ASM022 The Enneagram, Daily Prayer, and Being Slain in the Spirit

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the enneagram daily prayer and being slain in the spirit all that and more on this week's episode of ask science mike

[Music]

welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life it's the last one ever that i'll record after work because from now on this is my work friday is my last day full time with my company and i'm taking science mike full time i'm gonna go on the road for events and do things with the liturgists and for now i'm gonna answer podcast questions let's get it started [Music] hey mike my question is about what's referred to as being slain in the spirit i've been around situations where mass amounts of people laugh and controllably and even sometimes shake and other things of that nature and i was wondering if there's any science better understand how and why this happens and if so is it caused by god or their own psychological constructs thanks so much well i grew up in the southern baptist church and there was not a lot of uncontrollable laughter or shaking or being slain in the spirit in those contexts and in fact i'd never really experienced that personally until i was an adult and i started traveling i played a christian rock band if you can believe that and we would go to different places and play and one of those was a pentecostal church and we started playing a set like any other set and uh people reacted at first in a way that we thought we were doing really well because you know lots of people putting their hands up people moving the kinds of things you want to see happening at a rock show even a christian rock show um but then people started shaking and falling on the ground and we actually stopped playing because we thought there might be a medical emergency no it was just the spirit moving and for people who've never experienced this it is a disorienting and frankly very strange phenomenon now it's interesting if you look at the growth of the charismatic and pentecostal movements in the united states there are few denominations that have benefited as much from the decline of the mainline as the charismatic and pentecostal dominations and many social scientists believe that's because traditional mainline churches have had a somewhat more distant understanding of god a less personal relationship focused salvation message and certainly a more reserved worship style and so you had a generation that grew up in the peak of the american mainline and found themselves wanting something more intimate something more exciting and certainly charismatic and pentecostal movements are exciting so you know there's there's there's these phenomena where sometimes people will individually have these expressions of being slain in the spirit the laughter the shaking the falling down other times they will do that in sort of group cohesion under the director of a minister okay and so from what i see and what i've studied there's different things happening in each of those situations people who are individually expressing some form this could be speaking in tongues whatever a lot of pentecostal worship is associated with a neurologically distinct type of spiritual expression so if you've listened to the program before you've heard me talk you know that it is remarkably similar how a christian and a buddhist or a muslim experience worship neurologically how they feel god or how they worship god or how they meditate they're very similar charismatic traditions aren't believe it or not when you speak in tongues when you're slain in the spirit you don't have the normal characteristic prefrontal cortex focus the the increased activity there you don't have the intense anterior cingulate activity what you have instead is a limbic system let loose the lower brain has an opportunity to effectively operate the body and the vocal apparatus without the interference of the prefrontal cortex and that would feel very much like someone speaking through you your consciousness that you are you associate with yourself right the part of your consciousness you think of as you is is really primarily in your prefrontal cortex so when your limbic system begins to speak or shake your body or do these things without your agency well yeah that would feel a lot like being animated by god but there's more to it even than that when you have these group situations where people begin to laugh together uh or people all fall down together what i think is happening is group hypnosis now hypnosis is a sort of sensationalistic thing but there's well documented cases of hypnosis i've i have been hypnotized by something as simple as a youtube video hypnosis is nothing magical it's simply a state of relaxation and suggestibility and so i think what you see in uh ministers who encourage these sorts of activities is they do the same sort of rituals that hypnotherapists and and stage hypnotists use to hypnotize people so some percentage of people are more susceptible to hypnosis and so they get hypnotized and they have this experience and then a larger group of people through social identity goes along with it to such a degree that they believe they too were having that authentic experience and then a final group doesn't have the experience but doesn't want to look like they're not a part of this group identity and so they they don't say that it didn't happen to them or they say that it didn't happen but they wish that it would and so i think there's a great way to look at this scientifically and you can explain all of this through you know what i just said hypnosis and through a type of spiritual expression that allows the limbic system to run free there's a lot of pentecostals and charismatics out there who would say god is working in them and that they feel god and these things make them feel closer to god i'm not going to take that away from them what i'm describing is the cogs and the machine you could certainly argue that the what i'm saying is the mechanisms by which god is moving in people's lives after all i've had a mystical experience right i've had and value my moment with god and you could argue absolutely that my moment with god was nothing but another neurological predisposition that it was a another way of exploiting human brains and i just call it beautiful and so for the person who's been slain in the spirit and found that fulfilling and moving and enriching then that is god in their life however to the person who's been manipulated or abused or taken advantage of that's definitely not of god that's someone committing fraud [Music] our next question came in from the email inbox and it reads hey science mike my name is michael stone and i'm a recently graduated high