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    Home / College Guide / The Science of a Spiritual Being
     Posted on Wednesday, September 23 @ 00:00:18 PDT
    College

    How do we live our lives in a way that allows our spiritual being, our inner being, to feel that we are living a life worth living? Today, more feel that the existence of a spiritual being is a fabrication made up by religious zealots to hold leverage over those who follow their teachings. A life where happiness is not measured by the growth of materialistic possessions, power, or fame, but a life that allows us to understand that there is more to life than the existence we are faced with. A life that allows the heart to grow through the magical touch of our hearts reaching out to all those living amongst us and far beyond the limits of imagination. Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meager life than the poor,” - thoughts expressed by Henry David Thoreau, a 19th-century poet, naturalist, philosopher, transcendentalist, and much more. Many see happiness as upgrading the kitchen in their home or moving into a home distancing them from others with less or little means to know what the next day will bring.

    As long as we are not brewed in those misfortunes, many feel their lives can be and are separate and free from those too destitute they have no desire to join. Some take it for granted that we are better than the needy and impoverished hovering around street corners with signs asking for our money. But the problem is not solved within our hearts nor for the victimized by giving or not giving from our pockets as life remains conflicted about living a caring life reflected as spiritual beings. The French Philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, offered his thoughts another way: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” For those who believe they are spiritual beings, could their unity transform the torment of others into miracles not of hope but of beautiful accomplishments for one another? Indeed, much has been done to lighten the burden of those needing our help. But the torment and problems remain for those desperate for help, and with those giving what they can, still unable to turn too many lives into miracles of a happy life. There are many challenging beliefs. Our soul is a state of unconditioned love and forgiveness, allowing those that believe and express it, the harmony of peace and joy residing within us, and the opportunity to establish our Spiritual Being is greater than the chemical bonds holding our physical being together.

    Just the notion of a Spiritual Being is anathema to many today. Hogwash with no scientific basis, but often believed by many who reject the teachings of science itself. When we try to explain the soul or our Spiritual Being in terms of science, it becomes inexplicable. It is like trying to explain love using science when love resides in our hearts without an instrument indicating how much love we are giving or how much we have to give, but there nevertheless. It is a dominating feeling felt by nearly all that guides us in our behaviors toward family and nonfamily members. We know it exists, yet the science for its existence is absent. Or is it? The advancements of today’s technology allow us to examine the human brain in ways never before thought possible. Researchers from the Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School and Medicine, and the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, Teachers College, Columbia University, were able to pinpoint areas in the brain found to be “personally relevant” when our brain processes spiritual experiences. Twenty-seven young adults, 12 women, 15 men, between the ages of 18 to 27 participated in the study. All had functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning their brains while they were experiencing spiritual feelings.

    The fMRIs revealed a neural “neurobiological home” for spirituality with a specific part of the brain activating when they believed they felt a connection with God or something greater than themselves. The parietal cortex is the area in the brain involved with sensation, perception, and self-awareness while processing our ability to focus. This area was frequently activated when they experienced a variety of what they considered spiritual experiences. Marc Potenza, Ph.D., M.D., Professor of Psychiatry and neuroscience at the Yale Child Study Center, said, “ Spiritual experiences are robust states that may have profound impacts on people ’ s lives. Understanding the neural bases of spiritual experiences may help us better understand their roles in resilience and recovery from mental health and addictive disorders.” The researchers believe the brain scans revealing spirituality had a universal, cognitive basis because their participants had different backgrounds in how and what they believed constituted religious or spiritual experiences. The researchers used individualized scripts pertinent to each participant’s specific religious or spiritual connection to God or higher power for accessing their beliefs about spiritual experiences.

    The researchers explained, “ Although studies have linked specific brain measures to aspects of spirituality, none have sought to directly examine spiritual experiences, particularly when using a broader, modern definition of spirituality that may be independent of religiousness.” By reading specific scripts that had meaningful spiritual or religious values to their participants, it allowed them to access and observe their unique neural activities that they were feeling and thinking. The beliefs of each of these 27 young adults had regarding their feeling to something greater than themselves appeared to cause the brain to have the same effect within their parietal cortex that contains the somatosensory cortex where touch sensations are processed. Each is located behind the frontal lobe and is believed to be important for attention and language. Whatever they felt was a religious or spiritual experience, it caused their brain to have personal neuronal activities within this same area but different from other neural activities associated with relaxation. The researchers wrote, “ We observed in the spiritual condition, as compared with the neutral-relaxing condition, reduced activity in the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL), a result that suggests the IPL may contribute importantly to perceptual processing and self-other representations during spiritual experiences.

