Heroic Chat with Dr. Lisa Miller: Cultivating Quest Orientation

Hey Heroes. Today's episode features a mastery level chat with one of our friends and world class experts sharing how they show up as the best version of themselves. This heroic chat with Brian was recorded live in front of a virtual audience of heroic community members and coaches. To learn more about this series as well as how you can join Brian's daily live coaching sessions at 1:01pm Central Time. Plus get access to a ton more to help you move from theory to to practice to mastery and express the best, most heroic version of yourself. Head to Heroic US today and if you like this episode, please leave a positive review and hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts. Now, here's your host, Brian Johnson.

Heroes, it is 1:01pm Central time plus 3 today the heroic gods bless me with some zoom challenges and here we are. It is great to see you Pamela, Amy, Victor, Kyle, Timmy B, Kimmy, Ryan, Troy, Anthony, Coach Lanny, Michelle, Alex83 Nice work bud. Lisa, Bradley, Rob, Martha, we're making lunch again. Love the consistency. Angelina, Mark who's hiding behind that chat thing? Juana, Dave and Heidi on my screen one Great to see you all today. We blessed to be joined by Dr. Lisa Miller. If you did not know, there is a new science of spirituality and our quest for an inspired life. And Lisa Miller is one of the leading thinkers, frankly the leading thinker on the subject who helped create the domain and absolutely loved your book Lisa the Awakened Brain. Really excited to connect today and to discuss some of those big ideas and to learn more about your heroic quest and share your wisdom with our community. So bless you and thank you for being here today.

I'm thrilled to be here today and I can't take my eyes off the community. I'm going through the pages. This is a very alive community with very alive leadership. This is a joy. A total joy.

Goosebumps already. Bless you for seeing our community and celebrating our community and the way we frame it is we use a phrase, soul force, which we got I got from Gandhi, Satyagraha of course, nonviolent resistance. But it's really truth force, love force, virtue force or soul force. So our entire mission is to help individuals activate their soul force so we can help others activate theirs. And again, your wisdom that you share not just in this book but the spiritual child and the decades that you've invested in helping us more consciously and deliberately cultivate our soul force is why I'm so excited to connect to that together today again, we're all about ancient wisdom and modern science and what you've done to bring so much of the ancient wisdom and spiritual wisdom into the lab and show us how we can practically apply that in meaningful, empirically proven ways. It's just exhilarating to read the book, to see all these ideas that all the faith traditions have discussed concretize the way you have. It's truly just. It's a beautiful thing. Now, before we get into your story and then the wisdom that you've unpacked, if you're open to it, and I didn't ask you this in the prelude, so I'm putting you on the spot here, and the answer could be no. But we like to begin these chats by connecting to our best selves through just a really quick, you know, one, two, maybe three minute breath, meditative reflection and grounding exercise. If you're open to leading us with that, we would be blessed.

I would be very grateful. Thank you. And I even want to kill the headline and say that in all the science, the greatest force of the spiritually awakened brain is what happens in what you're doing here now. It's the sacredness in and between us as it is given through force. So I offer this practice as an opportunity to honor your coming together in spirit and to say how grateful I am to join you here. Ever share a practice like you do, so beautifully behind you, your inspiration, your legacy. I share my teacher. And the teacher for this practice is the late Dr. Gary Weaver. I'm going to invite you to clear out your inner space and take five breaths. I invite you to close your eyes and open your inner chamber. I invite you to set before you a table in your inner chamber. Into your table, you may invite anyone, living or deceased, who truly has your best interest in mind. Anyone, living or deceased, who truly has your best interest in mind. And with them all sitting there, ask them if they love you. And now you may invite your higher self, the part of you that is so much more than anything you may have or not have done or not done, your true, eternal, higher self, and ask you if you love you. And now, finally, you may invite your higher power, however you know, whatever your words, your higher power, and ask if they love you. And now with all of these people sitting here right now, what do they need to share? What do you need to know? What do they need to tell you? Now, When you're ready, I invite you back.

Foreign. We're starting strong here, Lisa. Wow, that is so beautiful. Sorry if I interrupted. If you were not done with that was. I often connect with these Heroes, my medit. Well, not often, every morning. Then they speak to me and they connect with me. And I actually did. I think you shared an exercise similar to this in your great book. And I did something similar to this. But the felt sense of both connection and love and just the safety that is created in that connection and then that connection from what I would describe as my heroes, my guides, who elicited the best within me. My daimon is a word that we use a lot, from the ancient Greek spirit to that creative force, whatever we want to call that higher force. What a beautiful, elegant connection through them, through us, to that, that broader life force, which makes me want to jump ahead in our discussion. So before we come back and say, how in the heck did you get to the point where you are studying the science of spirituality, which I very much want to hear about and have you share, I want to go straight to one of the big punchlines in your book, which is personal spirituality versus personal conservatism. And I know I'm skipping a few steps and we'll come back and connect the dots, but what I just felt there was a very personal, direct connection to the power of the personal spirituality. And I'd like to use that as a jumping off point into framing the healthy and perhaps the less than healthy expressions of spirituality and religion. Can you share your thoughts on that?

Yes. So what we just shared was an engagement of your birthright. Every single one of us on earth is endowed with this innate capacity. It is a neurodocking station of relational transcendence, transcendent relationship with the spirit of those who truly have our best interest in mind. Unconditional, radical love with our true, eternal higher self and with our higher power source force, who we may call God or the higher power. This is our birthright. No one can ever take this away. No bad teachers, no trauma. Nothing can take away your birthright. This is your awakened brain. Now what is remarkable is that science didn't know how to hold up a mirror to the greatness of this gift, this extraordinary endowment, this blessing, really, until the past 10 years, in the late 90s, there was perhaps the most ground shaking scientific article I've ever seen in my life. It was a twin study. And a twin study can determine the extent to which any human capacity is innate or environmentally formed. Well, until this time, scientists said, oh, you can't define spirituality. And other sciences would say, well, I can. Spirituality is peace and harmony. No, no, no. Spirituality is that deep sense of connection. Scientists acted like theologians, but Ken Keller came along and took a beautiful twin study and found something earth shattering, which is our deep inner capacity for what we just shared. Our awakened brain, our innate personal spirituality is indeed our birthright. It is one third innate. But like all innate capacities, it is shaped by our environment. It is two thirds molded. As we leave home at 18 or 20, we pick our environment. The company you keep in an enlightened community, the teachers you choose, your walk, your values, and your transcendent practices all weigh into shape your innate spiritual core. That is why spirituality is in every single one of us. People will say to me, am I spiritual? And I don't even have to turn my head. Of course you're spiritual. As we have two eyes, two ears and a nose, you are a spiritual being. To your point, what is the difference between spirituality and religion? Well, religion is 100% environmentally transmitted. It is a gift of our parents and grandparents. It is a choice that we make to engage a community, a sacred text. Religion can be part of the 2/3 embrace onto the innate spiritual core. But religion itself is entirely 100% environmentally transmitted. And that is a scientific answer to something which in the public square, our culture has become a little tone deaf. If you say spiritual, sometimes people think you mean religious. If you say religious, why are we tone deaf? Nobody's fault. Because 40 years ago, in the good attempt to be inclusive, we threw this discussion out of the public square. We stopped talking about religion, we stopped talking about spirituality. We were trying to be respectful and inclusive, but we actually became radically exclusive and we lost the spiritual baby with the bathwater. We lost perhaps the greatest gift in the United States, which is pluralism. And now that society has grown up, we can go back into the public square. And as we have inclusivity and diversity around race and gender and orientation, we can have inclusivity and diversity around spiritual life, and we can have our voice back. And it's that together with a strong science that says this is a natural human capacity that is essential to our whole personhood and in fact, to the focus of your magnificent community. In making the whole person, there is indeed a spiritual core. It is actually the hub of the wheel. So that that is the scientific answer.

