Q & A with author Matthew McKay

What were some of the ways you sought to make contact with your son?

In the beginning I looked for signs he might be present, anything unusual in our environment. Family and friends kept track of dreams or messages from Jordan. We went to a medium, we went to a psychologist who specializes in Induced After Death Communication, and I learned how to do Channeled Writing. In the end, I found that channeled writing was the most effective way to make contact with Jordan—literally any time I wanted.

What is Induced After Death Communication – how does it work, and what happened when you tried it?

This is based on research by psychologist Alan Botkin. He discovered that by making a small change in a well known protocol for treating trauma, that his patients spontaneously received direct messages from the dead. He worked primarily with vets who experienced traumatic losses in war. After the first “accidental” IADC (Induced After-Death Communication) Botkin did the revised procedure with 83 vets who were being treated for trauma. None were told what to expect, but 81 (97%) heard the voice of someone they loved who had died.

I saw Botkin in Chicago, did the trauma process, and heard Jordan say these words to me: “Dad . . . Dad . . . Tell Mom I’m here . . . I’m all right. I’m here with you . . . Tell her I’m OK.”

What is Channeled Writing, and how did it help you to communicate to your son, Jordan?

Channeled Writing, also called automatic writing, has been used for hundreds of years as a means to communicate with the spirit world. Spiritual seekers and famous poets have used it, including W. B. Yeats. The Channeled Writing process I learned includes using meditation to get into a receptive state, writing out a question, and listening for the answer (often heard as a whispered voice inside one’s head or simply a thought). You just write the answer down, and move on to the next question. All of Jordan’s words in the book came from Channeled Writing.

How did you come to write a book with your son – after his death?

Ralph Metzner, a psychologist who taught me to use Channeled Writing, suggested that I could use Channeled Writing to do a book with Jordan. I asked Jordan if he was

interested in a book project, even though I had no idea what it would involve. He was not only willing, he outlined the first 10 chapters of the book and established the entire scope of the project—within 5 minutes.

What did you learn about the spirit world – life after death – from Jordan?

Souls reincarnate for hundreds of lives. Between lives they are home—in the spirit world. Immediately after death, souls are met by guides and loved ones in an environment created to look familiar and reassuring. Following a brief transitional period, souls begin a life review where they examine every significant moment of the just completed life. Life review helps us learn how each decision we make affects everyone around us. After live review, souls join their soul family—a group of souls who both learn and reincarnate together. Guides (teachers) oversee the learning process—both on earth and in the life-between-lives. Each soul’s lesson plan for what they will learn on earth is called karma.

Why are we here – did Jordan say anything about that?

We are here for one purpose only—to learn.. We are not here to be redeemed or to earn a place in heaven by doing good works. The reason we reincarnate, living hundreds of lives, is to learn the lessons that each life teaches. In the same way bees bring honey back to the hive, we return to the spirit world after each life, carrying all the wisdom and new lessons we have learned.

What did you learn about God from Jordan?

Jordan says that all of consciousness—collectively—is God. As consciousness grows and evolves, God develops and evolves. As each soul learns, because we are all a part of God, God learns. And not a “person,” a specific entity. We don’t see God in the spirit world. God is us.

Can anyone contact the dead, or do you need special powers?

You need no special powers to talk to the dead. I have no special powers.   I’m not a medium. I am not clairvoyant or clairaudient. Channeled Writing is something anyone can learn. It requires doing a brief meditation to open the channel and help you become more receptive. Have an object with you that connects you to the spirit on the other side. After the meditation, write out questions. Start with questions that will have simple yes or no answers. The answer will come as a thought—write it down. As the process becomes more comfortable and familiar, write out questions that require a more complex answer (thought).   Find words for whatever answer (thought) shows up in your mind.

Why is there so much pain in life – according to Jordan?

Jordan indicates that all the pain in the world is necessary for our mission of learning. We come to this planet to learn how to love with, and in spite of pain. These are lessons that CANNOT happen in the spirit world where there is no pain and we love without effort or cost.

We come to a physical planet to face resistance and obstacles. As Jordan says, “You can’t learn to throw a curve ball in heaven. First of all, you need a physical ball. Then you need gravity and wind resistance. There are no great pitchers in the spirit world.”

Every lesson we learn here is taught by pain and resistance.

