How White Light Moments Change Your Brain, with Andrew Newberg

Past Due with Ana Marie Cox and Open Mike Eagle

Ana Marie Cox, Open Mike Eagle, and Andrew Steven

Arts, Society & Culture, Business, Performing Arts

4.6 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 June 2020

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How White Light Moments Change Your Brain, with Andrew Newberg If you’ve listened to the show at all this season, you’ve learned that the brain doesn’t want to change. And when it does change, it’s usually a slow process of erosion or evolution. So... what about the white light moments we’ve all heard of, if not experienced? Throughout history, there are accounts of people who undergo an instantaneous conversion of some kind: a flash of insight or comprehension that changes their lives forever. “Neurotheologian” Andrew Newberg joins us to talk about his research into what’s behind the white light, and what it does to us when it shines. You can find out more about Andrew and his research on his website His book about white light experiences is How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain If you’d like to hear Ana talk about her own white light experience, that discussion is here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Annamarie Cox and welcome to With Friends Like These Converts edition.
0:10.6	Quick morning, I am going to talk about suicide for a little bit here, so if that's not something
0:16.5	you can handle right now, you should fast forward.
0:20.8	Hello people who didn't fast forward.
0:24.0	So I am lucky enough to have a single moment that changed my life.
0:30.0	Sometimes they're called white light moments.
0:32.8	In 12 step programs, they're sometimes called a moment of clarity.
0:37.6	But that doesn't quite capture what happened to me.
0:41.9	You can hear the whole story of my suicide attempt and my decision to finally get sober
0:47.0	and an interview I did with John Mo that we will link to in the show notes.
0:51.8	The important part right now is that I woke up in the ICU and experienced a profound revelation
1:01.4	that the universe had a plan for me and at the very least it wanted me to stay alive for
1:08.7	a little while longer.
1:11.4	I didn't believe that before.
1:13.1	I didn't trust the universe.
1:16.8	And then I did.
1:18.4	And it's hard to explain the profundity of that thought in the moment.
1:22.5	It's hard to explain how clear it was and how deep it felt.
1:27.0	And unlike most thoughts, it has never quite left me.
1:32.2	And I think it's the reason I've been sober since then, going on nine years now.
1:38.7	If you've listened to the show at all this season, you know that the human brain just
1:43.0	usually doesn't change and it certainly doesn't change in an instant, except when it does.
	...

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