I love it. And there are so many threads that I want to. And we will pull on that, But I'm actually going to pause that and then we'll come back to the healthy spiritual expression that the research talks about and the less than healthy at times, you know, dogmatic, conservative expression that isn't the personal spirituality. But stepping back all the way to however you want to frame your origin story. Who are you? How did you get from where you were to where you are? Tell us about your heroic quest and I'll leave it at that. And you can take that however you want and then we'll unpack it in a number of different ways.

I sure agree with you that every one of us has a heroic quest. And I'm grateful to be able to share the one I've been on as a child. Like every single child on earth, I was a naturally spiritual child. So I remember and I invite you into your own experiences as a child. Having wide open eyes and knowing in my mind and in my heart and in my soul, in my very spirit, being a direct observer of the nature of reality. And I could see the numinous, I could see the sacred in and through the construction of our lives. And I could feel ancestors. And this was something that science has gone on to show. Yes, indeed. But it was so magnificent that I couldn't wait to get to kindergarten and talk about this. I couldn't wait to come together in learning school. I had such respect and awe for school. We were going to talk about this sacred symphony. I got to kindergarten and I couldn't wait. And the first day it didn't come up and I thought, well, it's so important, it must be for first grade. And it was quite a wait. But eventually I got to graduate school where it still wasn't talked about. So I talked about it. And I realized that as I went on as a clinical scientist and a clinical psychologist, I increasingly had experiences that said a mental health field, well being field, a pursuit of thriving minus the spiritual core makes no sense. I can share perhaps a brief story. I was a new intern, a new clinical psychologist here in New York on an inpatient unit. People were suffering terribly and there was not one word. In fact, you are not supposed to talk about spirituality or religion. It was part of the frozen public square and people were indeed spiritually non conversant. The patients were in terrible pain. And so one woman said to me, Dr. Miller, could you come here? And come here did not mean step into your office, walk down the hallway, go into the kitchen under the fluorescent lights, no, even more private, stand in the back pantry by the pots and pans. And there, very privately, she shut the door and she said, Dr. Miller, will you pray with me? We needed that level. I mean, that's like the inquisition that we needed that level of secrecy for her to feel safe, to connect, as we just did with her higher power. And I thought, wow. So, of course the answer is yes, if anyone says, will you join me? As we just shared in connecting to our highest power, too. So I joined her, and she happened to be Catholic, and she prayed the rosary, and I happened to be Jewish, and I don't know the rosary. And she knew that. And she said, Dr. Miller, could you pray your way now? She didn't care that I didn't know her language. She cared that we were in a sacred community, as you are here. And so I prayed my way, and she prayed hers. And then she said, now, let's say our prayers. And she said, Dr. Miller, you go first. And I said, no, no, you go first. And she said, okay. She wanted to go first. She said, dear God, tomorrow I'm being sent away. She was being sent upstate from the city to this long term, probably never come back. Almost like a sentence. Please, God, watch over me when I am alone upstate. I was about to join her when she said, and please, God, can you watch over Dr. Miller? I mean, no one else was saying amongst my colleagues, can you watch over Dr. Miller? In her deepest moment of pain, in the godly relationship and the spiritual bond that we shared, there was a deep sense of love and care and that somehow in the sacred presence, she would be safe. This went on and on because the patients knew. Yes, we talk about that here. One other small story. A gentleman grabbed me, literally grabbed me. And he said, could you stand here behind the door? We're on the inpatient behind the door. He said, I've got to tell you something. You see, Dr. Miller, there's the world, little T, and then there's the world, big T. And the world, little T, is where I go to work and I have a parent and a son. And things just hurt too much. And when it just gets too painful in the world, I go to the world where I am Jesus Christ, and my mother is Mary. He was telling me, of course, both realities are true, the material and the transcendent. We are a point and we are a wave. But he was putting his hand on the gear shift and. And moving into the unitive world while talking about the world of distinction. He was doing that on purpose because it hurt too much here because of the unloving, unspiritual behavior. So I realized that the spiritual core is the center of our bearings. And the rest of my career, the next 20 years, has been about understanding that through a lens of science and then bringing that to leaders such as yourself as one more tool in your toolbox. A lens and.

Beautiful. And I love the way you share the story of that and other celebrations in your environment. So you're. You're a young. I mean, pre kindergarten. That's just amazing. Let's go. I mean, talk about precocious and attuned. Then you come up graduate school, you're taught all the traditional things. You're awakened in this environment to the reality that there's more than just, you know, the pragmatic tools that your clinical practice, you know, obviously you had developed. I want to hear about two things. The awakened brain and what that is and why that matters and how that helps shape a healthy consciousness through which we can more deeply connect and express the best within ourselves. But also, I want to know about your own quest. And it had to be hard. It had to be challenging for you as a young researcher, clearly ambitious to make a difference, yet also wanting to conform and having certain pressures on you. Were there moments in which you had to, one could say, heroically choose a path that was not what was expected of you in the face of kind of pushback? Because, again, this is a big part, of course, of what heroic is all about, is shining a light on whether it's you or John Mackey starting Whole Foods or Phil Stotts going through his journey. We've all been there. We've all fought our own dragons and found ways to either win that battle or tame them and ride them or whatever. But can you describe some of the more formative challenges that you faced in the process of coming to where you are?

Thank you. Well, there is one more story that I think leads into this, which is I was in a group co facilitating a psychotherapeutic group. And one woman who was riddled with pain and really having problems thinking and had a form of schizophrenia said, I have to tell you, she said to the group, when I have the psychosis, when the illness starts, it's hard for me to feel God. It's hard for me to pray. And I said, I put my hand on my heart. And I said, I'm sorry, can you tell us more? And my co group facilitator cut in. We don't talk about that here. He said, do you think that's just a projection about how you feel about me? The therapist? And so I leaned in again and I said, no, I think Mrs. Jones is saying something important. Can you tell us about how it feels when you are close to God and when you can't get there? And then he cut in again and he said, we really don't Talk about. And. And I quit. I didn't push the time. And the biggest regret in my life was that I didn't push the third time to get my therapist out of the way. And I made a vow that I'd never do that again. That suffering was in its core. We are renewed through spiritual life. We are found in our deep connection, as we just shared, to the sacred, the guiding, the force in us, through us and among us. And I vowed I would never, ever allow that window to shut again. That in all time, if I didn't push it open for her, it might not have been pushed open. And I was never going to ever be silent again. And so I had plenty of opportunities for. I think pushback would perhaps be an understatement. I remember I had my first series of scientific articles, and I published them in the journal that I'd wanted so much to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. And I stepped up at Columbia to give grand rounds. And suddenly it must have been a half a dozen people, when they saw the topic, got up and walked out. They thought spirituality had nothing to do with them as healers and therapists. And then as it went on, and the findings were very strong, had been through peer review. It was in the top journal. And the mentors who I adored and wanted to emulate sort of looked and said, what could it really be? And I'm like, well, here's the relationship. People with a strong spiritual life, oftentimes through depression, build a spiritual core and then are protected against subsequent depressions. By what magnitude? 80%. There's nothing like that in the clinical sciences. 80%. Most things are 10%. What does that really mean? And this went on and on. And it was really evidence for me that the work needed to be done. That standing up and marching out. And very bright people saying, it's just social functioning. No, no, we've controlled for social functioning. Very bright people found this work evocative. And very bright people said things that weren't on par with their usual scientific analysis. It said to me, the work needs to get done, and this is evocative for a reason. We have a huge hole in the middle of academia, mental health, and the public square when it comes to the spiritual core, the spiritual heart. So I took that as fuel. And there have always been a few, what I call trail angels on the way who love the work and are moved and inspired. But there have been equal numbers of people, particularly in the first decade, who said, this isn't psychology. This will never get funded. They didn't like the clothes I wear. I mean, and I figured that that just means it's even more important to do this. I didn't want a fake career. I didn't want to be a scientist chasing nothing. I wanted to go after what I thought was our charge, which was to go after the truth. And I had the tools of epidemiology, MRI studies. I had the tool of a life lived to go after this. And I still hold in my heart that academia is charged with being a voice of truth.

