Understanding This Will Change How You Experience Your Entire Life

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Spirituality, as Dr. Miller defines it, has three parts

  Dr. Lisa Miller, a Columbia professor and author of The Awakened Brain, says we are built to see into the deeper nature of life; that deeper nature is real, alive and guiding whether we ignore it or not; and every day we can choose to live in dialogue with it. Being 'in dialogue' means being an open observer of what life is showing you rather than trying to control it.

• 02

  Spirituality is innate; religion is one way of cultivating it

  She argues everyone, atheist or devout, has the same capacity for what she calls an awakened brain. Religion is a gift of environment that gives that capacity language and direction. Words like God, Hashem, source or the universe differ, but she says she's never heard anyone argue for two sources of life.

• 03

  Twin studies suggest about one-third of spiritual capacity is inborn

  Using the same twin-study method that separates inherited from environmental traits like temperament, she cites Dr. Kendler's research as the first published evidence of a genetic capacity for spiritual experience. Mel reads from the book that roughly one-third is 'inscribed in our genetic code' and two-thirds comes from upbringing, company and practice. So the wiring is given, but a lived spiritual life has to be built.

• 04

  Brain scans show one shared spiritual perception system

  In her fMRI work, she says, the same neural correlates activated whether a participant felt God's presence in a childhood church or saw light on the ice in Glacier National Park, across Catholic, Hindu, Jewish and spiritual-but-not-religious people. Her conclusion: just as there is one visual system, there is one spiritual brain, which she says makes religious war 'obsolete.'

• 05

  It's a perception, not a belief

  Dr. Miller describes spirituality as a seat of perception: sensing guidance, noticing synchronicities and feeling buoyant even when things fall apart. On page 102 of her book she asks whether the brain is less an idea generator than an antenna receiving a larger consciousness. That challenges the psychology model she trained in, where you mainly feel better by rearranging thoughts.

• 06

  Emotions are an accurate index of alignment

  Guilt after cheating on a test or a spouse, or sadness, isn't pathological in her view; it is information about your relationship to reality and a knock on the door to course-correct. She ties this to Mel's Let Them idea: what we think we want is based on the past, and paddling with the river rather than against it takes you somewhere better than you planned.

• 07

  A sustained spiritual life is linked to a thicker cortex in the regions thin in depression

  She reports a thicker cortex across 'awakened brain' regions in people who maintain a daily practice, whether nature walks, meditation, prayer or service, and says those are the same regions that are thinner in people with recurrent major depression. She also describes high-amplitude alpha waves on EEG during recovery from despair through spiritual awakening.

• 08

  She calls spirituality the strongest protective factor studied

  Citing hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, Dr. Miller says a strong spiritual life is more protective against addiction, depression and suicidality than anything else examined in the clinical and social sciences, and that falling mental health has tracked declining personal spirituality. She also proposes that about two-thirds of depressions reflect spiritual hunger, a craving for meaning, which she frames as her hypothesis and clinical view.

• 09

  Many people threw the spiritual baby out with the bathwater

  She attributes the crisis to confusion between spirituality and religion: people reject how faith was practiced at home and lose their own path too. Her line is that when a torchbearer doesn't walk the walk, the flame is still real, so look for other flame carriers, such as a parenting circle about 'walking with the Joneses.'

• 10

  Contingent love makes kids anxious; spiritual parenting is the alternative

  She warns that 'radical achieving awareness,' constant questions about math tests and soccer wins, can be heard as conditional love, citing colleague Dr. Suniya Luthar's decade of studies linking it to anxiety and depression. Instead, spirituality should run through everyday moments, such as the car ride after a lost game or a college rejection.