You’ve used hypnosis to lead people on past life and between life journeys—and you’ve been on them yourself. How do you do it? What did you learn?

I learned an hypnotic induction, from the work of psychologist Michael Newton, that allows people to return to past lives, and the life-between-lives (the spirit world). It takes about four hours, but offers profound truths about our individual life purpose—what we came here to learn and what we came here to do.

Later, in order to take these journeys myself, I consulted psychologist Ralph Metzner, who helped me visit past lives I had shared with Jordan. I also witnessed experiences I’ve had in the life-between-lives, including life review, meeting the “council of elders” and reuniting with my soul family.

Did Jordan make contact with others after he died? How did he do it?

Jordan made contact with many family and friends after his death. These contacts included vivid dreams with specific messages, visions, the overwhelming feeling of his presence with telepathy, and my own experiences with channeled writing, induced after death communication, and mediums.

What are you and Jordan doing and talking about now?

Right now Jordan and I are collaborating on a new process for creating spiritual growth. It’s something that can be learned in an 8-week group workshop. He has laid out all the steps of the protocol, and I’ll soon be testing to see how it works (I’m still a researcher, after all). This may also turn into another book we’ll work on together.

Seeking Jordan by Matthew McKay

October 1, 2015 • Metaphysics • Hardcover/eBook • 232 pages

Price: $22.95 • ISBN 978-1-60868-367-3

An Excerpt from Seeking Jordan by Matthew McKay, PhD

Time moves us downstream from each loss. The living relationship is further away, left on the bank where we last embraced, where the last words were spoken. Across that distance stretches silence, the helplessness of what can’t be fixed or undone.

The last time I saw Jordan was at lunch at Saul’s, a deli he was fond of. I can’t remember what we spoke of. He was doing well — a job he liked, a lovely young woman he’d recently moved in with. I do remember the corner where I hugged him goodbye, feeling his thick, wiry hair against my cheek, his strong arms around me. I said, “I love you,” as I had thousands of times, and then I began half-running to my car, late for something.

I had no inkling this was the moment we were leaving each other, and that every moment since would bear me further from his arms, his eyes, his sweetness. It was so ordinary, so embedded in our daily lives, that it held no portents of loss. And when I look back, I feel as if we are still there, still hugging on that corner. I can feel him holding me, and sometimes I can believe the embrace still exists — that I can have it, reenter it anytime I want.

But time moves us downriver. I craved more than memory, more than the few words I’d heard in Chicago. I wanted a two-way conversation, like we’d had at the deli. I wanted to ask questions and hear answers. I wanted to know my boy again.

In hopes of having that conversation, I consulted Ralph Metzner, a psychologist who has learned the art of channeled writing — an ancient technique for reaching across the divide of death and communicating to souls in the spirit world. Ralph himself lost a son, and he spent years searching for ways to reach him.

There was another connection: Jordan and Ralph’s stepson, Eli, had been best friends. I knew instinctively that anyone I connected to through Jordan could be trusted. And Ralph had known Jordan well.

***

His office is set up in the former dining room of an old Victorian. High mahogany wainscoting reaches to a shelf near the ceiling; there is a crystal chandelier. Ralph, a thin man with wispy white hair and eyes that have a wounded look, explains the process so I can learn the steps and do it at home. Channeled writing works best when it is done in the same place with a set ritual. It helps to have an object that connects you to the dead, and it is also beneficial to first engage in a practice that helps you enter a receptive state. Breathing meditations work well, as do candles for focusing attention.

“How will I know I’m not making it up?” I ask him.

“You can’t escape uncertainty,” Ralph replies. “There will always be doubt. Just listen to Jordan; see what he says. Your feelings about it will guide you.”

***

I have a desk that my parents gave me when I was eleven. Whenever I sit at it, I feel how objects connect us to people who are gone, and sometimes to an earlier version of ourselves. I sat here as a child, doing homework, distracting myself with small toys, and looking into the enticing darkness of my backyard.

Now I sit here alone, assembling objects: A cobalt blue glass mask, with a lit candle behind it, that my daughter, Bekah, brought from Mexico. And a blue business card Jordan created while he was in high school. It reads, Jordan McKay, CEO, Omega Technologies. There was no Omega Technologies, but it got him into countless trade shows for Apple and other technology giants.

