Science news that wraps up Spirituality: How I have been rethinking decades of experiences
“Who am I”? My wish for you is that what drives the search for that answer may come from understanding scientific, seemingly unrelated facts. Happy reading.
Scientific premises for objectifying the need for transcendence are already available today. Here are three facts that have illuminated my understanding of how spirit and matter actually stand in the same dimension.
What do Richard Wiseman, Daniel Goldman, and Stephen Porges have in common?
The spiritual quest is a complex of beliefs, experiences, and practices that seem to embody seeking coherence between world and subject. If there were no discrepancies between sensations, feelings, and personal efficacy, no one would find the world inconsistent with respect to the subjective dimension. Spirituality would simply be the world, and it would be reflected in our individual dimension.
When world and subject do not coincide, there is not only a sense of separation but also of insecurity. At the most superficial level, the need for transcendence is materially matched by a low level of resilience. Resilience reflects behavioral, physiological, emotional, and social processes that depend on adaptive strategies for regulation and maintenance, health, growth, and effectiveness. Thus, an optimal level of resilience keeps us connected to and in relationship with the world. It makes us feel part of a larger reality, keeps us active, and makes us feel a part of it. The world will continue to be an unpredictable environment, but the security of being able to actively influence it in the direction of our needs can go some way to satisfying our need for transcendence.
The spiritual quest, however, goes on: some things continue to elude our control and / or repeat themselves and seem to us to be sinister.
Has Richard Wiseman revealed the motivation that drives us to meditate?
When a person believes they are being held by an unconscious and/or inexplicable force, they often feel called to search within themselves for the reason. On the other hand, people who are more resilient and feel kissed by luck, or, I might add, in a religious sense, providence, notice serendipitous opportunities more easily than unlucky people.
This is the finding of Richard Wiseman, a researcher and professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. Wiseman shows that people create the conditions for good fortune by following four principles:
creating and noticing serendipitous opportunities; making decisions by listening to intuition, creating self-fulfilling prophecies through positive expectations and adopting a resilient attitude that turns bad luck into good fortune.
This is partly due to low levels of tension and performance anxiety, which interfere with the ability to notice the unexpected. Unlucky people miss serendipitous opportunities because they are too focused on finding something else. They go to parties with the intention of finding their perfect partner and miss opportunities to make good friends; driven by anxiety, they focus excessively on a task and miss opportunities to achieve their goal that are right in front of them. Those who practice meditation know that it brings greater attention span, less tension, more emotional resilience, more creativity. It can restore flow and spontaneity; it is possible that this is why many people have continued to practice for years, if not decades.
Empathy and Emotional Quotient
Meditating, contemplating, and practicing deep connection with the body indirectly affects our cognitive system: it increases our ability to generate the right information and actions at the right time. This is where the spiritual quest takes on the key aspects of emotional intelligence.
Spirituality does not necessarily require belief in God or adherence to a particular religious denomination; both may require adherence to certain beliefs and ritual practices. Spirituality and religiosity are both based on an initial personal exploration of transcendent forces that may (or may not) bring about changes in our individual and interpersonal condition.
Being aware of the wonder and beauty within the self and the world in ways that allow for the cultivation of meaning, identity, and purpose; seeking and experiencing meaning and interdependence in relationships with others or with transcendent figures, personal or impersonal one, that give meaning to life over time; authentically expressing one’s values, passions, and identity through activities, practices, and relationships that promote a sense of inner wholeness and harmony. All these aspects necessarily develop as emotional intelligence grows. People with low EQ are unable to identify or name, accept or validate, connect with or be guided by their feelings. As a result, they may have difficulty connecting with themselves and others. They have difficulty making decisions or are guided by external coercive factors rather than by intuition or a sense of identity and generally by consistent feelings and sensations. They may feel dissatisfied, empty, and disconnected without understanding why.
New avenues are opened in our possibilities, daily interactions, and ability to have new experiences through increased awareness, the ability to observe detachedly, the ability to disidentify with emotions and the ability to use our feelings as tools rather than being victimized by them. The result is a renewed ability to find fulfillment in our surroundings, and a greater connection to ourselves and others, as well as to things, animals, and plants.
When our sensations become fluid and we are able to enter into a deep relationship with our surroundings, the spiritual path becomes the search for the best possible expression of this new relationship.
It involves the ability to use the body as an integrated system to evaluate situations, people, environments and objects in an unmediated and instinctive way. The sixth sense, perceiving subtle energies, synchronicities, can now refer to what neuroscience calls neuroception.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlhFrBoEnxU
Neuroception: it is what you have unconsciously enhanced through years of spiritual practices
The term “neuroception” was introduced to emphasize a neural process, distinct from the perception of the five senses, that can detect environmental features through visceral sensations. Some form of neuroception can be found in virtually all living organisms, regardless of the development of the nervous system. Each can assess varying degrees of safety or danger of the environment and its elements. In fact, it can be argued that single-celled organisms and even plants have a primordial nervous system capable of detecting danger. However, mammals have a more extensive and complex capacity for neuroception: they can react immediately to a possible threat, but also to safety signals. It is oxytocin that plays an important role in regulating the autonomic nervous system, allowing mammals to rest without fear, give birth, and experience intimacy without activating physiological defenses.
The feeling of safety plays a key role in allowing humans not only to survive, but to thrive. Prof. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory describes for the first time the relationship between the autonomic nervous system, mental and physical health, social relationships, cognitive processes and attitudes.
Recognizing that feelings of safety have a measurable neurophysiological substrate would transform the study of subjective perception of people and environments from anecdotal or psychological, if not parapsychological, to objective.
Polyvagal theory proposes that the neural assessment of risk and safety reflexively triggers changes in the autonomic state without requiring conscious awareness. This includes the full range of feelings that are still an elusive construct and instead, in this theory, form the core of a persistent motivational system that influences the autonomic nervous system, which in turn drives behaviors, emotions, and thoughts.
This has profound implications for how we understand behavior and how we often misunderstand how to make decisions and behave in ways that seem irrational.
The goal of many spiritual practices, as well as therapeutic strategies, is to separate feelings from associated thoughts and behaviors, allowing the person to experience feelings without involuntarily associating them with thoughts or behaviors. The individual understands that feelings are not intentional or under voluntary control, but are part of an adaptive reflexive system connected to our nervous system.
The consequence of being able to recognize the existence and action of the neuroceptive system is the ability to recognize subconscious threats, even the everyday ones, such as taking the wrong road, forgetting something important, or defusing habitual associations and making room for cooperative behaviors. This supports the physiological systems that allow access to higher brain structures for learning, creativity, vision of beauty and perception of harmony.
