When Mental Health Intersects with Spirituality with Dr. Lisa Miller

Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wealth. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is doctor Lisa Miller, a professor and founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University. She's a leading national expert in

spirituality health and thriving in development. Doctor Miller has also authored one hundred peer review articles on spirituality and mental health in youth and family. She is a grant funded clinical scientist, Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and former President of the APA Society of Psychology and Spirituality. Today, Lisa and Eric discuss her book, The Awakened Brain.

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

spirituality and depression in this podcast, right, But that's part of what entrenched in depression feels like for me. I make the conscious effort to change the channel, but there's nothing coming through at least it feels like on channel. So I don't think you're talking about that we do something and immediately feel a particular thing. I think you're talking more about a conscious effort to at least try and look in that direction. Would that be a way to say it?

this experience of major depression. And what I would say is that it is a journey, right, a gentle journey with ourselves through which we can cultivate two forms of perception, and the one that will get us up and out in time is a deep relationship with the universe, who I call God, the higher power. Will you use your word Jesus Hashamalah. But it is the de force in us, through us, and around us. And yes, medication can be very good, and yes treatment as usual can be very helpful,

but alone it is insufficient. With help. The upside the porthole to the landscape of the good wolves, and that is the expansive capacity what I call awakened awareness. And it turns out through the lens of science, this porthole for expansive awareness where we feel the loving sense, the unity. The next guy who comes around the corner, well, he's God's child too. We're here to help him and him

and her. That capacity is cultivated, and it is cultivated although it is our birthright as a form of our awakened brain.

currently doing. So if you have the headspace for it, I'd love if you could just pause for a second and ask yourself, what's one thing I could do today or tonight to feed my good wolf. Whatever your thing is. A really useful strategy can be having something external, a prompt or a friend, or a tool that regularly nudges

you back towards awareness and intentionality. For the past year, I've been sending little good Wolf reminders to some of my friends and community members, just quick, little SMS messages two times per week that give them a little bit of wisdom and remind them to pause for a second and come off autopilot. If you want, I can send them to you too. I do it totally for free, and people seem to really love them. Just drop your information at oneufeed dot net slash SMS and I can

send them to you. It's totally free, and if you end up not liking the little reminders, you can easily opt out. That's one you feed dot net slash SMA. And now back to the episode. So let's talk about the word spirituality. It's used throughout your book. You talk about there being a biological basis for spirituality. You say that there's nothing as protective against depression as spirituality. So

what does that term mean to you? Because it's one of those words that is similar to love in that it means a thousand different things to a thousand different people. So what are we talking about here?

wait a minute. You know, every single one of us, through the lens of science, is a naturally spiritual being, just as we're physical and hot edded and emotional beings. We can look through the lens of a twin study and say, yes, twins rays together, twins prays depart. How much of spirituality is inborn versus environmentally formed? And it

turns out that spirituality is our birthright, hardwired. It is one third and eight two thirds environmentally formed, which means that every single one of us on earth is a naturally spiritual being. There's a natural spirituality and more specifically, a capacity to be in a sustained relationship with the universe. My word is God, a higher power. But this loving force that's in us, through us and among us in AA. When we say we're handing it over, we're not handing

it over to mister nobody. We're handing it over and it is hot by this buoyant loving force that is our birthright. And if we support it it is two thirds environmentally cultivated, nourished, then we have a strong spiritual war. That is the inborn awaken religion. I didn't answer you. Religion is environmentally transmitted. Yeah, So whether I'm Hindu, Catholic, Christian, Wilslim, whatever, I am that religious cultivation of the spiritual, the religious embrace,

the prayers, meditations, text community. Religion is a gift of our parents and grandparents are our unity. You might choose a religion and immerse it's environmentally transmitted. They are two different things, although they go hand in hand. Religion and spirituality. For about two thirds of people in the United States, they say I'm spiritually it right right.