I begin with my breath, counting the exhalations till I reach ten, then starting over. I focus on my diaphragm, the genesis and center of the breath. Some spiritual traditions recognize this spot as the locus of “wise mind,” where we can access the deepest truth of our lives. When thoughts arise, I notice and label them — “There’s a thought” — and return attention to my breath. After a while my mind settles, and a calm begins that touches every part of my body.

I suddenly wonder if this is some kind of hokum I’ve fallen prey to. Then I worry that I haven’t done it right, that I haven’t prepared sufficiently to hear Jordan’s words. “There’s a thought…and another thought.”

I stare at the flickering candle behind the mask. I imagine that it is Jordan’s presence, like the sanctuary light in the Catholic churches of my childhood. And now my mind begins to quiet again. I open my notebook and write the most urgent question: Are you happy?

The answer is instantaneous; it arrives before I’ve finished the question. It comes in the form of a whispered thought, with the timbre and pitch of Jordan’s voice. I write:

More than you can know.

Then I write more questions and record the answers.

Do you miss me? I have you with me.

What are you doing? Studying. Learning things. Getting ready for what I have to do next time.

Next time? I’ll be back soon. I want to help the planet. Last time I wasn’t going to have time to do anything, so I practiced focusing my will, finding beauty.

How can I connect to you? Watch for me when I come to you. Watch the signs. Feel me inside. Trust that feeling when you sense I’m with you. The circle stays strong with love. Just remember your love for me. Open the channel so you can hear — just like you’re doing now. This is the circle, letting me through. I love you, Dad. That’s how it is. I’m right with you. I’m here with you and Mom. Just feel it. It’s real. My arms are around you. Always.

What is the circle? The practice of love keeps the circle. It’s like a discipline. Practicing love isn’t collecting sad memories. It’s feeling the whole person, without thought, without judgment. It’s holding all of them at once.

The circle is all of us, living and dead. All connected, all talking to each other. It’s no different now than when we talked at Saul’s. Our relationship is the same, Dad.

I’m exhausted; I blow out the candle. I want to believe everything I’ve heard, but I hate self-deception. It’s a response I inherited from my father, a man who despised the ways people lie to themselves to justify their needs and actions. But suddenly it’s clear: I will have to live with that remembered contempt in order to keep listening. If I want to open the channel so my boy can talk to me, then I’ll also have to live with doubt, perhaps even ridicule.

# # #

Matthew McKay, PhD, is the author of Seeking Jordan and numerous other books. He is a clinical psychologist, professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA, and founder and publisher at New Harbinger Publications. Visit him online at http://www.SeekingJordan.com.

Excerpted from Seeking Jordan: How I Learned the Truth about Death and the Invisible Universe. Copyright ©2016 by Matthew McKay, PhD. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com

An Excerpt from Seeking Jordan by Matthew McKay, PhD

The sound of truth, like some harmony that only the wise can hear, rings out in the spiritual salons and in the clerics’ quarters; it is heard from the high pulpits and after eating peyote.

But the sound of truth — the words and rhythms — is just a seduction. The emotion of certainty is just an emotion — no more true or false than any other. The mind says yes because the mind fears what it can’t predict or explain.

The mind seeks the exquisite relief of order and linearity. It seeks the Great One who can finally explain our pain, our waiting in the dark. The mind is always ready to say yes because it is wired into us, into our hunger to make sense of this place.

The idea of truth deceives us. The light holds a million versions of the truth — no one of them complete or whole. Each is the partial wisdom of one moment, looking across one vista. Each is a moment of great vision and a lie, because certainty seduces, and in that certainty every other vantage place is lost.

We seek certainty because it is the antidote to fear. We seek certainty because it’s the one thing impossible to find here.

But certainty is more dangerous than doubt. From conviction come razor-edged rules. Beliefs born of certainty harden and become swords of emotional violence. They cut and wound. They kill love because love — above all — accepts. It softens around each necessary flaw.

Certainty divides the world into what is true and false, rejected and embraced. It is the defense of the righteous, the self-willed. It is what war — in every form — is made of.

So this is certain: there is no certain truth here. And the certainty we think we find is often damaging; it is never the last word. It is never complete.

While doubt is painful, it is not a curse. Jordan has told me that doubt and uncertainty are necessary to our development as souls. They create a rocky field where things grow that can be found in no other place.

