When Mental Health Intersects with Spirituality with Dr. Lisa Miller

In this episode, Dr. Lisa Miller shares her journey into understanding where depression and mental health intersect with spirituality. Drawing from her early experiences as a psychotherapist and her groundbreaking epidemiological and MRI studies, Lisa highlights one perspective of certain types of depression and its transformative potential as an invitation to spiritual awakening and growth. She emphasizes the importance of nurturing one’s spiritual life to cope with life’s challenges, offering valuable insights for personal growth and self-discovery. Her perspective on emotional awareness in navigating inner emotional landscapes serves as a valuable resource for empowering listeners with a deeper understanding of the intricate relationship between mental health and spirituality.

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Discover the different types of depression to gain a deeper understanding of mental health challenges
• Explore the role of spirituality in overcoming depression for a holistic approach to emotional well-being
• Cultivate awakened awareness for mental health to develop a more conscious and mindful relationship with your emotions
• Understand the impact of existential yearning on personal growth to enhance your journey of self-discovery.
• Learn strategies for integrating spiritual and cognitive awareness to empower your emotional growth and well-being

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Very often, depression is a hunger to developmental depression, and
your soul, your natural spiritual awareness, is hungering to engage
and expand. So depression is not lost time or downtime
or wasted time. It is the invitation to an ovationing.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,

(00:44):
or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
what we do. We think things that hold us back
and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,

(01:04):
how they feed their good wealth. Thanks for joining us.
Our guest on this episode is doctor Lisa Miller, a

(01:24):
professor and founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at
Teachers College, Columbia University. She's a leading national expert in
spirituality health and thriving in development. Doctor Miller has also
authored one hundred peer review articles on spirituality and mental
health in youth and family. She is a grant funded

(01:44):
clinical scientist, Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and former
President of the APA Society of Psychology and Spirituality. Today,
Lisa and Eric discuss her book, The Awakened Brain.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
Hi, Lisa, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
I'm so grateful for what you're putting into our world
in the type of depth and open handedness and open
heartedness that you're trying to help us make as a
new normal.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Thank you. We're going to be discussing your book, The
Awakened Brain, but before we do that, we'll start like
we always do with the Parable. In the Parable, there's
a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which
represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed

(02:30):
and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they
think about it for a second, and they look up
at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins,
and the grandparent says the one you feed. So I'd
like to start off by asking you what that parable
means to you in your life and in the work
that you do.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
In every single second we make a choice, you can
feel it. We can chill the surly wolf one and
we can feel the loving expanse of wolf too. And
it is a choice. It is a determined choice where
we take the tuner and move to the channel. Is
it the channel of selfishness and limitedness and zero sum game?

(03:06):
Or is it the channel where love begets loved? And
if I'm just a little bit generous, the universe comes
back one thousand and fold. What's the choice right now,
this second.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
So when you say that that it's a choice, right,
I think we have a choice to choose what channel
we want to try and listen to, right And you know,
I know there's been lots of times in my life
where I try and turn the channel to the connected side,
the expansive side of things, and it feels like there's

(03:36):
nothing to tune into there, and then I find myself
kind of back over in the other And I think
we're going to talk a lot about the role of
spirituality and depression in this podcast, right, But that's part
of what entrenched in depression feels like for me. I
make the conscious effort to change the channel, but there's
nothing coming through at least it feels like on channel.

(04:00):
So I don't think you're talking about that we do
something and immediately feel a particular thing. I think you're
talking more about a conscious effort to at least try
and look in that direction. Would that be a way
to say it?

Speaker 1 (04:14):
So, Eric, I'm coming to you as a clinical scientist,
but I wouldn't dare open up my mouth about depression
if I hadn't walked that very heinful. At times, you
just felt like dread, like the boogey man was over
my shoulder. I've been depressed. I know what this is.
So I come to this not just as a cool
clinical scientist, but as someone who's really suffered and had

(04:35):
this experience of major depression. And what I would say
is that it is a journey, right, a gentle journey
with ourselves through which we can cultivate two forms of perception,
and the one that will get us up and out
in time is a deep relationship with the universe, who
I call God, the higher power. Will you use your

(04:57):
word Jesus Hashamalah. But it is the de force in us,
through us, and around us. And yes, medication can be
very good, and yes treatment as usual can be very helpful,
but alone it is insufficient. With help. The upside the
porthole to the landscape of the good wolves, and that
is the expansive capacity what I call awakened awareness. And

(05:18):
it turns out through the lens of science, this porthole
for expansive awareness where we feel the loving sense, the unity.
The next guy who comes around the corner, well, he's
God's child too. We're here to help him and him
and her. That capacity is cultivated, and it is cultivated
although it is our birthright as a form of our
awakened brain.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
So something I'm going to be doing a little more
often is ask you, the listener, to reflect on what
you're hearing. We strongly believe that knowledge is power, but
only if combined with action and integration. So before we
move on, I'd like to ask you what's coming up
for you as you listen to this. Are there any
things you're currently doing that or feeding your bad way

(06:00):
that might make sense to remove, or any things you
could do to feed your good wolf that you're not
currently doing. So if you have the headspace for it,
I'd love if you could just pause for a second
and ask yourself, what's one thing I could do today
or tonight to feed my good wolf. Whatever your thing is.
A really useful strategy can be having something external, a

(06:21):
prompt or a friend, or a tool that regularly nudges
you back towards awareness and intentionality. For the past year,
I've been sending little good Wolf reminders to some of
my friends and community members, just quick, little SMS messages
two times per week that give them a little bit
of wisdom and remind them to pause for a second
and come off autopilot. If you want, I can send

(06:42):
them to you too. I do it totally for free,
and people seem to really love them. Just drop your
information at oneufeed dot net slash SMS and I can
send them to you. It's totally free, and if you
end up not liking the little reminders, you can easily
opt out. That's one you feed dot net slash SMA.
And now back to the episode. So let's talk about

(07:05):
the word spirituality. It's used throughout your book. You talk
about there being a biological basis for spirituality. You say
that there's nothing as protective against depression as spirituality. So
what does that term mean to you? Because it's one
of those words that is similar to love in that
it means a thousand different things to a thousand different people.

(07:27):
So what are we talking about here?