    ” Thinking spiritually with empathy requires unique neural processes and pathways that allow us to escape the “me,” and replace them with “we,” to acquire a meaning for life some hope to attain. The lives of others and the way people are living their lives is of primary importance for those seeing the reality of life, knowing it could be far better not for themselves, but for all of humanity. The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg was well aware of why individual beliefs for the benefit of all mankind were so important. For her, she said the meaning of life was, “To make life a little better for people less fortunate than you, that’s what I think a meaningful life is.” “One lives not just for oneself but for one’s community.” Her parietal lobe neural pathways were well activated in the domain of spiritual unity for all of mankind. The researchers of this 2019 Yale and Columbia study concluded: “In conclusion, these results demonstrate neural mechanisms underlying spiritual experiences across diverse traditions and perspectives. Continuing to build our empirical understanding of how spiritual experiences are mediated by the brain and the future extension of similar studies to clinical populations could help facilitate the judicious integration of spirituality into treatment and prevention in areas of mental health conditions.

    ” Neural Correlates of Personalized Spiritual Experiences. Cerebral Cortex , May 2019 Although the study was able to identify the genesis for where thoughts of spirituality originate within the brain, it did not reveal the secrets behind those thoughts – why and how those thoughts change a persons life, making them feel their life is/was a life well-lived. In Luke 17:20-21, Jesus said: “What you seek is within you. The kingdom of heaven is within you.” In Dhammapada , Buddha said: “ To begin the journey in the Way…first, set yourself straight. You are your only master.” In Bhagavad Gita , Krishna said: “Those who seek oneness ceaselessly find the Lord dwelling in their own hearts.” In Tao Te Ching , Lao Tzu wrote: “The Way is empty, yet contains all. Words cannot describe it. Better that one should look for it within.” This is a transformation of oneself that comes silently and unseen, such as how leavened bread rises in silence to become more than what it was even through the calmness found within itself. The living organisms within the leavened bread grow uninterrupted in silence just as the growth of our spiritual souls g row toward one another when our kingdom of a spiritual soul is found within you.

    Remaining connected to our soul allows us to see the world not for ourselves, but for all those needing us in their lives. Empathy for one another generates hopefulness and happiness found in the hearts of all mankind. You feel your spiritual self, your soul offering the map of your future as you begin to trust the spiritual presence within you for the joy it can bring to all those seeking and needing our arms of compassion. It is this that elicits a spiritual experience, our purpose in life. As long as you are listening, you can trust there is a part of you that knows the way, where to take you along the journey, led down a path bearing peace to one another through the peace found within our hearts. Egoism is turned into altruism; materialism into spiritualism; blame into understanding; power into humbleness; pride into love; resentment into forgiveness, self-importance into we-importance, and me into we. These ACTIONS bring about what we wish our Spiritual Being to give us. Spirituality also gives us Free Will so that WE can create for ourselves what spirituality can do for us with the power to do when I am you, and you are me, found in the hearts of those who have spiritual enlightenment.

    A critical effort is having pride turn into love and not into exclusion. Some truly believe their belief is THE belief everyone should abide by, believing that their spiritual pathway is the only lane to spiritual enlightenment. The path to God or a higher deity or spiritual experiences allow you to see that you are the world, and the world is you, meaning your love will embrace more compassion just as weapons will embrace more killings. Without love, there is no compassion; without weapons, oh my God, what would the world be like? C.S. Lewis as a spiritual being, wrote : “ There are two kinds of love: we love wise and kind and beautiful people because we need them, but we love (or try to love) stupid and disagreeable people because they need us. The second kind is the more divine because that is how God loves us: not because we are lovable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but He delights to give.” Lewis, in his book, Mere Christianity , wrote: “There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardl y any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves.