***

Sitting at my childhood desk once again, I meditate as I prepare to speak with Jordan. Behind the glass mask, a candle emits blue light. Outside, a susurrant breath of wind pushes through the redwoods. Finally, from some internal stillness, I ask Jordan why doubt and uncertainly are a necessary part of our life here. His answer comes in just a moment. Jordan explains:

Certainty is not a healthy state for souls — incarnate or discarnate. There is an immense amount we don’t know. All learning must take place through the lens of doubt, which is why each thing we learn should be held as a mere hypothesis.

Doubt lies at the root of hope, and it is the experience of hope that makes seeking possible, that drives the quest for new knowledge and wisdom. So doubt motivates learning, the quest to enter what is unknown, the determination to turn darkness into light.

The doubt of incarnates, isolated as we are from our soul groups and guides, is especially painful. Nothing is certain; nothing is verifiable. We can’t even know with certainty whether the physical world is an illusion of consciousness. And while I can tell you that the physical universe exists in space and time, my words can’t prove that you aren’t dreaming. Where can we go for the truth? There is no one to ask except gurus, who are often lost themselves and may be making things up.

Here’s something important: the doubt of incarnates is crucial to the growth of all consciousness. That’s because seeking, in an environment where nothing can be proved or verified, creates openness to all the infinite possibilities. We are unencumbered by any absolute knowledge, so we can soar to imagine endless possibilities.

Paradoxically, discarnates are limited by vast, seemingly incontrovertible knowledge, which makes it more difficult for them to imagine the dark, unseen corners of the universe. We come to Earth (and other worlds) to know nothing and to imagine everything. With no certainty, with only intuition and the scientific method to guide us, we can reach past the observable bones of the universe to think what has never yet been thought and to ask what has never yet been a question. That is the gift of living in this uncertain place.

We have used our experience of not knowing to seek wisdom since souls began inhabiting bodies. We have sought truth through myths and allegories, through epic stories passed down from our elders, through beauty, and through endless observations of what works and what doesn’t. We have touched truth partially; we have at times sensed something enormous, just beyond the edges of thought. We have given all that we sensed and saw and imagined to collective consciousness — without any certainty of what was true or false.

That is what we do here.

# # #

Matthew McKay, PhD, is the author of Seeking Jordan and numerous other books. He is a clinical psychologist, professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA, and founder and publisher at New Harbinger Publications. Visit him online at http://www.SeekingJordan.com.

Excerpted from Seeking Jordan: How I Learned the Truth about Death and the Invisible Universe. Copyright © 2016 by Matthew McKay, PhD. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com

An Excerpt from Seeking Jordan by Matthew McKay, PhD

At the funeral, all eyes are on the coffin. As if the one inside was the victim of misfortune, struck down by some malicious fate.

Death isn’t bad luck, because there is no difference between the living and the dead. The one in the coffin is doing the same thing as the one grieving in the pew: loving and learning.

There is no difference between the living and the dead because the young have already been old, already taken a last breath, already watched planets die and galaxies collide. The one in the coffin is finished with this play. That’s all. And has taken everything learned back to “the whole,” back to the light.

The mourners go home. And while they grieve, the departed one is in the circle, greeting a brother from one life, or greeting a father, a daughter, a friend from others. Greeting a lover who left early, and a lover who in another play was left behind. Greeting the ones who were teachers, who were antagonists, who were protectors or protected. Greeting the one who ended a past life, who was a murderer.

The circle is always complete. We are always in it, and the funeral is an illusion. While souls actually experience no separation (just as Jordan is still with me), most human minds believe that the loss of the body is the loss of the person. And that if something cannot be seen, it isn’t there.

The human mind, having amnesia for all past lives, identifies each person (soul) with a single body. And if that body/person can no longer be seen, it is assumed to be gone. Lost.

But that isn’t the case. Jordan’s soul is right next to me, guiding me as I write this. Souls do not leave us, and the circle does not break just because that brilliant collection of molecules called a body is put in a box.

I know this, yet still I sometimes feel alone. I ask Jordan, and he explains:

The illusion of separation is perpetuated by religious images of the afterlife — an extraordinary realm so different from our planet that its inhabitants seem unreachable and lost to us. But again, it is the human mind creating fictions.