Speaker 1 (07:28):
That's right, Eric. People hear that word and like, what
do you mean? Find that what do you mean by
spiritual life? And many people when they hear the word
spirituality actually think religion, and they don't think any religion.
They think the religion that was delivered to them by
a torch bearer who was a human being who might
have been quite voible. So let's back this up and say,
wait a minute. You know, every single one of us,

(07:51):
through the lens of science, is a naturally spiritual being,
just as we're physical and hot edded and emotional beings.
We can look through the lens of a twin study
and say, yes, twins rays together, twins prays depart. How
much of spirituality is inborn versus environmentally formed? And it
turns out that spirituality is our birthright, hardwired. It is

(08:15):
one third and eight two thirds environmentally formed, which means
that every single one of us on earth is a
naturally spiritual being. There's a natural spirituality and more specifically,
a capacity to be in a sustained relationship with the universe.
My word is God, a higher power. But this loving

(08:36):
force that's in us, through us and among us in AA.
When we say we're handing it over, we're not handing
it over to mister nobody. We're handing it over and
it is hot by this buoyant loving force that is
our birthright. And if we support it it is two
thirds environmentally cultivated, nourished, then we have a strong spiritual war.

(08:59):
That is the inborn awaken religion. I didn't answer you.
Religion is environmentally transmitted. Yeah, So whether I'm Hindu, Catholic, Christian, Wilslim, whatever,
I am that religious cultivation of the spiritual, the religious embrace,
the prayers, meditations, text community. Religion is a gift of

(09:21):
our parents and grandparents are our unity. You might choose
a religion and immerse it's environmentally transmitted. They are two
different things, although they go hand in hand. Religion and spirituality.
For about two thirds of people in the United States,
they say I'm spiritually it right right.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
You know, spirituality being a word I've used a lot
on this podcast over the years. I taught a program
called Spiritual Habits that were rebranding this time around. Slightly
different program, but a lot of it's similar. And the
reason I did is because that word, again has seemed problematic.
I feel like I have to talk a lot about
what I mean by it, and my view of spirituality

(10:00):
might be slightly different than what you're describing, and so
I'm just, in the spirit of dialogue, like to throw
it out there and kind of kind of see I
want to hear your view. Yeah, yeah, I mean my
view is spirituality is about being connected to things that
deeply matter, right, That for me is what it means

(10:22):
to me. Now, maybe I'll tell a little story here
that I think will be interesting. I love I got
sober in nineteen ninety four from heroin addiction, and I
got sober in Columbus, Ohio in nineteen ninety four in
a twelve step program and higher Power and God meant God.
It meant sort of the Christian God. It meant an
interventionist God that would come in and help you get sober, right,

(10:46):
And I did everything I could to believe that, and
I got sober, But ultimately some bad things happened in
my life and it sort of fell apart for me, right.
And part of the thing that caused it to fall
apart for me was I would looking at people that
I loved who were dying, and they were people who
came to AA, and they seemed to be doing the

(11:07):
same things I was doing. They were going to meetings,
they were calling their sponsor, they were praying, like they
were making as good an effort as I thought, and
they died, and it became very hard for me to
believe that a higher power out there was choosing me
over them. It came to be to me something that

(11:28):
I was like, well, if that is the way of
the universe, I don't think I want it, right, if
it's a universe where some of us get picked and
some of us don't. And so eventually that sort of
breaking with spirituality led to me going back out and
drinking again. And I didn't go back to Heroin, but
I was out about four years and I realized I
was just as sick inside, and I came back and
I find myself in AA again in Central Ohio, in

(11:51):
the same program. Right and I went, I have to
find a spiritual path for me if I'm going to
actually work the steps going to be in this program.
I got to figure out what this means to me
that I can actually really believe, right. And where I
landed was I believed that if I lived my life

(12:12):
according to certain principles, right, principles of kindness and love
and generosity and not being so self centered and being
honest and all these things, if I lived that way,
didn't mean that good things would happen to me, right.
It wasn't like I was doing the right thing in
the universe was going to dole out to me the
right goods, right. But I felt that I could both

(12:35):
a stay sober as long as I did that, and
b handle whatever life brought my way. So my spirituality
in some ways felt colder, right, because it didn't feel
like there was a force out there that was particularly
loving or not loving. Now, from there, I went into
Zen Buddhism, and I landed in a place where feeling

(12:58):
the deep unity of everything, experiencing that and seeing like, oh,
this is all actually really connected, you know, sort of
broaden that spirituality out. But that's kind of where I landed,
and so when I hear things about a loving force,
I sometimes get hung up, right because I look at
that and I go, but it doesn't seem that that

(13:19):
force loves things equally. Right, There are lots of spiritual
people in Gaza right now who are praying their ass
off and are dying. And so that's just my sort
of perspective. So talk to me about kind of what
you're hearing in what I'm saying in comparison to your
experience and what the science would tell us. That was
a long diatribe. By the way, apologize listeners that this

(13:42):
actually is Lisa's interview.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
Well, Lisa is interested in your journey, and thank you
for sharing that, because Eric, that was very beautifully generous
of your heart. So this is what I'd say. I'd
say that there is a deep love in us, for
us and around us. My word is God, that we
are loved and held and we are guided, We are
never alone. And our awakened brain, our inborn, awakened brain

(14:06):
is built that we can engage if we choose, we
say yes and build it if we say yes, whether
it's through prayer or twelve Step or meditation or service
to deepen our awareness, strengthen the muscle to see that
we've loved and help and guided. You're loving God, What
do you ask of me? Now? I just did not
get what I wanted. I just lost the person I love.

(14:30):
The fact that there's a loving God doesn't mean we
get our deliverables. It doesn't mean that we call the shots.
Do you know? I mean there's a movement out there
that I just think is so tragic called manifestation. Yes,
it's somehow it's so called spiritual to send out what
you want at the ego level right and think that. No,
that's not spirituality to me. It is a dialogue with

(14:51):
a loving We don't practice eric to share this a
little bit, we do practice right here.

