Waking Up Your Spiritual Brain: Part 2
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. About a century ago, the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung was treating a young woman. He sat with his back to a window, listening to his patient. She told him about a dream she'd had. In it, she was given a piece of jewelry modeled after a beetle long considered sacred in Egyptian culture. The scarab beetle was associated in ancient Egypt with a divine force that moved the sun. Intricately carved scarab jewels were sometimes placed on the hearts of the dead to assist them in the afterlife. The young woman told the psychiatrist that in the dream, she was given a golden scarab. As Jung listened to the story, he heard a tapping behind him. He turned to see a flying insect knocking against the windowpane.
It was a beetle. In a monograph on what he called synchronicity, Carl Jung wrote, I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analog to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarab-eared beetle, which, contrary to its usual habits, had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment.
What insights does Lisa Miller share about spirituality?
Scientists have debated Jung's theory for decades. Many have argued that what happened in that room was nothing more than an interesting coincidence. But for Carl Jung, the beetle at the window was not merely evidence that in a complex world, unusual things sometimes happen by chance. Synchronicity was a tap on the shoulder, a sign, an invitation into deeper realms of meaning and understanding. Last week on the show we discussed the research of Columbia University psychologist Lisa Miller. Over several decades of brain imaging and other research she's found that when we encourage our mental capacity for spiritual and transcendent thinking it can have measurable effects on our brains and quantifiable benefits for our health.
If you missed our earlier episode you can find it in this podcast feed. It's titled Waking Up Your Spiritual Brain Part 1. This week on Hidden Brain, Lisa Miller takes us on a journey of synchronicity in her own life and explains what it means to cultivate a mind that is open to the transcendent.
Columbia University psychologist Lisa Miller argues that we have two capacities in our minds. One is focused on goals and achievement. She calls this the achieving brain. The other is focused on meaning, connection, and transcendence. She calls this the awakened brain. Lisa argues that when we cultivate our spiritual side, we activate three networks in the brain. These networks give us the feeling that we are loved, that we are being guided, and that we are not alone. The achieving brain might dismiss Carl Jung's synchronicities using the language of probability and coincidence. But to the awakened brain, which is open to seeing connections, these events can open the door to exploration and growth.
Lisa told me of a time in her own life when she experienced powerful moments of synchronicity. She said that seeing these moments as signs, not just coincidences, changed her life.
Shankar, this was a journey of many, many years. It was perhaps one of the most excruciating journeys of my life and certainly that of my husband as well. We were in our early 30s and we decided we wanted to become parents. So we were going to... so-called try. We took a vacation to Sedona. We took a vacation to the Caribbean and eagerly awaited the good news. But in fact, there was no baby, no pregnancy, no child. And as these failed attempts month after month started to add up, we got a very haunting sense that, wait a minute, maybe there's something wrong. Maybe we can't conceive.
How can synchronicity influence our spiritual journey?
And as we moved into year one and a half and year two, we saw a fertility doctor and I checked out and he checked out my husband as being healthy. They said, oh, we can get you pregnant, not to worry. And we did some rounds of IUIs and after that, not working, strangely, wasn't sure why. We did some rounds of IVF thinking, well, now we're going to the next phase. Surely, he's healthy, I'm healthy with an IVF, we'll quickly conceive.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:25
2
What insights does Lisa Miller share about spirituality?
1:25–4:43
3
How can synchronicity influence our spiritual journey?
4:43–17:19
4
What are the differences between the achieving brain and the awakened brain?
17:19–22:38
5
How do moments of suffering lead to spiritual growth?
22:38–42:31
6
What role do spiritual practices play in enhancing well-being?
42:31–48:57
7
How can we cultivate an awakened brain in our daily lives?
48:57–1:11:15
8
What are the implications of spirituality in education?
1:11:15–1:33:01