know, one of my greatest disappointments in life is when I can feel that I’m straining.
I can feel I’m in overdrive. I haven’t prayed enough, which is my practice. And, you know, I don’t feel completely at these moments, I’m almost surly, like grumpy, and I can feel that I’m going against the current. You know, and it has always been to my detriment or that of someone else when I’m in that state of being.
And so now when I feel this surlyness, I think, Ooh, I’m not in an awakened state. I want to be in an awakened state. And I go and I practice as I practice prayer life or connection with nature. Because literally the day unfolds. It’s not just a happier day. I meet different people and go to different destinations and find different purpose in the day.
When I am in a dialogue with source, when I am in a dialogue, loving, guiding universe with God.
Pam King: One of my greatest desires for this podcast is that regardless of where you are in your life or career journey, that all of you growth seekers and leaders. As you live into your purpose, that you’ll find balance in spiritual health and thriving. And Lisa’s very attuned to the difficult balance between achievement and awakening.
A life of action and a life of contemplation. Doing doing doing, but also patiently being and letting be.
Okay, so Lisa. In your life, you are
Lisa Miller: so in demand. How do
Pam King: you manage a balance between
Lisa Miller: your concept of awakened brain and achievement brain? You clearly are well dialed into
Pam King: achievement brain as well, because you’re very effective and strategic. But you have demonstrated in your life this beautiful balance of integrating or toggling, to use your word, between the two.
How do you
Lisa Miller: keep that up? We absolutely need both. So I’m not saying that I only float in a suspended state of connection, right? But it’s head, heart, and hand. So the alignment is what does the deep inner guidance, what does God’s direction. This would be my language, whenever one’s, what does the guidance of the universe or what does Jesus put on your heart, whatever your words are, that is the deep awakened journey.
But, but I also want to contribute something from that deep seat of awareness and that requires. Implementation. I think it’s a way of walking the trail to toggle between an awakened understanding of dialogue and then how can I contribute? What can I give implementation? Discernment. Most science requires both an inspired, awakened vision of what the question has, but then, you know, hammering it out is pretty straightforward and it’s very logical and empirical.
So I think we’re knowers in many forms. And we need all forms of knowing. So this is how we’re built. And I think we have deprived ourselves by laying atrophy, intuition, mystical awareness. That is hard data. It is absolutely hard data and science can be a beautiful. Witness, really a sacred witness onto the impact of spiritual life.
And what does that mean? And the intuitive can say, my heart, it feels this, and I can discern through logic and the data of my life and parents and we can use all forms of knowing together, and when we do, we can literally track on an MRI. That we have built highways, if you will, myelinated tracks between regions of the brain, multiple organic forms of knowing, different inborn epistemologies, and we have a far more rich engagement with life because we are engaging through all of our channels of knowing.
Pam King: Lisa and I took the conversation in the direction of knowing. The spiritually awakened brain is connected to the world and integrated in the self. Allowing us to know that we are loved, held, and guided by God in such a way that draws us closer to each other, to a deeper love of neighbor.
Lisa Miller: Okay, that validates these
Pam King: other ways of knowing, but in our world we so value
Lisa Miller: empirical science that in a sense we need to validate
Pam King: the more mystical or the more awakened approach.
Lisa Miller: That’s a really important point, Pam. So, it’s my view that science does not prove spirituality. Spirituality needs no proof.
My direct mystical experience, the felt awareness of God, this needs no proof. This is in and of itself, in my book, established. Our
Pam King: brains are plastic. That means they stretch and they grow. And while they make connections at an astounding rate when we’re young, they really never stop growing. This is amazing to me.
And I marvel at the incredible capacity of the brain to keep adapting and responding to our lived environment. And it really grounds so much hope. Again, that we can live into our potential for power and agency,
Lisa Miller: as well as
Pam King: reciprocity and responsiveness. and connection. Lisa’s work is especially notable for how spirituality can help us cultivate resilience, especially resilience to suffering and mental illness.
