Who am I in relation to all that exists?
Exploring your spiritual paradigm (Part 2)
“It made intuitive sense to me that we essentially live in two realms – the everyday world where we buy groceries and commute to work and bicker with our partners and watch the leaves change in the park; and the transcendent world that’s bigger than any individual life, and to which we each belong.”
— Dr. Lisa Miller
From: The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality
Note: If you haven’t already, you may find it helpful to read my previous posts in this series before continuing: “Your Spiritual Paradigm” and “What is Responsible for All That Exists?”
In the very first post to An Uncharted Path, I proposed a working definition of the term spirituality that included a sense of connection to something larger than ourselves and a search for meaning in our lives.
Keep this in mind as we consider the second question within our paradigm exploration: “What am I in relation to all that exists?
A Few Queries to Contemplate
Dr. Victor Ashear (previously introduced in “Your Spiritual Paradigm”) described the spiritual self as “that part of us that connects to the universal, eternal, and transcendent.” Having a sense of who he was as a spiritual being influenced the way he viewed his life and brought a clarification of his values. It also encouraged behavior aligned with those values.”
Ashear posed several queries, related to this part of our paradigm exploration, that may deepen your contemplation of who you are in relation to all that exists. These could prove helpful regardless of where you are in your beliefs about the existence of a Creator or higher force:
· What is the nature of human beings?
· Where do humans fit in the vast order of the universe?
· Are humans central to creation?
· Are we inherently good or evil -- or both?
· Are we worthy or unworthy? If unworthy, how do we become worthy?
· Are we equal or unequal to one another?
· Are we in control of our lives or not? Do we have free will?
· Are we eternal or ephemeral?
Here are a few more to consider:
· Do we need to be “saved” and, if so, from what?
· Does gender identity, sexual orientation, race, or socio-economic status factor into our relation to all that is?
· Who am I in relation to others? (Who do I view as “we”? Who do I view as “they”?)
· Is there a connectedness among all humans (or within all of creation)?
A Personal Connection?
A question not included above is one that asks whether individuals have some sort of personal connection to God, or to whatever higher power we might conceive. In an earlier post, I introduced you to Dr. Linda Mercandante who conducted qualitative research, about a decade ago, on the views of the spiritual-but-not-religious (SBNR).
Related to this post’s central question, she discovered that many SBNR dismissed the concept of a personal God – a God who delivers personalized care to individuals - and found it liberating. They often viewed Jesus, Buddha, and other religious figures as evolved beings, not supernatural ones – as role models, as spiritual guides.
In contrast, a smaller set of interviewees found it challenging to leave behind a more personal view of God, one who was invested in them as individuals. For these interviewees, this stance had often been established through earlier spiritual formation. “Some wanted to have it both ways, getting guidance but not unwanted attention.”
Others did not see God as personal to them in particular, but as an impersonal force behind everything. Many called it ‘The Universe’.” They viewed God as impersonal, yet compassionate and non-demanding. Viewed as a force that cared in some way, it could be called upon by individuals whenever necessary. This view spanned genders, generations, and geography.
A significant number of interviewees viewed God as engaged in a development of consciousness within itself. Some who held this view felt that the divine was not independently conscious but was reliant on humans to experience, feel, or be aware – to evolve. “Rather than a God who transforms human consciousness, we now have humans who transform God’s consciousness.”
In learning of this expressed view, I was reminded of something called process theology, a position that suggests that God engages in the time sequence, unaware of the future. “God is constantly advancing”, according to American philosopher, Charles Hartshorne, in his book Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method. “God is engaged in this process at every moment in time, synthesizing all the data from every occasion throughout the universe.”
Jay McDaniel, American theologian and philosopher, adds this: “Process theologians are relational panentheists. They believe that the relation between God and the universe is and has been from a beginning-less past – an ongoing interaction between manifold creative agents: an all-caring, all-influential, and all faithful agent, whom we name God, and countless other agents, including ourselves, who collectively form God’s body.”
The Brain’s Link to Spirituality
The word ‘energy’ came up frequently in Mercandante’s interviews, which conveyed a scientific feel to their alternative spiritual views as well as a monistic bent (a single, undivided Unity). A substantial number of interviewees felt that a view of a transcendent dimension as “energy” was the position that made the most sense in current times.
One might say that Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor brought support to this idea in her 2008 TED talk and book, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey. Dr. Taylor, a brain researcher, experienced a massive stroke and witnessed, first-hand, the functioning of her own brain during the episode. One of the first aspects she noticed was the absence of a distinct self, the lack of any boundaries to her body.
