Waking Up Your Spiritual Brain: Part 1
6/29/202650 min
Food, safety, and strong relationships are essential to our survival. Psychologist Lisa Miller says our brains also crave something else: transcendence. She suggests that spirituality is a universal human capacity, and that feeling connected to something larger than ourselves may be essential to a fulfilling life.
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Episode illustration by Karem Adem for Unsplash.
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First 90 secondsShankar Vedantam· Host0:00
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Thomas Hood was a 19th century English poet known for his elegant, often melancholy verse. [gentle music] His 1826 poem, I Remember, I Remember, captures a feeling that is familiar to many adults, especially its wistful last lines. "I remember, I remember, / The fir trees dark and high; / I used to think their slender tops / Were close against the sky. / It was a childish ignorance, / But now 'tis little joy / To know I'm farther off from heaven / Than when I was a boy." Thomas Hood's poem gestures to the reality that as grownups, many of us lack the effortless sense of connection and awe that we felt as kids. Was that intimate bond with the universe merely an illusion of childhood or a real measurable human capacity that we can access as grownups? Researchers are investigating the ways that we can preserve or revive the sense of being close to the sky that Thomas Hood so tenderly evoked. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore what it means to feel closer to heaven and the value of looking for transcendence in our busy, bustling lives.
Unknown speaker1:20
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