This is amazing. And this is exactly what I was hoping to go. So I want to explore this just a little bit more to make it even more real and just to restate the obvious. So you faced significant challenges from the five people literally getting up and walking out. And as I heard you say that, I felt what you. I imagine you must have felt, at least at some level of, oh, my God, like, really? And that the doubting voice that you alchemize quickly. But I assume there was a doubting voice. Is that accurate, that there is part of you that you. I mean, I'm astonished by and inspired by how you framed it right now. And I wonder, was there a part of you that questioned the utility, or were you just so firm in your commitment that it was actually that quick of a perfect, I've got fuel. You're not a threat, you're a challenge, which in itself would be awesome. But I just want to know, were there practical frames that you used or perhaps even your own connection to your spirit that you were guided by? Like, how would you frame that up? For those of us who continue to experience this pushback, these challenges, William Damon comes to mind, a mentor of mine and beloved sage. When I started heroic, I asked him, what one thing do you want me thinking about? He paused, thought about it, and said, it's going to be harder than you think. And my best ideas met the most resistance. And that didn't mean they were always good ideas, because sometimes it was appropriate. And that frame has really helped me. But what practically did you do in those moments in order to alchemize it that we may be able to practice in our heroic quest?

Thank you. I knew in my deep heart that in no way am I special, but I work for someone who is, to quote the U.S. army, and that this really was a mission to serve who I call God. You could say spirit, the truth, whatever it is, through witness, that in spiritual community, we tell our stories as you have here, and we tell a story and bear witness and are Fortified by each other's journey. In science, we listen to a chorus of human experience. It is indeed a form of testimony. And so I viewed science as sacred work, that I was bearing witness to God's creation, to the manifestation of source. And it did not bother me one whit that people who were senior, that I adored and admired, hated it and walked out in the sense that it didn't deter my mission. But did I feel threatened? Well, sure, I've been threatened plenty of times. And I was devoted to this path while feeling threatened, you know, been threatened many, many times. But, you know, it's so interesting because as we follow our true path, right when, you know, I think everybody's sent from central casting, including the boogeyman and the bad guys, that, you know, they're threats. Yes. But it only fortifies the purpose and mission. And right when I was really back against the wall, you know, with people not liking this, there was always someone on a white horse who came in. So I. I don't think we're alone. I think there's trail angels. And as we pursue our authentic path, look at who you have in each other. You're sent for casting. So by which I mean the symphony conducted by who I call God. And. And this was something that just time and time again was the case. So I never feared for the work. I never feared to do the work. But sure, then I've been attacked a lot. Yeah.

Yeah, beautiful. Okay, cool. And that's super helpful. And again, just your resolve and your connection to your own power and the higher power. Joseph Campbell, of course, heroes, mythology would describe it as when you follow your bliss, which again is a jumping off point into enlightenment. Right. Sat chit Ananda. Trusting that impulse that hidden hands come, doors appear where there were only once walls. Who were some of your guides and heroes that came in and influenced you just to celebrate them and model for us how we can play that role for those in our lives.

Well, I shared with you a beautiful spiritual visualization that awake that engages our awakened brain. That was a gift from the late Dr. Gary Weaver. So I was giving a talk in Salt Lake City, huge auditorium. And in the back row, I could see in my mind's eye this enormous force of love coming at me. Here's the numbers up on the wall. And I can't take my eyes off this gentleman, probably in his mid-70s and his equally loving wife. Just blasts of love. I could feel it in my heart. I could feel their love in my body. So as soon as the numbers were over, I Charged right up to them. I had to meet them. It was Dr. Gary Weaver and his wife Colleen. And I said, who are you? And he shared with me that he had actually flatlined 10 times. He'd been there and back. He gave off love. He embodied, as we all do, spirit. And it was amplified by his clarity and embrace and hers, too. And so I invited them to the academic lunch and sat right next to them, and I said, tell me about you. And it turned out that Dr. Gary Weaver and his wife only worked with court referred boys. Boys, the third time before the judge, were going to be thrown out of life. Like the woman in the inpatient unit. They were going to be sent to adult prison. These boys had been abused, and many of them were now abusers, and no one else wanted to work with them. Dr. Weaver saw through to their soul, and he loved these boys. And so he did two things. He'd take them out into the desert where they'd have challenging climbs up a precipice and go a full day without enough water. And it's not time for dinner till the very last person crosses the line. Relational spirituality, bonding. And he shared the practice that we started with today, through which he reawakened their birthright, their natural awakened brain. He re enlivened their innate capacity for the relational connection to their higher power and that presence in their love for one another. Relational spirituality. He is a hero. So I said, well, this is so powerful. I required all of my students at Columbia to go out into the Desert with Dr. Gary Weaver if they wanted to work with me. And these were people coming from banks and advertising agencies like, no, no. And I'm like, you don't have to go. If you want to work with me, you have to go. And so my Columbia students, Dr. Weaver and the court referred boys all went out. And it was life changing. My students had profound awakenings. Dr. Weaver adopted 28 boys. And so for all that I've said, the reason he's my hero is that he adopted into his home, into what was truly in his heart, fatherhood, 28 sons. So when he passed, I went to his funeral and I offered to pay for the tickets. It's very moving. Not one of my students would let me pay. They paid their own way to attend the funeral. All the Columbia students came to this small church in rural Utah. They had to open up the doors of the church. There were hundreds of people because he was so full of love. And in the first three rows were 28 pallbearers. And these boys were now men and they were forest rangers and they were teachers and they were fathers. He had saved their life by knowing them as souls on earth and saying, you are my son. So that's my hero. And I've tried to mentor and teach and live my life in that way.

Beautiful. He feels to me like one of the many embodied awakened brains. As you would frame it up. Let's talk about what that means. So what does it mean to have an awakened brain? And I want to talk about that vis a vis the challenge and that being an antidote to the modern challenge. And then start to go down deeper into the practical tools that we can use to connect. And then with an emphasis on those that you have found personally most enriching and most powerful and life transformative. But can you define for us the awakened brain?

Yes. And can I do it experientially?

You can stop asking. This is your show. Please run with it. We are here at your guidance.