school student from kalamazoo michigan i have always been interested in learning about personality and different ways of categorizing it a while back i heard of the enneagram and i've been reading a couple of books on it i've found the enneagram to be helpful in my own personal growth as well as in my understanding of others the specific levels of emotional health for each type and suggested developmental practices are especially beneficial for me while i understand that the enneagram is not intended as a means of limitation and that i do not completely fit into one specific personality type i am having difficulty typing myself especially since the authors of the wisdom of the enneagram claim that every person does indeed fit into one of the nine types more than the others i believe it would be helpful for me to focus my enneagram efforts on one specific type that i embody most fully what's your advice i am curious as to whether there is any true science behind the enneagram it seems very psychological in nature and i am wondering whether the larger psychological community has an opinion about it i am also curious about your personal experience with enneagram have you engaged with any enneagram material and found it to be helpful as i have was determining your own type easy or did it take some time what is your type if you were to nail yourself down thanks for all the good stuff michael stone well michael i have tried the enneagram test and it has never been able to put me into an enneagram category never ever ever now my test results are remarkably consistent i always tie between the helper and the peacemaker an even match i never have a points variance between the two of them even when i try tests from different sources so i guess i'm starting from the bottom there with my own enneagram experience i have a lot of friends that swear by the enneagram they say that it was something that was incredibly revelational for them and their own personal growth that helped them know themselves better to live a healthier life very successful people very creative people some of the people i respect most in the world swear by the enneagram i have not been impressed by it [Laughter] i just you know here's the thing about personality tests you know you asked about the psychological community is the psychological community have an opinion on the enneagram yeah it's like myers-brigg it is a it is an aid for naval gazing i don't mean that in a bad way introspection is good and healthy but most of these personality typing tools don't yield the kind of results and consistent results that you would want for something with scientific rigor these aren't these aren't diagnostic tools that psychologists are going to use to treat disorders for example not the enneagram not myers-briggs not any of those for if you're asking you know myers-briggs i'm an enfj and the more i read about enfj and every time i take the test man enfj all day long it seems to make sense for who i am but these are sort of you know almost like really sophisticated horoscopes they're really open-ended they ask questions so there is some formula to them but a lot of times you're going to read multiple categories like you took all the labels off you just read the text i bet a lot of it and would sound like you feel like you because that's kind of the way they're written okay and i again i'm saying that's you know probably probably 90 of my friends are enneagram fans so and that you know they they roll their eyes when i talk about the scientific limitations of it the whole idea that one person is going to fit into one of the nine types more than the others it has not been my experience at all i see myself all over the enneagram and the helper and the peacemaker which the test places me out i could see myself being you know those being my two dominant descriptions but everybody who's an expert in the enneagram says i can't have two then this is why this is not a scientific tool it doesn't work for everybody myers-briggs has the same problem some people are unscorable myers-briggs some people are wildly inconsistent on myers-briggs or depending on whose tests they take they come up with different results and that's not what you want from a scientific diagnostic tool i think there's nothing wrong with the enneagram for people who have used the enneagram to gain new insights about themselves to come to a place of greater emotional wholeness and healing to change the ways that they relate to other people that's healthy that's good that's beneficial i'm for it i don't think it's damaging i just think it's misleading to present it as scientific or spiritually authoritative or certainly as universal science just doesn't back it up [Music] hi science mike i actually just had a question about prayer you tend to talk a lot about uh the importance of daily prayer and meditating on a loving god and i was just wondering what that looks like for you and i've been a christian for a long time but i've always had trouble setting aside time to pray and i haven't quite found a rhythm that works well for me i haven't um perhaps i haven't explored enough options but i was just wondering what that looks like practically for you what kind of meditation do you do or what kind of prayer do you do or where do you do it or how long do you do it for these are all things that would be helpful for me so i have a frame of reference for how i begin to implement that in my life thank you so much i love what you're doing with the show well the first thing i'd tell you is if you have not heard the episode on meditation we did of the liturgist podcast definitely go check that out that's a like a 90 minute show on nothing but prayer and meditation and we'll take you much deeper into a practice than i can do in a you know five to seven minute answer on ask science mike and i'll have a link to that in the show notes on asksciencemike.com you can click right there go hear the podcast but my practice changes over time first of all i have been praying daily to gods i was six or seven years old it's very comfortable very natural for me to speak conversationally with god i don't feel self-conscious when i do that it is easier for me to speak out loud or even speak to god through my mind than it is to record this show the show is a little difficult for me i sit alone in a room and talking to a microphone i'm an extrovert you know there's a there's a chemistry missing for me that is not when i pray i don't feel alone when i pray because i've done it so many times there was that period when i was an atheist i stopped praying so it's not like it's been a completely unentered practice but it wasn't too long after i returned to faith that i begin to pray daily again and i