    […] There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unco nscious of in ourselves.[…]The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility.” Evil thrives on confusing those unwilling to replace hate with compassion, unwilling to replace pride with acceptance, unwilling to replace blame with understanding, causing them to believe their actions are an affirmation of God ’ s will or spiritual experiences, justifying their pride to “lead” other people. We are told by over and over to treat others as we would have others treat us: “ A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” - John 13:34 The Golden Rule: “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.” – Matthew 7:12 For those who are unable to replace hatred with love and feel they are right and you are wrong, Confucius offered wisdom for the ages: “ Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” “ This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you.

    ” - Mahabharata Martin Luther King put it this way: “A world without love is a nightmare for all.” “ Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Confucianism seeks fair treatment of all by everyone: “ Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you.” - Analects 15:23 “ Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, and you will find that this is the shortest way to benevolence.” - Menucias VII.A.4 Perceptive advi ce leading to a life sought by many is bountiful, but just as young child ren are unable to understand concepts beyond their development al age , man y adults are unable to integrate their spiritua l being to the awakening that suffering is universally insufferable, needing everyone’s spiritual being to overcome this suffering. By helping these people, you are helping yourself; my spiritual being becomes a heaven on earth from our own making. This cannot be done through violence nor through pride nor through weapons nor through chaos. Each of these reactions must be quash ed and replaced with the eyes of compassion for all , by all .

    It is our Free W ill that allows pride and hatred of others to go on menacing the lives of so many or we can use it to dissolve the ghastly acts of man into oblivion. Free Will allows us to replace pride with love, not for a few, but for all of mankind. This is what the experiences of a spiritual being are a ble to understand. Without the “we” t hat we must have to survive life on earth, life can ne ver offer the promise of a life we have been un able to achieve despite our history of abuses and despite our ability to “think . ” In separate studies done by Duke, Dartmouth, and Yale Universities specific incidences about how folks used prayer in their everyday lives to help them through their difficulties were recorded: People who did not go to church at all remained in the hospital THREE times longer than people who attended church regularly. Heart patients who were without religious beliefs were 14 times MORE likely to die from the surgery. Senior citizens that did not or rarely went to church suffered from strokes TWICE the rate compared to those that went to church regularly. Smokers who regularly attended church had lower blood pressure, similar to nonsmokers who did not attend church.

    Religious people living in Israel had a 40% lower death rate from cancer and cardiovascular disease compared to non-religious people. Handbook of Religion and Health . February 2012 Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population. Southern Medical Journal 81. 1988 The Impact of Religion on Mens Blood Pressure. Journal of Religion and Health 28. 1989 Dr. Harold Koenig, Associate Professor of Medicine & Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University stated: People who are more religious tend to become depressed less often. And when they do become depressed, they recover more quickly from depression. That has consequences for their physical health and the quality of their lives. Maya Angelou, American poet, and memoirist, beautifully expressed her spiritual being for our commitment to one another when she wrote: ‘I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I’m praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I’m grateful that I’m heard.” My personal belief and love for God have been confirmed many times over and over again. During the course of my 72 years of life, I have encountered many difficult situations that could easily have resulted in physical or emotional scarring.

    But my steadfast belief in the glory and power of Our Lord has always carried me through each situation unscathed. There is no scientific proof for any of this except for what you feel in your heart and know from your experiences that God is there to help those who have faith in him. That faith is eternal because it completes me as a person knowing you are not alone as difficult as life can get. God has given me more guidance, more comfort, more trust for getting along with people of different persuasions. When we respect people, we can work together to build a better society; when we lack respect, everyone fails. This poem attempts to express the love and respect I have for Our Lord every day of my life. I can only be humbly grateful for the personal relationship I have with the Lord and have tried to express this here: Thank you, my Lord. You are not my dream, You are my happiness, Through the faith you have given me, Stronger than happiness, Stronger than life, Stronger than the unknown, Because you are known To me, In me, For me to be with you, And you through me. A child is his father, and the father his son, The two are one, And one is what we are With the Lord in our heart, One child, One Lord, One Love for all Dream on .

    . . Dream on . . . Dream on. . .

     
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