How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain

How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain PDF Author: Andrew Newberg
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698194403
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book

Book Description
The bestselling authors of How God Changes Your Brain reveal the neurological underpinnings of enlightenment, offering unique strategies to help readers experience its many benefits. In this original and groundbreaking book, Andrew Newberg, M.D., and Mark Robert Waldman turn their attention to the pinnacle of the human experience: enlightenment. Through his brain- scan studies on Brazilian psychic mediums, Sufi mystics, Buddhist meditators, Franciscan nuns, Pentecostals, and participants in secular spirituality rituals, Newberg has discovered the specific neurological mechanisms associated with the enlightenment experience--and how we might activate those circuits in our own brains. In his survey of more than one thousand people who have experienced enlightenment, Newberg has also discovered that in the aftermath they have had profound, positive life changes. Enlightenment offers us the possibility to become permanently less stress-prone, to break bad habits, to improve our collaboration and creativity skills, and to lead happier, more satisfying lives. Relaying the story of his own transformational experience as well as including the stories of others who try to describe an event that is truly indescribable, Newberg brings us a new paradigm for deep and lasting change.

How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain

How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain PDF Author: Andrew Newberg
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698194403
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book

Book Description
The bestselling authors of How God Changes Your Brain reveal the neurological underpinnings of enlightenment, offering unique strategies to help readers experience its many benefits. In this original and groundbreaking book, Andrew Newberg, M.D., and Mark Robert Waldman turn their attention to the pinnacle of the human experience: enlightenment. Through his brain- scan studies on Brazilian psychic mediums, Sufi mystics, Buddhist meditators, Franciscan nuns, Pentecostals, and participants in secular spirituality rituals, Newberg has discovered the specific neurological mechanisms associated with the enlightenment experience--and how we might activate those circuits in our own brains. In his survey of more than one thousand people who have experienced enlightenment, Newberg has also discovered that in the aftermath they have had profound, positive life changes. Enlightenment offers us the possibility to become permanently less stress-prone, to break bad habits, to improve our collaboration and creativity skills, and to lead happier, more satisfying lives. Relaying the story of his own transformational experience as well as including the stories of others who try to describe an event that is truly indescribable, Newberg brings us a new paradigm for deep and lasting change.

How God Changes Your Brain

How God Changes Your Brain PDF Author: Andrew Newberg, M.D.
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345512790
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book

Book Description
God is great—for your mental, physical, and spiritual health. Based on new evidence culled from brain-scan studies, a wide-reaching survey of people’s religious and spiritual experiences, and the authors’ analyses of adult drawings of God, neuroscientist Andrew Newberg and therapist Mark Robert Waldman offer the following breakthrough discoveries: • Not only do prayer and spiritual practice reduce stress, but just twelve minutes of meditation per day may slow down the aging process. • Contemplating a loving God rather than a punitive God reduces anxiety and depression and increases feelings of security, compassion, and love. • Fundamentalism, in and of itself, can be personally beneficial, but the prejudice generated by extreme beliefs can permanently damage your brain. • Intense prayer and meditation permanently change numerous structures and functions in the brain, altering your values and the way you perceive reality. Both a revelatory work of modern science and a practical guide for readers to enhance their physical and emotional health, How God Changes Your Brain is a first-of-a-kind book about faith that is as credible as it is inspiring.

Bliss Brain

Bliss Brain PDF Author: Dawson Church
Publisher: Hay House, Inc
ISBN: 1401957773
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book

Book Description
Award Winner in the Science category of the 2020 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest Award-winning author and thought leader Dawson Church, Ph.D., blends cutting-edge neuroscience with intense firsthand experience to show you how you can rewire your brain for happiness-starting right now. Neural plasticity-the discovery that the brain is capable of rewiring itself-is now widely understood. But what few people have grasped yet is how quickly this is happening, how extensive brain changes can be, and how much control each of us has over the process. In Bliss Brain, famed researcher Dawson Church digs deep into leading-edge science, and finds stunning evidence of rapid and radical brain change. In just eight weeks of practice, 12 minutes a day, using the right techniques, we can produce measurable changes in our brains. These make us calmer, happier, and more resilient. When we cultivate these pleasurable states over time, they become traits. We don't just feel more blissful as a temporary state; the changes are literally hard-wired into our brains, becoming stable and enduring personality traits. The startling conclusions of Church's research show that neural remodeling goes much farther than scientists have previously understood, with stress circuits shriveling over time. Simultaneously, "The Enlightenment Circuit"-associated with happiness, compassion, productivity, creativity, and resilience-expands. During deep meditation, Church shows how "the 7 neurochemicals of ecstasy" are released in our brains. These include anandamide, a neurotransmitter that's been named "the bliss molecule" because it mimics the effects of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. It boosts serotonin and dopamine; the first is an analog of psilocybin, the second of cocaine. He shows how cultivating these elevated emotional states literally produces a self-induced high. While writing Bliss Brain, Church went through a series of disasters, including escaping seconds ahead of a California wildfire that consumed his home and office and claimed 22 lives. The fire triggered a painful medical condition and a financial disaster. Through it all, Church steadily practiced the techniques of Bliss Brain while teaching them to thousands of other people. This book weaves his story of resilience into the fabric of neuroscience, producing a fascinating picture of just how happy we can make our brains, no matter what the odds.

