The Awakened Brain
Notes on Lisa Miller's case for spirituality, and its effect on human psychology.
I learned about Dr. Lisa Miller’s work on House Calls, Vivek Murthy’s podcast from his time as U.S. Surgeon General. Miller is a clinical psychologist and researcher who argues that spirituality is an “innate perceptual capacity” in the human brain, and that this capacity buffers us against illnesses like addiction and depression. Most of her evidence is correlational, but I appreciate the questions she’s asking and her effort to ground spirituality in science and clinical practice.
Despite all the progress in psychological healing, suffering seems as widespread as ever. Modern interventions (psychodynamic therapy, CBT, medication) matter, but they can also keep people circling the same loops. Warped incentives make the situation worse, keeping providers and patients focused on symptom reduction vs. a reliable path out of these loops. Positive psychology seems better at building inner resilience, but this methodology is still organized around the ego vs. the steadiness Miller attributes to a spiritual foundation.
Her macro-point, I think, is that healing isn’t just about generating new thoughts or replacing unhappy ones. It’s about noticing and aligning ourselves with what life is showing us (what she calls “Awakened Awareness”). Her work feels intuitive to me, especially having grown up watching faith carry my parents and extended family through adversity. Whether or not the scientific basis for spirituality holds up, for me it falls in the “well, it certainly doesn’t hurt” category. Miller’s book has me thinking more about what I want to hand my own children in wild and uncertain times.
Who should read it
- Anyone on the front lines of care (parents, educators, counselors, medical staff, etc.)
- Spiritual seekers
How this book changed me
Spiritual awareness shows up in our physiology. People engaged in spiritual awareness walk through life differently, and it shows up in their physiology. High levels of personal spirituality appear to buffer against alcoholism, depression, and drug addiction. In teens, when individuation often gets tangled with spiritual and existential questions, spirituality looks to be twice as protective vs. adults when it comes to clinical depression and addiction.
Personal devotion protects more than religiosity. Personal spirituality (inner spiritual devotion) is more correlated with emotional resilience than religion (institutional conservatism). Miller cites Dr. Kenneth Kendler’s research, which shows personal devotion as more protective against adverse events like divorce, loss, and illness, while religiosity is more broadly associated with reduced substance abuse risk.
Suffering might be the other side of meaning. To treat “suffering” as symptoms to pathologize and treat, or as the direct result of poor “habits of mind,” misses what may be going on underneath. Miller argues that spiritual formation is less an antidote to struggle than a “way of being” (or a “lens”) that emerges alongside it. We exist in a system that makes us believe we need more stuff to make the suffering go away. But if suffering is part of the human experience, the task isn’t to numb or squash the symptoms, or to reset the mind. The task is to listen and to notice and align ourselves with whatever life is showing us.
Spirituality has universal dimensions. Miller identifies universal dimensions of spirituality, based on survey work across India, China, and the U.S. (n≈5,500): altruism, love of neighbor as self, a sense of oneness, the practice of sacred transcendence, and adherence to a moral code.
Top quotes
“The common misunderstanding in the mental health field is that it’s a traumatic or painful event that makes us depressed. Mental suffering isn’t a direct result of trauma, it is an outcome of how trauma grips our daily experience of life and narrows our perception. Healing arises not by revisiting the traumatic event but by bringing new insight and information to bear on the event.”
“I made a pledge to validate the questions my patients were asking and to help them do what they were trying to do… not to sit in pain but build their lives and find their own path to resilience and renewal.”
“In a secular and materialist world, we make meaning which happens to align with shift from religion to industrial systems of meaning. In a spiritual awareness framework, meaning is revealed and we interact with it.”
“The world isn’t made of individual particles. It’s an inseparable whole. Our attention is what beholds both expressions of reality — point and wave, distinctiveness and oneness.”