I feel like I have to talk a lot about what I mean by it, and my view of spirituality might be slightly different than what you're describing, and so I'm just, in the spirit of dialogue, like to throw it out there and kind of kind of see I want to hear your view. Yeah, yeah, I mean my view is spirituality is about being connected to things that deeply matter, right, That for me is what it means to me. Now, maybe I'll tell a little story here

that I think will be interesting. I love I got sober in nineteen ninety four from heroin addiction, and I got sober in Columbus, Ohio in nineteen ninety four in a twelve step program and higher Power and God meant God. It meant sort of the Christian God. It meant an interventionist God that would come in and help you get sober, right, And I did everything I could to believe that, and I got sober, But ultimately some bad things happened in my life and it sort of fell apart for me, right.

And part of the thing that caused it to fall apart for me was I would looking at people that I loved who were dying, and they were people who came to AA, and they seemed to be doing the same things I was doing. They were going to meetings, they were calling their sponsor, they were praying, like they were making as good an effort as I thought, and they died, and it became very hard for me to believe that a higher power out there was choosing me

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

the same program. Right and I went, I have to find a spiritual path for me if I'm going to actually work the steps going to be in this program. I got to figure out what this means to me

that I can actually really believe, right. And where I landed was I believed that if I lived my life according to certain principles, right, principles of kindness and love and generosity and not being so self centered and being honest and all these things, if I lived that way, didn't mean that good things would happen to me, right. It wasn't like I was doing the right thing in the universe was going to dole out to me the

right goods, right. But I felt that I could both a stay sober as long as I did that, and b handle whatever life brought my way. So my spirituality in some ways felt colder, right, because it didn't feel like there was a force out there that was particularly loving or not loving. Now, from there, I went into Zen Buddhism, and I landed in a place where feeling the deep unity of everything, experiencing that and seeing like, oh, this is all actually really connected, you know, sort of

broaden that spirituality out. But that's kind of where I landed, and so when I hear things about a loving force, I sometimes get hung up, right because I look at that and I go, but it doesn't seem that that force loves things equally. Right, There are lots of spiritual people in Gaza right now who are praying their ass off and are dying. And so that's just my sort of perspective. So talk to me about kind of what you're hearing in what I'm saying in comparison to your

experience and what the science would tell us. That was a long diatribe. By the way, apologize listeners that this actually is Lisa's interview.

never alone. And our awakened brain, our inborn, awakened brain is built that we can engage if we choose, we say yes and build it if we say yes, whether it's through prayer or twelve Step or meditation or service to deepen our awareness, strengthen the muscle to see that we've loved and help and guided. You're loving God, What do you ask of me? Now? I just did not get what I wanted. I just lost the person I love. The fact that there's a loving God doesn't mean we

get our deliverables. It doesn't mean that we call the shots. Do you know? I mean there's a movement out there that I just think is so tragic called manifestation. Yes, it's somehow it's so called spiritual to send out what you want at the ego level right and think that. No, that's not spirituality to me. It is a dialogue with a loving We don't practice eric to share this a little bit, we do practice right here.

your red door. You grab the handle, but it's stuck, and you can't believe it stuck because A plus B. Let's see you did everything right. You kick the door. Maybe you're angry, it doesn't seem fair in time, you might be depressed, but only you have no choice. It's stuck. Has it stuck? You turn? You turn fifty eighty one hundred and forty degrees in over there over there is a wide open yellow door. You might have said yellow doors don't exist. You don't never heard of yellow doors.

A wide open yellow door. Someone who made you feel alive, someone who touched your heart in a way that you've never felt before, a job where you're seen beyond what you've known in yourself. That yellow door was not what you had wanted. It was better than what you've wanted and better for you. So as you sit back now and there's that stuckbred door in the hairpin turn and the wide open yellow door, how really are the most

important things in our lives? Form? Is it narrowly through planning and strategy, or is there a time where there are opportunities bigger and beyond what we knew were possible? Where we were to become something that we didn't even know existed. Because manifestation is very small. That's a small way to live. That's the red door. I want that red door, and if I can't do it with my hands, I'm going to send it out with my mind and consciousness.