start the day prayer i wake up sort of groggy even though i'm a morning person but i get up and i let my dogs out and i usually walk outside with them and in those moments when i'm outside with the dogs and they're enjoying the morning they remind me that this day is a gift and i take a few moments to receive that gift and to be thankful for it i will usually start to vocalize how appreciative i am for this day before i've spoken to another person before i've done anything else i take just just 30 seconds 40 seconds to vocalize gratitude for the day to god and then the dogs back in they like to have breakfast immediately they're smart i get that i like to have breakfast pretty fast too and then as i sort of get ready and the day starts to flow through my mind i consciously surrender the day to god that the day was a gift to me and i am in return going to offer that gift back to god that that this day i will do god's work i take i take intentional time to both converse with god which we call cataphatic prayer and also to express mindfulness mindfulness meditation to simply be still and aware of the day whenever i see a moment of beauty you know if i'm driving to work and the sky is beautiful or i i i drive to work on a canopy road that's under this beautiful oak canopy across a small road is how i go to work every morning i ride a motorcycle and every day i take time to simply be aware that i didn't make the road i didn't make the motorcycle i didn't make the sky or the trees all these things have been offered to me to enjoy if i will enjoy them and so i don't verbally express gratitude i put my soul my heart these are words that don't quite fit i orient my being towards a gratitude and an awareness of the gift and i'll often think of the gift of my consciousness of my body uh and i thank god for all of those things so i begin every day with gratitude as the day goes on stressful things happen you encounter other people who are having bad days you start to have a bad day yourself i surrender those things to god usually through conversational prayer and then towards the end of the day i have moments of prayer all throughout but i will usually take some time five minutes ten minutes and do some centering prayer to sit still in the presence of god with no agenda no goal simply meditating in the presence of god i also i get a little embarrassed about this but i i'm back to doing daily bible study um i read the bible every day usually a few different translations i do um i it's a latin turn i can't really say it lecto divina i don't know a divine reading of scripture where i read short passages very short and i reflect on them and i allow god to reveal something in that text to me a very slow savoring read it's the opposite of what i did when i lost my faith and i obsessively read the bible as quickly as possible here i'm not trying to prove or disprove anything i'm merely trying to see what god would reveal to me through the bible which i know that sounds funny to people because i'm the guy that says well i don't think genesis is literal or or you know the a lot of there may be mythic attributes even to the new testament and then be oh no he doesn't appreciate the bible quite the contrary you know the bible is the story the stories of people of faith who have gone before me who have loved and served god and their heart and soul is revealed in this text the way they knew and understood the god that i love is revealed in this text and so i appreciate the bible more today than i ever have in my life so for me it's simple my daily prayer routine is centered around gratitude surrender awareness and and scripture reading now that's not all the types of prayer meditation i do but those are the most consistent those are the things i do each and every day not every day do i ask god for things and not every day do i do other forms of prayer but every day i do those things now lately there's a there's a friend of mine who his son has been very ill and has had brain cancer and so i have every single day asked god for this young man to be healed every day without fail and those have been more intense or fervent moments of prayer so someone would say well you say you're not sure if you believe intercessory prayer or not well i'm not there's logical contradictions there but i've also seen what appears to be god moving through intercessory prayer and regardless my heart is moved for this young man and for his family and for my friend who i love so much so it's not the outcome of the prayer it's the alignment it's the understanding it's the tapping in to the energy the source of all life that which created everything and of which we have no words that's what i'm reaching out to in prayer and through some miraculous process that i cannot explain scientifically that reaches back as well if you're if you're saying how do you connect to a loving god consistency trying every day and being open being open to the experience believing that this is not a waste of time that it's not silly superstition but through prayer you can reflect on and connect to that loving god which caused you to be [Music] last question is another email question it reads hi science mike first i really appreciate your show and the liturgist podcast has been very helpful in my deconstruction reconstruction project i'm going to assume that's not home improvement my question is about the perceived link between homosexual behavior and child abuse i've tried to research this topic on my own but i've had trouble finding any good resources there were plenty of partisan research groups like the family research council but i immediately disregard those findings the reason this concerns me is that my brother-in-law who is 16 has come out as gay but everyone is hesitant to accept this due to his past he was sexually physically and mentally abused by his birth mother until she abandoned the family several years ago he has since continued the cycle of abuse with his younger stepbrother he has a slew of mental issues and is being treated for them but the one thing that keeps coming up from my in-laws is how homosexuality is caused by abuse at a young age they are of course fundamental conservative evangelicals who are latching on to this new trend of explaining homosexual behavior by equating it to abuse unfortunately their psychiatrist has reaffirmed the link between abuse and homosexual behavior whether this was for boys they are treating at their facility or if it is a general statistic i am not sure reciting the mantra correlation does not equal causation would only anger them and cause them to dig in deeper i really just would like to know what the science says i know we have no concrete answers yet but anything solid would be helpful