Her work has shown how individuals can exercise and practice and grow, building spiritual muscles that can actually protect against recurrent depression and sadness. Lisa speaks to the realities of depression while also remaining hopeful. That for those of us who do experience the Dark Knight of the Soul, we can accept and then move through it as part of our story.
That we can incorporate and understand, knowing it’s a part of our formation and a part of our path. The
Lisa Miller: reason that we are Pandemically sick is because we have let lay atrophy, this deep natural birthright. As I’m sure you’re well aware, a half of Gen Z, as of September, 48 percent reported moderate levels of a disease of despair.
The rate of death by suicide rivals the rate of death by auto accident. All three of my Gen Z kids have talked someone back from suicide. And even if in our own homes, as parents, we, we bring great sanctity to life. There is radical desanctification of life in the youth culture that is transmitted through the phone.
So the phone is not the problem. It’s not the phone. It, because the phone could have been a source for great spiritual connection. And in some cases is. But very often the phone is a place where a culture is transmitted that is effectively a public square minus a spiritual core. It is radically transactional, what can you do for me?
It is radically material, what do you look like, what do you have, what are you going to vacation? It is It’s basically a big golden calf delivered over the phone. And if we look at the studies, the MRI studies of people with a sustained spiritual life, it turns out that they really have strength in the muscle, so to speak.
There is a thicker cortex across the regions of the awakened brain. So by way of living in this study over eight years with their sort of lead foot, their strike heel on spiritual bedrock, you know, what God you asked of me today, a living felt dialogue. In the Judeo Christian tradition, a sense of oneness in some of the Eastern traditions, nature’s my cathedral, they day in and day out are using their awakened brain and it grows thick and strong and then becomes.
Neuroprotective against depression. So, day in and day out, choice to bring a spiritual response to suffering. He broke up with me. It feels horrible. Okay. I open my heart. I pray. I meditate. Of course, I’ll love again. Right. Versus he broke up with me. I’m such a loser, you know, and that’s very self referential down the, you know, down the rabbit hole.
So a spiritual response to suffering becomes the, you know, we’re building our, we’re building our goggles. We’re building our go to place of how we think of things and feel about things. The regions that grow thick. through practice in our spiritual brains are not thick but thin in people with recurrent major depression.
So there’s evidence, MRI studies published in JAMA Psychiatry that sustained spiritual life is neuroprotective against recurrence of major depression.
Pam King: That is huge in this era where depression is such a lived experience for so many people, whether officially clinically
Lisa Miller: or just leaning towards depression.
Um, and anxiety that is absolutely rampant. And so your
Pam King: comments that we can proactively cultivate this beyond
Lisa Miller: the self orientation where
Pam King: we can experience a love from beyond us, whether we mean that love God, whether
Lisa Miller: we even focus on love of family, but this beyond the self love
Pam King: that, that actually Fortifies our brain in ways that buffer
Lisa Miller: against depression beyond the self love is such a powerful and beautiful way you put it, Pam, because that is, it is relational spirituality beyond the self love and whether I am feeling that deep loved, I’m loved, felt guided by God or I show up as to be loving, holding and guiding of my family or my neighbor in need.
I’m using the same neuro docking station and in fact, of all the dimensions of live spiritual life, that which most strengthens. The awakened brain is love of neighbor to one another. We are able to draw closer to God, which strengthened the awakened brain.
Pam King: So it’s like beyond self vertical. Some people say beyond the self horizontal.
Lisa Miller: Yes. And you can get in either way, but if you’re stuck, all you have to do is walk out the door and do something literally for your neighbor on your street who’s having a rough time. And you’ll start to reawaken to this love beyond the self, as you put it, which extends to the awareness that God loves us.
For me, your writing on depression as possibly an invitation
Pam King: was really powerful. I’d love to hear you say
Lisa Miller: more about that. You know, you may have seen this many times if, as a minister, effectively, we bring many lenses of science online at once. So the first thing we look at is through the lens of a long term clinical course study.