Speaker 3 (14:56):
Okay, let's try it.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
And to invite you in your beautiful community, it's an
invitation to in this ninety second practice, close your eyes,
clear out your innerspace for five brass. I invite you

(15:20):
to locate a time where you wanted something so badly
it was him or her or them, to say yes,
it was that job, that opportunity, internship, that red door
was yours and you did everything right A plus B
plus ce technically research to everything strategically, you go for

(15:42):
your red door. You grab the handle, but it's stuck,
and you can't believe it stuck because A plus B.
Let's see you did everything right. You kick the door.
Maybe you're angry, it doesn't seem fair in time, you
might be depressed, but only you have no choice. It's stuck.
Has it stuck? You turn? You turn fifty eighty one

(16:04):
hundred and forty degrees in over there over there is
a wide open yellow door. You might have said yellow
doors don't exist. You don't never heard of yellow doors.
A wide open yellow door. Someone who made you feel alive,

(16:24):
someone who touched your heart in a way that you've
never felt before, a job where you're seen beyond what
you've known in yourself. That yellow door was not what
you had wanted. It was better than what you've wanted
and better for you. So as you sit back now
and there's that stuckbred door in the hairpin turn and

(16:45):
the wide open yellow door, how really are the most
important things in our lives? Form? Is it narrowly through
planning and strategy, or is there a time where there
are opportunities bigger and beyond what we knew were possible?
Where we were to become something that we didn't even

(17:06):
know existed. Because manifestation is very small. That's a small
way to live. That's the red door. I want that
red door, and if I can't do it with my hands,
I'm going to send it out with my mind and consciousness.
But that's appetite, that ambition, that's only based on your
appetite today back historically, what your parents said, you wanted,
what you thought you wanted. The yellow doors, the guided

(17:29):
yellow door has information that we have yet to discover.
That is a dialogue with a living universe that is
an open system, a way of being where we're connected
to the great sacred presence in us, through us and
among us, the unit of reality. So what I think
is that we don't get our red doors, shakee goodness.

(17:49):
We don't get our red doors because our lives are
actually an adventure and sometimes it's hurts, and sometimes we
lose people we love, and sometimes we're betrayed, and sometimes
it hurts m we can't even believe it. But that
is the meat and that is the grist for the
mill of walking through yellow doors. And they are divine.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Yeah, reminds me of a story I love. It's an
old Taoist story, right about the farmer and the horse. Right,
it's a it's a similar sort of thing of you know, farmer.
The farmer has a horse and it's his most valuable possession.
It runs away one day and his neighbor comes over.
He's like, it's terrible, I'm so sorry that that happened,
and the farmer says, well, you know, it could be good,

(18:29):
could be bad. And then a few days later, right,
the horse comes back with like three other horses, and
now the guy's immeasurably rich. And the neighbor comes over.
He's like, oh my god, you're so fortunate, you're so lucky.
You know, we'll see, right, you know, who knows. And
then his son is out riding one of the new horses,
throws gets his leg broken, and the neighbor again, who

(18:51):
just is not getting any wiser, right, we're all getting
it at this point. The neighbor is not yet goes, oh,
it's so terrible, I'm so sorry about your son. And
the armor. We know what he's going to say, all right,
we'll see. And then a few weeks later, the army
comes through and conscripts every able bodied young man and
his son isn't taken. And right, this story goes on,
and it kind of goes on and on and on, right,

(19:12):
and it just kind of goes on in that way, right,
And so you know, to me, the yellow door thing, right,
my biggest yellow door is I had a solar energy
company that I poured my heart and soul into and
I wanted and it failed. And out of the failure
of it is this podcast started. And I am a
way better podcast host and far happier doing what I

(19:33):
do in the world now than I ever would have
been doing that. And I think we all have those
sort of things in them. And term I'm going to
use here is narrow superituality. Right, I'd be saying that
we're being open, right, We're being open to what else
might emerge, right, And to me, it's.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
That the universe is alive.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
The universe is alive, There's no doubt about that. And
like I said, it's sort of interconnected, right. It even
the most fundamental levels of science, we are sort of
seeing things are interconnected. And the more we learn about
ecology and systems theory, which is permeating all aspects of science,
we're realizing more and more that to take anything on
its own, outside of its relationship to everything else is

(20:16):
to see a very limited viewpoint.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
So your awareness of this unit of reality that is
a foundationally loving unit of unit of love. Your awareness
is an awareness of something that's real the universe. We
live in, this matrix, in us, through us, around as
we live in a big embrace of a loving, conscious universe.

(20:39):
And we are like rays of the sun, emanations of
this great source. So when we realize this and pay
attention to this, and I mean, like, you know, when
I'm in traffic and I want to land on my horn,
or when someone was just incredibly rude to me, and
I have a choice to be rude back, or to think, wow,
they must have had a really harsh day, or wow,

(21:00):
have had a really harsh life, or wow, how could
I be so loving that when someone's totally shitty to me,
I'm loving back, right. That is knowing that we're emanations
of this loving conscious source. That's a choice, your beautiful
two wolf story every minute, and it is a habit.
We build this habit, but it also is a habit

(21:21):
that dials into a seat of perception where we feel
in our heart we just know in our being that
we're part of this loving unit of reality of which
you speak. That's our awakened brain, that's our birthright, that
is our natural spirituality, And in every tradition it has
a different name. Right. That is the upstream deep seat
of awareness, our awakened brain. That we are in a

(21:44):
unit of loving reality. That downstream is given many different
names and tellings and stories. Whether we say we are
handing it over, or that is God talking to us,
or I am one with all creation, or that is
the force of life and into a crow and mountain sun.
However we tell it, we are still connecting to this

(22:06):
deep unit of loving reality. So can we hold you
know in one hand this deep truth and in the
other hand, realize that we also have different zipped up
biobody suits and different GPS coordinates, that we are a
point and we are part of the wave. And live
out the narrative of our separateness of bumping into each
other in the subway and both wanting the same money

(22:28):
at work and both wanting the same role in a play.
And look at these so called moments of scarcity and
so called competition in a way that actually has in
our deeper heart and expanded reality. Okay, I didn't get
the lead, but maybe there's something else. There's a calling
for me. There's a yellow Dora.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
Yeah, let's go back aways here, and we've mentioned the
science of this a couple times, right, but let's go
back to what first put you on this trail of
being interested in trying to see the role of spirituality
in our overall well being? Like, what even put you

(23:06):
on the trail?