Images of the afterlife imbued with religious constructions of god and fantastic beings (for example, archangels and demons) are inventions of priests and holy men who attempted to make the journey while still embodied on Earth. Often aided by drugs or assaults on the body (including pain, sleeplessness, sensory overload, or deprivation), they saw in the “afterlife” what they wanted to see, what they feared seeing, or simply what their minds created in an altered state. The Tibetan and Egyptian books of the dead, the Upanishads, and the visions of countless mystics are examples of these journeys.

The Christian image of heavenly hosts singing god’s praises is also just a lovely hallucination. Such images — clouds and harps and angels at the gate — create hope. But paradoxically, they place embodied souls further away from those in spirit, making it seem that discarnates are in a place that’s sublime, distant, and inaccessible. These invented images hide the fact that departed souls are as much with us now as they were in life — perhaps more so, because now they are present as soon as we think of them. Telepathy covers any distance, instantly bringing souls together.

Souls in spirit love us as much as ever, think of us as much as ever, laugh with us at the absurdities of life, feel concerned about our pain, and celebrate our good choices. There is a simple reason for this. The relationship between living and departed souls is as deep, as vibrant, as committed, and as much in the present moment as ever it was on Earth.

This seems true to me. I am more in contact with Jordan now than I was at any time from when he left for college at eighteen until he was murdered at twenty-three. I consult with him often — about everything from family issues to personal choices. I send and receive messages of love and encouragement. And we are writing this book together.

I cannot hold or kiss my boy, which is a tremendous loss. But I can talk to him anytime, anywhere. There is no barrier — in this or in the spirit world — that can keep us apart.

The Struggle with Doubt

The only thing now standing between us is my own doubt. The doubt visits often, whispering that my conversations with Jordan are wishes rather than truth, and that all he has taught me is a fabrication, my own thoughts attributed to him. When in doubt, I withdraw. I seek him less. I feel frightened that I’ll discover something false in what he says, which will destroy my faith in us.

The doubt is unavoidable. I’ve learned that I must live with its whisperings even while I listen to Jordan. The doubt never leaves, because in this place absolute truth is hidden from us. Mother Teresa wrote that most of her life was spent with no sense of the presence of god. And whether or not the god she thought existed is really there, this dialectic remains: the quest for truth and the uncertainty are inescapably one experience.

Jordan says we are like shortwave radios, tuned to the frequency of some distant voice. Through the static, we pick up a phrase or two. We try to sew that into some coherence, but we have caught only a part of it. Through desire or projection, we may supply the missing words and get most of it wrong. But still we must listen.

I’ve learned one more thing about doubt. My need to send Jordan love and feel his love in return is bigger than doubt, bigger than the uncertainty and loneliness of living here without being able to hug my boy.

# # #

Matthew McKay, PhD, is the author of Seeking Jordan and numerous other books. He is a clinical psychologist, professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA, and founder and publisher at New Harbinger Publications. Visit him online at http://www.SeekingJordan.com.

Excerpted from Seeking Jordan: How I Learned the Truth about Death and the Invisible Universe. Copyright ©2016 by Matthew McKay, PhD. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com

Until relatively recently, yoga, meditation, and non-traditional spirituality – as opposed to classical religious practices – were widely perceived in the West as esoteric pursuits with little to offer mainstream society. Now they are highly-valued, prominent fields of endeavor with massive cultural buy-in. Having dedicated 40+ years to this “questionable arena,” it is rewarding to note the positive shift in public opinion, and, the appreciable enhancement such activities have made on so many lives. In fact, writing an article like this is challenging because there is no longer a dearth of information on the topic but, rather, an exhaustive volume of research requiring extensive time to read, process, and apply. On the up side, an abundance of scientific literature now attests to a range of psycho-social and body/mind benefits resulting from meditation and Sacred practices, (i.e. pertaining to religion or spirituality). Fortunately, these positive outcomes are no longer points of anecdotal testimony subject to academic dispute, but, matters of established fact. For psychologists then, several especially relevant questions arise regarding how to include this domain within the scope of practice. Specifically, when is it appropriate to engage patients on topics pertaining to the Sacred, meditation, and related activities? When is it viable to suggest patients explore such in adjunctive alignment with on-going therapy? And, when should these topics or practices not be addressed?