We look at people over decades and what we see if we swoop in on everybody’s 26 in this 40. Year plus study, three generations, everyone’s 26. And we say, okay, who here amongst this community of young adults, no longer emerging adults, young adults, has a very strong personal spirituality, again, whether I’m Christian, Hindu, Jewish, spiritual, but I will just, and those who say yes, I have a strong personal spirituality, it’s how I see life.
They are 250 percent more likely to have gotten there through profound struggle and depression sometime in the past 10 years. So age 16 to 26, the 10 years up to that point, were very difficult. A developmental depression and build the spiritual response to suffering is sitting there, why, what is God asking of me now?
Why did this happen to me? Is the world unfair? Or maybe the world’s not unfair. Maybe this is some type of moving on moment. And once that’s formed, from 26 onward to the next decade, we are 75 percent protected against a recurrence of depression. We are girded no matter what comes storming down on our heads.
We are girded against a subsequent depression, and that goes from 75 up to 90. We are 90 percent less likely to face depression if we’re at high risk. High risk because we’re under a highly stressful situation like the COVID situation. High risk because maybe I’m genetically predisposed or I grew up in a family with depressogenic thinking.
We’re the losers. It always happens to us. The world’s not fair. The more that stuff’s going on, the more that spiritual connection to God or higher power of life, and even more foundationally, you can feel that your heart opens into the connection with life. So, there we are. We’ve shown that often through struggle comes spiritual life, but once built, it is protective against a subsequent depression we are girded.
Now, let’s use the next lens. We’ll go from a long term clinical course study to an MRI study. What do the brains look like of these folks? And it turns out that those people who have recovered from depression through a deepening of spiritual life have built. A stronger cortex around the regions of perception, reflection, and orientation.
The occipital. Those regions are not thick, but thin in people with recurrent major depression. So they have, through a spiritual response to suffering, developed the muscle, built the muscle, if you will, so that they now are neuro protected. Okay, third lens of science, same folks, this time we’re going to put an EEG cap on your head.
Okay. And pick up the energy coming off your head, see how you’re using your brain. And again, a spiritual response to suffering establishes a certain use of the brain through which we give off a specific wavelength is high amplitude alpha, posteriorly, where many traditions, for instance, where the kippah goes, where yarmulke goes, or oftentimes women cover their head in prayer, the back of our head, we give off high amplitude alpha.
And not only that, but all we’ve said is come in, relax, kick back, close your eyes. We haven’t asked them to pray, and yet their go to place for living day in and day out is one of spiritual connection, they give off alpha. Alpha is also given off if we help people get out of depression through a jumpstart with SSRIs, like Prozac.
Fascinating. So, as I’m sure you’re well aware, there are a lot of people who go into treatment and they say, you know, they express some of the symptoms of depression. They may well be having a developmental depression, the knock at the door through which is beckoning this spiritual growth and awakening.
But if we only listen to the symptoms, and I’m not against medication, but if we dope away the symptoms and don’t do the work. We have missed the opportunity. This is the opportunity of that young person’s lifetime. It is developmental depression knocking at the door for spiritual awakening saying, what is my meaning?
What is the meaning? What is the purpose? Is love real? This guy just broke up with me. Is love real? Is God real? You know, you left me mom and you still love me. But he loves me now he doesn’t so what’s real? What is it? Yeah, and this real tough existential climb is hardwired It is hardwired through which we build our deepest spiritual core We’re neuro protected against subsequent depressions because we’re literally living A different life, one in which we’re in dialogue with loss as an opening.
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I so appreciate the emphasis, um,
Pam King: and opportunity through plasticity that you emphasize. We have the equipment, but we have to use it. We have to develop it. And kids, our world is not set up in a way
Lisa Miller: currently for them to necessarily do the hard
Pam King: work of meaning making and ask those questions.
And the more that we can create environments and guide young people to trust their inner voice. to look beyond themselves, um, simultaneously. Because I love how your work is never like, oh, it’s all beyond
Lisa Miller: you. You know, I think one of the things I’ve found is that even if we run as parents a very clear message, and even if we walk with our children, they still have to go through their own developmental depression.
