Turning the Tide

The waves form far out in the Caribbean Sea, a distant edge of the horizon from where I’m sitting. Everywhere I look, I see life. Birds flying so skillfully overhead, in tandem, blending in to the humid landscape of waves and palm trees that my son watches intently as well. Another huge swell tears toward us, threatening to wash us away, crashing instead into the rocks before us that serve as guardians against the roar of the water. The foamy tide creeps down the beach and back into the sea. My son and I breathe deeply, in tandem just like the gulls. Sylvia, it is time for the tide to turn. I hear this in myself and it feels as though the rocks are saying it, though I know it is my spiritual guides. You are protected, and it is time. Time for what, I wonder at first, but I already know. Time to rise from the emotional despair I am too often mired in, time to beat back the sea of insecurities that plague my spiritual life. It is time, as it so frequently has been in my life, to master my own mind so as to better hear my own spirit. Another wave crashes, another gull cries. Let Montego wash over me, clean like the beach beyond which I see the setting of the watery sun. Another feeling emerges and consumes my thoughts as the waves continue to make their presence vehemently known. Montego Bay, the same beautiful shores where my ancestors were brought against their will generations ago. What must they have thought arriving at this beautiful place only to begin yet another horrific journey? I can’t even imagine the emotional distress they endured without any reprieve. The scene is different now though as the waves pick up speed near the shore, crashing into the rocky peninsula and splashing a mist high in the air—I’m here with my son on a spur-of-the-moment Christmas trip, a chance to get away from it all for at least a little while. My spirit needs this, which means my mind does too. An increasingly strong relationship is being drawn between spirituality and science, perhaps most specifically spirituality and neuroscience. It’s has been an antagonistic relationship that borders on flat-out opposition: spirituality is an outdated tool for understanding our minds, and its answers are gradually and continually supplanted by the findings of modern neuroscience. In short, everything spirituality has to offer may be replaced or justified by scientific understanding of the brain. On the flip side, those who dig in their heels on the side of religion or spirituality often argue that science is far too reductive to be fully used to understand ourselves; we are far more than the sum of our biological parts. From these positions the battle lines get drawn, and crossing from one side to the other means facing profound skepticism from peers in either camp. All this said, is it any wonder that both science and spirituality present incomplete pictures of our interior selves? The more we understand about the human brain through neuroscience, the clearer it becomes just how little we know. This might be the defining feature of the field (and perhaps all of science): the more territory that gets discovered and charted, the larger the remaining blank spaces in the map present themselves to be. It is a process of learning what we don’t know. And as those gaps present themselves, spirituality is happy to jump in and point them out as mysteries that can only be addressed through nonscientific thought. That holds until neuroscience does fill in that specific gap, which of course creates new gaps, and the cycle continues. It will continue forever. This would be fine to treat as just a discussion of ideas if the two fields weren’t meeting in one very human and applicable place: our emotional and mental wellbeing. In an age when we are more concerned and knowledgeable than ever about the effects our emotional health can have on our lives, does it do us any good to wage this endless fight between science and spirituality? It’s one thing to have this argument in a lab or a classroom; it’s another to tell someone battling depression that we just don’t have the answers yet, and that anywhere they turn they will only find incomplete information. When a person is in the throes of depression, or any other neurophysical imbalance what we are increasingly learning are very common, that person does not care so much which side the answers come from. I can say this very confidently; I am a person fighting that fight to achieve and maintain good emotional health A lot of people might find it strange that I am both a neuroscientist and a spiritual person. In fact, these are the two labels that have worked together to shape my life. My journey to this point has two consistent threads, one of rigorous academic study and another of spiritual exploration. These two things were my foundation as a child and young student and are still my primary focus as an adult. I could hardly afford not to pay attention to them; depression is a constant presence in my life, and so I’ve had to search for ideas, habits, and solutions practically as a means of survival. My story is one that takes these two seemingly opposed fields that have defined my life and blending them together in a pursuit of truth and wellbeing. My spiritual life has evolved drastically throughout my life, and I attribute this to the way I’ve applied my scientific curiosity and discipline to learning more about spiritual practice. By the same token, my scientific career would not have reached the point it has, if not for my ability to stay spiritually attuned to myself in the midst of rigor and adversity. And this is what I wish to illustrate in this book: neuroscience and spirituality are not opposites, but actually complement one another in a way that can further each field. Furthermore on a human, individual level, the blending of these two modes of thought can have tremendous effects on our emotional health. That personal level feels essential to this discussion, because too often these ideas get lost in the abstract beyond ourselves. I am a person who has battled depression, and a person who has used both spirituality and a credentialed academic career in neuroscience to do so. Much of this book is my story.