Such questions require more time and space to address than this brief article allows. Accordingly, readers may find additional value and a more comprehensive understanding of these issues in the APA Handbook of Psychology, Religion, & Spirituality (2013: Kenneth I Pargament, PhD) However, to capsulize two key areas let me answer the last question first: Psychotic patients and those with too severe a character disorder are best served by not engaging in mystical or meditative pursuits as such activities could de-stabilize their mental coherence or trigger added psychiatric complications. However, many less severe patients confronting depression, anger, anxiety, stress, hypertension, addiction, insomnia, chronic pain, or, mild-to-moderate neuroses, defensiveness, compromised self-awareness, and self-destructive behaviors may benefit considerably from intelligently applied meditation if they are sufficiently motivated to practice. There is even related evidence suggesting that therapists who engage in meditative practices themselves, or hold to compassionate spiritual paradigms, may passively contribute to enhanced therapeutic outcomes.

The results of these findings is genuinely encouraging yet there is still no standardized body of information guiding psychologists to “best-practice” scenarios for different patient types and conditions. This can put a burden on therapists to learn about the functional impact of different meditative and spiritual practices, plus the brain-body changes arising from each. In short, it gets complicated quickly. From my experience, though, such detailed assessment is not always necessary or even useful. The bulk of real therapeutic value arises more simply in what I describe in Meditation as a Way of Life (Quest: 2014), as continued receptive spiritual attunement and what Herbert Benson, MD of the Mind/Body Medical Institute, Beth Israel-Deaconess Hospital, Boston similarly identifies as the Faith Factor. Simply put, potent healing progress can arise when a Relaxation-Response state is repeatedly cultivated through prayer or meditative techniques, and, when it is associated with deeply-held, affirmative philosophic, religious, or spiritual convictions. This cumulatively triggers top-down, nerve-cell-firing brain patterns linked to healthy states, aka “remembered wellness,” which, when infused with profound spiritual faith, helps catalyze internal transformations that significantly aid patients in disengaging from toxic thought patterns and related negative behaviors.

At the end of the day, the precise meditation technique or spiritual belief a patient practices may be less important than the fact that they repeatedly seek receptive attunement with the Sacred and, by doing so, invoke a faith factor and the subtle psycho-energetic dynamics associated with it to restore greater wholeness to the body/mind. The capacity of what I term “the deep self” to induce or accelerate healing through meditation and spiritual practice has been repeatedly demonstrated. The key challenge, then, is learning how to beneficially harness sacred skills and knowing when or where to refer patients when they might benefit by related assistance. Despite needing to locate viable resources, it is exciting to have a spectrum of integrative therapeutic tools which, though age old, have garnered modern respect through scientifically demonstrable beneficial outcomes.

Rev. Alan Pritz is an Interfaith Minister with a Minneapolis-based spiritual counseling/coaching, and consulting practice who’s trained in and taught meditation for 32+ years. Author of the award winning book, Meditation as a Way of Life: Philosophy & Practice (Quest: 2014) Reverend Pritz assists individuals and organizations with meditation, spirituality, and related themes to promote personal health, growth, and work/life balance. For information about his Minneapolis practice and services visit: www.awake-in-life.com.

Recommended Reading

1. Beyond the Relaxation Response, by Herbert Benson M.D., Times Books: 1984
2. Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine, by Larry Dossey, M.D., HarperCollins: 1993
3. Full Catastrophe Living, by Jon Kabat-Zinn PhD, Bantam Books: 1990
4. Meditation as a Way of Life: Philosophy & Practice, by Rev. Alan L. Pritz, Quest: 201
5. Meditation and Psychiatry, Michael McGee, MD http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2719544/
6. The Link between Religion and Health: Psychoneuroimmunology and the Faith Factor Edited by Harold G. Koenig and Harvey J. Cohen
7. Meditation: What You Need To Know: NIH https://nccih.nih.gov/health/meditation/overview.htm
8. 7 Ways Meditation Can Actually Change The Brain: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2015/02/09/7-ways-meditation-can-actually-change-the-brain/
9. The Physical and Psychological Effect of Meditation: A Review of Contemporary Research by Michael Murphy, Steven Donovan, and Eugene Taylor http://www.noetic.org/sites/default/files/uploads/files/Meditation_Intro.pdf
10. What Role Do Religion and Spirituality Play In Mental Health? Kenneth I. Pargament, PhD, http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2013/03/religion-spirituality.aspx

 *Article originally written for the February, 2016 edition of the Minnesota Psychological Association Newsletter