Science of the SpiritS


Music

Why do only some people get 'aesthetic chills' from listening to music?

Mitchell Colver
The Conversation
Tue, 24 May 2016 09:01 UTC
music and goosebumps
Have you ever been listening to a great piece of music and felt a chill run up your spine? Or goosebumps tickle your arms and shoulders?

The experience is called frisson (pronounced free-sawn), a French term meaning "aesthetic chills," and it feels like waves of pleasure running all over your skin. Some researchers have even dubbed it a "skin orgasm."

Listening to emotionally moving music is the most common trigger of frisson, but some feel it while looking at beautiful artwork, watching a particularly moving scene in a movie or having physical contact with another person. Studies have shown that roughly two-thirds of the population feels frisson, and frisson-loving Reddit users have even created a page to share their favorite frisson-causing media.

Comment: See also: Is there an evolutionary advantage to our emotional connection to music?

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Gift 2

The spiritual gift of anxiety and how to adapt to it

M.J. Higby
Waking Times
Thu, 26 May 2016 15:55 UTC
anxious woman
Arthur Somers Roche once said, "Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained."

If you've been affected by anxiety, you not only understand this quote, but you can viscerally feel it. If its owner doesn't lead the mind, the mind will instead lead. If you've been diagnosed with anxiety disorder, your stream of thoughts, untamed as they are, often lead to an ocean of worry that defines your daily existence. Drowning in this ocean of worry, you no doubt crave a vacation on a mental island called peace, even if just for a few minutes.

Comment: Never discount the effect of diet on brain function. See this article for more natural and food-based ways to reduce anxiety.

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Flashlight

Humility: A key virtue that makes us stewards of collective humanity

Mark Sisson
Mark's Daily Apple
Thu, 26 May 2016 00:00 UTC
humble, awe, humility
I've gotten a lot of feedback about my leadership post earlier this year—particularly from people who connected with the humility aspect. It's a characteristic I think most people would agree is in short supply these days, but most of us still admire it when we see it. In truth, little in our culture today encourages a humble disposition, and I think that's a relatively new development. More than ever it seems to be the loudest, boldest, and (often) most obnoxious voices that garner our attention. Brashness somewhere along the line became an asset rather than an irritation. We're told we need to do more, be more, have more, "fight" for what what we presumably deserve, and push our way to the front if we want our good in life. Put yourself out there, talk yourself up, and—above all—look out for number one. Is anyone else exhausted by these instructions? The key (and related) question of the day, however, is this: what would Grok have said about this social shift?

First off, I think it's safe to say he would've voted anyone exemplifying said traits off the island, as would have the majority his contemporaries—for very good reason. A band full of overgrown egos would've spelled disaster for survival in his day. In the "immediate" economies of hunter-gatherer life ("simple" hunter-gatherers who relied on no food storage in particular), daily cooperation was a must. Everyone upheld their duties to the band, and the group's good was the organizing principle of each and every day. There simply wasn't room for entitlement.

In keeping, band cohesion relied on every member's adherence to the social codes that were passed on through story and ritual. These codes of collaboration and reverence weren't just rules to be followed to avoid conflict or ostracism (a situation with significant, if not deadly, consequences in those days). Band codes were a spiritual as well as social ethos. Members participated in this ethical and spiritual tradition, and by doing so saw themselves as co-creators of it across the generations. This contribution was a key and honored aspect of their own individuation. Their individual identity was, in part, constructed and fulfilled through the personal upholding of the age-old codes.

Comment:

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Info

Income inequality: Is there a grooming gap?

Sara G. Miller
Live Science
Mon, 23 May 2016 11:31 UTC
woman doing makeup
© gpointstudio | Shutterstock.com
When it comes to your wages, do looks matter? A new study says yes.

However, in one aspect of appearance — being well groomed — there was a gender gap, according to the study.

The researchers found that overall, men and women who were considered more attractive earned more money than their less-attractive counterparts, according to the study, published online last month in the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. But when grooming was factored in for men, the numbers evened out. For women, those who were well-groomed women actually had higher incomes than poorly groomed women, regardless of their "natural" level of attractiveness, the researchers found.

Comment: Self-presentation is an important part of social interaction as well as a reflection of one's inner make-up. How we present ourselves to the world not only has an effect on those we spend time with, but taking the time to look after our appearance increases self-respect and self-confidence due to the fact that looking after ourselves is an act of self-love.

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Bell

The science of intuition: How to measure 'hunches' and 'gut feelings'

Cari Nierenberg
Live Science
Fri, 20 May 2016 14:19 UTC
decisions doors choice
© PathDoc/Shutterstock.com
Whether you call it a "gut feeling," an "inner voice" or a "sixth sense," intuition can play a real part in people's decision making, a new study suggests.

For the first time, researchers devised a technique to measure intuition. After using this method, they found evidence that people can use their intuition to make faster, more accurate and more confident decisions, according to the findings, published online in April in the journal Psychological Science.

The study shows that intuition does, indeed, exist and that researchers can measure it, said Joel Pearson, an associate professor of psychology at the University of New South Wales in Australia and the lead author of the study.

Comment: The book, Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell is an in-depth look at the phenomenon of intuition and is highly recommended. For more articles on the topic, see:

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Fire

Mutiny of the soul: Another way of looking at fatigue & depression

Charles Eisenstein
Upliftconnect.com
Sat, 21 May 2016 19:09 UTC
soul on fire
Depression, anxiety, and fatigue are an essential part of a process of metamorphosis that is unfolding on the planet today, and highly significant for the light they shed on the transition from an old world to a new.