It’s actually a gift. It hurts. But it is the road, if you will, the dark night of the souls, the road of trials through which they find on their own deep inner resonance in their own heart, their own spiritual compass. You know, we can only walk by their side. We can be transparent about our own spiritual journey and allow them to bear witness and give a testimony and we can let them know it’s coming so they know what it is, that it’s not lost time or downtime.
Depression isn’t time away from your budding career. It’s. Hmm. So how do you nudge a
Pam King: kiddo to, towards that beyond the self experience
Lisa Miller: of love? If we as parents or as teachers or as ministers share our own story. They are riveted because adolescence is a hard, wild growth spurt. We see in longitudinal twin studies, this surge of biological block of increased heritability, which means there’s a hunger of the heart to feel love and connection and newness.
And there’s the nagging existential questions of the head. And as this capacity boots up, it can feel like a half empty existential glass of spirituality. They hunger to know. They really want to, so if we share our stories, deeply authentic stories about our own spiritual path now, or when we were their age, they are riveted.
They’re absolutely riveted. They are prepared, body, mind, and spirit to want to know and need to know. The other thing is that, you know, I’ve spoken to, um, clergy, uh, who work at schools and universities and I’ll say, so how are the students doing? Would you say that on your campus, they’re pretty spiritual?
And they usually say, and there’s a few, but basically, no, they’re not spiritual at all. They don’t see beyond their own desk. And I’ll say, wow, so what do you do about that? And he said, the only thing I found is I take them on a mission trip and they’re, you know, digging a well by someone who needs clean water or bringing food to an orphanage.
We see a tremendous. Awakening. And again, it’s the engagement of our deep neuro seat, you know, of love beyond ourselves, as you put so beautifully and it’s felt. And then pretty soon they start asking about love of neighbor and then love of God and God loves us. And God loves these kids in the orphanage and you know, they open up.
So I think that when they see true spiritual walk, when they hear true spiritual talk from parents, from guides, and when they participate in love of neighbor. they wake up.
Pam King: There’s such an interesting and delicate balance to the sources of wisdom in spiritual life. We can draw so much knowledge from external sources, scripture, religious tradition, spiritual guides, and mentors.
But Lisa is encouraging us to pay attention to those internal resources, feelings, senses. perception, and a deep knowledge of spiritual reality. Again, we all have this capacity for spiritual attunement. And Lisa has found a powerful capacity for authentic inner spiritual awareness that Each of us can find in our own particular faith communities.
This expresses so much of what spiritual health is about. Again, an integration of our inner agency in spiritual capacity with our relationality and drive for connectedness.
Lisa Miller: In our country, about two thirds of people say I’m spiritual and religious. About 30 percent say I’m spiritual, but not religious.
Higher percentages with younger people. So, Gen Z has more than 30%, right? Spirituality and religion, to be crystal clear, go hand in hand for many people, but they are not the same thing. And if you ask, and we’ll use yet another lens, we’ll use now the twin study, if you ask a scientist, what’s the difference between spirituality and religion, the scientist will say religion is 100%.
environmentally transmitted. It’s the gift of our parents and grandparents. It is shown and taught through community. We might choose it and then view our lives, immerse ourselves in the faith community. So whereas religion is a hundred percent environmentally transmitted, our natural spiritual awareness is.
It is one third innate, two thirds environmentally formed. For many people, the two thirds embrace includes their faith tradition, and for some it does not. So when you raise this very timely and meaningful point about how to experience authentic inner spiritual awareness within the rich embrace of my faith tradition, how might the language and the sermons?
Move my inner, natural, spiritual capacity to feel, perceive, and know God, the higher power, or God in my sisters and brothers, relational spirituality. And I think that’s something that is transmitted through the person we’re sitting next to. Yeah, I remember as a child looking at my mother, I grew up in the Midwest.
