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When life gets hard, does what we think we believe hold us up, or does it crumble under the weight of doubt? I'm your host, Dr. Lee Warren- I'm a brain surgeon, author, and a person who's seen some stuff and wondered where God is in all this mess. This is The Spiritual Brain Surgery podcast, where we'll take a hard look at what we believe, why we believe it, and the neuroscience behind how our minds and our brains can smash together with faith to help us become healthier, feel better, and be happier so we can find the hope to withstand anything life throws at us. You've got questions, and we're going to do the hard work to find the answers, but you can't change your life until you change your mind, and it's gonna take some spiritual-brain surgery to get it done. So let's get after it.
When life gets hard, does what we think we believe hold us up,
or does it crumble under the weight of doubt?
I'm Dr. Lee Warren, your host, and this is Spiritual Brain Surgery,
where we'll take a hard look at what we believe,
why we believe it, and the neuroscience behind how our minds and our brains
can work together to help us
build a bulletproof faith that will withstand anything life throws at us.
Whether you're struggling with anxiety, grief, doubt, or you just want to go
deeper into the big questions we all have, remember,
you can't change your life until you change your mind, and sometimes it takes
spiritual brain surgery to get it done. So let's get after it.
Hey, my friend, Dr. Lee Warren here for some spiritual brain surgery.
Tata and I were unable to record this weekend, so I wanted to give you a few
minutes of some thoughts that I've been thinking about spiritual brain surgery
and where we're going with this podcast and what I intend for you to get from
it and why I think it's such a special opportunity for us to really connect on a deeper level
with what we believe, why we believe it, and how we can defend it,
share it, and live it out.
That's the overarching goal of spiritual brain surgery.
Today, we're going to talk about that, and I want to give you some thoughts
that were inspired by a fallen tree this morning on my way to work. So let's get after it.
So maybe you're new around here, Spiritual Brain Surgery is growing.
It's a pretty new podcast. I started it last year.
And first question you might have is, well, why did you start another podcast?
The Self-Brain Surgery podcast, the Dr. Lee Warren podcast, it's already a popular show that's growing.
We've got sponsors now, we're getting a lot more downloads and people all over
the world are hearing it every week. So why would you start another podcast? Well, I'll tell you one.
As we've gone deeper into the self-brain surgery curriculum,
the neuroscience part of my work of helping you understand what your mind is
and what your brain is and how they're not the same thing and how we can communicate
with God with our minds, and that has massive structural implications in how our brains,
our bodies, our lives, even our generations after us and people around us because
of epigenetics and quantum entanglement and all that stuff.
So once we get deeper into that, it's inevitable that we're going to start talking
about some things that will be attractive to people who are struggling in their lives,
even if they don't have any sort of faith or even if they don't have any sort
of relationship with God.
And what I wanted to do is to have the podcast be accessible for people,
even if they weren't people of faith, to say, hey, we're talking about science here.
We're talking about things that can be evaluated and thought about through research
and how 21st century neuroscience is showing us things about our minds and our
brains that are leading us to ask some big questions.
And I want to always be honest with you. I'm a Christian. You know what my worldview
is. You know what I believe. And I'm going to talk about it all the time.
But I want that podcast to be a place where people can come and grapple with
these things and not think that I'm just trying to shove my spirituality,
my religion, my faith down this road.
And here's what I believe. And I've said it out loud on the main podcast all
the time. I talk about it all the time.
What I believe is that if you are a reasonable and rational person,
and if you live your life in accordance with a set of principles that are consistent
with a good scientific method of querying what the truth is about the world
around you and trying to revise your hypothesis in accordance with the data
that you see and in response to the experiments and observations that you make about life,
that you will get to a place where you recognize one important truth,
and that is not everything that happens in your life can be answered,
understood, or made better,
with a scientific approach. Not everything can.
And so that led me to this idea as I started to put the concepts together for
my next book, which is coming out in February, The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery.
That led me to this idea that just as in neurosurgery, when I'm practicing my
practice as a neurosurgeon.
We have what we call approaches in neurosurgery. And approach is this set of
things that come about from the training and beliefs and experiences that we have.
