In pursuing themes touched on by Karen Armstrong around spiritual practice, I am exploring spiritual modernization, multidisciplinary studies, empirical philosophy, Systems Theory, and the recognition of Jesus´ legacy of integrity and the need to reform hypocrisy in a pluralistic human rights context. The three selections below refer to three different contexts with important interrelated implications::::
"....The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi, founding director of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT, entered a Buddhist monastery in India at age 10. He said he was drawn there by dreams of mountains and men in saffron robes.
“Spiritual experiences are as real as awake moments,” he said. “Like with love, kindness, compassion, fear, surprise — there are stories around these powerful experiences, but no metrics.” He added that there is a tendency to polarize secular versus religious life.
“Life is really both, but people are just not paying attention,” he said.
So how can researchers and health care providers capture this elusive, multi-dimensional aspect of life that changes over a person’s lifetime?
“It’s like trying to capture Beethoven’s ninth symphony by whistling,” said Kenneth Pargament, a Bowling Green State University professor of psychology. But now there are hundreds of measures that attempt to do just that, he added.
Researchers from Duke University, the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health and the University of Liverpool described the survey instruments they have developed to create these measurements.
New approaches::::
Andrea Baccarelli, the Mark and Catherine Winkler Associate Professor of Environmental Epigenetics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, proposed that spirituality be looked at through the lens of epigenetics.
DNA methylation is one epigenetic mechanism that changes the way genes perform. When methylation goes awry, it contributes to disease.
Bacarelli said that he found through the Black Women’s Health Study that a history of child abuse is associated with higher methylation levels in the glucocorticoid receptor pathways in the hippocampus.
“The effect was attenuated somewhat in women with emotional support during childhood,” Bacarelli said. “Does spirituality modulate methylation too? This should be studied," he added.....
More than 3,000 studies indicate that religion has a potentially beneficial effect on health, said speaker Neal Krause of the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
Belief in a deity engenders hope, which has been linked to positive physiological changes, Krause said. Those who regularly attend religious services benefit from a community that is there to help members cope in difficult times, he added....." - Ellen Barlow, "Spirituality and Healing: Harvard Catalyst Symposium," Jan. 14, 2015.
https://hms.harvard.edu/news/spirituality-healing
"Most modern prejudice against biblical miracle reports depends on David Hume’s argument that uniform human experience precluded miracles. Yet current research shows that human experience is far from uniform. In fact, hundreds of millions of people today claim to have experienced miracles." Frank Turek interviewing Craig Keener, PhD
https://crossexamined.org/miracles-dr-craig-keener-part-1/
Lewis Mehl-Medrona, MD, PhD writes about a Native American patient with an 11 year old boy who returned with a broken bone after having been diagnosed with lung tumors six years earlier. Finding that the tumors had disappeared, Dr. Mehl-Medrona asked the mother what had happened. "She said she had gone to a traditional healer. "We took him home to the reservation, just like they told us," she answered. "The medicine man doctored him. He gave him herbs and other medicines and talked a long time to all of us and did ceremonies, and Mikey got better. They prayed for him every night for two weeks. They painted in the sand and chanted."
"That´s wonderful," I (LMM) said, and she relaxed. She had looked like she expected a scolding...." Coyote Medicine, Lewis Mehl-Medrona, MD, PhD p. 19.
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