Anatomy of the Soul Quotes

“Remember that emotion is not a debatable phenomenon. It is an authentic reflection of our subjective experience, one that is best served by attending to it.”
― Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections Between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices that Can Transform Your Life and Relationships

“Being known. Our Western world has long emphasized knowledge—factual information and “proof”—over the process of being known by God and others. No wonder, then, that despite all our technological advancements and the proliferation of social media, we are more intra- and interpersonally isolated than ever. Yet it is only when we are known that we are positioned to become conduits of love. And it is love that transforms our minds, makes forgiveness possible, and weaves a community of disparate people into the tapestry of God’s family. Attention.”
― Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships

“But narratives are not the only instruments within Scripture that can help us integrate our minds and lives. Poetry is another powerful literary tool. It has several distinct features:    By activating our sense of rhythm, poetry accesses our right-mode operations and systems.    Reading poetry has the effect of catching us off guard. Our imaginations are invigorated when our usual linear expectations of prose (that one word will follow obediently behind another on the way to a predictable end) don’t apply. This can stimulate buried emotional states and layers of memory.    Finally, poetry not only appeals to right-mode processing, but to left mode as well, given its use of language. This makes it a powerful integrative tool.”
― Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships

“In your life, God’s “way” is about loving him and loving your neighbor with all the parts of you. And this is hard work, especially for those parts of your “heart, soul, and mind” that have not had much practice doing that—the wounded parts, the weak parts, or the functions, such as memory or emotion, that you may not pay much attention to.”
― Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships

“even though you cannot change the events of your story, you can change the way you experience your story. Have”
― Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships

“In particular, he said that an important part of how people change—not just their experiences, but also their brains—is through the process of telling their stories to an empathic listener.”
― Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships

“Left-brain mental processing disregards the right-brain emotional elements of trust that are necessary for life to thrive. When I know that I know something because I can logically prove it, I step away from trust. When I no longer trust, I am no longer open to being known, to relationship, to love.”
― Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships

“Research in marriage and family therapy suggests that approximately 80 percent of the emotional conflict between couples is rooted in events that predate the couple knowing each other. That’s why one of the questions I commonly ask in marriage counseling is how much of each spouse’s reaction to the other is his or her “80 percent.” In other words, how much of the conflict is not so much a direct outgrowth of a current event as something that flows from parts of their minds that are remembering?”
― Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships

“sexual addiction. During their initial period of abstinence, abusers often find themselves flooded with emotions they do not yet have the mental or spiritual maturity to regulate, and as a result, quickly return to their old habits.”
― Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships

“It seems to me that one way to express their perspective is to say that if we can reduce our experience (in this case, of God) to that which we can measure (our genes and our neurons), we can eliminate the necessity of the God we thought existed.”
― Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships

“I’ve come to call what I experienced the process of being known. This is a much deeper and richer experience than simply knowing the bare facts of my story. It reflects what neuroscience and related disciplines are teaching us about what it means to live an integrated life—both as an individual and as part of a community.”
― Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships

“When we find ourselves on the low road, metaphorically the PFC has come unhinged. Neurologically it has become less efficiently connected to the other parts of the brain that are sending messages to it. On the low road we do not regulate our bodies well; we do not attune to others’ emotional states; our emotions are unbalanced and our responses are rigid. We leave no space for empathy and therefore limit our insight; fear becomes our gyroscope, overwhelming our capacity to attend to our bodies and making it impossible for us to intuit internal and external situations with wisdom. Ultimately this leads to poor moral choices. This entire process gives new meaning to the expression “He flipped his lid.”
― Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships