Waking Up Your Spiritual Brain: Part 1

Hidden Brain

This episode explores how spiritual awareness and transcendence can be scientifically studied and are vital for mental well-being. Through personal stories and research, psychologist Lisa Miller reveals the healing power

Key takeaways

• Spiritual experiences correlate with greater resilience and well-being

Transcript preview

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Thomas Hood was a 19th century English poet known for his elegant, often melancholy verse. His 1826 poem, I Remember, I Remember, captures a feeling that is familiar to many adults, especially its wistful last lines. I Remember, I Remember, the fur trees dark and high. I used to think their slender tops were close against the sky. It was a childish ignorance, but now does little joy to know I'm farther off from heaven than when I was a boy. Thomas Hood's poem gestures to the reality that as grown-ups many of us lacked the effortless sense of connection and awe that we felt as kids. Was that intimate bond with the universe merely an illusion of childhood or a real measurable human capacity that we can access as grown-ups? are investigating the ways that we can preserve or revive the sense of being close to the sky that Thomas Hood so tenderly evoked. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore what it means to feel closer to heaven and the value of looking for transcendence in our busy bustling lives. These days we are encouraged and even exhorted to optimize every aspect of our lives. Our bodies, our relationships, our productivity. But what about the parts of us that yearn for meaning, for understanding, for wisdom? Those aspects of ourselves are often ignored in our tireless pursuit of worldly rewards. University, Psychologist Lisa Miller studies the science of transcendence. Lisa Miller, welcome to Hidden Brain. I'm so grateful to be here. I appreciate so much your shove, the way you go deeper, the way you open up the double door in our life. So Shanker, thank you for having me. Lisa, early on in your career as a psychologist, you treated a young woman named Ileana. Can you describe her for me and tell me what brought her into your clinic? Shunker Iliana was only 12 years old. She was in middle school. This was in New York and she came in one day all by herself to the clinic. Generally of course young people are accompanied by a grandparent or a parent someone break some. This little girl was hudged her arms wrapped tight and when I invited her in to say what has brought you here. two men had walked into her father's store. Her father owned a corner deli. Two men who he knew had walked into his store, robbed him, and then taken his life. Her father was her son, her moon, her stars. She was devastated. Ileana was beyond bereft. She could barely move through the day. living in her new setting with her mother and her mother's mother. Both women had escaped themselves, very perilous and painful situations, and they were quite understandably guarded and had yet to benefit from therapy. So in this setting, Ileana was really basically on a lockdown, a social lockdown. She wasn't allowed to go out and see friends. She wasn't allowed to go to the school dance. She gone from being, near the apple of her father's eye to living in a very cold restrictive environment. The treatment of the day would suggest help her renegotiate her condition, help her make sense of what had happened, address the trauma, the brutality of her father's death, and the wrongness, the moral and spiritual injury of her father's death. But all of the treatment as usual was not moving the needle. I mean, you know, every day, you know, every day, you know, day that a patient comes into the clinic, we do a quick assessment one to ten, how are you? And she was never above a five. It was a four, it was a three, it was a five, never above a five. Mm. Well, one day she came absolutely skipping it, night and day. It was a whole different presentation clinically. It was as if the lights had been powered back on. And I said, please, please, please come in, Eliana. Tell me, tell me, tell me. What is happened? And she said bouncing in her seat joyfully she looked me in the eye and she said you're not going to believe this you're not going to believe this I was finally allowed to go to a dance and I met a boy and he was so polite and he was so nice and we talked for 20 minutes which is a long time in eighth grade and you're not going to believe it guess what his name is Ileana told Lisa that the boy she'd met had an extremely unusual name and it turned out it was the same unusual name of her dead father. And she said, well don't you see Dr Miller? My father's watching over me. My father's protecting me. My father's right here with me. I understand that shortly before she went on this dance, Ileana's grandmother had organized a traditional Dominican ceremony to honor her father. Describe the ceremony for me, Lisa. What happened there? Ileana's family had a beautiful tradition that was coming from the Dominican Republic, a blend of many faith traditions. much as many traditions do. What was important to Ileana was that when they held the ceremony to honor her father with prayers, with candles, with photos, Ileana, through the ceremony, knew her father's spirit was alive and real and in relationship to the family. So that shortly thereafter, when she met a boy at the dance who shared the very same name as a her father. She had a depth of spiritual understanding that her father walks with her. She says, my father is looking after me. He is protecting me. working on a psychiatric inpatient unit. Tell me about what life was like on that unit and an intervention, an unusual intervention that you came up with at one point. Shanker, I worked on an inpatient unit in Manhattan where so many of the patients suffered terribly. Some had recurrent very deep major depression. Some struggled with addiction, others schizophrenia. The time in which I happened to be an inter- on the unit was the time of the Jewish holidays. This hospital happened to serve a great number of people who were Jewish. As the holidays approached, one morning in our community meeting a gentleman raised his hand. He was someone who was known as very explosive as he struggled with bipolar. He'd become very angry, maybe toss a chair, yell and march out. So it was he, of all people who raised his hand in a full community meeting, 30 people in a circle under the flickering lights, he raised his hand and said, what will we be doing for Yom Kippur? And the unit chief of very nice man sort of looked at his foot and said, I'm sorry, we don't have anything, the rabbis will be going home to their own families. What? What? Nothing for Yom Kippur? And he became more and more upset, explosive, tossed the chair and walked the chair and walked out of the room. So I understand that you decided to arrange an informal Yom Kipur service on the ward. Describe the scene for me. Well I'm not a rabbi, but I did have at that time about two and a half decades of experience with Yom Kipur services. So I approached the unit chief who gave me permission and said sure if you want to come in on Yom Kipur, that's your decision. I found in a box in my apartment a beautiful weathered prayer book that had been my grandmothers. That day when I arrived to the unit, the patients were all dressed beautifully. No hospital gowns or gurnies. Our so-called sanctuary was the back room, the kitchen, with its linoleum table and its fluorescent lights, but it felt sanctified. And there we were, there were four. Jewish patients and by their side each had an aid who very graciously joined in our ceremony. As we started to move through the prayers, it was the gentleman who had been so explosive and so-called chaotic, who was holding the cadence of our prayers, who was davening, as we say, in Judaism, moving and swaying with his body and with the lyrical music of his voice, holding our collective prayer. He was far from chaotic. He was our spiritual leader and guide. The woman who had struggled so deeply with shame and guilt and depression, perked up and said, I want to say something. I've always known that at Yom Kippur, we can ask for free. forgiveness. But sitting here with all of you reading these prayers, I realized that we can be forgiven. All around the table, whatever had caged in their soul was superseded by the radiance. In this moment of their spirit, it was extraordinary. Tiav new, Tia nu, Tia nu, Tia nu. And so I realized Shankar that something was happening in a spiritually grounded religious ceremony that was not happening in treatment as usual. Once the word got out that Dr Miller talks about spirituality, me over to the corner. One woman who I happened to be Jewish, she happened to be Catholic, turned to me one day and said Dr Miller, I have some very heavy news. They will be sending me away upstate, which means no longer will she be living in Manhattan struggling through the revolving door of treatment, but is really being sent away. She said, well you come with me, I need to talk to you. And come with