The Awakened Brain: A Brief Review and Recommendation

 

By Alison Towle Moore

 

From the time I was young I have been fascinated with how animals navigate – some over vast stretches of sky or ocean, some in fast-moving schools of fish or flocks of birds. And I have wondered about and worked to tune into my own guidance system. In a world changing as quickly as ours, maps are outdated as soon as they are made. Our old plans may not make sense anymore. So how do we move skillfully through the world? And how do we square science with the deeper knowing that many of us rely upon?

 

I recently read Lisa Miller, PhD’s book The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life. Published in 2021, Miller writes about research (hers and colleagues) in the fields of psychology and neuroscience. Her findings show that humans are universally equipped for spirituality, meaning a sense of connection to the whole, of the sacred, of a deeper knowing beyond what we see (spiritual awareness is another term she uses).

 

We can engage with our own spirituality in ways that awaken our perception, which makes us more creative, collaborative, ethical and innovative. Miller considers spirituality not as a cultural or institutional artifact, but as a way of being in the world (53).

 

She witnessed patients who were able to heal due to their ability to reframe their inner narrative, to find meaning and a sense of not being alone in their struggles (the sense of a loved one who had died still being with them in spirit, for example). These strong correlations she had seen in patients between spirituality and mental health were still largely unknown in her scientific literature.

 

“Psychology held what seemed too limited a view on healing: that we scan the world and knit together meaning; that we feel better when we are able to choose to make meaning; that we feel better when we impose a more positive meaning on the world and more that we shift toward health when somehow, and usually through a struggle, a bigger meaning is revealed to us. Synchronicity seemed to be one way, even in darkness and suffering, for a new sense of the world to show up or shine through (92).” She set out to test the idea that synchronicity is a sign that inner and outer are aligning.

Part of our awakening is learning (or relearning) to validate our perceptions as real (93). She asks: “What if the brain didn’t create thoughts so much as receive them? What if our brains were less like generators and more like antennae or docking stations for larger consciousness? What if emotions direct us into the world as it really is (102)?” She shares understanding of the nature of reality via quantum physics, of an implicate order or unified consciousness.

And she observes that people in deepened spiritual states or meditation or people holding hands through pain give off the same energetic wavelength as the earth’s electromagnetic field itself - high amplitude alpha waves. It is “…the wavelength of the oneness of all life… When we awaken, we resonate at the same frequency of all of nature on Earth (her emphasis, 216).”

 

“What I was discovering about synchronicity suggested something important about healing: that feeling better isn’t just a matter of creating new thoughts, of replacing unhappy ones with happier ones- it’s also about noticing and aligning ourselves with whatever life is showing us. 

 

This doesn’t mean we get crisp or obvious answers to a priori questions. Life isn’t a mail-order catalog. We don’t send our attention out, and then get the goods or the answer we ordered. Spiritual awareness is a stance, not a transaction. There’s no guarantee that we’re going to get what we want, or what we thought we wanted. When we become spiritually aware – through synchronicity, for example – it is a sign that despite the uncertainty, we are aligned with the force of life (102, 103, my italics).

 

What she suggests is that we become more adept at seeing a wider view of possibilities and of following our own inner guidance. We may not have up-to-date maps, but we have a better ability to navigate the path we are traveling.

 

I highly recommend reading the book. This brief review only scratches the surface of her offering. It is accessible and has a number of tools in it for practitioners to use in helping clients access their own spirituality – for awakened brains, awakened connections and awakened hearts. Listen to her interview on The Rich Roll Podcast 1/10/2022 for more.

 

All references are from The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life by Lisa Miller, PhD.  Random House, New York 2021.