21 Rituals to Change Your Life

21 Rituals to Change Your Life PDF Author: Theresa Cheung
Publisher: Duncan Baird Publishers
ISBN: 1780289111
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 163

Get Book

Book Description
Creating personal ritual in our lives allows us to bring the presence of the sacred into the everyday. The rituals in this book have been designed as symbolic acts providing a framework for anyone to use to create positive change in their lives. The 7 morning rituals are designed to help you 'wake with determination', the 7 afternoon rituals focus on 'living on purpose', and the 7 evening rituals are about 'retiring with satisfaction'.

Bliss Brain

Bliss Brain PDF Author: Dawson Church
Publisher: Hay House, Inc
ISBN: 1401957757
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book

Book Description
Award Winner in the Science category of the 2020 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest Award-winning author and thought leader Dawson Church, Ph.D., blends cutting-edge neuroscience with intense firsthand experience to show you how you can rewire your brain for happiness-starting right now. Neural plasticity-the discovery that the brain is capable of rewiring itself-is now widely understood. But what few people have grasped yet is how quickly this is happening, how extensive brain changes can be, and how much control each of us has over the process. In Bliss Brain, famed researcher Dawson Church digs deep into leading-edge science, and finds stunning evidence of rapid and radical brain change. In just eight weeks of practice, 12 minutes a day, using the right techniques, we can produce measurable changes in our brains. These make us calmer, happier, and more resilient. When we cultivate these pleasurable states over time, they become traits. We don't just feel more blissful as a temporary state; the changes are literally hard-wired into our brains, becoming stable and enduring personality traits. The startling conclusions of Church's research show that neural remodeling goes much farther than scientists have previously understood, with stress circuits shriveling over time. Simultaneously, "The Enlightenment Circuit"-associated with happiness, compassion, productivity, creativity, and resilience-expands. During deep meditation, Church shows how "the 7 neurochemicals of ecstasy" are released in our brains. These include anandamide, a neurotransmitter that's been named "the bliss molecule" because it mimics the effects of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. It boosts serotonin and dopamine; the first is an analog of psilocybin, the second of cocaine. He shows how cultivating these elevated emotional states literally produces a self-induced high. While writing Bliss Brain, Church went through a series of disasters, including escaping seconds ahead of a California wildfire that consumed his home and office and claimed 22 lives. The fire triggered a painful medical condition and a financial disaster. Through it all, Church steadily practiced the techniques of Bliss Brain while teaching them to thousands of other people. This book weaves his story of resilience into the fabric of neuroscience, producing a fascinating picture of just how happy we can make our brains, no matter what the odds.

Megaliths, Music, and the Mind

Megaliths, Music, and the Mind PDF Author: Linda Eneix
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1040012205
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Get Book

Book Description
What drove the building of the first megalithic monuments and lifestyle changes that launched Western civilization? This exploration of the human experience of special sound in ancient ritual and ceremonial spaces brings a new perspective for anyone with an interest in prehistory and human development in its most pivotal days. From Göbekli Tepe in Anatolia to megalithic temples in Malta to passage tombs in Ireland, the world’s oldest buildings and the newest scientific research combine for a look at the Western Neolithic Revolution that goes where no one has gone before. With original photos and illustrations, Megaliths, Music and the Mind assembles content from the worlds of archaeology, architecture, anthropology, ethnomusicology, genetics, neuroscience, physics, and more. Fascinating pieces of evidence are set side by side, resulting in a stunning premise. This book is a core overview focused on the rediscovery of an ill-understood sensory element of developing culture, with hope for therapeutic application in the modern world. Material from the out-of-print booklet Listening for Ancient Gods has been expanded and updated in this volume, which also includes select papers from OTSF Archaeoacoustics International Conferences, plus a personal account from one of the founding fathers of new-age music.