Speaker 1 (23:07):
Eric? When I was starting to I've been a clinical
scientist and a psychologist for twenty five years. When I
was starting out, actually even a little longer than that,
there was absolutely zero talk of spirituality in mental health,
in psychotherapy, in patient units, in private practices, no one
talked about spirituality. And so as a new psychotherapist, I

(23:29):
was on an impatient unit where people were having the
hardest months of their entire life. The pain was unbelievable.
They had faced right the losses. They were biologically driven,
perhaps in some cases to depression or bipolar It was
true of the suffering. And in a psychotherapy climate that

(23:49):
didn't talk about spirituality, the patients were letting me know
what they They'd knock at my door and whispered, can
I see you? And see you? Meant leave the practice office,
walk down the linoleum hallway, go into the kitchen, into
the pantry and sitting by the pots and pans, total pain, Miller,

(24:13):
will you pray with me? That happened to be from
a woman who is Catholic, but of other faith traditions
eric some were Jewish, some were hinduo some were spiritual
but not religious. Some were in terrible pain and reaching
for ultimate reality in the language of life, you know
what is real, what is true? And I started to
realize that depression was actually a banging at the door

(24:34):
for an opening of our spiritual heart. That depression was
actually yearning for more. And the more wasn't to be fancier,
or more rich or have more something. The more was
the more of our deep being, of connection to this
unit of loving reality of which were apart. The more
of depression was, Hey, there is in you an ache
because you've yet to arrive at the full expansiveness of

(24:56):
where you are being called and pulled. That there was
an arc, you could say teleology, a thrust in depression. Basically,
the ignition depression is the ignition to rev the engine
and to become more to in ourselves feel more. So
I saw that and I spent the next twenty five
years of my life developing a science MRI studies, genotyping studies,

(25:20):
epidemiological studies, so that the mental health field could get
a picture of the deep relationship between spiritual emergents and depression.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
And so talk to me about some of the early science.
I think you started epidemiology, right, that was your first
sort of process of looking at this and what did
you find.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
So, as you suggest, epidemiology is the view out for
ten thousand foot aerial window when you're looking at the
airplane and you see patterns of cities. Epidemiology is patterns
amongst people. And what we saw from the distant view
of epidemiology was that people with a strong personal spiritual
life were eighty percent protected against the diction, were sixty

(26:05):
percent protected against depression, were eighty two percent less likely
to take their life going through our epidemic suicide. So
there was nothing in the clinical sciences for how like
protective against the diseases of despair as a strong spiritual core.
That was the first past. But you know, Eric, I

(26:25):
thought back to the patients on the impatient unit, and
I just knew that, yes, spirituality is healing, Yes spirituality
is protective, but how do we build it in the
first place? And why was it that in the most
scruciating hour people were saying, help me reach for the
deep love that's in us. Helped me reach for the
ultimate sense of being held. And it dawned on me

(26:48):
that maybe it wasn't so easy, and it's not like
the other spiritual people that don't get depressed, then there's
unspiritual people who do get depressed. That was not the case.
That actually it was a deeper, richer story, and in
time we were able to move from epidemiological studies to
MRI studies and found that, hey, you know what, the
very same people with a very strong spirituality today that

(27:12):
even have a thick, strong, awakened brain today didn't get
there easy. They were two hundred and fifty percent more
likely to have suffered, to have had a major depression
in the past ten years. Depression is the gateway of
spiritual awakening. We are hardwired so that our suffering brings
us deeper, opens our heart more profoundly to be able

(27:33):
to feel the loving presence in us to us again,
my words God or higher power. But you can say
the unit of loving universe, this capacity to know and
feel what is real. We are built to see it
and feel it because it's real. But we get there
through suffering the bottom cracks. We can't believe how much
it hurts. And as I said, Eric, I've been there.

(27:55):
I mean, is there any meaning in life and our
people just inherently random? Is there's no moral compass building
to the world. And if we really take seriously these
times where we don't know, it's a tough pill. It
is a tough pill. So what I want people to
know is that depression is not only held in a
medical model. Yes, there are times where piece needs to

(28:16):
be fixed in our brain, but very often depression is
a hunger to developmental depression and your soul, your natural
spiritual awareness, is hungering to engage and expand. So depression
is not lost time or downtime or wasted time. It
is the invitation to an awationing.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
And so these people that were in this unit, yes
we're talking about people who were showing up again and
again and again like serious mental illness, right, but you
saw in them a hankering towards spirituality. So what was
the difference in what was not allowing spirituality to be
protective in their case? Right? Because they may have been

(29:22):
interested in it, but it wasn't protecting them right because
they were If we were going to be gauging people
on being ill, right, they were the most ill. They
kept coming back into impatient again and again. So what's
the difference in someone there who's got an inkling in
that direction and someone who's actually able to use a
spiritual worldview to heal themselves or to protect themselves against

(29:47):
mental illness?

Speaker 1 (29:48):
That's right to her? I was hearing the yearning and
just the emergence nation mergence of the spiritual heart, hungry
to grow and expand. But it was uns support it
because remember one third in night two thirds environmentally form
no one was walking with them. And there I was fine,
you know, but I realized there was so much more

(30:09):
that needed to be done. So could we actually do
another practice because I think this opens up a bit
of what might support people in doing this work. Sure, yep, great.
This is a practice that when we are in terrible
pain and want to turn to the universe, turn to God,
turn to our higher power. This is a nice place

(30:30):
in which to convey. I'm going to invite you to
take five press clear out your inner space, in your
inner chamber. I invite you to set before you a table.

(30:54):
This is your table. And to your table you may
invite anyone or deceased who truly has your best interest
in mind, anyone living or deceased to truly has your
best interest in mind. And with them all sitting there,

(31:21):
ask them if they love you, so that I love you.
And now you may invite your higher self, part of
you that is so much more than anything you may
have or not have, anything you may have done or

(31:43):
not done, your true eternal higher thoughts, and ask you
if you love me. And now finally you may invite
your higher power. Whatever your word, however you know your

(32:05):
higher power than to ask as they love you. And now,
with all of those people sitting there right now, what
do they need to let you know? What do they
need to share? What do they need to share with you? More?

(32:56):
And when you're ready, I impacked you pack. This is
your counsel and they are always there for you. Who
shows up may change, ending on where we are in
our road and which you pass. What is honor.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
That is a nice practice.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
And they're real. They're not imagined. You are detecting something real,
You are imaging something real, So that is handing it over.
We are built to have an awakened relationship with those
who truly have our best interest in mind, our higher selves,
our higher power. These are sacred, transcendent relationships. They're always there.

(33:41):
They're walking with us, alive or deceased, our higher power.
Some people say I saw light on the water. Some
people say I saw a white light. Some people say
I saw Jesus. People see it different, but whatever they
see is an image of some deep, loving presence that
is real. That is a unitive and there for all
of us, one presence for all of us, and then

(34:04):
seven billion different images.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
So far, with the science, we've sort of seen that
viewing the world this way offers protective benefit, or that
suffering often leads us as an opportunity to start to
view the world in this way, which then gives us
these positive benefits. So it's clear that this as a view,
you know, the science seems pretty clear that this is

(34:28):
healthy for us. Right, talk to me about where you
go next, right, which is into some of the fMRI
studies and what is that showing us?