But that's appetite, that ambition, that's only based on your appetite today back historically, what your parents said, you wanted, what you thought you wanted. The yellow doors, the guided yellow door has information that we have yet to discover. That is a dialogue with a living universe that is an open system, a way of being where we're connected to the great sacred presence in us, through us and

among us, the unit of reality. So what I think is that we don't get our red doors, shakee goodness. We don't get our red doors because our lives are actually an adventure and sometimes it's hurts, and sometimes we lose people we love, and sometimes we're betrayed, and sometimes it hurts m we can't even believe it. But that is the meat and that is the grist for the mill of walking through yellow doors. And they are divine.

now the guy's immeasurably rich. And the neighbor comes over. He's like, oh my god, you're so fortunate, you're so lucky. You know, we'll see, right, you know, who knows. And then his son is out riding one of the new horses, throws gets his leg broken, and the neighbor again, who just is not getting any wiser, right, we're all getting it at this point. The neighbor is not yet goes, oh, it's so terrible, I'm so sorry about your son. And the armor. We know what he's going to say, all right,

we'll see. And then a few weeks later, the army comes through and conscripts every able bodied young man and his son isn't taken. And right, this story goes on, and it kind of goes on and on and on, right, and it just kind of goes on in that way, right, And so you know, to me, the yellow door thing, right, my biggest yellow door is I had a solar energy company that I poured my heart and soul into and I wanted and it failed. And out of the failure

of it is this podcast started. And I am a way better podcast host and far happier doing what I do in the world now than I ever would have been doing that. And I think we all have those sort of things in them. And term I'm going to use here is narrow superituality. Right, I'd be saying that we're being open, right, We're being open to what else might emerge, right, And to me, it's.

this great source. So when we realize this and pay attention to this, and I mean, like, you know, when I'm in traffic and I want to land on my horn, or when someone was just incredibly rude to me, and I have a choice to be rude back, or to think, wow, they must have had a really harsh day, or wow, have had a really harsh life, or wow, how could I be so loving that when someone's totally shitty to me, I'm loving back, right. That is knowing that we're emanations

of this loving conscious source. That's a choice, your beautiful two wolf story every minute, and it is a habit. We build this habit, but it also is a habit that dials into a seat of perception where we feel in our heart we just know in our being that we're part of this loving unit of reality of which you speak. That's our awakened brain, that's our birthright, that is our natural spirituality, And in every tradition it has a different name. Right. That is the upstream deep seat

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

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

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

They had faced right the losses. They were biologically driven, perhaps in some cases to depression or bipolar It was true of the suffering. And in a psychotherapy climate that didn't talk about spirituality, the patients were letting me know what they They'd knock at my door and whispered, can I see you? And see you? Meant leave the practice office, walk down the linoleum hallway, go into the kitchen, into the pantry and sitting by the pots and pans, total pain, Miller,

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

actually yearning for more. And the more wasn't to be fancier, or more rich or have more something. The more was the more of our deep being, of connection to this unit of loving reality of which were apart. The more of depression was, Hey, there is in you an ache because you've yet to arrive at the full expansiveness of where you are being called and pulled. That there was

an arc, you could say teleology, a thrust in depression. Basically, the ignition depression is the ignition to rev the engine and to become more to in ourselves feel more. So I saw that and I spent the next twenty five years of my life developing a science MRI studies, genotyping studies, epidemiological studies, so that the mental health field could get a picture of the deep relationship between spiritual emergents and depression.

to take their life going through our epidemic suicide. So there was nothing in the clinical sciences for how like protective against the diseases of despair as a strong spiritual core. That was the first past. But you know, Eric, I thought back to the patients on the impatient unit, and I just knew that, yes, spirituality is healing, Yes spirituality is protective, but how do we build it in the

first place? And why was it that in the most scruciating hour people were saying, help me reach for the deep love that's in us. Helped me reach for the ultimate sense of being held. And it dawned on me that maybe it wasn't so easy, and it's not like the other spiritual people that don't get depressed, then there's unspiritual people who do get depressed. That was not the case.

That actually it was a deeper, richer story, and in time we were able to move from epidemiological studies to MRI studies and found that, hey, you know what, the very same people with a very strong spirituality today that even have a thick, strong, awakened brain today didn't get there easy. They were two hundred and fifty percent more likely to have suffered, to have had a major depression in the past ten years. Depression is the gateway of

spiritual awakening. We are hardwired so that our suffering brings us deeper, opens our heart more profoundly to be able to feel the loving presence in us to us again, my words God or higher power. But you can say the unit of loving universe, this capacity to know and feel what is real. We are built to see it and feel it because it's real. But we get there through suffering the bottom cracks. We can't believe how much it hurts. And as I said, Eric, I've been there.