thanks for what you do here jason well jason thanks for your question i would like to begin by helping you better affirm your brother-in-law who's come out as gay i know she said gay there but then you use the term homosexual a lot and that is certainly a valid term especially sort of speaking scientifically i suppose it's also termed a lot of baggage because conservatives have used it so much as a badge of shame for people of different sexual orientations that's where you usually hear the lgbtq lesbian gay bisexual transgendered queer and i tried as much as possible to say lgbtq simply had a sensitivity for people who have had a much more challenging environment coming to terms with their sexuality than i have as a you know heterosexual male right society has always validated the way that i express uh sexual love and romantic love uh and that's not the case for our friends of what has in the past been called alternative orientations now when we talk about the science of this is are gay men or lesbians are is that orientation typically the result of abuse science has not borne that out there are certainly cases where people have been abused and then express same-sex attraction but that's not like anywhere near a universal thing and the converse is not true either gay men are no more statistically likely to be pedophiles than straight men the data's just not there to say that they are now what's interesting people who suffer from pedophilia actually don't have the same divergent or dimorphic gender preferences that gay lesbian and straight people have what do i mean straight men like women gay men like men and the secondary sex characteristics especially guide their attraction to one group or the other but because pedophiles are attracted to children children don't have wildly divergent secondary sexual characteristics and so what you often see with pedophiles is that they are merely attracted to children and the gender is not especially relevant and so there's there could be a confirmation bias factor at play where when when a man is a pedophile and he begins to molest children it could be relatively indiscriminate about whether it's young boys or young girls but it may be easier for him to find that he can spend time with young boys than young girls and so through opportunity he becomes associated with gay pedophilia right regardless pedophilia is a disorder abuse of children is wrong period children can't consent to sexual contact they can't do it adults can that's why regardless of the arguments that make people have against it i don't find they hold water when you're talking about lgbtq two consenting adults whatever they want to do is none of my business but when it comes to children the consent is not there now you mentioned something about your brother-in-law that he has been a victim of abuse himself and absolutely abused people are more likely to turn around and abuse others because the other thing psychologists say is that typically pedophilia and child abuse is much less about sex and much more about power much like rape adult rape is is a power crime more than an expression of sexual need these are dark places dark places in the human psyche your brother-in-law if he's abusing people that's dangerous and has nothing to do with him being gay and everything to do with the fact that he's been abused and that he is perpetuating that cycle of abuse i hope that has been stopped that law enforcement has been informed and that the stepbrother has been protected that's more important than anything in terms of your conservative friends and your family who are saying that people are gay because they've been abused no science isn't there they're saying that gay people are more likely to abuse children know the science is not there to support that i'll include a link or two in the show notes at ask sciencemike.com this is a myth that needs to die no mainstream social scientists are making these claims or supporting these claims there's nothing here but propaganda that is harmful to innocent people and frankly undermines and limits our ability to have necessary and important conversations about child safety and child sexual abuse and if your faith compels you to do something that limits our ability to protect children from sexual abuse shame on you well that's another episode of ask science mike pretty heavy last question i feel like it's casting a shadow over the outro here uh but the really good news i'm full-time science mic now this is my full-time job so what i do for a living is advance a conversation about science and faith and specifically how christianity and science are simply good friends and not mortal enemies and i'd love to do this in your local community i've got a lot of events uh the rest of the year you can check them out at mikemcart.com events but i'd like to do more i've got a few more spots open now so if you'd like to have me come in and talk about the science of faith or host conversations about doubt or any of the kinds of things that you hear me talk about i'd love to just go to ask sciencemike.com and in the upper right hand corner click on bookmike and the good folks at chaffee management would be happy to talk to you about bringing me in for an event it'd be a lot of fun speaking of events i'll be at the wild goose festival with the liturgists this year i'm gonna talk about the science of peacemaking i'll be with forefront church in new york uh in september i believe talking about sex drugs and violence through the lenses of science and faith it's gonna be a phenomenal experience i'm gonna be heading back to uh texas soon to see my friends at the collective church so i'd love to see you there basically i'm gonna be all over the country i'd love to see you if i'm in your neck of the woods and if i'm not gonna be in your neck of the woods just find a church a college or a conference that might be interested in my work and will connect now the show ask science mike is more important than ever and so your questions are keeping it alive thanks so much for them if you'd like to put a question on the show just go to ask sciencemic.com scroll down to the bottom you can record a voice message and send it to me or type a text message i'll get that as well of course you can also use the hashtag asksciencemike on twitter soundcloud or youtube although very few people do that one anymore it's pretty much all through the website our show is listener supported this is one of the ways i pay my mortgage and not only that uh greg nordin's our producer hayley hyde she does a lot of pre-production helps as well so there's a lot of people involved in the show and because of that every single dollar helps you want 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