We remember this huge Jewish synagogue and it was packed at Yom Kippur. But when we went on a Shabbat on a Saturday morning, there were usually seven people. My mom and me , two elderly couples and a rabbinical student, , and my, I was the only child and my mother would sing the Hebrew prayers every Shabbat, lean over and sing them in my face.
And as she sang them, there was such love, love of me, love of God, love it all being one love. And which we now know is the same neuro docking station, but we have one love. And. When I say the prayers now, I say them with this deep felt love of God, and I say them with the felt presence of my mother by my side.
I mean, there are cases, I mean, to be fair and clear, there are moments where people read a book and are inspired, but for most of us, the capacity to feel authentic spiritual connection, love guided, inspired, guided, through the language and the text, Is enriched when we walk that bridge with a loving parent or grandparent or a mentor, you know, I mean, there’s data that if you are a mom and you’re just riddled with depression, or maybe you’re struggling with addiction and you just can’t get there.
If you drop your child off at a loving, safe faith community, they are 90 percent protected. They will find. The healthiest form of spirituality and they are 90 percent protected against picking up drugs and alcohol at the window of risk. They are 80 percent protected against themselves becoming depressed in the window of risk.
A loving, authentic mentor who walks the walk. Again, no one in the world like a grandparent, but there’s aunts and there’s uncles and there’s Committed mentors, you know, but it, but we walked the bridge alongside a guide who I would call one of God’s ambassadors, our grandparents, our parents.
The
Pam King: moment we’re in is so full of forces that can divide us and separate us sometimes all too violently. We know that well, but if what Lisa is finding could be expressed in public life, it would draw us into a more spacious. spirituality that makes room for each other’s perspectives, even admits disagreement.
There’s so much commonality we can tap into with respect to our spiritual inclinations. I wanted to know Lisa’s thoughts about how this kind of approach might impact public life, how it might shape democracy toward a more healthy and constructive direction.
Lisa Miller: I think that The antidote to the splintered culture wars and the splintered identity wars is that we can have a deep, loving embrace of spiritual pluralism. You know, I want to know you in the deepest way. And I want to hear about Christmas. I want to share with you about Hanukkah. And let’s listen to this little baby was born in your house.
I would hear it from a spiritual point of view, that pluralism to really, you know, we’ve come so far. With diversity and inclusivity around gender and race and orientation. The next horizon is spiritual diversity, deep pluralism. And this country was founded on deep spiritual pluralism. To be free and to be able to express our own love of God, universe in whatever voice is ours and respectfully.
Hear the whisper of Spirit, God, and one another as they one another use our own voice. So this is exactly how our country was made. I couldn’t agree with you more. And you would love this. You may know this already that in the Declaration of Independence, one of Jefferson’s earlier drafts said, We hold these truths to be sacred.
That all men were created equal and independent. That’s amazing. Yeah. So self evident was a sense that it is so sacred. It is so written into natural law, natural rights. This is a country with a DNA and, you know, endowed by their creator. Pluralism is. Absolutely as foundational as is the spiritual impetus of freedom and liberty for this country.
And I think it’s time to perhaps breathe a little pluralism back into our discourse. Absolutely. And I think Lisa, your work
Pam King: really affirms the spiritual dignity.
Lisa Miller: of all persons. Oh, beautiful.
Pam King: Where we can find this common ground with this shared spiritual dignity, regardless of beliefs.
Lisa Miller: And I
Pam King: think this moment in history is a really important time of reckoning around dignity and liberty.
And that. Despite the fact that, yes, the United States of America was founded on these impulses around liberation that it was at others expense. And that my work in thriving is, you know what, true human thriving is not thriving at others expense. We have to have that open awareness of how our, the cultivation of our gifts and our fullness of life may be at the expense of others.
And we can pursue
Lisa Miller: our fullness of life to enable the flourishing and thriving of others. I think, you know, one way I think about that important point is that democracy is a verb. The liberty and the values and the constitution are always ones towards which we are evolving and reaching. You know, what makes our system, I think, one of ever growing evolution and if you will, moving asymptotically more towards.