I mean, is there any meaning in life and our people just inherently random? Is there's no moral compass building to the world. And if we really take seriously these times where we don't know, it's a tough pill. It is a tough pill. So what I want people to know is that depression is not only held in a medical model. Yes, there are times where piece needs to be fixed in our brain, but very often depression is a hunger to developmental depression and your soul, your natural

spiritual awareness, is hungering to engage and expand. So depression is not lost time or downtime or wasted time. It is the invitation to an awationing.

on being ill, right, they were the most ill. They kept coming back into impatient again and again. So what's the difference in someone there who's got an inkling in that direction and someone who's actually able to use a spiritual worldview to heal themselves or to protect themselves against mental illness?

This is a practice that when we are in terrible pain and want to turn to the universe, turn to God, turn to our higher power. This is a nice place in which to convey. I'm going to invite you to take five press clear out your inner space, in your inner chamber. I invite you to set before you a table. This is your table. And to your table you may invite anyone or deceased who truly has your best interest in mind, anyone living or deceased to truly has your

best interest in mind. And with them all sitting there, ask them if they love you, so that I love you. And now you may invite your higher self, part of you that is so much more than anything you may have or not have, anything you may have done or not done, your true eternal higher thoughts, and ask you if you love me. And now finally you may invite your higher power. Whatever your word, however you know your

higher power than to ask as they love you. And now, with all of those people sitting there right now, what do they need to let you know? What do they need to share? What do they need to share with you? More? And when you're ready, I impacked you pack. This is your counsel and they are always there for you. Who shows up may change, ending on where we are in our road and which you pass. What is honor.

I saw Jesus. People see it different, but whatever they see is an image of some deep, loving presence that is real. That is a unitive and there for all of us, one presence for all of us, and then seven billion different images.

do hand it. So this is how we're build, and we're built from day one because this is our birthright. It should naturally be neurocircuits. There is a docking station in the brain, body, mind, and soul. So there are certain circuits in the brain that sustain this awareness. And I don't mean to apply biological reductionism again, I'm not

seeing the brain makes this up. I'm saying that we are connecting with something real and its landing path is the brain, the docking station, and there are So we invited people together the Spirituality, Mind Body Institute at my institute at Columbia and our colleagues at Yale Medical School. We said come on into our MRI web, and effectively, if we invited them to host council as you and I are just did here now herelessers, which is to say, tell us the time, were you in a deep transcendent

relationship as we just work relational, spiritual? And what we found was that about you know well, was what the national average might predict. About two thirds of people were in a transcendent relationship like holding council as told within their faith tradition. In the third chair, they sakh or Jesus, or they saw their ancestors and knew their ancestors walked

with them. Those about two thirds of people, and about a third of people said I saw light on the water, I saw forest, I saw infinity, I saw Mount Rainier and chair of three they were spiritual but not religious. And whether or not someone was religious or and spiritual or spiritual and not religious, and whether or not their religion happened to be that they were Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Christian, the same neurocircuits ran, there is one awakened brain, and

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

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

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

eight years over time showed a stronger awakened brain. There was a thicker cortex across regions of the awakened brain, which are regions of perception and reflection and orientation that prive opportunius occipital, which means that sustains spiritual life actually builds are deep and deep into our awareness. As you are just sharing for your meditation practice and for your journey, it becomes a go to place in you north.

just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop and be present, can't it. If you want to keep this momentum going that you built with this little exercise, i'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They are a nice little nudge to stop and be present in your life, and they're a helpful way to not get

lost in the busyness and forget what is important. You can join at oneufeed dot net slash sms and if you don't like them, you can get off a list really easily. So far, there are over one and seventy two others from the one you feed community on the list, and we'd love to welcome you as well. So head on over to oneufeed dot net slash sms and let's feed our good wolves together. So people who are nourishing

this part of themselves are seeing consistent changes in the brain. Yes, that look similar, regardless of exactly what the flavor of this thing.

against recurrence of depression. We are neuro protected through sustaining our spiritual life against recurrence of depression. We still have hard times. There can still be moments of sorrow and sadness. But the deep downward spiral to major depression is less like why because we develop a spiritual response to suffering. I just got fired, my husband just left me, I just lost my money. That hurts, and that hurts like hell. Right, But I don't necessarily need to say I am such

a loser. The depressigen in Howard spiral, it always happens to me, I am unworthy or turned to habits which are destructive. Instead, I make a choice love in my language, loving God, what do you ask of me? Now? In another language, I meditate and I feel that ah, I actually am part of all the love that is part of all creation. Or in another practice, I might go to the anepia, the sweat lodge and realize that there are messengers in prow and in some and in one another.

