The Science of Spirituality … Who Knew?

A lovely woman in the morning meditation group drew to my attention yesterday to the work of Dr Lisa Miller, who wrote The Awakened Brain.  A little digging took me to the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Columbia University, where they study the science of spirituality. 

The science of spirituality… how refreshing!  When I was in graduate school, the dominant culture in the Psychology Department was that science and spirituality were mutually exclusive.  If something could not be measured, it didn’t exist or, at least, it didn’t exist as a legitimate subject of study.  What a delight to discover that, in another place, Lisa Millar was devoting her life to integrating the deep core of spirituality to our understanding of human experience!

You can find out more about the work at the Institute website.

I have taken the liberty of copying a table I found there.  It shows the difference between life without a spiritual core and life with a spiritual core.  This seems to align nicely with the work of Richard Rohr – the False Self and the True Self that he speaks of in his book, “The Immortal Diamond”, and the spiritual development from the first half of life to the second half of life that he writes about in “Falling Upward.”  

If you want to learn more about Richard Rohr, look for the Centre for Action and Contemplation.  Here is the website link for the daily meditations

A Spiritual core shapes development, meaning, purpose, calling and connection

With spiritual core (True Self)Without spiritual core (False Self)
Self isInherent WorthAbilities Based
IdentityMeaning & PurposeAquiring Success
WorkCalling & ContributionTalents & Gains
RelationshipsSacred, Share Love & GrowPleasing, Meet Needs
PathAlways ConnectedUltimately Alone
Place in the worldPurposeful WorldRandom World
Existential RealityLove, Life-givingUnknown
Good eventsBlessingsDeserved luck
Bad eventsOpportunities. LearningRandom. Failure
From https://spiritualitymindbody.tc.columbia.edu/our-work/

What we reflected on the weeks ending April 8, 2022

#allinthistogether.

WE ARE SAFE because we are connected, not because we are worthy.

WE ARE ONE, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist and forever will recreate each other. Teillard de Chardin

IN THE MIDST OF CRISES, a solidarity guided by faith enables us to translate the love of God in our globalized culture, not by building towers or walls that divide, but then collapse, but by interweaving communities and sustaining processes of growth that are truly human and solid. And to do this, solidarity helps. . . . Richard Rohr

I SWIM with others.
Some are dolphins, some are sharks.
Which is which depends on the temperature of the water
or the weather. Something: it’s not clear.
Robin Knight – Shellfish

IN LOVING SOLIDARITY, we each bear what is ours to carry, the unjust weight of crucifixion, in expectant hope for God’s transformation. Richard Rohr

#itmatters

NO MATTER HOW old you are, you can always find things to do that matter.

MAY YOU REALIZE that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the facade of your life there is something beautiful, good, and eternal happening. John O’Donohue – For Solitude

#meditation

JOY IS the state that arises when we allow ourselves to experience everything as it unfolds, without judgement. It arises when we are being – without condition.       Michael Brown – The Presence Process

May you have the passion to heal what has hurt you, and allow it to come closer and become one with you. John O’Donohue – For Old Age

#spring

ALL THE BURIED SEEDS crack open in the dark the instant they surrender to a process they can’t see.  … In nature, we are quietly given countless models of how to give ourselves over to what appears dark and hopeless, but which is ultimately an awakening that is beyond all imagining.  This moving through the dark into blossom is the threshold to God. Mark Nepo  – The Book of Awakening

What we reflected on the week ending March 26, 2022

#Proverbs

THE WORLD is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.  But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater. J.R. R. Tolkien

A FRIEND is someone who dances with you in the sunlight, and walks with you in the shadows.

Quotes

#hope TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places-and there are so many-where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.  And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. Howard Zin

#choice WHATEVER our age, a child still lives within us. We are innocent in ways we do not understand-and we find great contentment in having no need to know all and be all. Hope lives in the inner child that is aware and guileless.  Befriend this childlike part of yourself. Lean back into this- the most real part of yourself – and pray. Little things make us who we are:what we say to ourselves in the privacy of our own minds, what we believe about ourselves, and what we see as important. This little child within us is important. We are who we are because of our choices, and some of our smallest choices have the greatest influence.Listen to the child within, and you will be guided well in the choices you make. All men are made by the same Great Spirit Chief. Chief Joseph – Nez Perce – Cherokee Book of Days

#meditation THERE IS a gathering of energy at the core of us, a vitality which is drained by the struggle to fit in. Living without vitality may even become normalized, until such time as we choose to leave, or are cast out of, a too-small circle of belonging. Only then do we begin to explore the inner regions of solitude, learning our own dimensionality. Making this encounter with that loneliness and longing is what gives us the eyes to recognize those companions and quests which, rather than demanding our smallness, call us into growth. Toko-pa Turner  – Belonging

#maryoliver TODAY I’m flying low and I’m not saying a word. I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.   Mary Oliver

#ruleoflife TO LIVE in God as a fish in water, not always awake but totally dependent for survival. To aspire to a shift in consciousness, even a tiny one. To know what I think, when I am thinking. To know what I am feeling . To not resist what I’m feeling, but to acknowledge and even embrace these feelings. To take actions through deliberate choice. To be present to the moment and to those who witness the moment. To sense my dependence in each of these moments and trust that I’m deeply loved and totally taken care of. To surrender and fall backward into the abyss of the underlying Soul of the Universe. And to know that it’s a gift – all gift. And to be grateful! This is my practice. To be patient and compassionate with my dullness,  my ignorance, my willfulness, my sloth, my self-indulgence. And to understand and accept that this is also my practice. To live in God as fish live in water, neither clinging nor resisting. To come to consciousness, to be awake, to be aware, to be present to the present moment. To live in now – not yesterday; not tomorrow. Moving with the flow.  Breathing in.  Breathing out. Aware of and focused only on the sacred now. This is my practice. Herb K – Practicing the Here and Now

#uncertainty NOTHING ever remains quite the same – but a time comes when we have to follow new guidelines and think new thoughts and do new things.  It does not take a superhuman, but it does take a believer – a worker with ears to hear and eyes to see – not just the physical but the spiritual.  We cannot take for granted that any other human can have accurate perception and spell things out for us.  The miracles are not all in other heads, other hands, other methods.  There must be a burst of inner fire that sparks a miracle, that opens a door to a greater life, a greater calm.  We are never so blind as when we close ourselves off by our critical views, our hardened hearts, our failure to perceive the greatness of gentle things.  O friend, look away from lack and need and pain.  Alter your vision and it will alter life. Cherokee Book of Days