True liberty, right, moving towards true life, liberty and happiness for all people is that we see the system as one that is self corrected that, you know, okay, you know, we have done better now with the right to vote, to go out, got there, right? Okay. We have, we are overly involved in this system allows for what I think, you know, from a spiritual perspective, our aspirational values, those verbs towards which we work towards.
Pam King: Yes. When I think about thriving, I think of it as a developmental. trajectory towards a telos that is a dynamic and it’s not a static end point. It’s a process and it is involves individual growth, relational growth and aspirational growth. We need an evolving sense of
Lisa Miller: ethical values and spirituality to continue
Pam King: to discern what is the call to thrive now.
was different than it was 30 years ago, and it looks different for each person, and that spirituality is such a dynamic process for people, and as you described,
Lisa Miller: the awakened brain
Pam King: really sets us up to discern the call now. And the ability to pivot 150 or
Lisa Miller: 30 degrees
Pam King: with a broader view of nature, humanity, and mind.
And that’s really necessary for our planet, for our species, for us individually, ultimately. And I think
Lisa Miller: you put it beautifully, our soul’s code, our natural telos in relationship. To fellow human beings and fellow living beings, but that there is, you know, something unique in all time and you and every single one of us and has articulated, but not in a vacuum and not at the expense of others, but in relationship to others, we go together and we go together, whether or not we’re Republicans or Democrats and we go together, whether or not we agree or disagree, we are souls on earth.
Going together. Yeah. On a journey. Absolutely. My
Pam King: first academic contribution was writing on a telos of the reciprocating
Lisa Miller: self. Which I initially did theologically,
Pam King: but I’m now writing from a psychological perspective because that’s how we develop. And we need that constant beyond the self orientation that that is our goal and hope as a species is to be more
Lisa Miller: fully differentiated.
And fully in relationship to be fully known and
Pam King: to know others, which I love that you discuss, you know, brain basis of how we can experience
Lisa Miller: differentiation and unity at the same time. I, I think that as we make choices in our relationship, as we articulate our journey in relationship to one another. At every moment, we’re both sides of the equation.
We’re the giver and we’re the taker. We’re the generous and we’re the recipient. And I think we’re invoking, you know, that which is about generosity on all sides. Really well
Pam King: said. Really, really well said. Before we wrap up, I always close my show with a simple question or short question and, and what is thriving
Lisa Miller: to you living in alignment with God’s will.
Thank you, Lisa. Thank you so much. Thank you. Oh, this is beautiful.
Pam King: Lisa Miller’s Science of Spirituality is an invitation to behold and discover and connect. to the marvelous reality of our spiritual brains with far reaching consequences for everyday lives. The key takeaways that I will carry with me from this conversation are the following.
Lisa Miller: Our
Pam King: brains are amazing.
Our spiritual capacity is like a muscle we can exercise with daily practices of attention, meditation, imagination and prayer. And we hold the spiritual capacity for transcendence. In common with each other, it’s
Lisa Miller: knit into our
Pam King: relational essence as human beings. We can find a renewed sense of agency and power and resilience when we open up to what’s inside.
Our feelings, our senses, our perceptions, and our core experience of God. Healthy spirituality allows us to know and experience that we are loved, held. guided,
Lisa Miller: and never alone. With
Pam King: and For is a production of the Thrive Center at Fuller Theological Seminary. This episode featured Lisa Miller. This season, new episodes drop every Monday. And don’t miss our weekly Friday series of podcast shorts, Playing with Light, where I get to share some of my curiosity and wonder, and offer a practical insight to help you stay on your path to spiritual health.
For more information, visit our website, thethrivecenter. org, where you’ll find all sorts of resources to support your pursuit of wholeness and a life of thriving on purpose. I am so grateful to the staff and fellows of The Thrive Center and our With For podcast team. Jill Westbrook is our Senior Director and Producer.