So we are love hell and never alone. And a spiritual response to trauma, post traumatic spiritual growth, despaired depression, developmental depression is our birthright. We are built to be more, not less, through these times of tremendous strength.

as portals to our aw way in life. Because the idea that in a secular world we make meaning, I feel like that we are always making meaning, right, But there are ways of making meaning that are more conducive to a open, loving perspective in the world. But you're suggesting that there is actually an external meaning to us, which there's the inner skeptic in me that goes I don't know if I believe that's true, right, So talk to me about why you see it that way, or

are we basically talking about the same thing. We're just using slightly different words.

or do I really want to take this risk? And then we have intuition, our gut instinct, We have mystical awareness, and we have spontaneous direct knowing just now, and we had synchronicities far too unprobabilistic to have happened by chance. We see the deeper meaning in a synchronosity. So there are multiple ways of knowing, and these are all valid. They all yelled hard data, but we have way of emphasized empiricism and logic and just knowing. I just know

it in my gut surefire. I mean, have you ever known something in your gut and just it was right? I mean, you took it, you went with your gut, and that was bedrocked. Have you ever had that type of experience.

those things out. So yes, I do notice a difference now, but I don't think I could for a certainly a fair amount of time in my life, I don't think I could tell the difference.

there are yellow doors built for us. I don't think that we go out there in the world and are narrowly makers of our past. I think we are discovers of our journey. That's not fatalism. I don't mean fatalism. I mean there's a living, dynamic dialogue between us and the force of life. So the contemporary narrow view that I just can't emphasize enough of, so called manifesting, is literally getting on Amazon and ordering the life you want. And that is a much smaller life than the universe

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

of me? Now? Who do I need to become to be able to love radically enough to stay in this marriage, or love this child who hates me? Or you know, who do I need to become, and the endgame is not tit for tat and somehow faring equal like the Red Door story, that's achieving awareness. That's zero sum game, you know. But it's not a zero sum game. The awakened life is a life where it doesn't matter what you get back. It's all about your emergence and becoming.

person in the world. It's a complete sort of flip of the way the law of attraction has used the word intention, and it's a complete focus on who do I want to be? In general, and really in almost every situation we find ourselves in. Right, who do I want to be at dinner tonight with my children? Who do I want to be with my coworkers? Who do I want to be with my partner, who's the person that I want to be. And that's kind of what

intention is to me. I think it's fundamental to any sort of well lived life.

a brighter story. And I've been very interested in this idea because, over the course of six hundred episodes, right, one of the things I've been asking people all about is the relationship between thought and emotion. Thought cause emotion to emotions cause thought. And to me, it has become very clear that it's a bidirectional thing, right, that it's actually not one or the other. I can look in

my own life and see both. I can see times where my thoughts cause a certain emotion, and I can see times where there's just an emotional weather and all my thoughts get filtered through that. Right. It's like I wake up and before I even have a thought, there's a sort of mood system that's there.

change your thoughts, that's not the whole game. So say a little bit more about that, because I think all of us can look in our own lives and if we look at the clinical data, CBT has its effectiveness. There is a place for working with your thoughts in a skillful way, right, There's no doubt about that. But it's certainly not the whole story exactly. So what do we not understanding when we think that's the whole game.

