Does a relationship with God make us happier?

A relationship with God is one of the six strengths of happy people.  Today we analyze the life and research of Dr. Lisa Miller PhD to discuss the questions, "Does a relationship with God make us happier?   What is an awakened brain?  How do you get it?  How does it help stave off depression? 

Transcript

Developing a closer relationship with God is one of the six strengths of happiness.  But not for everyone….. I remember the day one of my clients told me that Jesus was merely a magician, that the five thousand-ish  people who saw a resurrected Christ, were deceived.  That belief in God is an impediment to the progress of science.  My client said that even believing in God is harmful, that feeling guilty all the time for the things you’ve done wrong can make you depressed.  So, the big question for the day is:

Can anyone scientifically prove that having a relationship with God will make us happier?

Actually, yes. After a lifetime of research, Dr. Lisa Miller PhD, has brain scans of people who classify themselves as “highly spiritual.” Her studies prove that we can be happier by awakening our brain.

Rich Roll’s interview said, “All humans are equipped with this innate capacity for spirituality… [Dr. Miller’s] neuroscience actually proves that cultivating spirituality, the awakened brain leads to things like greater grit, greater optimism, greater resilience, and conversely insulates us against things like addiction, trauma and depression.”  https://www.richroll.com/podcast/lisa-miller-654/

One of the beauties of Dr. Miller's research is that she proved the awakened brain is available to everyone no matter their religious affiliation or lack thereof. 

Dr. Miller is a professor of psychology and spirituality at Columbia University and has an appointment in the medical school’s department of psychiatry. Her innovative research on spirituality has been published in more than one hundred peer-reviewed articles in leading journals. She’s a New York Times best-selling author. Today we’ll be discussing her book published in 2021, The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life.

It all started when Lisa Miller was a grad student working in a psychiatric hospital in upstate New York. 

One of her duties was facilitating group therapy for people we call the serious and persistent mentally ill. This means bi-polar, schizophrenia, and deep depression. When I worked in a psych hospital I used to call them “frequent flyers.” They’d stabilize, get released and be back a few months later. These patients had tried psychotropic medications, had tried therapy, and had tried group therapy for many years. They were just so depressed, anxious, and hopeless, they weren’t healing and getting better.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

During one group session, the Jewish patients had asked for a rabbi to come in for Yom Kippur, one of the holiest days in Judaism. The hospital wasn’t planning to arrange for a rabbi, so Lisa, a practicing Jew, asked for permission to bring her prayer book and lead the group. She was astonished at what she saw. 

The psychiatric patients had obtained nice clothing. They didn’t look depressed or psychotic.  Previously she had observed them lying in bed, trapped in a state of despair and futility.  But during the service appearances of mental illness vanished and they spoke intelligently and compassionately.  

One person said, “How can you not believe in an all-powerful God of goodness when you look around and see the beauty of the universe!” 

Another man had a habit of barricading himself in a hotel room because he was so afraid of people. When Lisa expressed her own concern about something she’d done, he said, “God will forgive you. God always forgives everyone.” 

She was astounded at the change. What is it about spirituality that helps people function so much better? 

Like the rest of us in the field of psychology, she was trained that spirituality is off limits in our profession. Our culture has a very damaging assumption: that science and spirituality can never mix. Scientists have always seen spirituality as a crutch or a cultural artifact. Because of this, in a recent training I was told to leave my spiritual beliefs at the door, don’t bring them into the counseling session.

Dr. Miller believes that we’ve been educated out of our spiritual awareness. She wondered how to explain what happened in that psychiatric hospital on Yom Kippur.  The patients had  accessed their spiritual side, and they were so changed. What is it about spirituality that can help people with serious mental illness to function better? Is there a scientific connection between spirituality and healing? 

 Dr. Miller went on to publish the results of 100 studies in which she collected 20 years of scientific, clinical, and epidemiological data on the connection between spirituality and healing. She used MRI scans to discover what she called “The Awakened brain.” How did she do this?

  First, she asked two questions to identify people who were highly spiritual:

1. How personally important is religion or spirituality to you (highly important; moderately important; somewhat important; not important)?

2. How frequently do you attend religious service (once a week or more; at least once a month; several times a year; very rarely)?

With their answers, she could identify highly spiritual people. Then MRI brain scans were done. Her team worked for close to a year, finding the best way to test what is true, collecting data, modeling the findings, running numbers to find out whether or not spirituality plays a role in preventing or protecting against depression.

Let me describe these brain scan results.  Everywhere there was cortical thickness, the scan showed a red dot. In highly spiritual people there were so many dots, that they converged to create a region of solid red. Think of that solid red area like a larger, more developed muscle. 

And their findings?

Here’s page 149 of The Awakened Brain: “The subjects for whom spirituality and religion were highly important had a healthier neural structure than did those for whom spirituality and religion held medium, low, or no importance.“

        In other words, highly spiritual people have healthier brains, “more brain muscle.” Those who choose to exercise their brains in spiritual ways will benefit most, like people who choose to work out and build muscle before a five-mile hike. The scans showed that everyone has the capacity to build “brain muscle,” just as everyone has the capacity to build body muscle.  

Dr. Miller had an interesting life.  At the same time she was researching the connection between spirituality and depression, she was experiencing her own spirituality and depression.

After many years in New York City, Dr. Miller and her husband decided to move to the Connecticut countryside and start a family. But, after you’ve tried to get pregnant for a year without success you’re considered infertile.  So, the Millers started In vitro fertilization (IVF).  And you know as soon as you want to get pregnant, your friends and family conceive easily and you feel like a failure. Friends were announcing second and third pregnancies. There were children and babies everywhere. It’s an emptiness that just haunted her. 