Speaker 1 (34:37):
So, Eric, the practice we just shared is literally handing
it oth. We are taking what's on our heart. What
do they need to tell you now? And you can
bring questions like why is this person so cruel to me?
Or why is my boss so luminating at meat? And
take these questions to your account. This is literally handing

(34:57):
it out to the higher we are built for and
we can guide ourselves up to the edge where we
do hand it. So this is how we're build, and
we're built from day one because this is our birthright.
It should naturally be neurocircuits. There is a docking station
in the brain, body, mind, and soul. So there are
certain circuits in the brain that sustain this awareness. And

(35:19):
I don't mean to apply biological reductionism again, I'm not
seeing the brain makes this up. I'm saying that we
are connecting with something real and its landing path is
the brain, the docking station, and there are So we
invited people together the Spirituality, Mind Body Institute at my
institute at Columbia and our colleagues at Yale Medical School.
We said come on into our MRI web, and effectively,

(35:42):
if we invited them to host council as you and
I are just did here now herelessers, which is to say,
tell us the time, were you in a deep transcendent
relationship as we just work relational, spiritual? And what we
found was that about you know well, was what the
national average might predict. About two thirds of people were
in a transcendent relationship like holding council as told within

(36:04):
their faith tradition. In the third chair, they sakh or Jesus,
or they saw their ancestors and knew their ancestors walked
with them. Those about two thirds of people, and about
a third of people said I saw light on the water,
I saw forest, I saw infinity, I saw Mount Rainier
and chair of three they were spiritual but not religious.

(36:25):
And whether or not someone was religious or and spiritual
or spiritual and not religious, and whether or not their
religion happened to be that they were Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Christian,
the same neurocircuits ran, there is one awakened brain, and
we all have it. Well, it's there for all of

(36:47):
us if we choose to engage it. We are all
born with a wiring to awaken one third and eight
and then it is a choice to practice and cultivate
our natural awakened awareness. So what was so beautiful is
that there's one spiritual brain. I mean, this should make
religious war beyond obsolete. This should make disputes about ultimate

(37:09):
reality viewed as well. That's actually downstream of who we
really are, and who we really are is we're all
spiritual beings that now force through human variability, just says
those with music. You know, there are people who for
whom this comes more easily. There are people for whom
this is more pronounced. But just like we all hear
music and love music and move with music, it's there

(37:30):
for all our natural spiritual awareness. And just like music
practice builds, we literally, by way of analogy, build the muscle.
We strengthened the awakened brain. The second set of findings
from our MRI studies is that people who sustain and
focus on building their spiritual awareness over in this study

(37:51):
eight years over time showed a stronger awakened brain. There
was a thicker cortex across regions of the awakened brain,
which are regions of perception and reflection and orientation that
prive opportunius occipital, which means that sustains spiritual life actually
builds are deep and deep into our awareness. As you

(38:12):
are just sharing for your meditation practice and for your journey,
it becomes a go to place in you north.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode Integration reminder.
Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute
to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a
detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause
and reflect. What's your one big insight so far and

(38:39):
how can you put it into practice in your life. Seriously,
just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It
can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop
and be present, can't it. If you want to keep
this momentum going that you built with this little exercise,
i'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders
SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with

(39:00):
insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They are
a nice little nudge to stop and be present in
your life, and they're a helpful way to not get
lost in the busyness and forget what is important. You
can join at oneufeed dot net slash sms and if
you don't like them, you can get off a list
really easily. So far, there are over one and seventy

(39:22):
two others from the one you feed community on the list,
and we'd love to welcome you as well. So head
on over to oneufeed dot net slash sms and let's
feed our good wolves together. So people who are nourishing
this part of themselves are seeing consistent changes in the brain. Yes,

(39:44):
that look similar, regardless of exactly what the flavor of
this thing.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
Is beautiful, Yes, So they could be Hindu, or they
could be spiritual not reliders. They could be Jewish, they
could be devout, appreciate. It doesn't matter. We're doing the
same deep thing in terms of the capacity to perceive
the transcendent relationship that we are loved in hell, guided
and never alone. Just as you and I sharedan council,

(40:10):
we are loved in help, guided, and never alone. When
we build our awakened brain over time, we are protected
against recurrence of depression. We are neuro protected through sustaining
our spiritual life against recurrence of depression. We still have
hard times. There can still be moments of sorrow and sadness.

(40:32):
But the deep downward spiral to major depression is less
like why because we develop a spiritual response to suffering.
I just got fired, my husband just left me, I
just lost my money. That hurts, and that hurts like hell. Right,
But I don't necessarily need to say I am such
a loser. The depressigen in Howard spiral, it always happens

(40:54):
to me, I am unworthy or turned to habits which
are destructive. Instead, I make a choice love in my language,
loving God, what do you ask of me? Now? In
another language, I meditate and I feel that ah, I
actually am part of all the love that is part
of all creation. Or in another practice, I might go
to the anepia, the sweat lodge and realize that there

(41:15):
are messengers in prow and in some and in one another.
So we are love hell and never alone. And a
spiritual response to trauma, post traumatic spiritual growth, despaired depression,
developmental depression is our birthright. We are built to be more,
not less, through these times of tremendous strength.

Speaker 3 (41:37):
There's something you say in the book that I wanted
to explore a little bit because it was another thing
that I got kind of hung up on, and it
was you say, in a secular, materialist world we make meaning.
But in my developing spiritual awareness framework, meaning is revealed
and we interact with it. We are in dialogue with life, right,
and our times of doubt, struggle, and depression often serve

(41:58):
as portals to our aw way in life. Because the
idea that in a secular world we make meaning, I
feel like that we are always making meaning, right, But
there are ways of making meaning that are more conducive
to a open, loving perspective in the world. But you're

(42:19):
suggesting that there is actually an external meaning to us,
which there's the inner skeptic in me that goes I
don't know if I believe that's true, right, So talk
to me about why you see it that way, or
are we basically talking about the same thing. We're just
using slightly different words.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
I might charge here, which is to say that inside
every one of us is a table of knowers. We
have multiple ways of knowing. We have logic and we
hammer things out. You know, I want to get this job,
I'm going to have to go through this door first.
We have empiricism. We you know, I need to get
the data to figure out which car I want to buy,
or do I really want to take this risk? And

(42:57):
then we have intuition, our gut instinct, We have mystical awareness,
and we have spontaneous direct knowing just now, and we
had synchronicities far too unprobabilistic to have happened by chance.
We see the deeper meaning in a synchronosity. So there
are multiple ways of knowing, and these are all valid.

