The Awakened Brain
The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life
Did you know that there’s a “Science of Spirituality”? Yep. There is. It’s fascinating. And, Lisa Miller is the pioneering researcher who created the field. This book is the distillation of her decades of work to help us apply her research to our (Heroic!) “Quests for an Inspired Life.” Lisa is also the founder and director of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, the first Ivy League graduate program in spirituality and psychology. And, she is the New York Times bestselling author of The Spiritual Child and a professor in the clinical psychology program at Teachers College, Columbia University. As you’d expect, the book is packed with Big Ideas. I’m excited to share some of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!
Big Ideas
- The challenge and its antidoteAnd its antidote.
- Personal Spirituality vs. Personal ConservatismAnd personal conservatism.
- The Quest Orientation: Integration is KeyIntegration is key.
- Three Doors and the Obstacles that make us strongerAnd obstacles that make us stronger.
- A fast track to awakened connectionA fast track.
“An awakened brain is available to all of us, right here in our neural circuitry. But we have to choose to engage it. It’s a muscle we can learn to strengthen, or let atrophy. I’ve come to see the problems we have in leadership, education, social justice, the environment, and mental health as different emanations of the same problem: unawakened awareness. A universal, healing capacity that has not been engaged or cultivated, that’s been left to die on the vine. The problem is within. And so is the solution.
Each one of us has the ability to fully develop our intimate capacity to live through an awareness of love, interconnection, and appreciation of life’s unfolding. Beyond belief, beyond a cognitive story we tell ourselves, the awakened brain is the inner lens through which we access the truest and most expansive reality: that all of life is sacred, that we never walk alone. Our brains are wired to perceive and receive that which uplifts, illuminates, and heals. …
This book is the story of how I discovered the awakened brain, why it matters, and how we can cultivate it in daily life.
And it’s the story of human possibility—of all the ways we’ve been cut down and cut off in life, and how to become whole.”
~ Lisa Miller, Ph.D. from The Awakened Brain
Did you know that there’s a “Science of Spirituality”?
Yep. There is. It’s fascinating. And, Lisa Miller is the pioneering researcher who created the field. This book is the distillation of her decades of work to help us apply her research to our (Heroic!) “Quests for an Inspired Life.”
Lisa is also the founder and director of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, the first Ivy League graduate program in spirituality and psychology. And, she is the New York Times bestselling author of The Spiritual Child and a professor in the clinical psychology program at Teachers College, Columbia University.
When I think of Lisa and her extraordinary work, I think of some of my other favorite pioneering researchers in the field of psychology including Ellen Langer (who has spent decades studying what she calls “The Psychology of Possibility” that we discuss in our Notes on Counterclockwise, Mindfulness, and The Power of Mindful Learning), Kristin Neff (who created the field and wrote the book on the science of Self-Compassion), Gabriele Oettingen (who redefined the science of goal setting and wrote the book Rethinking Positive Thinking), and Sonja Lyubomirksy (who is another leading wellbeing researcher who wrote The How of Happiness and The Myths of Happiness).
As you’d expect, the book is packed with Big Ideas. I’m excited to share some of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!
Download MP3
Download PDFNever cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.
Get the BookThe challenge and its antidote
“We live in an age of unprecedented mental anguish. Depression, anxiety, and substance abuse have reached epidemic proportions globally. In 2017, 66.6 million Americans—more than half of the respondents on the National Survey on Drug Use and Health—reported binge drinking within the past month, and 20 million meet the criteria for a substance use disorder. Thirty-one percent of American adults will develop a full-blown anxiety disorder at some point in their lives, and 19 percent in any given year. The World Health Organization reports that 264 million people on the planet are depressed; depression is the third most costly disability worldwide. Each year, 17 million American adults are depressed. Over 16 percent of youth in late adolescence currently face depression, and the impact of depression on suicide accounts for the second leading cause of death in adolescents, rivaled only by death by auto accident.”
That’s from the Introduction to the book.
After that passage, Lisa continues with some more data on the pandemic levels of burnout and chronic stress we face.
I literally felt nauseous as I typed it out and felt into the unprecedented pain we, as individuals and as a society, are experiencing in the modern world.
Then...
Lisa tells us about the ground-breaking MRI research she and her team conducted in 2012. One question her team posed—which was viewed as controversial at the time—led to remarkable insights.
They asked participants in the study to respond to“a major question used in the clinical science literature to quantify inner life.”