The first thing about approach is what is possible for this particular type of operation?
What is it possible to accomplish so we have a problem that the patient has?
We have a potential solution, and we address that with this thing that we call
approach, which is what we know we're capable of doing, what's possible,
and what technology we need to bring to the table to get that done,
what a position we would need to put the patient in to get it done,
and what kind of techniques we need to apply to the situation to get that done.
All of that stuff kind of balled up together is what we call approach, okay?
Is the patient on their side or on their back or on their belly?
Is the operation going to be carried out with a laser or with a microscope or
with a drill or with a hammer? What sets of tools will be necessary?
And when I've done these things in the past, what's been possible?
So what should I expect as potential complications might arise?
What impossibilities might present themselves that I might need to change from
one approach to another? All that sort of thing is approach.
So it dawned on me that we have this set of things that we call approach.
And people have approaches in their lives, too. Even when you don't realize
that you're using an approach, you're using one. And so one of those approaches
we've talked about before is something called that I call nothing can help me.
Like we've come to this place where we believe that because of our genetics
or our background or upbringing or traumas or tragedies or the things we've
been through, that we just are the way we are and nothing can be done about it.
And it just is what it is. And this is what life's going to be.
And if you're lucky and you're beautiful and you're rich and everything goes
your way, then maybe that life works out for you.
But if you're me and you've got this set of things or you think a certain way
or you've been raised a certain way or your dad did this thing to you or X,
Y and Z happened, then that's just how it's going to be for me.
And there's not much I can do about it.
And if you believe that, if you live your life in accordance with that,
nothing can help me approach, then guess what? Nothing can help you.
But it dawned on me as I started thinking about that, a huge part of our problem
in society right now is we have so many people who are living their lives according
to that idea that they have an identity or some kind of situation that they
can't change because they're stuck with the brain that they have or their life
has broken them in some particular way. So they're stuck and nothing can help them.
And what we've learned is the quantum physicists are the ones that taught us,
but how you view and think about the world turns out to be pretty much what's
true of your capabilities in the world and your experience of the world.
And so if you believe nothing can help you, then nothing can help you.
And so I started putting this book together thinking, how do I use sort of surgical
terminology because self-brain surgery really is real surgery?
And how do I use that to say you can change from one approach to another?
And there are multiple different approaches to your life, and some of them might
be more helpful than others.
And I just said, I realized at some point that on the Dr.
Lee Warren podcast, which we're now calling Self-Brain Surgery in Anticipation
of the Book coming out next year.
I wanted that place to be there for people who recognize that the approach they're
using isn't working, but they're not ready yet to say, hey, maybe God can help me.
That they want to sort of noodle out and work through and use science to get
to a different place in their life.
And I just want to provide that place where we can say, hey,
if you believe this or that, or you don't believe anything, here's some ways
that this science can be helpful to you.
Here's some ways that this idea that I got from scripture might be helpful to you.
And then we're going to lead you down this path to say, okay,
if my approach isn't working, I need to change approaches. So what's another approach?
Well, if nothing can help me, then maybe there's another approach where something can help me.
Maybe just shifting your mindset from, I do not believe I can be helped to,
I believe there is something that may be able to help me out there somewhere.
That's an approach shift. And if you're willing to make that approach shift
and you get to the end of that and you say, well, I believe that something can help me.
So I tried meditation or I tried this or I tried that or I tried alcohol or
I tried drugs or I tried Netflix or I tried affairs or whatever,
and nothing's helping me. And I thought something might, but I tried a bunch
of these things and nothing did. So now I'm stuck again.
Then maybe there's another approach and maybe that one's science can help me.
So maybe science can help me.
And so I want that podcast to be bringing you all these ideas from different walks of life.
And ultimately, I believe that if you pursue science with an honest approach,
you will come to a place where you say, you know what?
Science has really able to help me. And I've learned a lot.
I've grown a lot. I've changed a lot. but I've got some issues that science cannot solve.
And when I get to that place, that's when I say.
Maybe God can help me. Maybe there's something about spiritual life that could help me.
