The Neurospiritual Look of Love | Greg Cootsona | TEDxWaldenPond
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b7vWF0KrRM Video ID: 1b7vWF0KrRM ============================================================ Transcriber: Alexandre Frigeri Reviewer: Sue Lu I’m going to connect for you the findings of neuroscience with the wisdom of spiritual traditions in order to explore the neuro spiritual look of love. Now, I’ve discovered that a neuro spiritual approach to love brings human flourishing and happiness. It's written as an ancient story that modern science is uncovering. It’s in our evolutionary history, in spiritual writings. Maybe so far, so good. But we all know that to love, to love is to be vulnerable. So how did we bring this together? This desire we have for love, with the realization that we can be hurt by loving? That’s where neuro spirituality also comes in. Now, I want to let you know that I didn’t arrive naturally at this topic of neuro spirituality. The problem for me wasn't the science. The problem for me was my upbringing and background. I grew up in the Silicon Valley, where we had the common assumption that spiritual insight and scientific discovery are antithetical. We always thought that we grew up in the most beautiful place in the world, where we could do anything and solve any problem. My home in Menlo Park was only about five miles from where Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs developed the first personal computer. All that success. It suggested no need for spiritual assistance. I'm told that on any given week, only about 5% of the population of the Silicon Valley is in a house of worship of any sort. and my family's philosopher was Ayn Rand, who championed atheism and the virtue of selfishness. So spiritual life wasn’t really an option for me, but became a live option when I went to college at Berkeley. There I studied the world's religions, and I talked with friends and intelligent professors and academics about the questions of: is there a God? Is there an afterlife? Is there a spirit? I also studied the teachings in life of the great teachers: Jesus, the Buddha, Muhammad. And I went through a period of what philosophers like to call existential dread, which sounds really exciting and kind of cool, but for me, it was actually very lonely. I didn’t have a way of adding up my desire for meaning and purpose, and especially love. And what I found as I studied these great spiritual writers and teachers, is that love is central to pretty much every spiritual tradition. The words of Jesus stood out to me from the beginning of when he was asked, what's the greatest directive in life? And he said, “It’s to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s not hard to find parallels in other religious traditions. Muhammad said, “You will not enter Paradise until you believe, and you won’t believe until you love one another.” And the Buddha used an image from the mother child relationship. Just as the mother, at the risk of life, loves and protects her child, her only child. So one should cultivate this boundless love for all in the universe. I was learning and being convinced by love and the way it opened up a spiritual dimension for me. And by love I mean to will and to work for another’s best. To find gift love. The kind of love that shares with others. But I had a problem now. I had a problem. How do I bring this new-to-me wisdom from ancient texts with a familiar power of science. And that set me on a three and a half decade quest of academic projects and research, and research, where I've collaborated with neuroscientists, physicists, evolutionary biologists, social scientists and psychologists. And I’ve learned something from commentators on religion and spirituality that in order for religion to make a difference, it can’t be just something placed upon you extrinsically. Like somebody says, you’ve just got to believe. Not a bunch of doctrines and external rules and rituals, but something that we take intrinsically, that we’re motivated by. And when we find that intrinsic spirituality, there's neuroscientific research to say that it opens up an awakened brain, a brain that can see connections with all that's around us, and a brain that is resistant to depression, able to recover from addiction, and actually part of a flourishing life. Now, I experienced this in part in my early years at Berkeley, and I'm still discovering more today. I'm discovering some more of the components that neuroscience brings, as I've collaborated recently with neuroscientists on the topic of love. He's helped me understand the role of oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin, often called the love hormone or the bonding hormone, draws us closer. And vasopressin helps us to create boundaries in which that love can flourish. The elemental experience of the release of oxytocin is the birth of a child and the nurturing of that child. You see, we need it when we're young because we're born unable to protect ourselves. And so that oxytocin, vasopressin, those two neuropeptides, work together to boundary us and to bond us. Let me say it in a slightly different way. Oxytocin is known, as I said, for maternal bonding, social reward. While vasopressin helps regulate social communication, aggression, and territorial behavior. Boundary, bonding, connecting, protecting. Those two always work together. Combining these insights from neuroscience and the various sciences that look into how we love, combining that elegance intricac with the spiritual traditions, is only exponentially expanded my appreciation for love. But I want to get back to vulnerability, because sometimes this all sounds a little too perfect. So how do we negotiate this interaction, this deep desire we have for love and the fact that we can be hurt by love? This is a key component of our growth. The spiritual traditions have had this for centuries. Jesus talked about forgiveness as one of his central teachings. And forgiveness is essentially when our boundaries are broken. How do we work toward repair? And the Buddha started his teachings with all life as dukkha or suffering. It’s fascinating that these ancient texts also taught us about the transformation of the mind. We read this in the first century writings of Paul, which was a concept that science did not accept Until the late 20th century, when neuroplasticity was affirmed. We can change our brains, and we can increase in loving. It’ll take recognizing that there’s this yearning for love within us, that creates in us this connection with something deeper and broader. It'll take realizing that we need to keep moving out in love. As Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “There is no remedy to love but to love more.” Now, I’d like to imagine a world like this. A world like this when we’re elevated by this neuro spiritual look of love, where we see all around us, all around us as beautiful and worthy of love. Would you imagine with me a world like that? Imagine a world that moves beyond. The entrenched divisions and debilitating polarizations we face. Imagine a world where our desire for love and belonging flourishes. The next step. The next step might be as simple as giving somebody a touch or a hug. It might be spending time with people you love. It might be moving beyond those boundaries. Moving toward the least and the lost with kindness and compassion. Our world. Our world could be a place where all truly flourish with healthy boundaries and nurturing bonds. That is an idea worth sharing. Thank you. (Applause)