Synchronicity, Evolution, and Your Genes (Part 2)

 

By Deepak Chopra, MD, and Jordan Flesher, BA Psychology

 

Everyone has had a meaningful coincidence happen to them–the classic example is thinking of someone’s name and the next minute that person telephones, or seeing an unusual word in your mind’s eye and then running across that word the next time you open a book.  It’s spooky that the outside world can be synchronized with our inner world, yet the bigger question is about reality itself. Synchronicity, the common term for meaningful coincidences, doesn’t tend to change anyone’s life–but it could.

 

Instead of passing off such experiences as incidental, what if synchronicity is telling us something crucial about reality, linking the inner and outer worlds because in the long run, they are completely unified? If inner=outer, a tremendous shift in the Western materialistic worldview would follow. Let’s see how far the trail of clues takes us.

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The 13th Disciple

Join Deepak on his book tour of “The 13th Disciple” as he weaves together masterful storytelling, historical narrative, mystery and intrigue, to reveal surprising discoveries about the unknown last disciple of Christ, offering a new understanding of who Jesus really was in his final days. Enjoy an excerpt and audio of the book.
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The 13th Disciple: A Spiritual Adventure

 

Book Tour Schedule

Tuesday, March 31 – Detroit 

7:00 pm     Renaissance Unity Sanctuary

11200 E. Eleven Mile Road

Warren, MI 48093

Wednesday, April 1 – Washington, D.C.

7:30 pm     George Washington University Lisner Auditorium

730 21st Street NW

Washington, D.C.

Monday, April 6 – Houston

7:30 pm     Unity of Houston

Sanctuary

2929 Unity Drive,

Houston, TX 77057

Wednesday, April 8 – San Antonio

7:30 pm     Tobin Center for the Performing Arts

HEB Performance Hall

100 Auditorium Center

San Antonio, TX 78205

Friday, April 10 – Seattle

7:00 pm     Center for Spiritual Living

5801 Sand Point Way NE

Seattle, WA​

Gratitude Journal May Enhance Health in Cardiac Patients: I Am Grateful for….

Published in the Huffington Post: Gratitude

 

“Effects of Gratitude Journaling on Heart Rate Variability and Inflammatory Biomarkers

in Asymptomatic Heart Failure Patients”

By Paul Mills, PhD, Kathleen Wilson MS, Meredith A. Pung PhD, Kelly Chinh BS, Brook Henry PhD, J. Christopher Wells BS, Alex Wood PhD, Shamini Jain PhD, Barry Greenberg MD, Alan Maisel MD, Ottar Lunde MD, Deepak Chopra MD, Laura Redwine PhD

Departments of Family Medicine and Public Health, Psychiatry, and Medicine, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA

Department of Behavioral Science, University of Stirling, Stirling Scotland

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For the last decade or so, the field of behavioral cardiology has shifted its focus from being primarily on psychological traits such as hostility, stress, and depression to more positive psychological attributes such as gratitude, compassion, and empathy. In individuals with heart failure, gratitude has been identified as an important resource for alleviating the struggles associated with symptoms. In a recent cross-sectional study on over 180 asymptomatic heart failure patients, we reported that more gratitude was associated with less depression, better sleep, and less peripheral inflammation.  In this new study, to be presented at the University of California, San Diego Institute for Public Health’s Annual Public Health Research Day (to be held April 9, 2015), we report on the results of a randomized clinical trial where patients were randomized to either 8-weeks of gratitude journaling plus their usual care or 8-weeks usual care alone. Journaling was used as a way to cultivate gratitude. We found that patients who journaled about gratitude had increased heart rate variability (a measure of reduced cardiac risk) as well as reduced circulating levels of inflammatory biomarkers IL-6 and sTNFr1, which are associated with cardiovascular disease. Gratitude journaling is a low-cost and easily implementable intervention that may have significant beneficial effects to enhance health in cardiac patients. ​

Synchronicity, Evolution, and Your Genes (Part 1)

By Deepak Chopra, MD, and Jordan Flesher

 

Over the past decade, the hunt for genetic connections with behavior as intensified. For any experience, there must be a physical activity in the brain—otherwise, the experience has no basis. Using this irrefutable assumption, researchers have looked for the seat of anger, criminal behavior, gender identification, the sense of self, and many other aspects of human nature. This includes spirituality. Where is God in the brain? To many neuroscientists, that’s not only a valid question but the only one worth asking, insofar as spiritual experiences have any reality.

Now we are hearing about “God in the genes,” as genetics overtakes neuroscience for the top spot in explaining the roots of human experience. Where the brain operates only in the present, genetics peers deep into the past. A geneticist would want to know what evolutionary advantage early humans got from being spiritual—in the broadest sense of the word—that led to a better chance to survive. This whole line of inquiry, whether we’re taking about the brain or our genes, makes sense if you are a materialist. But it runs the danger of saying that spirituality is only about the physical side of the experience, as if music could never be discussed except by looking at pianos and radios, the physical side of delivering the musical experience.

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