And I want to show you how that idea that maybe science alone isn't enough,
and maybe there's something to this God idea after all,
that that place, potential transformation, is the boiling pot,
the mixing pot, the cauldron,
where I think I can help you see a place that life can be better than it is,
that you can truly change your life by changing your mind, that you can become
healthier and feel better and be happier and all that stuff.
I believe I can lead you to a place on the path where you say,
maybe I should look into this idea that perhaps God can help me.
Okay. So I then realized that we have some things that we talk about on the podcast a lot.
I used to do theology Thursday and I did Bible studies and I did morning quiet
times and I did Tuesdays with Tata all the time.
And those were almost purely spiritual.
And I realized that if we're going to have some people coming into the podcast,
walking this path that we're so carefully creating for people to be able to
follow and recognize that science and faith are not enemies and you don't have
to be a moron to think about spiritual things and the brain actually responds
and your brain gets healthier and more resilient and more powerful when you
think about spiritual things and when you meditate.
And this was just on the Mel Robbins podcast. It's just this past week where
she's looking at the neuroscience that's showing, guess what?
People who pray and meditate, their brains get healthier than people who don't.
So I want there to be a path, a place for those people who aren't ready to say,
hey, let's have a Bible study.
They're not ready for that. So I wanted to move that because it's so important
to me and I don't want to give it up.
But I also want to make space for people who are seeking and make that place
a little bit more comfortable for them as we take this journey together that's
going to lead to maybe God can help me.
And again, hiding any of this, it's right there in plain sight.
It's there. We talk about it all the time. The Ten Commandments of Cell Praying
Surgery are spiritual principles. And my work is all wrapped up in my faith.
So it's just that I wanted to take all this other stuff that's almost purely
biblical Christianity oriented stuff with some science thrown into it.
And create its own place. And so that if that's where you are and you want to go deeper.
Or if I get you to the other place on my other podcast and you want to go deeper,
then we'll have this whole library of content over here on spiritual brain surgery
where you can take a deep dive into what we believe and why we believe it and how we can live it,
defend it and share it with others. That's why.
And then I also thought about spiritual brain surgery. There'll be a perfect
opportunity to have some guest hosts, some people with great stories or who've
been through really hard things or can share their faith in a different way.
So we had Leanne Ellington and John Seidel and me, Shirley, and Christy Osborne.
We're going to have a bunch of other additional great guest hosts coming up.
And I'm going to do some solo episodes like this one that you're hearing now.
We're going to bring you Tuesdays with Tatas and all that. So if you're new
here, I just wanted to give you an overview.
Why Spiritual Brain Surgery? What's it all about?
Well, that's what it's all about. We've got some incredible guests coming up on the show.
We're having another interview this week for a guest that'll be a conversation
with me and the guests on the show.
I wanted to give you all that. And let me tell you why the spiritual side of
this is so important to me.
First, I believe with all my heart that Jesus is the Son of God and that he's the path to salvation.
And he's also the path to abundance in the life that we have right now.
But if you've never heard my voice before, if this is the first time you've
ever heard me talk about this show or myself or my work, I just want you to hear me say this.
Life is really, really hard. I'm a neurosurgeon. And I practice in the most
probably complex and difficult specialty where there's some truly heartbreaking
things. There's some diseases we can't cure.
There's some injuries we can't fix. And I'm the guy that has to go into the
waiting room and talk to the parents or the family or the spouse and say,
we did everything we could.
But the tumor was too aggressive. The injury was too severe. We couldn't save him.
Or he's going to live, but he's going to have some serious disabilities,
some serious neurological compromise here, and he might not get better.
I'm the guy that has to say that.
So neurosurgery is fraught with that kind of thing. And I just want you to know
that I am not saying that just believe in Jesus and your life's going to be
great. This is not some kind of prosperity thing.
We talk about positivity all the time. We talk about how important it is to
filter your mind properly and use the reticular activating system in a way that
helps you see possibility and opportunity.
But that's not saying that if you just get your mind right, your life will be
right. It's not saying that you can have whatever you ask God for. It's not saying that.
And it's not saying that you'll be protected from trauma and drama and tragedy
and massive things as long as you believe the right stuff and give the right
money away to the church and all that stuff.
