10/22/2025
I was recently having a conversation with an MD who was interested in my work but struggling to see where spirituality and psychology intersect.
And here are some thoughts and assertions based on my areas of study and incorporation of the spirit within how I practice:
I find there to be a fascinating dichotomy in the human condition sitting between spirituality and science. We often like to believe we’ve evolved beyond worship, or that modernity has freed us from kneeling before altars like our ancestors(who, by the way, you inherited your genetic makeup from which includes the nervous system). Yet, we are still wired to revere, to devote, and believe in something larger than ourselves. Worship is very much a neurologic process. And before you go saying "you're not a doctor!", let me explain and why that is the whole point of why I never became an MD of psychology:
The human brain seeks patterns, order, and meaning. It’s the same circuitry that creates art, prays to God, falls in love, or obsesses over status and certainty. So whether we call it faith, fandom, ideology, or evidence-based practice, the behavior is the same. We anchor our identity in something external, that tells us who we are and what is “right”, which sets our moral compass, but breeds the shadow nature from putting restraints on anything outside of those realms, revering them as “wrong”, simply because they are not understood, bred by a fear-based system that seeks, largely, to control.
In today’s world, many have traded altars for algorithms. We’ve made “the science” the new sacred. But I’m not to be misunderstood by saying, I deeply respect the pursuit of knowledge and empirical truth. But it becomes dangerous when science itself becomes a kind of dogma, when we stop questioning the frameworks built to explain our suffering.
Take the DSM(the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). It has undoubtedly helped bring structure and validation to human pain, yes, but it’s also a book of definitions written by committees(human beings), shaped by culture, bias, and politics. Over time, what we consider “disorder” has shifted dramatically. Grief, homosexuality, hysteria, were all once pathologized and were reflections of how societal discomfort with the mysterious, the emotional, and the spiritual often gets labeled as illness, without asking the soul. Because, of course, the soul can’t be pigeon-holed or pathologized.
The more I study neuroscience, the more I find myself believing in a higher intelligence. I can tell you for certain: there *IS* something beyond the sum of synapses and chemical cascades. The brain is too intricate and too poetic in its function to be pure accident. Consciousness feels like a divine experiment in self-awareness.
I understand and respect those who prefer to keep spirituality out of mental health. But even in that, there’s worship of systems, credentials, and institutions. The human need to bow before something won’t vanish, it’ll just find a new altar.
Perhaps the true integration lies not in choosing between science and spirit, but in remembering that both are languages trying to describe the same mystery: the mind, the soul, and the profound complexity of being human.