(43:17):
They all yelled hard data, but we have way of
emphasized empiricism and logic and just knowing. I just know
it in my gut surefire. I mean, have you ever
known something in your gut and just it was right?
I mean, you took it, you went with your gut,
and that was bedrocked. Have you ever had that type
of experience.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
I've had that. But I've also had plenty of experiences
where I was absolutely certain I was right in my
gut and it turned out to be very wrong. I mean,
I was convinced that Heroin was absolutely what I had
to have for a number of years. That felt deeply intuitive,
It felt at a cellular level. It was also deeply misguided.
It was a response to my trauma not a response

(43:59):
to my awakened awareness, to use your terminology, right, So, yes,
I've had both.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
But does it feel the same though.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
No, I've been able to tune in over time to
these things that are more a response to trauma, have
a desperation to them, or they have an energy of
sort of clinging that's in them that is very intense,
and the other is more subtle and more open and
more quiet. Right. But I think it's taken me a

(44:29):
while to sort of be able to sort of sort
those things out. So yes, I do notice a difference now,
but I don't think I could for a certainly a
fair amount of time in my life, I don't think
I could tell the difference.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
You honed your inner instrument, you hone yourn, yes, and
you learned the resonance of something that was life giving
and instinct that was expansive, and an instinct that came
from another place. So what I would say is that
we are built to be able if we cultivate and
gently and caringly give it attention, cultivate an awareness of

(45:04):
different forms of knowing, and that just as when we
shared the road of life practice with the yellow door,
there are yellow doors built for us. I don't think
that we go out there in the world and are
narrowly makers of our past. I think we are discovers
of our journey. That's not fatalism. I don't mean fatalism.

(45:24):
I mean there's a living, dynamic dialogue between us and
the force of life. So the contemporary narrow view that
I just can't emphasize enough of, so called manifesting, is
literally getting on Amazon and ordering the life you want.
And that is a much smaller life than the universe
has in mind for you. The universe has yellow doors

(45:47):
in mind for you. The universe has people that love
you and the way you've had and been loved. The
universe has ways that you can give that you didn't
even do yet. That's a bigger life, and we get
there true being in dialogue. Hey, what is life showing
you now? Not just hey, I didn't get what I want?
Why didn't I get what I want? Slamming my head
on that red door? Versus Okay, what is life asking

(46:11):
of me? Now? Who do I need to become to
be able to love radically enough to stay in this marriage,
or love this child who hates me? Or you know,
who do I need to become, and the endgame is
not tit for tat and somehow faring equal like the
Red Door story, that's achieving awareness. That's zero sum game,
you know. But it's not a zero sum game. The

(46:32):
awakened life is a life where it doesn't matter what
you get back. It's all about your emergence and becoming.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
In my habits that matter program. One of the very
first core ideas is intention, and that word has gotten
strong out in the manifest world to a certain degree. Right,
you set your intention and then you will get these things.
And in my mind, intention is not about what I'm
going to get or what's going to come to me.

(47:22):
It's all about who am I going to be? Who
is the person that I am, and what are the
behaviors that are going to allow me to be that
person in the world. It's a complete sort of flip
of the way the law of attraction has used the
word intention, and it's a complete focus on who do

(47:43):
I want to be? In general, and really in almost
every situation we find ourselves in. Right, who do I
want to be at dinner tonight with my children? Who
do I want to be with my coworkers? Who do
I want to be with my partner, who's the person
that I want to be. And that's kind of what
intention is to me. I think it's fundamental to any

(48:04):
sort of well lived life.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
That's a masterpiece, that's a spiritual journey. Right, it's not
a show. It's without a becoming. It's magnificent, beautiful.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
I want to dig into a couple other areas here
a little bit. And one is you said that it
seemed that this was the place where psychology had become stuck,
bound by three limiting assumptions, right, One is that the
brain creates thoughts. Second is that all meaning is interpretation.
And three that we feel better by rearranging our thoughts,

(48:38):
by disputing the thoughts that make us unhappy and replacing
depressing thoughts with a new framework that helps us tell
a brighter story. And I've been very interested in this
idea because, over the course of six hundred episodes, right,
one of the things I've been asking people all about
is the relationship between thought and emotion. Thought cause emotion

(49:00):
to emotions cause thought. And to me, it has become
very clear that it's a bidirectional thing, right, that it's
actually not one or the other. I can look in
my own life and see both. I can see times
where my thoughts cause a certain emotion, and I can
see times where there's just an emotional weather and all
my thoughts get filtered through that. Right. It's like I

(49:21):
wake up and before I even have a thought, there's
a sort of mood system that's there.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Right.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
So this is kind of going back and forth between
these two. And you say something at one point about CBT,
and you're saying that it's also in a colleague of
yours study about depression and rumination, and you say, women
that are depressed are capable of having positive thoughts, but
they feel the benefit of those positive thoughts less intensely
than women who aren't depressed, Right, And I find that

(49:49):
a fascinating thing because it's saying that if you just
change your thoughts, that's not the whole game. So say
a little bit more about that, because I think all
of us can look in our own lives and if
we look at the clinical data, CBT has its effectiveness.
There is a place for working with your thoughts in
a skillful way, right, There's no doubt about that. But

(50:11):
it's certainly not the whole story exactly. So what do
we not understanding when we think that's the whole game.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
It's such a rich I mean, we could talk for hours,
and you know, maybe I'd love if you invite me back.
We'll keep going. Let's do this piece today, which is
I have a colleague who I just cherish, Alaria Mkulioff,
who's a shaman. He is the last Elop shaman. So
he lives on the Lutian Islands in Alaska, the last
of his lineage, and he wrote the book The Wisdom Keeper,

(50:40):
and he says things that I say in The Awakened
Brain in a traditional way. Awake and Branda talk about
awakened awareness and a chieting on us. What Alaria Mkulioff
says from the Shamami tradition is that Western society has
it upside down. We prioritize the head, so to speak,
the thinking of the head, and then common you'er the
head to direct heart. But traditionally Shamanic understanding is that