When a growing fatigue or depression becomes serious, and we get a diagnosis of Epstein-Barr or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or hypothyroid or low serotonin, we typically feel relief and alarm. Alarm: something is wrong with me. Relief: at least I know I'm not imagining things; now that I have a diagnosis, I can be cured, and life can go back to normal. But of course, a cure for these conditions is elusive.

Comment: Wake up call: Depression holds tremendous potential for personal growth and spiritual awakening

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Heart

Why twins live longer healthier lives: Emotional support is the key

Susan Scutti
Medical Daily
Mon, 23 May 2016 17:57 UTC
twins survival advantage
© Rich Gershon / GettyTwins have a “survival advantage” over the general population: study.
Because couples and people with lots of friends tend to live longer, healthier lives, scientists often say marriage, friendship, and social interaction in general provide "health protective" benefits. Similarly, being born a twin may offer unseen advantages, according to a new analysis from University of Washington researchers that shows twins are more likely of surviving into their 60s.

Specifically, identical twins show greater ability to survive than fraternal twins at nearly every age, while fraternal twins have greater survival capacity than the general population.

"This research has documented a 'twin protection effect' akin to a marriage protection effect where a socially close relationship contributes to better survival outcomes throughout most of life," concluded David Sharrow and James Anderson.

Fact is, marriage is an advantage for some, not all. Most studies suggest a supportive marriage benefits both partners, while more contentious marital arrangements are problematic. For example, unhappy unions raise the risks of heart disease, especially among older women, one study found. Another revealed married partners who report being ambivalent about their marriage have consistently higher blood pressure throughout the day than those who consider themselves part of a supportive couple. One other study indicated health benefits may be asymmetric with long-term family life strongly linked to later-life health for men but for women... not so much.

Comment: Companionship and the support of others is crucial to our overall health and well-being - it's not the number of our social connections but the quality of our relationships that matters:

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Cow Skull

Belief in witchcraft linked to lack of community trust

Stephanie Pappas
Live Science
Thu, 12 May 2016 10:42 UTC
Witch doctor
© Creative Commons
A witch doctor in Zimbabwe, in sub-Saharan Africa where belief in witchcraft is widespread.
Belief in witchcraft is linked to a lack of trust for people in sub-Saharan Africa, new research finds. And that lack of social trust may be a barrier to economic development in struggling nations.

In regions where witchcraft belief is high, people are less likely to trust others, including their family, neighbors and local institutions, American University economist Boris Gershman reports in the May issue of the Journal of Development Economics. "What's more, the children of immigrants from countries with high prevalence of witchcraft beliefs are more distrusting than children of immigrants from other countries," Gershman found, suggesting that such beliefs may contribute to the formation of persistent antisocial attitudes.

"Economists and other social scientists have found a positive role of things like trust and cooperation in fostering business transactions, economic growth, trade and a variety of positive socioeconomic outcomes," Gershman told Live Science. "If witchcraft beliefs indeed contribute to the erosion of social capital, this is the channel through which they may adversely affect economic development."

Comment: Related articles:

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Family

Parent's behavior may affect kids of divorce more than divorce itself

Rebecca Harrington
Business Insider
Mon, 23 May 2016 12:30 UTC
Divorce
It's a common assumption that children of divorce are more likely to get divorced themselves.

For the most part, that's what psychologists have found when they've studied this phenomenon.

But perhaps divorce per se isn't exactly what's to blame.

Comment: See also: Dr. Gabor Maté: The stress-disease connection, addiction & the destruction of American childhood

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Light Saber

Wake up call: Depression holds tremendous potential for personal growth and spiritual awakening

Alex Pietrowski
Waking Times
Fri, 20 May 2016 00:00 UTC
depression
Is depression simply a disease as many psychiatrists and doctors would have us believe, or is there tremendous potential for personal growth and spiritual awakening locked up in the struggle against this common 'disorder?'

For those who are battling, or who have already conquered depression, there is certainly no one size fits all answer, but, according to one of the world's foremost experts on the relative study of mind and spirit, Dr. Lisa Miller, severe depression and spiritual experience are two sides of the same cognitive coin.

Her idea is perhaps best presented with this metaphor: depression and spiritual awakening are two sides of the same door. On one side is the total possibility of despair, hopelessness and isolation, and a look through to the other side reveals equally strong shades of spiritual satisfaction, inner peace, and connection to all that is.

Personally driven by her own despair and depression that resulted from infertility and a lack of being able to find her and her husbands' lives worth living without their own children, she began, ever so slowly to awaken to the messages of healers and helpers that seemed to arise serendipitously on her path, offering hints at greater possibilities for happiness and fulfillment.

Comment:
The three births of the human spirit - Carl Gustav Jung

Spiritual birth can only be the result of consciousness. Our internal development therefore does not only depend on our life experience; it depends much more on our ability to divert our attention from the outside world to our internal world.

From the aspect of our spiritual birth the - often chaotic - world of our Mind and emotions is not our real internal world. Our attention should not be directed to the analysis and comprehension of these; instead, we need to concentrate on becoming conscious of our existence, to find the center of our Self behind our external life and personal history. That is our real internal world.

In the course of our spiritual world we become conscious of, and alert to that internal center, to that internal world. Once that has been accomplished, our life is placed on entirely new foundations. The Mind stops functioning the way it used to and, together with that, our sense of identifying with the Mind vanishes. The spiritual Ego, our separate little self disappears, and we are permeated by a permanent, light presence. The personality is gone, and what remains is silence and presence, as the real essence of our existence. From that time on, that will serve as the real foundation for our internal development.

See also:

Epidemic depression as a wake up call to humanity
Overcome depression using your mind

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