This one:“How personally important is religion or spirituality to you?”
And...
They discovered that: “The high-spiritual brain was healthier and more robust than the low-spiritual brain. And the high-spiritual brain was thicker and stronger in exactly the same regions that weaken and wither in depressed brains.”
She tells us...
“The MRI findings marked a pivotal moment on the way to my breakthrough discovery that each of us has an awakened brain. Each of us is endowed with a natural capacity to perceive a greater reality and consciously connect to the life force that moves in, through, and around us. Whether or not we participate in a spiritual practice or adhere to a faith tradition, whether or not we identify as religious or spiritual, our brain has a natural inclination toward and docking station for spiritual awareness. The awakened brain is the neural circuitry that allows us to see the world more fully and thus enhance our individual, societal, and global well-being.”
The book is all about the research studies that led to these remarkable results AND the practical things we can do to awaken our brains.
Why would we want to do that?
Because...
“When we engage these perceptual capacities—when we make full use of how we’re built—our brains become structurally healthier and better connected, and we access unsurpassed psychological benefits: less depression, anxiety, and substance abuse; and more positive psychological traits such as grit, resilience, optimism, tenacity, and creativity.”
Remarkably, I found that in the nationally representative sample of teens, adolescents with a strong personal spirituality were 35 to 75 percent less likely to experience clinical depression. No other mental health intervention, clinical or pharmacological, for adults or adolescents, has anything close to these prevention rates.
The subjects for whom spirituality and religion were highly important had a healthier neural structure than did those for whom spirituality and religion held medium, low, or no importance.
Personal Spirituality vs. Personal Conservatism
“Dr. Kendler established a clear distinction between personal spirituality and strict adherence to the rules of religion, or what Kendler called ‘personal conservatism.’ In his largely Judeo-Christian sample, personal spirituality measured items such as ‘frequency of seeking spiritual comfort’ and ‘frequency of private prayer,’ while personal conservatism measured items such as ‘belief that God rewards and punishes’ and ‘literal belief in the Bible.’ Kendler found that personal devotion and personal conservatism go hand in hand for some people, but not the majority of those studied. Following a particular religious text very closely didn’t necessarily mean or not mean that a person reported a felt sense of being in a personal relationship with a higher power, or turning to a higher power or source for guidance in times of difficulty. In other words, a person could measure high in personal devotion while anywhere from high to low in personal conservatism, and vice versa. Kendler’s research was the first major empirical study supporting the important distinction that people can be spiritual with or without being religious, and religious with or without being spiritual.”
Personal spirituality vs. personal conservatism.
The basic idea?
We can be SPIRITUAL (and feel a connection to a power bigger than ourselves) WITH or WITHOUT being religious.
And...
It’s the “personal spirituality” (the “spiritual”) NOT the “personal conservatism” (the “religious”) that offers the powerful benefits.
Andrew Newberg is another leading researcher in the field.
He wrote a book called How God Changes Your Brain in which he tells us that spiritual beliefs can bring a great deal of peace and happiness to the individuals who practice them.
He ALSO tells us: “These studies support our argument that fear-based religions can be hazardous to your health. It’s too bad that the Surgeon General can’t place a warning sign on certain passages from the Bible or Koran, especially those that encourage violence toward people who hold different beliefs.”
Plus:“The enemy is not religion; the enemy is anger, hostility, intolerance, separatism, extreme idealism, and prejudicial fear—be it secular, religious, or political.”
After the passage above, Lisa continues by saying:“The study’s next set of findings was even more significant. Kendler showed three vital and heretofore unexplored correlations between spirituality and mental health.
First, low levels of depressive symptoms are related to high levels of personal devotion. That is, if you have a high degree of spirituality, you’re less likely to be depressed.
Second, Kendler found that personal devotion can serve as a buffer against the negative psychological effects of stressful life events such as illness, divorce, or loss of a loved one. … Personal devotion, a sense of personal relationship with a higher power—was the active ingredient that carried the protective benefits, with or without personal conservatism.
Third, he found that personal devotion decreased the lifetime risk for alcoholism and nicotine dependence. Spiritual people are less likely to be addicted.”
Personal spirituality. It does a Hero good. Let’s connect to something bigger than ourselves as we keep this wisdom from Lisa in mind: “Our findings touched on the cornerstone of all faith traditions: that sacred, transcendent love ignites in service to one another.”