That's not true, okay? I'm living proof of it, okay? I've been through a divorce.
I've had PTSD from war, and I've lost a son.
So I've done the stuff in life that creates the most pain. And so I'm just here
to tell you that there's some stuff that you will face in your life that science
alone cannot handle for you.
And you're going to get to a place where you need something more. And it is reasonable.
Following a scientific approach, it is reasonable and rational for you to say, maybe God can help me.
And so if you're here, since you're here listening to me on the Spiritual Brain
Surgery podcast, then maybe you've already said that. Maybe God can help me.
Then it makes sense to take a deep dive into what exactly is it that Christians
believe that God does, can, and will do.
Why exactly do we think it's reasonable to think that we can have hope and maybe
even happiness again after we've gone through some of those difficult things?
That's what this show is going to do. We're going to go deep into why it is
reasonable to think those things.
I'm going to give you an example. This morning, we had a big storm last night.
Got in my truck to drive to work to the hospital this morning.
And I got about halfway up our mile and a half long dirt road that leads out
to the highway from our house.
And there was a massive tree that had fallen over. It was completely blocking the road.
And I'm talking about the top half of a 100-year-old, probably 7,500-year-old
cottonwood tree, you know, big in diameter as any big tree you've seen in your
yard, probably three feet in diameter.
And the top of it was probably a foot or more in diameter and laying all the
way across the road and just about three or four or five feet into the ditch
on the side of the road between a barbed wire fence that separates off our neighbor's property from ours.
And I was stuck. There was no way I was going to get to work.
This tree was bigger than my tractor would have pulled out of the way.
I certainly didn't have time to get a chainsaw and cut it up and move it and all that.
So I called the sheriff's department because during off hours,
they're the ones that you call if there's some kind of problem.
They'll get the county out there.
And I told them what was going on. They said they'd send somebody out,
but it would be several hours because it stormed the night before.
He'd done a lot of damage in the area.
And so I knew if I was going to get to work and take care of patients today,
I was going to have to figure a way around that tree.
But the path was blocked. The road was completely blocked. Part of the ditch
was blocked. There was a barbed wire fence over there.
And there was no way I was getting to work. There's not another road out of
our property. There's a river to the north, so I can't drive my truck across the river.
There's no way I'm getting out of there to get to the hospital. There was no way.
And I remembered, this is that funny little voice that you have in your head.
God says to Isaiah, you'll hear a voice that says, don't go this way, go that way.
There's a path for you. And I remembered Isaiah 43.
There's this little passage. It says, I'm God, and apart from me,
there is no salvation. I'm your God.
I'm the one that you can trust. I'm the one. And Jesus says the same thing in John.
He says, I am the way and the truth and the life.
And later in Isaiah 43, he says, see, forget the former things.
I'm doing a new thing. I'm going to make a way where there is no way.
I'm going to make a stream in the desert, a path through the wilderness.
He says, I want you to forget the former things, and I want you to recognize
that I'm doing something new, that there's a way forward for you.
And as I was pondering that, because I intended to talk to you about this today,
I knew I had some time at lunch. I was going to tell you about this.
It dawned on me, hey, I could put my truck in four-wheel drive,
and I could get one tire up right up next to the fence on the other side of
this ditch and one tire apart from the ditch because the ditch was full of raging water.
Now it was going to be muddy and boggy and I was going to get stuck if I got in the ditch.
So I drove over one tire, got up on the side, my truck's angled about 30 degrees.
And I said, I'm just going to have to run over the top of that tree.
But in four wheel drive, maybe I can climb over those branches enough and maybe
it won't tear up the undercarriage of my truck.
And maybe if I go really slowly and I just am really careful and really blessed here,
maybe I either won't get stuck, slide into the fence and destroy my neighbor's
fence or drop into the ditch and get stuck or get high centered on the tree branch.
Maybe it won't tear my underpan and I won't have a big oil leak or tear out
the muffler of my truck or any of that.
Maybe if I just go real slow, maybe I can negotiate this and maybe there's a way forward here.
And I thought, boy, I've tried stuff like that in the past. And guess what happened?
I got stuck. I had to go get a friend.