Lauren Kim is our Operations Manager. Wren Jurgensen is our Social Media Graphic Designer. Evan Rosa is our Consulting Producer. And special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology in Marriage and Family Therapy. I’m your host, Dr. Pam King. Thank you for listening.
Dr. Lisa Miller
Dr. Lisa Miller is bestselling author of The Spiritual Child and The Awakened Brain, and researcher and professor in clinical psychology at the Teachers College of Columbia University.
Episode Summary
Dr. Lisa Miller discusses the glorious complexity of the human spiritual brain, which reveals our innate capacity for transcendence. Drawing on research in psychology and neuroscience, Lisa helps people with practical, tangible, and evidence-backed interventions that lead to their thriving and spiritual health. She explains why spirituality is so transformative and challenges us to reimagine religion, faith, and spirituality as an experience of love from beyond us.
“Loved, held, guided, and never alone. We are wired to be able to perceive that. And when we do, everything in our world is reordered. And in fact, of all the dimensions of lived spiritual life, that which most strengthens the awakened brain is love of neighbor—to one another. We are able to draw closer to God.” — Lisa Miller (Columbia University, author of The Awakened Brain)
What does science have to say about spirituality?
Dr. Lisa Miller, clinical psychologist and researcher, has made the case through years of research collaborations that spirituality is a birthright to the human species. In her best selling book, The Awakened Brain, she notes the glorious complexity of the human spiritual brain, revealing an innate capacity for transcendence. But she’s not content to stop at these psychological capacities. She wants to help people with practical, tangible, evidence backed interventions that lead to their thriving and spiritual health. Lisa not only gives words, but explains scientifically why spirituality is so transformative. She challenges us to reimagine religion, faith, and spirituality as an experience of love from beyond us.
Her research suggests that spirituality has less to do with the dos and don’ts of religion, and rather offers a richer experience of how to encounter the love of God. Even if you don’t believe in God, spirituality provides access to powerful transcendent emotions such as awe and joy that help our resilience and are necessary for thriving. These emotions broaden and build our capacities and help us develop narratives around love and goodness.
In this conversation with Lisa Miller, we discuss:
- The neuroscience of spirituality
- Guided meditative practices to fortify spiritual health and a sense of love, purpose, and possibility
- How paying attention to our inner mental and spiritual life builds awareness and resilience
- Research findings from the science of spirituality that we’re wired for transcendence
- How transcendent love fortifies our brain in ways that buffer against depression and anxiety
- How human connection and spiritual guides are vital for a healthy life and even a thriving democracy
- And we explore all of these experientially, working through the ideas with practical exercises to increase our awareness
Show Notes
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- "Loved, held, guided, and never alone. We are wired to be able to perceive that. And when we do, everything in our world is reordered. And in fact, of all the dimensions of live spiritual life, that which most strengthens the awakened brain is love of neighbor to one another. We are able to draw closer to God.”
- What does science have to say about spirituality?
- About Lisa Miller and The Awakened Brain
- An experience of love from beyond us
- With & For’s approach to practical resources and exercises
- The power of asking a council of advocates in your mind: “Do you love me?”
- Meditative practice: The Hosting Table
- “We can ask what's on our heart. The capacity to be in a deep transcendent relationship is our birthright.”
- “God is working in us and through us.”
- Dr. Gary Weaver on trauma and spiritual or moral injury
- Urgency and hope, curiosity and openness
- Neuro-docking station: “There’s one spiritual brain and we all have it.”
- The research that led to The Awakened Brain
- “Every single one of us is born with natural spirituality. There's an innate Human capacity and every single, just as we have two eyes, two ears and a nose, we are born with a neuro-docking station, the capacity through which to experience a transcendent, living relationship.”
- Longitudinal research on twins
- “This capacity to perceive and feel and know a transcendent relationship is one-third innate. We are all born with the wiring hardwired, but two-thirds environmentally formed.”
- Ken Kendler: What is the awakened brain?
- Neurological correlates while people told sacred stories of transcendent relationship. “The same neural correlates ran in every single person.”