Among our participants, who represented the most populous world religious traditions—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism—as well as the category of nonreligious, secular, or spiritual-but-not-religious, we found that people shared five common spiritual phenotypes: 1. Altruism; 2. Love of Neighbor as Self; 3. Sense of Oneness; 4. Practice of Sacred Togetherness; 5. Adherence to Moral Code.
For spiritually aware people across faith traditions—and including those without a faith tradition—the brain appeared able to protect itself from the long-standing neurological structures of depression.
The Quest Orientation: Integration is Key
“We also measured the degree to which they engaged in a very specific construct that has been linked to long-term spiritual thriving: a way of engaging neurological and perceptual capacities in a state of quest. Quest orientation is characterized by a tendency to journey in life: to search for answers to meaningful personal decisions and big existential questions; to perceive doubts as positive; and to be open to change, or more accurately, open to perceiving with fresh eyes, and then using new experiences to fuel change. In quest, we open ourselves to the messages from life, take seriously this discovery, and then actively use learning to share our decisions and our actions—our personal operating manual.”
A QUEST Orientation.
I never knew that was a scientific thing until I read that passage from a chapter called “Integration Is Key.”
Lisa tells us that we have two different types of awareness: what she calls an “achieving” awareness and an “awakened” awareness.
The key?
As per the title of the chapter, the wisest (and most spiritually attuned!) among us INTEGRATE these two awarenesses as part of a QUEST orientation.
How awesome is THAT?
Lisa continues by telling us:“Quest is a toggle between awakened and achieving awareness. We can ask a driving question through achieving awareness and then receive an answer through awakened awareness; and the opposite is also true: we can be inspired by an awakened experience and then discern its meaning and place in our lives through achieving awareness. This dynamic interplay supports innovative, creative thinking. We can problem-solve in a whole new way through quest, whether on significant personal choices, professional challenges, or the bigger lifework of disappointment, loss, and trauma. In quest, life itself becomes a creative journey full of unexpected surprise and buoyant with love, connection and direction. We just need to choose to engage what moments of awareness we already have, take seriously our flashes of intuition or insight, and honor the ongoing interplay as it yields fresh meaning and direction. We are hardwired to awaken, transform, and expand even through trauma. If we answer the call, often with spiritual support, we can realize our great potential for an inspired life.”
Step 1 of the Heroic quest? We must answer the call.
To do that, we must leave our comfort zone. To do THAT, we must embrace the fact that a good, noble life is SUPPOSED to be challenging. If we want to grow and become all that we are capable of being in service to something bigger than ourselves, we must embrace the natural “discomfort” and pain and struggle of life.
This truth is echoed across all ancient wisdom traditions.
We see it in the First Noble Truth of Buddhism in which we are told that “Life is suffering.” We see it in the ancient Greek and Stoic traditions that revered the story of The Choice of Hercules. We see it in the modern Netflix documentary called Stutz featuring my beloved coach Phil Stutz who tells Jonah Hill that we each need to embrace the pain of life and that the pain of uncertainty and hard work will NEVER go away.
Then what do we do?
In the chapters after this one, Lisa walks us through how to Awaken Attention, Awaken Connection, and Awaken Heart. We’ll touch on some of those Ideas in a moment.
For now, to use our frame with Heroic: We start by Knowing the Ultimate Quest we’re on—to connect to and express the best version of ourselves in service to something bigger than ourselves. We Forge Antifragile Confidence as we use every challenge as fuel for our growth. We simplify the process by Optimizing Our Big 3 of Energy, Work, and Love. We Make TODAY a Masterpiece as we Master Ourselves, Dominate the Fundamentals so we can Activate Our Soul Force and give our families, communities and world all we’ve got.
In quest, the brain is coherent and connected, its regions and networks in harmony. Essentially, the questing brain integrates our achieving and awakened awareness.
Our finding touched on the cornerstone of all faith traditions: that sacred, transcendent love ignites in service to one another.
Three Doors and the Obstacles that make us stronger
“‘Guides and synchronicities are not things we look for,’ Walter said. ‘We’re visited by them. When we’re open, we experience them.’
Even obstacles often appear at just the right time to teach us something important. I created this exercise called Three doors to help show that when we’re using the lens of achieving awareness alone, we see boulders blocking our path, but when we engage our awakened attention, the boulders are actually stepping-stones that show us the path forward. To build awakened attention, I have developed this practice, which I’ve shared with bankers and lawyers, U.S. Army generals, Columbia students, homeless youth in New York City, and patients working through suffering and building well-being. The exercise is equally relevant and effective for everyone, because it calls our attention to the road of life.”