(51:05):
you cultivate the heart as an instrument of knowing. The
heart perceives what is true, the true North Star, and
then sends direction to the head to implement. So let's
look at Western culture if we let the hand guide
the heart. I want this? How am I going to
get that? Why doesn't he like me? Those are the

(51:25):
thoughts the head. How am I doing compared to her
or him or them on social media? How am I
doing compared to the Joneses? While those understandings and drivings
of head, calculations of the head commandeer a heart that
has craving, It has headativeness or envy, that has yearning

(51:46):
and dissatisfaction. That is a setup or misery. What if
we flip it around as is hand in traditional shamanic culture,
the heart what is true? What is really valuable? What
is my path? What is the nature of our lives?
Unit of love? The heart perceives the ultimate direction. What
is God showing me now? What is the universe guiding

(52:07):
me to see? Turn right here? I've always turned left?
The universe says turn right. That is the knowing of
the heart, and the head then discerves how might I
best serve my divine direction? How might I best love
this person who's very difficult? The head implements that is
an alignment, that is a spiritual past, that is a

(52:31):
stance of quest, because we go after what's true from
the direction of heart and we figure out how to
do it with the head. I agree with Hilaria, and
we have it backwards. The bottom line is that that
formulation of the head guiding heart isn't awakened life. It's
opening up to what is the universe asking of me? Now?

(52:52):
Where am I being guided? Now? What am I to
contribute here? You know, when you get tap tapped, this
one's yours that see universe tapping you?

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Right.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
A lot of though, what we've learned is that even
people who are making a rational decision are doing it
based on emotion. The emotion is telling them what to do,
and then their brain figures out how to justify it.
So it's almost as if, I mean, maybe it's the
way you're describing that the head is driving the heart,
but it almost sounds like it's a heart that's not

(53:24):
working very well that's driving everything. Right, when you talked
about I want this and I want that, like, that's desire, right,
and desire we tend to think of is coming from
the heart, But it's a heart to me that has
been co opted by you know, different types of desire,
mimetic desire, which is I know what I want based

(53:44):
on what you want and craving and fear. It's almost
as if I mean, I agree that it's the cultivation
of the heart. And my experience has been when that
heart gets going in a certain direction, the brain will
follow it because that tends to be in my experience
what it often does. It's trying to justify what the
heart says.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Anyway, So I guess I would say that every emotion
is informative. If I take my finger and touch a
hot stove out, that hurts because I'm touching something real.
Heat and emotion is touching something real. If I feel craving,
it's because I'm touching something real, which is I'm deploying
headed a eye. If I feel empty, because I'm deploying

(54:27):
something real, a false bearing or a false sense of self.
So emotions are our friends. They're telling us information. And
if we can look at these emotions, whether they feel
awful or when they come from a place it feels
like the first wolf, right or the second wolf? Where
does it come from? This emotion of your two ways?
You know you're very important terrible? I think no matter

(54:50):
where it comes from, the emotion is revelatory. It is
the best information we have onto how are we engage
in our inner being? To your point, and if what
we're feeling is craving and surliness, it is helpful information
that we might redirect and reposition our deep seat of intervening,
turn the channel to a more expansive spiritual what I

(55:12):
would call a waiting channel.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
So this brings up another sort of interesting question that
I'm curious what you think about, because I've dealt with
depression in my life a variety of different ways, right,
But I often think of it into broad camps. Camp
One is that I take it seriously and I attempt

(55:34):
to resolve it somehow, right, and sometimes that is useful,
but sometimes that seems to be a dead end. And
I take the opposite view of it, which is that
I don't take it seriously. I treat it as a
passing mood system. Right. I often call it the emotional

(55:55):
flu like I don't quite know why I have this,
in the same way I can't pinpoint who gave me
the cold virus. I don't know where it came from,
but it's here. I know the ways to take care
of myself while it's here, so I'm going to do
those things. But beyond that, I'm not going to attribute
a ton of meaning to it, because when I do,
I seem to spiral further down the hole sometimes. And so,

(56:19):
you know, on one hand, the fact that we say
depression and emotion is revelatory. Yes, I think it can be,
but it seems to me that there are times that
I don't know what they're about, and I've found it
better to not make a big fuss out of it
and let it sort of pass. But that's to sort
of ignore its revelatory character. Now we could say that

(56:41):
that's taking a broader perspective, right, a wider lens, a
different lens on it, right, which is to say that,
you know, as a human being, there are mood systems
that come and go for you know, maybe it's something
I ate that I didn't like, or any number of
different things. I didn't sleep well enough three days last week.
But what do you think about that? Do you think

(57:01):
that we should explore every emotion every time or is
there a place to simply say, like, Okay, you know what,
I'm going to do the things that I know help
in this circumstance, and I'm going to leave it at that.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
Lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely, so Eric in my journey, I
would say that not all depressions are the same. So
when I'm getting a virus in addition to having a
headache and a stomach ache, I can feel depressed as
a symptom of that virus. Right, And that hue, that
sense of depression, I think I'm getting sick. It's a symptom.
The brain's an organ and just as I know I'm

(57:35):
an upset stomach and a sore throat, the brain is
affected by this virus and I'm feeling depressed. That hue
of depression is different than when I feel existential anxiety
or when I feel a yearning to figure out what
is the purpose in my life? So we have this
huge word depression right right, how the Eskimos have many

(57:58):
names for snow right, Our culture is a little tone
deaf when it comes to depression, and we've yet to
have many names for the different hues of depression. And
there are feelings of so called yes, use the same
word depression that I'm feeling sort of out of sorts
and down and low because I have a virus. And
then there's a very different feeling that deserves a different name,

(58:19):
and I'll call it for the moment existential yearning or
spiritual hunger, or feelings of worthlessness, not because I'm not
cute enough and rich enough, but because somehow I've yet
to emerge into a being that I feel called to
be or that I'm born. And that is a developmental
depression that's on our side. It's repelling us into a

(58:41):
quest and they steal different And I think you are
attunement to knowing the difference between different hues as you
are describing of emotion, different gutted stinks. I think we
can draw a tune to wait a minute, what kind
of so called depression is this? There's actually many different
shape of feelings that come from different places and are

(59:02):
propelling us to different places. You know, from a scientific
point of view. Even the people who came up with
the DSM Diagnostic Manual on Depression themselves ran the study
and said, you know what, in this so called category,
there are actually many different subtypes and some have a
lot to do with sort of the body feeling low,