So just blessed if we might. This is a 92nd practice that I think evokes the felt experience. I'm going to invite you once again to close your eyes, clear out your inner space. I invite you to remember a time locate a time where you wanted something so badly. That red door was yours. You wanted the job, the internship, the promotion, him, her, them to say yes, that home. And you did everything A plus B plus C strategically to get it. You researched it. You were tactically right, that red door is yours. And as you reach for the red door A plus B plus C you grab that handle 99% but it's stuck. And you can't believe it's stuck because you have done everything right. A plus B plus C. It doesn't seem true or fair. You might be shocked in time, angry or depressed, but only because that red door was stuck. You had no choice. You turned 40, 60, 130 degrees and there there was a wide open yellow door. And on the other side of the yellow door was someone who made you feel alive. Was a job more right for you? Was a place to live that you'd never considered. You might have said yellow doors don't exist. You'd never thought of yellow doors. But on the other side of the yellow door was not what you wanted. It was better than what you wanted and better for you. And I invite you to take a step back and think of that shut red door. The hairpin turn leading to the wide open yellow door that has everything to do with where you are and who you are today. Was there anyone at that Hairpin turn. A helper, a healer, a guide, a coach, a counselor, a friend, a grandparent who for the first time told you a story they'd never shared before. Or perhaps someone you met for a minute and a half on the bus, at the coffee shop, at a party. A trail angel. A trail angel at the hairpin turn pointing you to the wide open yellow door that has everything to do with who you are and where you are today. Now, as you step way back, stuck red door, hairpin turn. Wide open yellow door. Trail angel. How are the most important things in our life found? Is it narrowly through radical control? Yes, we need strategy and yes, we need tactics. But is it really command control? Are we fully makers of our path? Or are we in some of the most important moments, the defining path actually discovers of our journey? Now finally stepping way back, stuck red door. Hairpin turned trail angel. Wide open yellow door that has everything to do with who you are and where you are today. Where in your road of life is your higher power, source, God, universe? Is your higher power in the wide open yellow door? And the stuck red door is your higher power in the trail angel and your openness to be in dialogue with the guidance. Is it possible that you've been on a spiritual path all along? And when you're ready, I invite you back. We need tactics, we need strategy. We need to get up and make things happen. And life is about 4% controllable and 96% dynamic and full of flux. And it's been a gift of the lesson of COVID that we see how very little we actually control. I can push the elevator button whether it comes in 10 seconds, 10 minutes, whether it's packed, whether the people in it are healthy. I don't control all that. I just pushed the elevator button. So when we can no longer have radical control, which is really an illusion, we can shift our conversation with life from what do I want? How am I going to get it? Why did I not get it? Am I not good enough? Why did I not get it? If I do to, hey, what is life showing me now? What is the deeper spirit through life asking of me now? And we all have times where a trail angel has shown up or something was far too unprobabilistic to have been a shut red door and equally unprobabilistic to have been a wide open yellow door. We are loved and held and guided. We are never alone. When we use our awakened awareness. We are in dialogue with the force in us, through us and among us. When we use our awakened Awareness. We are in dialogue on the road of life. So synchronicities, people show up, folks on the white horse and folks wearing the bad guy hats. Everyone shows up in this journey of life. So I don't control the world around me. And it's increasingly full of dynamism and flux and less controllable. But what can be anchoring is that we can take a stance, of course, quest through which we are sure footed in asking, what is life showing me now? What does God ask of me now? And it is a balance ultimately between achieving and awakened awareness that we go on a quest.

Hey hero, have you heard the news about Brian's book? Activate your heroic potential head to Heroic US Book to learn more and get your copy as well as check out exclusive content and bonuses. That's Heroic US Book. Now back to today's episode, which is.

The perfect segue to tell us about that. So you framed it in the book, the quest orientation, and you talk about the fact that integration is key. So of course you just highlighted facets of that. But can you make it more explicit and then can you connect it to your research and show us how these things are connected and again, what benefits us in terms of our well being, our resilience from depression and other challenges of modern life?

Yes. So door number one is achieving awareness and we need it. It's tactical, it's strategic, and it's predicated on control. Door number two is our awakened awareness. It is a dialogue. It is a receptive form of perception. Whereas in achieving awareness, my hopes, my goals are based on today, all the way back my historical learning. In awakened awareness, we get a catch. It's an intuition, it's a gut instinct, it's a synchronicity or a mystical experience. It is a high pixel catch in the catcher's receptive, transcendent awareness. And that high pixel catch has information which has yet to unfold. This is why AI could never beat us, because AI doesn't receive sacred catches. It is a form of deep inspiration and the details have yet to unfold. I'm sure we've all had experiences of just knowing, go right, go right. Every day I go left, but I'm supposed to go right. When we do, who should we run into, but what site should we see? But these are both our birthright. Achieving and awakened awareness are both our birthright. We're wired for both and they both allow us to see and engage reality. There are two realities. One in which we are a point, one in which we are a wave, one in which we are distinct and finding our way in random and the other in which we actually are part of a deep sea of life. White caps on one ocean. When we put them together, we see that what looked random is actually informed by the deep sea. That we show up each other's lives synchronistically. That blessings come in and through. You have been a trail angel for many and everyone in this community is a trail angel for everyone else. No one can take your place. Which means that when you feel. Say it. Just tell her. Say it. I don't know why it came to me. It's on my heart.

Say it.

I'll give you an example. I'm standing in the Whole Foods, and Whole Foods is a healthy store. So everyone has healthy food. But I feel compelled to look in this woman's cart. And I do. And I say, wow. I said, you have the, you know, the vegan yogurt, you have the kale. And something says, everyone in the store is healthy. Say it to her. You are so healthy. You are such a healthy woman. And she starts to cry. And she said, I just started chemotherapy. And I said, well, that shows you you are healthy. And they took out the cancer, but you are healthy. We are called. We are like emanations raised from the sun to shine on each other. This is who we are. When we realize that achieving an awakened awareness together means that what looks like disparate atomistic events. You, me, you're at this gps, she's at that gps. She looks like this and he looks like that and are zipped up by a bodysuit. And we are emanations of one sacred consciousness showing up in a deep symphony of design. That's how it goes together and that's how quest is made. Nothing is random and everything you do matters. You really matter.

Now bring us to the lab. And the way you articulate this in the book of. Yeah, yeah, that again, sounds amazing. And what is more amazing for me is what you've done to demonstrate the efficacy of that in a very practical, grounded, material way. That when we have an orientation that integrates the achievement and the awakened brain, then what does your research show happens.