After surviving the stroke, Jill underwent an eight-year process of healing and recovery. In the end, she was convinced that we all exist as energy beings, connected via the consciousness of our brains’ right hemispheres, to form one human family. What follows are her remarks regarding our fundamental connectedness:
“Our right brain perceives the big picture and recognizes that everything around us, about us, among us and within us is made up of energy particles that are woven together into a universal tapestry. Since everything is connected, there is an intimate relationship between the atomic space around and within me, and the atomic space around and within you - regardless of where we are.
On an energetic level, if I think about you, send good vibrations your way, hold you in the light, or pray for you, then I am consciously sending my energy to you with a healing intention. If I meditate over you or lay my hands upon your wound, then I am purposely directing the energy of my being to help you heal.”
Dr. Lisa Miller offers further affirmation for our connection to something transcendent in her book, The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life. Dr. Miller is a professor in the clinical psychology program at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is also the founder and director of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, the first Ivy League grad program in spirituality and psychology.
Included within her book is a description of the work of Dr. Kenneth Kendler who examined the genetic versus environmental basis for spirituality. Through this work, Kendler discovered that a significant portion (approximately one-third) of our capacity to experience the sacred and transcendent is found in our genetic code, much like eye color or fingerprints. Like many inherent capacities (e.g. language or singing), spirituality varies in its strength from person to person.
The remainder of one’s capacity is largely a factor of upbringing, those with whom we associate, and the specific ways we nurture our spirituality. Noteworthy is the fact that the latter two are aspects in which we have substantial control (topics to explore in later posts).
Along with these findings, Kendler’s empirical research supported a key distinction: that people can be spiritual with or without being religious, and religious with or without being spiritual - a point I emphasize throughout this newsletter. Until Kendler’s work, the view from clinical science was an assumption that spirituality was synonymous with religion – a set of views or beliefs, but not an aspect of humanity that is “hardwired” -- an inborn capacity for all of us, a birthright.
Inspired by Kendler’s discovery that spirituality is innate, Dr. Miller wondered whether it was possible to find the biological mechanism of our spiritual capacity – evidence of spirituality in our bodies, brains, or genes. How do we actually activate our spirituality and engage in its protective power (a protective quality previously established through her research)?
Dr. Miller wanted to see spirituality in action – as it was being experienced – to determine if the neural workings of spiritual awareness could be identified. To do so, she enlisted neuroimaging collaborators at Yale, and a full year was devoted to the design of an innovative study that could effectively examine this.
During the study, participants were asked to tell three separate and detailed personal narratives while they were in an MRI scanner: a stressful event, a relaxing event, and a spiritual experience.
The spiritual accounts all shared distinct commonalities regardless of whether they were secular or religious, occurring indoors or in nature, in solitude or with others.
During the recounting of their spiritual experiences, participants physically felt warm, calm, energized, and “more alive”. On an emotional level, they reported greater clarity, awe, openness, peace, and unity. Also notable were the reported strong connections with and love for other people, their surroundings, and/or a higher power.
In addition, participants attached significant meaning to these stories. They each recounted a direct, felt sense of oneness with the environment or the divine - while simultaneously, a sense of their own voice, identity, or presence dissolved into something larger around or beyond them. Boundaries disappeared. “Pops of awareness” often emerged – moments of guidance in which a problem, conflict, or question was resolved through sudden insight or realization.
The researchers, for the first time, could see from the scanner that spiritual awakening involves self-transcendent awareness and relationship, as well as a sense of unity or closeness. In her own words, Dr. Miller stated:
In a spiritual experience, hard, fixed boundaries soften. As feelings of separateness diminish, we embrace sensations of transcendence and union. This pattern suggests that when we have a spiritual experience, our identification with our physical self becomes more relaxed and our perception of boundaries between ourselves and others becomes more diffuse. We enter into a less bounded and more expanded sense of self. We perceive we are part of a oneness.
Along with the qualities of spiritual experiences, the team had also pinpointed the associated sites of awakened awareness in the brain. In summary, they concluded:
The ventral attention network is where we see that the world is alive and talking to us; the frontotemporal network is where we feel the warm, loving embrace of others and of life itself; and the parietal lobe is where we know that we matter, belong, and are never alone.
Interestingly, the ventral attention network is largely located in the right hemisphere of the brain – the hemisphere emphasized by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor.
Final Thoughts
What I find uplifting, as a spiritually independent person, is that no one religion or spiritual community seems to have a corner on the types of spiritual experiences shared with Dr. Miller’s team.
Every one of us has the ability to engage the parts of the brain that create a sense of interconnectedness and facilitate our links to the transcendent.
We have apparently been gifted with this inborn, universal capacity. And we can use this anytime and anywhere — regardless of our degree of religiosity.
Reflect: What are your thoughts and reactions to the content of this post?