The Ten Worlds

The Ten Worlds PDF Author: Ash ElDifrawi
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0757320430
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Get Book

Book Description
What exactly is happiness that we spend our lives pursuing it more fiercely than anything else? The answer, Drs. Lickerman and ElDifrawi argue, is that happiness isn't just a good feeling but a special good feeling—in fact, the best good feeling we're capable of having. Enduring happiness is something we all want yet many of us fail to achieve. Look around you. How many people do you know who would say they feel a constant and powerful sense of satisfaction with their lives? How many people do you imagine wouldn't find their ability to be happy impaired by a significant loss, like the death of a parent, a spouse, or a child? How is it possible to be happy in the long-term when so many terrible things are destined to happen to us? In this highly engaging and eminently practical book—told in the form of a Platonic dialogue recounting real-life patient experiences—Drs. Lickerman and ElDifrawi assert that the reason genuine, long-lasting happiness is so difficult to achieve and maintain is that we're profoundly confused not only about how to go about it but also about what happiness is. In identifying nine basic erroneous views we all have about what we need to be happy—views they term the core delusions—Lickerman and ElDifrawi show us that our happiness depends not on our external possessions or even on our experiences but rather on the beliefs we have that shape our most fundamental thinking. These beliefs, they argue, create ten internal life-conditions, or worlds, through which we continuously cycle and that determine how happy we're able to be. Drawing on the latest scientific research as well as Buddhist philosophy, Lickerman and ElDifrawi argue that once we learn to embrace a correct understanding of happiness, we can free ourselves from the suffering the core delusions cause us and enjoy the kind of happiness we all want, the kind found in the highest of the Ten Worlds, the world of Enlightenment. The Ten Worlds: Hell Hunger Animality Anger Tranquility Rapture Learning Realization Compassion Enlightenment

Rethinking Meditation

Rethinking Meditation PDF Author: David L. McMahan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197661742
Category : Meditation
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book

Book Description
"Rethinking Meditation provides a new theoretical and historical approach to Buddhist and Buddhist-derived meditative practices. It shows how, rather than coming down to us unchanged from the time of the Buddha, the standard articulation of mindfulness as bare, non-judgmental attention to the present moment is a distillation of particular strands of classical Buddhist thought that have combined with western ideas to create a unique practice tailored to modern forms of thought and ways of life. Part genealogical study and part philosophical argument, it inquires into some of the widespread assumptions about how meditation works and what it does, presenting a view of meditative practices as technologies of the self embedded in cultural forms of life. It shows that the relationship between meditative practices and cultural context is much more crucial than is suggested in typical contemporary articulations, which often emphasize transcendence of cultural conditioning and achieving "objective" internal access to the contents of consciousness. Meditation, McMahan argues, is always situated in social contexts and draws from repertoires of cultural categories, concepts, and values, sometimes accommodating them and sometimes resisting them. Rethinking Meditation also considers the scientific study of meditation and meditation in relation to modern articulations of secularism, freedom, authenticity, appreciation, and interdependence. It also examines the potential for meditation to enhance autonomy and addresses recent attempts to bring meditative practices to bear on social, political, and environmental issues"--

Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Extraterrestrial Intelligence PDF Author: Jensine Andresen
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527579255
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 355

Get Book

Book Description
What are the implications for human society, and for our institutions of higher learning, of the discovery of a sophisticated extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) operating on and around Earth? This book explores this timely question from a multidisciplinary perspective. It considers scientific, philosophical, theological, and interdisciplinary ways of thinking about the question, and it represents all viewpoints on how likely it is that an ETI is already operating here on Earth. The book’s contributors represent a wide range of academic disciplines in their formal training and later vocations, and, upon reflection on the book’s topic, they articulate a diverse range of insights into how ETI will impact humankind. It is safe to say that any contact or communication with ETI will not be merely a game changer for human society, but it also will be a paradigm changer. It makes sense for human beings to prepare themselves now for this important transition.

Simply Sacred

Simply Sacred PDF Author: Irene Kokatay
Publisher: Balboa Press
ISBN: 1982214538
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Get Book

Book Description
Many of us are experiencing an urgency to wake up, to live more fully in the here and now, and to stop taking our lives for granted. We are haunted by a feeling there is something more to life, something just out of reach. We feel disconnected, incomplete, but sense an intrinsic wholeness at a deeper level of our being. In Simply Sacred, author Irene Kokatay offers an invitation to wake up to our fundamental nature in the ordinary lives we’re living. She weaves together narratives of her years of experience working as a hospice counselor facing death on a regular basis, at an ashram in India, and her encounters with a spiritual mentor to share her unique journey of awakening. Kokatay seeks to inspire others to embark on their own quest to live a richer and fuller expression of who they are. Through stories, insights, and contemplations on life, death, and awakening, she encourages us to deepen the experience of the sacredness contained in the everyday moments of our lives.