A LIBRARIAN’S ORIENTATION
What this book explores
Clinical psychologist Lisa Miller combines personal narrative with research on spirituality, development, depression, resilience, and the brain. She argues that a capacity for spiritual awareness is part of human life and that cultivating connection to something larger than the isolated self can support meaning and psychological well-being.
EDITORIAL NOTE
Why it’s in the Library
This book offers a bridge for travelers who are open to spirituality but want engagement with psychology and neuroscience rather than only testimony or theology. It broadens the shelf beyond extraordinary mystical states and presents spiritual life as a capacity connected to development, relationship, resilience, and attention.
Good starting place if…
You are interested in how spiritual awareness may relate to mental health, resilience, development, and the brain, and you prefer an accessible research-facing introduction.
Know before you begin…
Miller moves between empirical findings, clinical interpretation, personal experience, and larger claims about an innate spiritual brain. Correlation, brain imaging, and reported well-being do not by themselves establish a divine source, a single spiritual faculty, or one correct metaphysical explanation. The book can support serious inquiry without settling what spiritual experience ultimately is.