awakened awareness and a chieting on us. What Alaria Mkulioff says from the Shamami tradition is that Western society has it upside down. We prioritize the head, so to speak, the thinking of the head, and then common you'er the head to direct heart. But traditionally Shamanic understanding is that you cultivate the heart as an instrument of knowing. The heart perceives what is true, the true North Star, and

then sends direction to the head to implement. So let's look at Western culture if we let the hand guide the heart. I want this? How am I going to get that? Why doesn't he like me? Those are the thoughts the head. How am I doing compared to her or him or them on social media? How am I doing compared to the Joneses? While those understandings and drivings of head, calculations of the head commandeer a heart that has craving, It has headativeness or envy, that has yearning

and dissatisfaction. That is a setup or misery. What if we flip it around as is hand in traditional shamanic culture, the heart what is true? What is really valuable? What is my path? What is the nature of our lives? Unit of love? The heart perceives the ultimate direction. What is God showing me now? What is the universe guiding me to see? Turn right here? I've always turned left? The universe says turn right. That is the knowing of the heart, and the head then discerves how might I

best serve my divine direction? How might I best love this person who's very difficult? The head implements that is an alignment, that is a spiritual past, that is a stance of quest, because we go after what's true from the direction of heart and we figure out how to do it with the head. I agree with Hilaria, and we have it backwards. The bottom line is that that formulation of the head guiding heart isn't awakened life. It's opening up to what is the universe asking of me? Now?

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

working very well that's driving everything. Right, when you talked about I want this and I want that, like, that's desire, right, and desire we tend to think of is coming from the heart, But it's a heart to me that has been co opted by you know, different types of desire, mimetic desire, which is I know what I want based on what you want and craving and fear. It's almost as if I mean, I agree that it's the cultivation

of the heart. And my experience has been when that heart gets going in a certain direction, the brain will follow it because that tends to be in my experience what it often does. It's trying to justify what the heart says.

So emotions are our friends. They're telling us information. And if we can look at these emotions, whether they feel awful or when they come from a place it feels like the first wolf, right or the second wolf? Where does it come from? This emotion of your two ways? You know you're very important terrible? I think no matter where it comes from, the emotion is revelatory. It is the best information we have onto how are we engage

in our inner being? To your point, and if what we're feeling is craving and surliness, it is helpful information that we might redirect and reposition our deep seat of intervening, turn the channel to a more expansive spiritual what I would call a waiting channel.

passing mood system. Right. I often call it the emotional flu like I don't quite know why I have this, in the same way I can't pinpoint who gave me the cold virus. I don't know where it came from, but it's here. I know the ways to take care of myself while it's here, so I'm going to do those things. But beyond that, I'm not going to attribute a ton of meaning to it, because when I do, I seem to spiral further down the hole sometimes. And so, you know, on one hand, the fact that we say

depression and emotion is revelatory. Yes, I think it can be, but it seems to me that there are times that I don't know what they're about, and I've found it better to not make a big fuss out of it and let it sort of pass. But that's to sort

of ignore its revelatory character. Now we could say that that's taking a broader perspective, right, a wider lens, a different lens on it, right, which is to say that, you know, as a human being, there are mood systems that come and go for you know, maybe it's something I ate that I didn't like, or any number of different things. I didn't sleep well enough three days last week.

But what do you think about that? Do you think that we should explore every emotion every time or is there a place to simply say, like, Okay, you know what, I'm going to do the things that I know help in this circumstance, and I'm going to leave it at that.

affected by this virus and I'm feeling depressed. That hue of depression is different than when I feel existential anxiety or when I feel a yearning to figure out what is the purpose in my life? So we have this huge word depression right right, how the Eskimos have many names for snow right, Our culture is a little tone deaf when it comes to depression, and we've yet to

have many names for the different hues of depression. And there are feelings of so called yes, use the same word depression that I'm feeling sort of out of sorts

and down and low because I have a virus. And then there's a very different feeling that deserves a different name, and I'll call it for the moment existential yearning or spiritual hunger, or feelings of worthlessness, not because I'm not cute enough and rich enough, but because somehow I've yet to emerge into a being that I feel called to be or that I'm born. And that is a developmental

depression that's on our side. It's repelling us into a quest and they steal different And I think you are attunement to knowing the difference between different hues as you are describing of emotion, different gutted stinks. I think we can draw a tune to wait a minute, what kind of so called depression is this? There's actually many different shape of feelings that come from different places and are propelling us to different places. You know, from a scientific

point of view. Even the people who came up with the DSM Diagnostic Manual on Depression themselves ran the study and said, you know what, in this so called category, there are actually many different subtypes and some have a lot to do with sort of the body feeling low, but others have to do with a sense of being

in self and purpose. So this big, huge term, this catch hall category, this basket that we call depression actually has tremendous heterogeneity, many different types and they are different. So I'm so glad you're opening this up because there are times where really what we need is medication and