I'll call Al or one of my friends to go get a tractor and pull me out of there.
Or I injured my truck. Lisa and I tried to go around a big obstacle in Wyoming one time.
We got almost stuck and had to use the winch to get out of there.
Like you can damage your truck. You can get stuck. You can sink.
You can tear yourself up.
And I thought about all those previous times when I'd had trouble or I had to
turn around and go home because I couldn't get out.
I was scared for a minute, but I thought, you know what, there's 30 people that
are looking for my help today, and it's already almost 8 o'clock there.
In Nebraska, people drive 200 miles to see me sometimes, so it's like they're
not going to be sitting at home still.
They're going to have wasted a long drive in the car if I can't get there, so I need to get there.
So I did. I just crossed the ditch with one tire and really slowly drove up
onto those tree branches and just slowly negotiated.
It made an awful scraping sound. I hope when I go out there later today,
it won't be leaking oil all around my truck.
But I made it across.
I got through it. And I got to the other side. And I remember that verse again.
I'm making a way where there is no way. I'm making a path through the wilderness.
I'm making streams in the desert. I want you to forget the former things and
just remember there is a way forward.
But to know the way, you got to know what the truth is. You have to know what
your approach is capable of giving.
You have to know what the instrument you have, in my case, the truck today.
What can it do? What's reasonable to try? What's an alternative approach?
What's a path you haven't considered? Because here's the thing.
If you fix your eyes on the problem, you fix your eyes on your issue,
the loss that you've had. when my son died, that could easily have become the
only thing I could see in my life. And you know people like that.
20 years from now, you bump into him on the street and you say,
hey, how are you doing today, Joe?
And he says, I was thinking about my boy that died 20 years ago.
And I'm going to go to support group meeting in a little while.
And I'm just struggling today.
And don't hear me wrong. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with hurting
because I'm still hurting over my precious son, Mitchell, dying.
Okay. I'll never stop hurting.
But I just decided, that Lisa and I and our family said, we cannot let this
be the defining moment of our life. God said to Isaiah.
I will refine you in the furnace of suffering.
And just realize the alternative to being refined is to be defined and burned up.
And that thing can be the only thing that ever happens in your life,
or it can be something that refines you in some way and you're able to move forward.
And that's why God says, forget the former things, press on towards the new thing that I'm doing.
Somebody wrote in just this weekend and said, hey, are you saying that we should
forget the traumas that we've been through?
And I'm not saying that. When he says forget the former things,
he's not saying literally wipe them from your mind. That's not possible.
Your brain from time to time is going to bring things up to you and remind you of them.
I live every day with the memory of what happened to my son and my precious
boy that I can't hold and hug and talk to anymore. And he made me laugh.
And we just had such a wonderful relationship. And I miss him every day and
I always will. So I'm not saying forget your traumas.
What I'm saying is don't let the trauma be the only thing you look at.
Don't orient your life towards the thing you've lost or towards the problem you went through.
Don't orient your gaze and fix your mind and set your attention on those things
because quantum physics teaches us that what we set our attention on becomes
what's real in our life. 10th commandment of self-brain surgery is to remember
that thoughts become things, okay?
That the things you think about becomes what's real in your life.
So if you fix your attention and your purpose and your focus and your emotional
energy and all that on the problem, on the identity, on the crisis, on the loss, on the pain.
Everything that you look at
in your life will be an uncrossable tree across the road in front of you.
And your only alternative will be to continue to live in the past, okay?
That's what I wanted to share with you today. That's why spiritual brain surgery, okay?
I want there to be a place where we can come and we can have Bible studies and
we can talk about theology and we can do apologetics. And why does science and
faith work together to show us who Jesus really is and what's true in your life?
And where can you turn when you're really hurting?
And I want that other podcast, the Self-Brain Surgery podcast,
I want that to be a place where we're on a journey together.
And if you're already a Christian and already a believer, I want you to take
a journey with me there too.
And my new book, The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery,
will help you because some Christians make the mistake of thinking that,
yeah, God's going to save me someday and he's going to wipe away all my tears and all that.
But boy, this life sure is terrible. And I wish I didn't have it like I do.