There was round after round of medical appointments. The IVF specialist said he had no idea why she wasn’t conceiving. So many worries. Women guilt themselves about taking the pill all those years. They think they’ve done something wrong. They think they must not be healthy enough for a baby.

Oh but wait…. then they remember “I’m not supposed to be anxious or worry, it hurts my chance to get pregnant”. Guilt, guilt, shame, shame.

Women on IVF are on a roller coaster in the 2nd two weeks of the month, thinking, “I might be pregnant, I can imagine telling my husband our prayers are answered.”

Then comes disappointment: “I feel silly for having my hopes up so high. I’m having another painful period and low hormones.” In this situation they can get hyper focused on babies and it’s all they can think about. It’s no surprise that IVF causes the same levels of anxiety and depression in women as cancer and HIV!

When the Millers tried artificial insemination and conceived, Lisa was so excited, and her husband was beyond excited. But after a few months the baby’s heart stopped beating. Her husband just curled up in a ball and wept.  She just held him and tried to comfort him.

While she suffered her own trial and depression, Dr. Miller was researching depression in highly spiritual people. One of her findings was that: “Spiritual awareness doesn’t buffer against ever facing suffering. Suffering pulls spiritual awareness forward, building the spiritual core that prepares us for the next time we face suffering.  Grappling with moments of pain and emptiness actually catalyzed spiritual formation in some way.” (page #)

Dr. Miller discovered in her own life drama and in her study subjects, it’s not that spiritually awakened people don’t have problems, depression, loss and pain. But, awakened brain people who are praying and serving and studying in their efforts to know God are building their core spiritual muscles. When they face trials and suffering, they have the strength to work on those problems. And working on problems made them even stronger.

At first Dr. Miller found it difficult to get her studies published. But then she had breakthroughs. Instead of discrediting her research, the peer review committees made suggestions. Dr. Miller's science was starting to change our culture’s most destructive hypothesis, that because you can’t touch, quantify, or measure spirituality, it doesn’t exist.

Back to the struggle of trying to get pregnant: The Millers were watching an ad on TV about orphans in Russia and they felt inspired to adopt. But then a strange thing happened. In the middle of one night Lisa Miller felt a presence in her room. She then felt the words: “If you were pregnant, would you adopt?”  

And she said without thinking, “Oh, no.”

A short time later, her cousin convinced her to join a healing circle of Lakota Indians in South Dakota. There were several days of classes in which Lisa Miller and her cousin were the only non-native Americans. The classes led up to the sweat lodge experience where the Lakota Indian woman would pray for miracles and spiritual rebirth. 

As they went around the circle in the sweat lodge, each woman shared her own suffering and need for healing.   It was such a profound experience that Dr. Miller

 who for 22 years was a professor in the Clinical psychology program of Columbia University where she founded and directed the Spirituality Mind Body Institute,

who has a decade of joint appointments in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical School,  

 who is Co-Founder and Editor of the APA journal on Spirituality in Clinical practice, and editor of the Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality, definitely a person who writes and speaks for a living, 

could not speak.

Finally her cousin had to speak for her: “Lisa has come searching for her child. Can we help her find her child?” The women recited a prayer in Lakota for her.

The next morning as she entered her rental car to leave, she received a call about a baby boy who had been located at an orphanage in St. Petersburg. Weeks later they received a video of a six-months-old baby cooing “Da da” in Russian. 

She fell madly in love. 

But, again that night she felt the presence in the room. It said, “If you were pregnant, would you still adopt?” 

This time she said “Yes!” And that night, after 5 years of trying, she and her husband, without any doctors or medicines, conceived a healthy baby girl. Their son is 15 months older than his sister. End of story.  

Now for analysis.  What is the best of psychology and the best of spirituality in this experience? 

Dr. Miller would rate herself as “highly spiritual.” As a practicing Jew, she prayed for five years for a baby. No results. Then the  Lakota women in the sweat lodge  combined their faith and prayers with Lisa's faith and prayers. And they had their miracles. Luke 1:37 says nothing is impossible with God.

She didn’t just study the awakened brain. Through her trials and tears trying to have a baby, she had faith in God, and her awakened brain made life easier, happier, and gave her power. 

Russell M. Nelson, current prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said,“As you let God prevail in your life, I promise you greater peace, confidence, joy…“ (Nelson, Overcome the World and Find Rest October 2022,)If we let God prevail in our lives, we develop a relationship with him that awakens our brains and helps us reach our full potential.

Dr. Miller is an example of letting God and science prevail in her life. Wikipedia calls Dr. Miller a “research-based catalytic hub for seeding a more spiritual society.”

Another reason Lisa Miller PhD is the best of psychology: Her research methods are valid. She is a consummate scientist using the most widely accepted scientific rules.  That is the opposite of pseudo-scientific. And let me tell you, if you’ve ever done research, it’s so complicated and difficult. 

Ezra Taft Benson, a prophet of the past said,”Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can.  He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, …lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends, and pour out peace.” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Ezra Taft Benson (2014), 42-43.

The purpose of these podcasts is to entice you to do more to awaken your Brain.  Why?  

• People who work on their relationship with God develop awakened brains.
• People with awakened brains are happier

While you were listening today, did you get an idea of something you could do to build your relationship with God?

Don’t let the prompting get away, God gave us smartphones for a reason.  

 If you know, someone who would enjoy learning about how developing a relationship with God awakens our brains and leads to more happiness. If you know someone like that, please press that share button. Until next time. Live like his son. Help others on their way