When we look at the brain and we use dti, which is a way of looking at how much water squirts along neurons versus out the side of neurons, so highly myelinated neurons. When we pave the roads in our brain, the water shoots along the road. When we use dti, what we see is that in people, to use all forms of knowing, achieving and awakened awareness, logic, empiricism and intuition, mystical experience, unit of awareness. Together we literally pave the highways, myelinate the tracks between regions of the brain, between organic forms of knowing, organic epistemologies. We have a more highly interconnected brain, which is a good brain. It is a more creative, innovative brain. It is more situationally aware in our work and most importantly, in our lives. So when I say to my students, at our inner table of human knowing, we all have an empiricist, a logician, a mystic, an intuitive and a skeptic. Everyone's welcome. Skeptic is not the bouncer at the door skeptic? No, the skeptics at the table to propel inquiry, to propel a deepening of intuitive witness, mindfulness, to take as serious and real a mystical experience, as ontologically real built into the fabric of reality. We all work together. And when we do, when there's discourse between ways of knowing, we pave the ways, we myelinate the tracks between different regions of the brain, and we are better problem solvers. We are more present to the reality that surrounds us and yet less afraid. It's extremely important. We're set up for quest when we live this way day in and day out. When we engage our awakened brain and start to see life through the goggles, right of spiritual bedrock, we build, we strengthen, if you will, the awakened brain, by way of analogy, strengthen the spiritual core. And what that means when we look through a structural MRI is that people who, day in and day out sustain an awakened lens on life alongside achieving, toggle back and forth, build the muscle of the awakened brain. There's broad and pervasive regions, of course, cortical thickness, which is processing power, and in particular cortical thickness across the regions of the parietal, precunius and occipital, which are regions of perception, reflection and orientation, which means I can have the same partner and the same job and live in the same apartment, and it all looks different when I look through a strengthened awakened brain perception, reflection and orientation. What's particularly remarkable is that people with a strong awakened brain are the same people who say, my personal spiritual life, with or without religion and across any faith tradition, my innate, as we opened with awakened awareness is important to me. I turn to my higher power for guidance in times of difficulty. My relationships are sacred spiritual events. People who see life that way got there two and a half times more likely, 250% more likely, to get there through struggle, through suffering. The path to spiritual awakening can be through numinous experiences and Very often it is through struggle we are two and a half times more likely to have struggled if we tend to see life on spiritual bedrock. Not only that, it helps us rethink what is depression. Because in a longitudinal study, people who are spiritual today were 250% more likely to have struggled over the past 10 years. And having established a strong awakened brain, 75% protected against recurrence over the next 10 years. That goes up to 90% when we're otherwise at high risk. High risk because we are under the hailstorm of painful life events. High risk because we're genetically loaded. High risk because we are the shamans, artists, teachers, musicians who are open to experience. Where more gets in, there's more inspiration and so too more pain. The capacity to develop as a sensitive, open person, a spiritual response, response to suffering builds the awakened brain. And not only are we girded against subsequent deep depressions, we go through life finding yellow doors. We go through life hearing and seeing, hey, that's a trail angel. And showing up for others as trail angels. And we become in our walk, as each of you are teachers of the spiritual path in a gracious, modest way, walking the path we are built through suffering to expand spiritually. And so much is the case that there are three bridges in life. Emerging adulthood, the second half of life, midlife, and crossing the bridge to elderhood, where we are hardwired just as we change physically to expand spiritually. As we expand, we see this through longitudinal twin studies. There's an increased heritable contribution. We extend, expand our spiritual capacity. It boots up as a half empty glass of spirituality. There's extra capacity. What is my meaning? What is my purpose in emerging adulthood at midlife? Have I lived my ultimate? I don't mean am I like a teacher or a lawyer? I mean ultimate purpose in relationship to life itself. And as an elder, how am I? How will I leave this world? What will be my spiritual footprint? What do I want to be sure I do now? These three bridges are times of innate, hardwired spiritual growth. But it boots up the ignition. The knock at the door is an existential despair, developmental depression.

Your demonstration of the integration of the awakened spiritual mind and the logical, rational, scientific mind there in and of itself was just fantastic. To go from the esoteric and to the very hyper practical MRI was just a really cool demonstration of the very things we're talking about. So with all of that in thinking about, one of our frames is moving from theory to practice and then to mastery, which of course is always a practice together what practical things can we do to help integrate the achieving and the awakened brain? And I know that you mentioned the. The doors, the three doors I talk about in the note and you talk about in the book. And then we had the spiritual guides in our connection as another practice. So those are two very concrete practices. What else arises for you and that you've seen from your research as the most transformative practices that we can engage in in order to have that quest, orientation, integration, et cetera.

Beautiful. I'm going to nest this squarely in an MRI study. And it goes like this. We ask people to come in and tell us two stories. And there are always two stories. We have a choice. The first is tell me about being really stressed. And the second is tell me about being in deep relationship to the force in life, your spiritual connection to God, your higher power. No one was confused. Everyone had both stories. The stress story we were expecting was a story of challenge. I started a new job, and I thought, how am I ever going to master all this material? Or my spouse and I, we decided to scale Kilimanjaro. And it was one big challenge. We were expecting challenge to be the footing of stress. But we didn't hear one challenge in stories of stress. Stress sounded like this. I have got to get that promotion. I have got to put away this much more money. I have got to get him her. Them to I've gotta, gotta. And as the I've gotta have it story runs, what lights up in the FMRI is the insula and striatum. It is the neurodocking station of addiction. We have poison in our air and water, and we have poison in our culture. We are acculturated into addiction. The neuro docking station for I've gotta have that much more money, that much bigger house, that much more of me, that much more followers. Whatever the I've got to have it is, is a stance which is the neurodocking station for I've got to have a drink, I've got to have a hit. I've got to get on the Internet. We are acculturated and acculturating those younger than us into a culture of addiction. And yet we have a choice, because we then ask that very same person, okay, let's put your hand on the gear shift, and here's the practical skill and change your conversation with life from I've got a habit in which life is a shopping center, to hey, what is life revealing to me now? What is the hit? What is the awakened experience and the story Goes like this. I'm feeling like such a loser. I was just turned down at seven out of eight medical schools. I'm never going to be a doctor like my mother and father. But then I see light in the leaves. And I know God has a plan for me. And I will be a healer in the way I am intended. Or, you know. We'd lived together 10 years. I had an engagement ring. We were going to get married. And literally the week before he called it off. I felt so ugly. I felt so unlovable. But then going home and sitting at the Thanksgiving table. With my parents and my siblings and my grandparents. I felt this great love. My grandfather led us in a prayer. And I felt the love of our higher power. And I just knew. I knew I would love again. The deep rearrangement of meaning that speaks to a wiser, truer part of ourselves. Is a foundationally spiritual process. It is opening up our awakened brain as an open system. To receive that which is profoundly rearranging and reorienting and renewing. It is a choice. It is a choice between saying, I've got to have it. And instead saying, you know what? I just didn't get something. And I can't figure out why. And then I didn't get it again. Maybe I could put my hand on the gear shift. And change my conversation with life. And say, what is being asked of me now? What is my higher power revealing to me now? And we all have a choice. At every minute, at every single minute.

If there were a choir of angels who could be audible right now. They would be singing. They're me in the background. Beautiful.

And they're there for you. Every one of you. They're there. Yeah.

Always. And this is again that. That not subtle, but subtle and very significant shift in consciousness to that awakened state. Allows for that integration. Allows for that dynamic spontaneity of life to come through us. What a beautiful, simple, practical way to do that. We're approaching.

I want to answer your question fully. I'm sorry. I left out the best part. What's the neurodocking station? The neurodocking station through which we receive this guidance. The higher power has three components. We are loved and held. We are guided. And we are never alone. It is the dynamism on the spiritual path. The bonding network. Just as it was there. Frontotemporal. As children in our parents or grandparents. Arms engages. We know we are loved and held. We are guided. We shift from. I've gotta have it. Dorsal to bottom up. Ventral attention. The lights Go back on in life. Do you remember that moment? And the yellow door pops. Loved and held, guided. And the parietal that puts in and out hard boundaries. So we know that we are both a point and a wave. We are magnificently unique, magnificently diverse and part of one sacred consciousness. We are never alone. That includes who we are to one another. And every living being, loved and held, guided and never alone has a neurodocking station and is the same for everyone on Earth. There is one awakened brain and every everyone has it. Of course, there's human variants like in math or music. And of course we can cultivate and strengthen 2/3 environmentally strengthened. But every one of us, whether we're Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Catholic, spiritual but not religious. Nature is my cathedral. Has the same spiritual brain that says religious war is outdated, that says we are all deeply capable of connecting in the deepest way. So that if we're going to have a world of inclusivity, it's one in which I love you as a point and I feel your heart as a wave. We are both to one another. We can't have radical, splintered society and we can't ignore that there's legitimate inequity. We need to bring together distinction and unitiveness. We need to love each other into knowing each other.