- “Loved, held, guided, and never alone.”
- Supporting religious people across faith traditions
- Lisa Miller’s personal struggle with infertility and the desire to have a child
- Meditative practice: The Trail Angel Exercise
- “Less cogitative, and more exciting”
- “Are we actually discoverers of our journey where we don't get what we want, we get something so much better?”
- “Where in your road of life is God? Where is your higher power? What is the deep nature of life?”
- The difficult balance between achievement and awakening—action and contemplation
- Head, heart, and hand
- “We are knowers in many forms.”
- “We can use all forms of knowing together, and when we do, we can literally track on an MRI. That we have built highways, if you will, myelinated tracks between regions of the brain, multiple organic forms of knowing, different inborn epistemologies, and we have a far more rich engagement with life because we are engaging through all of our channels of knowing.”
- Knowledge, spirituality, and our connection to the world
- Neuroplasticity and adaptation to the lived environment
- Resilience, depression, and hope
- As of September 2022—48 percent of Gen Z “reported moderate levels of a disease of despair. The rate of death by suicide rivals the rate of death by auto accident. All three of my Gen Z kids have talked someone back from suicide.”
- “There is radical desanctification of life in the youth culture that is transmitted through the phone. So the phone is not the problem. It's not the phone. It, because the phone could have been a source for great spiritual connection. And in some cases is. But very often the phone is a place where a culture is transmitted that is effectively a public square minus a spiritual core. It is radically transactional, what can you do for me? It is radically material, what do you look like, what do you have, what are you going to vacation? It is It's basically a big golden calf delivered over the phone.”
- Spirituality and the spiritual muscle of the awakened brain is neuroprotective against depression
- “Beyond-the-self love”
- “It is relational spirituality beyond the self love and whether I am feeling that deep loved, I'm loved, felt guided by God or I show up as to be loving, holding and guiding of my family or my neighbor in need. I'm using the same neuro docking station and in fact, of all the dimensions of live spiritual life, that which most strengthens. The awakened brain is love of neighbor to one another. We are able to draw closer to God, which strengthened the awakened brain.”
- Having a strong spirituality: 250 percent more likely to have gotten there through profound struggle and depression within the past 10 years.
- Long-term clinical study vs fMRI studies and giving of alpha-energy
- “Is love real? Is God real?”
- “We have the equipment, but we have to use it. We have to develop it.”
- The hard work of meaning-making
- How to help children move towards transcendent love
- Authentic inner spiritual awareness
- Religion vs spirituality
- Religion and faith tradition is 100% environmentally transmitted
- Spirituality is 1/3 innate, 2/3 environmentally transmitted
- Lisa’s early childhood experience of her Jewish faith and the love her mother
- Spirituality and democracy
- How spiritual pluralism and spiritual diversity can impact public life
- “We hold these truths to be sacred…”
- Finding common ground through shared spiritual dignity
- “Democracy is a verb.”
- “Our soul's code, our natural telos in relationship to fellow human beings and fellow living beings … in relationship to others, we go together. And we go together whether or not we're Republicans or Democrats. And we go together whether or not we agree or disagree. We are souls on earth going together on a journey.”
- Invoking generosity on all sides
- What is thriving to Lisa Miller?
- “Living in alignment with God’s will.”
- Pam King’s takeaways from her conversation with Lisa Miller:
- Our brains are amazing.
- Our spiritual capacity is like a muscle we can exercise with daily practices of attention, meditation, imagination and prayer.
- And we hold the spiritual capacity for transcendence. In common with each other, it's knit into our relational essence as human beings.
- We can find a renewed sense of agency and power and resilience when we open up to what's inside: our feelings, our senses, our perceptions, and our core experience of God.
- Healthy spirituality allows us to know and experience that we are loved, held, guided, and never alone.
About Dr. Pam King
Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.About With & For
- Host: Pam King
- Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
- Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
- Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
- Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa
About the Thrive Center
- Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
- Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
- Follow us on X @thrivecenter
- Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter
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