And I sure can't change this habit because it's just how I am. It's how my family is.
I'm telling you, there is a path to an abundant life that's bigger and better
and more exciting than you ever imagined. Paul says it in the New Testament.
God can give you far more than you can ask or even imagine. And he's not talking
about money and jewelry and cars.
He's talking about this peace, this resilience, this power for your life that
comes in spite of and sometimes because of the things that we go through.
And the great mystery of Christian life is that you can have an abundant life
in the face of things that are constantly being stolen and killed and destroyed
and the trouble that we inevitably have in this lifetime. Okay?
Spiritual brain surgery, because I want you to learn what we believe,
why we believe it, and how we can live it, defend it, share it,
and have this life that means something, even when things are hard.
And self-brain surgery, because I want you to see that there is a reasonable,
rational, scientific approach you can take to your life that leads you to a
place where you say, science can't answer everything in my life.
And I have to see that there's bigger things out there in the universe that
I need to connect my mind to.
And then I need to get to the Bible and see it's been saying that all along.
And the arc of science bends back towards what scripture has been saying the whole time.
And so these two shows, I hope you listen to both of them. Please subscribe
wherever you listen to podcasts to Spiritual Brain Surgery and Self Brain Surgery with Dr. Lee Warren.
Check us out on YouTube. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. It's youtube.com slash at Dr.
Lee Warren, the at symbol and D-R-L-E-E-W-A-R-R-E-N, youtube.com slash,
and then you have to do the at Dr. Lee Warren.
Okay, subscribe. Why? Because I want to make sure that you get notified every
time there's a new episode.
If we get to 5,000 YouTube subscribers, we're going to do a special YouTube-only
episode. We'll take video questions from you. We'll have a great time.
And we're going to have a giveaway with something special.
In fact, this might be the first time I announce it. I'm going to give away
a signed hardcover copy of all three of my books to one lucky listener when
we get to 5,000 YouTube subscribers. So how do you qualify for that?
You have to be subscribed to the podcast on Apple or Spotify, wherever you listen.
And you have to subscribe on YouTube and my email list, okay?
Three places I want to contact with you. I want to know that you're getting
all the episodes wherever you listen to audio podcasts on YouTube and that I
can email you my weekly newsletter.
Because my weekly newsletter, if you're not getting it, it's my best prescription
for how you change your mind and change your life.
I've been writing a prescription like that every Sunday since 2014.
And it's the best work I do every week. I think my work as a neurosurgeon is
amazing. I get to help people save lives, reduce pain, relieve,
restore, function, all that stuff.
And the work that I do writing is doing that for you around the world on the
emotional and spiritual level, okay?
So these two things, these two things that I get to do, practicing neurosurgery
and practicing and prescribing self-brain surgery, immensely valuable and immensely rewarding.
And I want to make sure you get access to that stuff, okay? So help us get to
5,000 YouTube subscribers.
Make sure you subscribe to both the podcasts and we'll keep doing this thing.
Keep pursuing truth. We keep trying to transform our lives By changing our minds
first And we keep remembering That all you have to do, my friend Is understand this one simple thing.
The things you think about Become real things
in the world It's time to stop committing self-malpractice That's the first
commandment of self-brain surgery It's time to understand that not everything
you feel And think is true That's the second and third commandments It's time
to understand that your mind and your brain Are not the same thing That's the fourth commandment.
And it's time to understand the fifth commandment, which is I must believe that
self-brain surgery is not a metaphor.
It's the mechanism of how I changed my life.
Those are the first five. I'll teach you the next five next time.
We'll go through them again.
I just wanted to put it back out there as kind of what is this spiritual brain
surgery thing all about? And I hope it's been helpful for you.
I got around the tree branch today.
You can get around whatever tree branches are in your path too.
You just can't fixate on the branch. You got to look for the new thing that
God's doing, the new opportunity, the new path. And how do you do that?
Well, remember, you can't change your life until you change your mind.
And the good news is you can start today. I'm Dr. Lee Warren.
This has been another episode of the Spiritual Brain Surgery Podcast.
Thanks for your time. God bless you, my friend. We'll see you next time.