Beautiful. And then, as you've said a number of times, each of us choosing to be on our own quest in our own idiosyncratic way, the way we frame it is you are a hero on a mission, on a quest. But the hero's ultimate boon is their transformation of their consciousness. And then the hero becomes the guide, becomes the radiant exemplar of what's possible in their own humble, everyday, connected way. I really appreciate you giving us such profound wisdom and that integration again, of the very spiritual and the hyper practical. Inspiring. And I'm excited too, that you've been willing to spend more time with us in order to explore some questions. I already see Shelly has a hand up. If you have questions that you would like to chat with Dr. Lisa about, please raise your hand. Before we go there briefly, one of the things I like to do is I want to hear just a little bit more about you and your practices. So this is, you know, heroic chats with masters, individuals I admire, who have created a life of deep meaning and purpose that have given so much to us. What, very practically and tactically have you found to be transformative in your life in what we call the Big three? So one of the ways we frame it, and I like to jokingly say, don't agree with Freud on a lot of things, but I think he got it right that a good life comes down to work and love. If you can get your work and your love optimized, I like to say 80%, even 90%, there's. But if your energy isn't there because of poor lifestyle choices, you're going to have a hard time showing up in your work or your love. We call that our big three. So energy, work and love. When you think about again, very practically, the things that you have made distinctions on theoretically in energy and work in love that you practice, that you think have been most powerful for you in your own quest, what arises for you. What's the number one life changing thing that arises in your energy, work and love? Knowing we could talk about that for a weekend, but excited to hear just the practical day to day things that you do to keep yourself plugged in.

What a helpful way to frame it out. And I'll start with energy, which is in the morning I get up and if I don't do this, the day doesn't align right until I do. And I know that I feel off axis and misaligned. I get up, I walk outdoors, no matter the season. And I can be at times in a cold winter season. And I make what is for me in my words, a prayer to God in deep relationship. And my prayer is, dear God, please open my heart first so that I might feel your ultimate love and presence. And then I thank God for the sun and the air, for the earth in the water, for all living beings of the earth, the water and the air and beyond. I'm sure there's others out there. And then there's also a spirit, mind, body, practice. I do and I ask, I feel okay doing this. I'm a mom. I think we have this prerogative to bless my kids. But I started with everybody, the all living beings, and I say them by name and my extended family by name and the ancestors. And then I ask that I, God, open my heart so that I might be a vessel of love and speak and live in the the path of love. That is the opening of the day. And I end with and please bless you, God. Now if I start that way, I'm on the path. If I rush it or skip it, I don't skip it very often. But if I do, it doesn't take 10 minutes till I say, wow, go back outside, start the day. That's the source of all energy, if you will. I think of it as sacred Consciousness in work, I only do that which I feel is part of my mission on Earth, which is to bear witness to how extraordinary creation is us, the larger creation and in love. Love is not a contract. Love is not a deal. Love is a calling. And that has been the way I've found that love works in my path.

Wow. I'm very happy that I asked. What a wonderful set of reflections. Thank you for sharing and I'm excited to integrate that as I imagine others have gotten some beautiful things that we can bring into our day to day practices. Bless you. Thank you. Shelly would love and I see Shelly, Ryan, Jessica and Ariana. We will see what we can do over the next 20 or minutes or so. Great to see you, Shelly.

Thanks. Dr. Miller. I'm reading your book right now. It's amazing you answered the question. I was going to ask a different question. My question is for those of us who have like an innate quest orientation, like you say in your book, where we ask questions and we think and we're artists and like the, you know, when you ask what's the meaning of life? The lever where it's like, just shut up and pay your bills. That lever is broken for us. How do you reconcile those two things? So world with a lowercase in the world with an uppercase T. It's beautifully put. And I think the mission is to get everything to line up so, you know, the things I do to pay the rent are aligned in some way, or at least how I live into them is aligned with my greater mission. So if I'm on a spiritual path, and right now I am a barista at the coffee shop, it's to regard each person as a soul on earth. So. So I don't know each day what will happen. But I can live out my deepest spiritual values as a barista, as a professor, it doesn't matter what I do. This student is coming to complain about a grade. Why has God sent this student to me in all time and place? Now this is someone's precious child. And I particularly remind myself when I'm being annoyed. Synchronicities often start by being annoying because they're perturbations of what we had planned. They fluster the ego. I think my resonance with your very beautiful, powerful question is how to use the heart, if you will, to set the true direction. Implement with the head, knowing that every single moment is a sacred moment. And can I line up my spiritual path with this moment now? And the people who come are extraordinary. The guy on the bus is amazing. You know so today, the example today was that I had. I ran out of gas on the way driving into New York. And so I pulled into the rest stop and the fellow behind the counter had been there all night, and he looked so tired. And I said, have you been here all night? He said, I have. I said, you are great. You are great. And I said, and God bless you. And he said, thank you. I had the gift of seeing him at the rest stop. Right. So I knew that today I had, you know, I was going into New York, I was going to Columbia, but I didn't know I'd meet him. Thanks. That makes a lot of sense. Usually everyone's answer is like, well, just write books for a living. Blah, blah, blah. Like things you can't actually do today. So thank you. It's all in what do today like? This precious gift of you opening that inquiry for all of us. It's all in the synchronistic gifts, the trail angels. You are a trail angel in this moment. For me and us, these. This is what makes life full. This is the high pixel being. We don't need to metric our lives. It's in the deep being in and of itself.

Beautiful.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you, Shelly. Great to see you. Ryan.

Good afternoon, or whatever time it is, where everybody is. Quick celebration of Brian and Dr. Miller for being here today and putting together this amazing chat. I think everyone's brains are just exploding. Exploding all across, if the. The chat's any indication. My question, really, you probably have more experience with this than just about anybody. Is the best way to open people up to these concepts that are not in any way, shape or form open to them? You know, I think we've all tried to flog the horse to the water and then been upset that it wouldn't drink. And I'm more interested in how to make the horse thirsty so that it wants to go to the water on its own. And I can't imagine anybody that would be more versed in that than you, Dr. Miller. Also, killer shades. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, my kids tried to take them away from me. I had to hold on. No, they're awesome. It's a very beautiful point. Which is. I so agree. People don't like being told what to do, of course. But as you suggest, I think one of the most powerful gifts we give is opening the window and both walking the walk and talking the walk, telling our own story, transparency into our own spiritual path. Speaking in the first person in the awakened brain, I tell our journey of struggling with Infertility, and it was so depressing. It was to the point where I couldn't find my husband one night because he was on the floor. He was so depressed. Through that bout of struggle and despair, discovering our spirit, our deeper spiritual bearings. So I think when we tell in the first person about our own journey and the miracles and the deep relationship we have with spirit or whatever your word is for force, source, people are riveted. They're absolutely riveted. Why? Because it is a quarter inch under the surface. Their own hungry spiritual heart, their own yearning spirit, spiritual brain for awakening. They're absolutely riveted. And it resonates because it is true. It aligns with the nature of reality, and we know the truth. You know, Malcolm X said it so beautifully. If someone has a dirty glass of water, don't criticize. Show them a clean one. And upon examination, they'll know what is pure water. I think your story, your life, your walk, but I think our opportunity is to be transparent and to say it. Yes, we talk about that here in a way that's loving. You know, I was just saying thank you so much. That's beautiful and a lot to think about. So thank you so, so much.

This was awesome.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you. Ryan. Great to see you as always. Jessica.

I feel like I have a million and a half questions, and I'll only ask you one, but I just want to thank you so much first. You know, as I was listening to you, I was driving to the library, and I'm, like, weeping listening, which I do a lot. And I was like, why am I crying so much? And it was just, you know, in our culture, I feel like the thing that we give the most authority is science. And I am a very. A deeply spiritual person. It's my first virtue. It's my highest virtue is spirituality. And, you know, I'm. I'm.