(59:23):
but others have to do with a sense of being
in self and purpose. So this big, huge term, this
catch hall category, this basket that we call depression actually
has tremendous heterogeneity, many different types and they are different.
So I'm so glad you're opening this up because there
are times where really what we need is medication and

(59:44):
that's it. And then there's other times where whether I
am or am not on medication, I am as well
being called to cross the bridge to the next station
in life where depression is a developmental knock or to
awakening and it growth. And I think we start to
in our long journey draw tune to the different feeling
at hand, and that's a richness in all lives that

(01:00:06):
you describe it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
Yeah, that's really well said. I mean, I think one
of the biggest insights I've had over the last couple
of years is how much tiredness feels like depression. Yes, right,
And I just didn't really get it. I didn't really
get it right. And so there are a lot of
late in the evening if I've had a really busy
day where that feeling is there, and it makes a

(01:00:29):
world of difference what I call it, Because if I say, oh,
I'm tired, then I know, go to sleep and you'll
wake up and it'll be different. But if I say
I'm depressed. All of a sudden, I'm bringing a cascade
of meaning into this thing, right, because that word is

(01:00:50):
very weighted for me given my past. Right, you know,
depression means there's something wrong. Depression means that something needs
to be done. Depression means that could be headed towards
bad territory. There's a lot of meaning there. Tired is
a word that carries far less freight in my mind. Right,
It's just like, oh, you're tired, go to bed. Right.

(01:01:10):
It's taken me till I was fifty years old to
really notice how similar they are. And given the nature
of how we sometimes we were talking about thought causing
emotion or emotion causing thought. Emotion will cause thoughts, so
the thoughts that come out of that can be very similar.
It's because it's just a habitual response. Emotion feels like this,

(01:01:33):
here come the thoughts, right. But at the minute that
I sort of realize what the emotion is is a
different thing. I can then look at those thoughts and
just go, oh, ignore them. Right, in the same way
that when I'm sick, or even better examples of I
don't sleep well the night before, I know that lots
of things the next day are going to look lousy
to me, and I don't seem to have the skill

(01:01:55):
to like completely turn that off. So all I do
is go, yeah, that's just let that all go today,
don't even pay any attention to all that noise because
you're really tired, and tomorrow you'll feel differently, right. And
I think you've used this sort of a tuning an instrument, right,
which is I think what a lot of this is
is this paying very close attention to our own experience.

(01:02:18):
And that's one of the things I always loved about
Buddhism was this idea of like, don't believe what I
say because I said it, try it out, pay really
close attention in your own life. And that is a
skill that I think is to use a phrase of
yours that we're going to talk about in the post
show conversation, that's a questing mindset, right. It's a mindset
that says, let me be curious about what's happening here,

(01:02:40):
and let me be willing to look at it from
different ways.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
Eric Kylie Eden say that whether it's through Buddhism or
meditation or prayer, that you are sharing the validity of
our observing eye. The higher part of ourselves looks down
upon the inner landscape of our emotional life, the chairman
of the board that we are over our own lives.

(01:03:05):
We all have a chairman of the board. We all
have an observing eye. And I think one of the
great moments where we come out of depression is when
we free ourselves from the tossing seas and this quick
sand in the morass. We say, wait a minute, there
is a part of me that is real, and I
call it the soul that looks down upon my inner life.

(01:03:26):
It says look at that, or wow, that's kind of
a nuance. Er oooth that one hurt, you know, but
it's disidentified. There's a greasy space, there's a distance, and
we have the natural authority to step back from the
flow of our emotion, to sit in the throne, to
be the chairman of the board and say, you know what,
I have a choice in my relationship to the flow

(01:03:49):
of my inner life. I have a choice in how
I want to relate to what's coming at me. And
I even have a choice in what I call these things.
The fact that the doctor calls the depression depression depressions
doesn't mean I have to I can call that. Oh,
that's kind of a viral foul mood. You know, I'm chilling, sick,
a sore throat, and I feel like I have a

(01:04:09):
viral fault. And this over here, No, this is an
existential yearning. I can feel a spiritual growth. Spiritual growth
can feel when we expand like a half empty glass
of spirituality. What is the hollowness? And me, Now, that's
a real hollowness that is helping us. That's for us.
That's not a disease that's pecking at us. That is
a calling of growth, and that's for us. So those

(01:04:31):
are very different feelings and I can name them existential
yearning and awakening versus viral foul mood.

Speaker 3 (01:04:39):
So listener and thinking about all that and the other
great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going to
isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what
would it be? Not your top ten, not the top five,
just one? What is it? Think about it? Got it?

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
Now?

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
I ask you, what's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little
thing you can do today to put it in practice?
Or maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember,
little by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change
happens as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive
heroic effort. If you're not already on our good Wolf
Reminder SMS list, I'd highly recommend it as a tool

(01:05:17):
you can leverage to remind you to take those vital
baby steps forward. You can get on there at oneufeed
dot net slash sms. It's totally free, and once you're
on there, I'll send you a couple text messages a
week with little reminders and nudges. Here's what I recently
shared to give you an idea of the type of
stuff I send. Keep practicing even if it seems hopeless.

(01:05:38):
Don't strive for perfection, aim for consistency, and no matter what,
keep showing up for yourself. That was a great gem
from recent guests Light Watkins. And if you're on the
fence about joining, remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe.
If you want to get in, I'd love to have
you there. Just go to oneufeed dot net slash sms.
All right back to it. Well, that is a wonderful

(01:06:01):
place for us to wrap up. You and I are
going to continue in the post show conversation. You've got
another practice to let us through. And we've talked about
achieving awareness and awakened awareness, and you talk about how
integration is the key, right, how do we integrate these things?
And you then also talk about something called a quest orientation,

(01:06:21):
which is the questing brain is the way we integrate
these two things. So we'll be discussing that a little
bit more in the post show conversation listeners. If you'd
like access to the post show Conversation ad free episodes,
a special episode I do each week called teaching Song
and a poem and the good feeling that comes from
supporting something that you value. Go to one ufeed dot

(01:06:42):
net slash join and become part of our community. Oh
I should mention too, we have monthly community meetings now
and maybe doctor Miller will join us for one of
those in the future. So thank you so much. This
has been a really enjoyable conversation. Thank you for your
work and thank you for taking the time to share
it with us.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
Eric, thank you for shying the Awakening brain, and thank
you for connecting so deep.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
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(01:07:42):
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