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

wake up and it'll be different. But if I say I'm depressed. All of a sudden, I'm bringing a cascade of meaning into this thing, right, because that word is very weighted for me given my past. Right, you know, depression means there's something wrong. Depression means that something needs to be done. Depression means that could be headed towards bad territory. There's a lot of meaning there. Tired is a word that carries far less freight in my mind. Right,

It's just like, oh, you're tired, go to bed. Right. It's taken me till I was fifty years old to really notice how similar they are. And given the nature of how we sometimes we were talking about thought causing emotion or emotion causing thought. Emotion will cause thoughts, so the thoughts that come out of that can be very similar. It's because it's just a habitual response. Emotion feels like this, here come the thoughts, right. But at the minute that I sort of realize what the emotion is is a

different thing. I can then look at those thoughts and just go, oh, ignore them. Right, in the same way that when I'm sick, or even better examples of I don't sleep well the night before, I know that lots of things the next day are going to look lousy to me, and I don't seem to have the skill to like completely turn that off. So all I do is go, yeah, that's just let that all go today, don't even pay any attention to all that noise because

you're really tired, and tomorrow you'll feel differently, right. And I think you've used this sort of a tuning an instrument, right, which is I think what a lot of this is is this paying very close attention to our own experience. And that's one of the things I always loved about Buddhism was this idea of like, don't believe what I say because I said it, try it out, pay really

close attention in your own life. And that is a skill that I think is to use a phrase of yours that we're going to talk about in the post show conversation, that's a questing mindset, right. It's a mindset that says, let me be curious about what's happening here, and let me be willing to look at it from different ways.

sand in the morass. We say, wait a minute, there is a part of me that is real, and I call it the soul that looks down upon my inner life. It says look at that, or wow, that's kind of a nuance. Er oooth that one hurt, you know, but it's disidentified. There's a greasy space, there's a distance, and we have the natural authority to step back from the flow of our emotion, to sit in the throne, to be the chairman of the board and say, you know what, I have a choice in my relationship to the flow

of my inner life. I have a choice in how I want to relate to what's coming at me. And I even have a choice in what I call these things. The fact that the doctor calls the depression depression depressions doesn't mean I have to I can call that. Oh, that's kind of a viral foul mood. You know, I'm chilling, sick, a sore throat, and I feel like I have a viral fault. And this over here, No, this is an

existential yearning. I can feel a spiritual growth. Spiritual growth can feel when we expand like a half empty glass of spirituality. What is the hollowness? And me, Now, that's a real hollowness that is helping us. That's for us. That's not a disease that's pecking at us. That is a calling of growth, and that's for us. So those are very different feelings and I can name them existential yearning and awakening versus viral foul mood.

dot net slash sms. It's totally free, and once you're on there, I'll send you a couple text messages a week with little reminders and nudges. Here's what I recently shared to give you an idea of the type of stuff I send. Keep practicing even if it seems hopeless. Don't strive for perfection, aim for consistency, and no matter what, keep showing up for yourself. That was a great gem

from recent guests Light Watkins. And if you're on the fence about joining, remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe. If you want to get in, I'd love to have you there. Just go to oneufeed dot net slash sms. All right back to it. Well, that is a wonderful place for us to wrap up. You and I are going to continue in the post show conversation. You've got

another practice to let us through. And we've talked about achieving awareness and awakened awareness, and you talk about how integration is the key, right, how do we integrate these things? And you then also talk about something called a quest orientation, which is the questing brain is the way we integrate these two things. So we'll be discussing that a little

bit more in the post show conversation listeners. If you'd like access to the post show Conversation ad free episodes, a special episode I do each week called teaching Song and a poem and the good feeling that comes from supporting something that you value. Go to one ufeed dot net slash join and become part of our community. Oh I should mention too, we have monthly community meetings now and maybe doctor Miller will join us for one of those in the future. So thank you so much. This

has been a really enjoyable conversation. Thank you for your work and thank you for taking the time to share it with us.

To learn more, make a donation at any level and become a member of the one you Feed community, go to oneufeed dot net slash Join the One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.