I'm.

I'm a member of the Baha' I faith, and the Baha' I faith teaches that religion and science, spirituality and science are two ways of understanding reality and that they are in harmony with each other. And I was like, that's why I'm crying, because science is validating spirituality right now.

Holy crap.

So I just want to thank you for your work. And I'll get to my question.

Which is science is an empirical way of looking at the truth. And so too is intuition and mystical awareness ways of looking at the truth. There's one truth, and there's many lenses on truth. And I so honor in the Baha' I faith when you visit a Baha' I temple, it's all. All the different ways of knowing the lenses of knowing the truth. Many traditions. Yeah.

You've been to the one in Wilmette?

I have.

I used to work there.

Oh, that's wonderful. And.

And that's wonderful.

Ultimately. It's so interesting. Ultimately, as I've known people who are of the Baha' I faith, spirituality is about service.

Yes.

Look at the dimensions of spiritual life. The one that most thickens the awakened brain, that most builds the muscle. Dickens, the cortex, is love of neighbor. And altruism. When we walk the walk, I call it prayer in action. The just as we might feel God's presence or our higher power, we feel that relationship and our love for one another and act on it. Altruism is the strongest force of cultivating spiritual awareness. And if we're stuck, we literally just need to get up, go out the door, and do something, even a little. Something nice for someone. And we've entered the unit of reality where we're not splintered. We're part of the wave.

So beautiful. You know, Abdul Baha, who is the son of Bahaullah, the founder of the Baha' I faith, he says, if you are so depressed that prayer doesn't even help you, you get up and you immediately go out and help somebody else. That's. That's. That's the ticket. Which is also why I'm so drawn to heroic. I was like, I keep telling my Baha' I friends about heroic, and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. There are people who are taking ancient wisdom and modern science and bringing it together so that you can be your best self in service of something higher. What? Of course, yes. Sign me up. So we're on board. My question is really about children. And, you know, I grew up in a family that was not at all religious at all. And I became a Baha' I as a child. And my parents, they let me do it because they wanted me to make my own choices. And they said, well, out of all the organized religions, this is the one that we dislike the least. So we'll let you. We'll let you become a Baha'. I.

Was like, okay, thanks.

Thanks, guys. And I have had. My heart is overwhelmed with gratitude by how many trail angels I have had in my life. Here's the tears again. And I can't control that for my child. I don't know what she will have in her life, you know? And so I want to do the best that I can do for her in terms of setting her up for living a spiritual life, for having an awakened brain. And I noticed that, like, she's very resistant to anything I tell her to do. So I don't tell her to pray. I just have her watch me pray. You know, I just do the things. But I'm like, I don't feel like that's quite enough. And so I'm curious, you know, I don't want her to just watch me, like, how can I best support my child living a spiritual life? Is my question.

That's beautiful. Well, you are right that the most important gift to a child in developing her or his own spiritual core is the transparency. Walking the walk and talking the walk by the parents, grandparents and significant people in their lives. Yes, we talk about that here. Yes, there is a way in practice of transcendence. Yes, our values are derived from our relationship to ultimate reality, not cherry picked or driven by hedonics. So these things, lived and spoken, are very important. What we see through science is when there is the passing of the torch, the intergenerational transmission of spiritual life, the child is 80% protected against recurrent depression, going through the window of risk. And when the Torch has passed three generations, the child is 90% protected because it's in the air and water of the relational life of the family. How we speak, how we see yellow doors, how we know Covid came and shut down everything. And I didn't get the prom, and I didn't get. Students will raise their hands here at Columbia and say, are we ruined? And the answer is no, because you got the ultimate education. Life is full of flux, dynamism and what was real. The love of your family was real. The relationship with Source, your higher power was real. The ability to know that when the things in the outer world crumble, we don't fall through an existential hole. We are firmly rooted in quest. We are in deep relationship to Source, to God. That is lived. I'm sure you live it having heard what you said. And I think the tears are sacred. Tears say, yes, this is true, this is holy. This is of ultimate significance. So I think tears are great. And sometimes my students call me the professor who cries.

Nice. My kind of professor.

Amen.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Love to you both and everybody.

Jessica, what a beautiful question and what a beautiful frame and embodiment of the ideals and the aspirations. So good to see you.

Thank you.

Love to you and your kids and family. Ariana, I'm not sure if we can see you, but that would be wonderful if we Could. There we go.

You know what? If I might. I want to add one more story. Can I add a story real quick to the.

This is your show, Lisa. Let's go.

It's in response to that question. I want to give it a narrative. And it goes like this. My mother was a profoundly spiritually expressive person. She'd watch a sunset and cry and say, thank you, God. Thank you, God, for the beauty of the sunset. My dad was a skeptical academic and an artist who would sit out on the back porch and read plays. And yet it was my dad. This is about transparency, walking the walk and talking the walk. The very night his mother died, his own mother died. He was in his 40s. We all went to bed and I got up, as I always did at 4am I came downstairs, but there was my dad. And my dad was a big, healthy guy, played basketball in college, and he was in a little ball. So I sat. I was 9 years old by my dad. And he said, you know, Grandma was in my dream last night. And Grandma used to wear beautiful clothes and jewelry, but in this dream, she was in a very everyday plain gray suit that I often saw her in. And there Grandma and I were walking, and he's sort of figuring this out. Open, totally open, walking down Grand Avenue where we'd walked so many times before, side by side. And I take it to me, and he kind of looks at me, figuring it out that Grandma had always been my mother and she will always walk with me. She'll continue to walk with me as my mother. It was so raw, it was so open, it was so generous. And when I think of my dad, it's to that depth that I go. I mean, he never asked, you know, did you win the race? What was your grade? Never. But that's what we shared. So what does that say? Say, ancestors walk with us. I've done studies in China and Mexico. Everybody knows ancestors walk with us. But I know it's true, because when I was nine, my father shared that experience. When we say, we talk about it here, we give language and form and access to the awakened reality, and we deepen our bond into very profound. That is my father and my relationship, an awakened connection.

Beautiful. Thank you again for sharing. Ariana.

Oops.

Let's get you off mute.

Are you able to hear me? Okay, this is so interesting. Like, what's happening with me right now when you. Thank you so much, by the way.

It's my joy. It's my joy.

Thank you for bringing an experience to all of us, like just bringing Us there and having. I felt so connected in that you brought the whole spiritualness out of me when you were. You're speaking and it was so powerful and it's so interesting. What's happening right now is like I have all these parts of me right now that are like trying to like cut that off, you know, like one's like, you're gonna make a fool of yourself or you're not gonna be able to say it or it's not gonna come out. And so there's like this, this whole team of parts that are trying to protect me and not. Not talk. Talk with you. And with that being said, I'm curious because I have found the model of internal family systems to be just a beautiful model to be able to get that higher self in me and to calm those parts down and just be like, we're all okay. It's the lens that I see the world through. I've done ultrasound diagnostic, ultrasound for about 25 years. And so I have to recreate an image of the organ in their body before I see it. And so it's on a two dimensional screen, but I, in my mind, I create the organ. And so I think parts work is an extension of that. I'm able to see the parts of other people and also myself. And so it's sort of like this extension. And so my lens, it feels very true to me. And because of that truth, it gives me the courage to talk about it. And I also have a part that doesn't want to be polarizing and respect other people's lenses of the world. And so I have a, you know, there is that battle between speaking my truth and then also not and being respectful for other people's lenses of the world. And that, that seems to be where. I think where my biggest obstacle is, is, is wanting everybody to be their own, accepted for who they are as a. As a whole. And who they are is beautiful. And it's like we're, it's like we're all like. I see myself as in everybody else, as like, we have this conductor, we are the conductor, which is our higher self. And then we have these parts of us which are the orchestra and the other parts of the orchestra. And every single part of us has this beautiful tune. And then there's a higher source beyond that that's giving the information to that or that conductor. That's our orchestra. And every single part of us is that beautiful that we all have that beautiful note, their horn and the trumpet and the violin. And all of those are all part of us. And they all have a beautiful note and the high notes. And sometimes I think we get too stuck on. We want the high notes all the time to be positive and all this. And it's like, it's all a beautiful song when you have the low notes that, you know, what, how would it, how would the melody be if we don't have the low notes, the richness that comes with it. It's all like a beautiful, beautiful song.