That’s from a chapter on how to cultivate “Awakened Attention.”
We’ll talk about the exercise Lisa created in a moment. First, let’s chat about some parallel pithy wisdom from a couple of my heroes: Eleanor Roosevelt and Marcus Aurelius.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said (check out the Notes on You Learn by Living for more of her wisdom): “A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping stone to the optimist.”
Note: SEEING the truth in that statement THE MOMENT you are experiencing the stumbling block is, to use Lisa’s frame, an example of “awakened attention.”
Marcus Aurelius once said (and Ryan Holiday wrote a whole book about it!): “The impediment to action advances the action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
I repeat: SEEING the truth in that statement THE MOMENT you are experiencing the stumbling block is, to use Lisa’s frame, an example of “awakened attention.”
This is the essence of so much of our work together as we learn how to powerfully navigate our Heroic quests. If we want to forge antifragile confidence and LITERALLY get stronger with every obstacle we face, we need to learn how to eat all those obstacles like the energy bars they are—KNOWING that obstacles, when viewed with the proper, wise, AWAKENED perspective, make us stronger. #OMMS!!!
Lisa’s exercise goes like this: Grab a piece of paper. Draw the “road of your life” on it.
Imagine a point in your life when you “faced a hurdle: a loss, a disappointment, a death”; a time in your life when you *almost* achieved something you wanted—“a job, a relationship, an award or accomplishment, an acceptance letter from a particular school”—and then “somehow, unexpectedly, the door slammed, and you didn’t get what you wanted or what you thought you were going to get.”
Then, Lisa tells us to think about what happened as a result of that loss/disappointment that would NOT have happened otherwise. “What new insight or connection or path emerged, what new doorway opened, when the first door closed?”
Here’s to embracing the Wise/Awakened perspective that allows us to see all the obstacles we face on our Heroic quests as opportunities to practice our philosophies as we navigate the inevitable storms, emerge stronger, and fulfill our idiosyncratic missions!
High-risk people who built a spiritual muscle to respond to suffering were protected against the downward spiral the next time sorrow or disappointment came around, because they had cultivated a spiritual response.
A fast track to awakened connection
“He led me in this transcendent visualization exercise, called Holding Council:
Sit down. Close your eyes. Set before you a table. To your table you may invite anyone, living or deceased, who truly has your best interest in mind. With all of your guests sitting there at your table, ask them if they love you.
And now to your table, invite your higher self. The part of you that is much greater than anything you’ve done or not done, anything you have or don’t have. Ask your eternal, higher self if you love you.
And now to your table invite your higher power, whoever or whatever it is to you. Ask if your higher power loves you.
And now, with all of those people sitting there, right now, ask, ‘What do I need to know right now? What do they need to tell me?’
It was a fast track to awakened connection. To realizing that we are in relationships—with our ancestors, our loved ones, our higher selves, our higher power—that transcend physical presence, and through which we gain something vital and useful. Your inner council is always there. Different people may show up at your table at different times. You can ask them questions anytime, anywhere.”
That’s from the chapter on how to create an Awakened Connection.
I love that exercise. I do something every moring during my meditation. Rather than imagining my Heroes at a table, I imagine the Heroes on my wall coming alive like the old headmasters in Dumbledore’s office at Hogwarts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson. Abraham Lincoln. Marcus Aurelius. Aristotle. Confucius. Epictetus. Viktor Frankl. Abraham Maslow. Winston Churchill. Gandhi. Eleanor Roosevelt.
I like to ask them to share some wisdom with me for my Heroic quest before I check in with my daimon and ask HIM what he thinks. I’m going to start by feeling their LOVE and support and encouragement. And THEN go to their wisdom.
How about YOU? Who’s at YOUR table/on your metaphorical wall of Heroes? Can you feel their love? Can you make the connection between them and your best self and your higher power?
If you feel so inspired, take a nice, deep, relaxing breath. Make that connection now. Ask them: “What do I need to know right now?”
Here’s to connecting to our best selves and following its always-wise guidance as we take the next steps in awakening our mind, body and spirit so we can fulfill our Heroic quests TOGETHER, Hero!
This is perhaps the biggest revelation of the awakened brain: that it’s in our innate nature to build a better world. That what’s good for everyone is also what’s best for each one of us.
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