And as I resonate with what you're saying, it's my experience that when we are authentic, when we speak our truth, as you are so generously open handedly sharing your truth, we give permission to others to do the same, whatever their truth may be, and it may be quite different from our own or told in a quite different way. They are free. We look at each other with love. I don't care what you say. I love you and I want to know you.

Thank you so much. Yes. And yeah. And I think I want everyone, I mean, I just want to like. And another thing about the music, like our music, our story, our life is our own song. It's our own music with the richness and the depth and all that stuff. And so often people want to grab onto one note. They just want to hold on to one note and nothing to change. And it's like, you can't, you can't. We have like, that's our music, you know, you can't hold on to the high note. Like, what would it be like, what would the song be like if we only heard one note of it?

Monotone. It'd be monotone.

Right, Right, right.

Beautiful. It's a song because it varies. Yes.

Yeah.

Sacredness. Even when things hurt, even when we feel horrible, even when something really awful is in our path, we're still loved and held. We are still in a sacred state of being. It doesn't need to be happy all the time to be in a sacred state of being. Right.

And through that lens I'm able to be spiritual. And I think for me, I've had religion in my background and that was probably the most harmful as far as me and my spirituality. It was only until I experienced spirituality in nature and awe, like being in awe, like all my, all of my senses experiencing something in the moment, you.

Know, science finding that mirrors your experience. May I share this? When we are in a deep, spiritually connected state, as you're describing, we give off a wavelength called high amplitude alpha. It's a unitive wavelength and it's the very Same wavelength, by a different name. Schumann's resonance of all life, nature all the way around the earth. The earth's crest up one mile, vibrates at a core wavelength of Schumann's resonance, the same wavelength as the spiritually engaged brain, Alpha. Which means that when we are in a deep state of authentic connection, we are. That felt oneness with all nature, with all life, is mirrored by the sameness of the measurement of its wavelength, which I interpret to mean we rejoins the sacred consciousness field that is the Garden of Eden when we join nature all around us in its deep presence and being at that unitive level of sacred consciousness. And all everyone else, the animals, the trees, everyone else is engaged in alpha. Schumann's resonance. It's we who at times step outside, but can come back, as you say. And it turns out that a 20 minute walk in the forest, 20 minutes in nature, entrains the brain in the same way as prayer. We awaken to the deep oneness. I'm Jewish, and the most holy prayer for Jews is Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Kad Hero Israel. The Lord is our God. The Lord is one. That has traditionally been interpreted as monotheism, but the Lord is one all life, one sacred oneness. So when we return to nature and we really return, as in Eden, we are part of the sacred oneness and we measure it as Alpha.

It reminds me when you said that, it's like you're a masterpiece. You're a piece of the master.

Beautiful. Yes, yes, yes.

Coming up right now for me is, you know, the Alpha.

Ariana, I'm going to. I'm going to respectfully, just want to make sure we're attuned to the time.

Yeah, this is a question. It was just kind of like seeing how this would flow. You're speaking of Alpha, but we live in such a beta, high beta world with the kids are on the. The. There's so much stimulus. And so how. How do you bring the tool of spirituality into this high beta world where people are losing sight of creativity, where they are losing sight of nature, where they are losing sight of that.

How do you.

What are your offerings? The tools might, you know, I'll let that. That's my question. Thank you.

In a quiet, peaceful, long silence in nature, we start to move. Our inner life starts to move, and we roam. And if you're talking about kids, you know, I invite you to think about when you were 15, 16, waiting for the bus or waiting to be picked up. At first it might Be is he going to call me tonight and did I get a B or an A? And then sitting there and after all that settles down, starting to look at the grass and the sun, maybe having a unit of experience, a realization, a breakthrough, maybe making a prayer or meditation or a sense of transcendent experience, a memory. Long silences are the formation of the capacity to be in dialogue with space spirit. Long silences are when our brain forms in adolescence to be able to be an open system in dialogue with source, with the sacred consciousness. So we looked at three generations in a study 40 year study, three generations. In the first generation, the grandparents, we saw the spiritually engaged brain vibrates at the level of alpha, the same wavelength as life itself, the kingdom. In the next generation, the parents generation, we saw the spiritually engaged brain once again vibrates at alpha. It is part of the unit of consciousness field Schumann's resonance. Then we looked at the teenagers mean age 16. And there was no alpha. Do I think that's social media? No, I think it's the distraction of cutting to little bits. These moments that are moments of reflection journey inner formation of our awakened brain. How do we restore that? By giving young people long, peaceful, uninterrupted quiet in nature. Do I think that social media is bad? Not inherently, no. Because you can build spiritual community through these platforms. It's all what we put on the phone. What are we putting on the phone? Here's something nourishing normatively. We put the public square and it's a public square minus the spiritual core, which is a radically transactional public square versus one based on I thou transformational. So transactional means what do I look like and how do I measure up and how many people follow me and am I well resourced or not? Well, this is all the world of measurement. It's transactional, it treats us like commodities. But this is a transformational community. This is an ivow community. So it's all what we put on our phones.

Beautiful, Arianna, thank you so much. And thank you for having the courage to share your beautiful perspective and music and music of life. And Lisa, thank you so much for your generosity of spirit and just your presence and hard work work and passionate commitment to your ideals over the last X decades. Would you be open to sending us off with Even just a 32nd or whatever breath connection to stillness and reflection? I know you have important work to do in just about 10 minutes, but if you can give us one more breath, we would be blessed.

May I use my own words, knowing.

That you'll I would. I would very much appreciate however, you. You would feel inspired to guide us.

Translation in your own. In your own inner life. Okay.

Yes.

Thank you God for the extraordinary gift of coming together and sharing in this spiritual community. Please maybe remain emanations of your love, walking alongside one another. And as we go forth, may your love work through us to reawaken your world world to your great infinite presence in love. Amen.

Amen. Bless you and bless the families you're now going to go serve.

Thank you for this extraordinary experience of joining your community. You make the world more full of awakened love.

We love you. We appreciate you. There you go. I have hope for humanity. What a professor at Columbia University can bring, that integration of science and spirituality and practical wisdom with so much love. Nothing I can add to that other than bless you all for being here. Thank you all who shared today. My brain and heart are also expressed floating in the comments that I see arising now. Nat, if you would be available to help us facilitate connection. For those of you who would like to stay, please do. If you will be leaving us now, look forward to seeing you. Tomorrow will be day one at 101 and I look forward to seeing you then. Until then, bless you.

Hey hero. We hope you enjoyed this heroic chat. To learn more about this series as well as how you can join Brian's daily live coaching sessions at 1:01pm Central Time. Plus get access to a ton more to help you move from theory to practice to mastery and express the best, most heroic version of yourself. Head to Heroic us today and if you liked this episode, please leave a positive review and hit the subscribe button on your platform of choice. Have a fantastic day.