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What Does Empowerment Actually Do

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Neuroscience Gives Us an Answer

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a friend asked me the other day

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he said he saw a ritual at a temple

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someone was kneeling

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the acharya sprinkled a few drops of water on his head

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and chanted a mantra

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saying from today this teaching is passed to you

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he asked me whether this is for real

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when those few drops land

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does something really pour into your body

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after hearing him out

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my first reaction was neither yes nor no

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what I thought was this

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people have been asking this for over two thousand years

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hello

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good to see you all

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I am Leo Wang

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today's word is empowerment

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you have probably heard it in many places

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calling a piercing remark a flash of pure insight

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some think of empowerment the moment Vajrayana comes up

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as if receiving it granted you lineage and blessing

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and the energy transmitted by the guru

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this word carries enormous weight

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so heavy that many spend a lifetime hoping for it once

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but what does it actually do

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surprisingly few people ever explain that clearly

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let us not rush to judgment

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I want to show you something interesting first

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empowerment was originally not Buddhist at all

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go back to ancient India two thousand years ago

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a new king's enthronement had its own ritual

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priests brought water from the four great oceans

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and poured basin after basin over the new king's head

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once the pouring was done you were the king

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this ritual has its own word in Sanskrit

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rendered into Chinese it became the word empowerment

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see

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at first the meaning was utterly literal

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pour water on the head

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and hand power over to you

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later around the seventh century esoteric Buddhism arose

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it borrowed this royal rite and reshaped it into a transmission rite

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what once poured enthronement water

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now poured lineage water

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the king became a practitioner

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the throne became the dharma

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by now you may sense something

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at its core empowerment is a rite of conferral

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the central act is one person solemnly

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handing something invisible into another person's hands

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and here comes the question

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was that invisible thing really handed over

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or did the ritual flip a switch that was already inside you

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which brings in today's other main character

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your brain

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start with something we both know the placebo

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a doctor hands you a pill and says it works well

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but there is no active ingredient inside

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it is just sugar

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yet you swallow it and the pain really eases

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for some people the readings really improve

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this is not pretending

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nor can it be waved away as just in your head

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scientists have measured it with instruments

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after the sugar the brain really released painkilling chemicals

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the body's parameters really changed

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the Italian placebo researcher Benedetti

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has worked in this field for decades

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his conclusion put plainly is one sentence

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your expectation about something is itself a drug

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the stronger the expectation the stronger the dose

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I had a small taste of this myself

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one year my head ached badly

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I dug out a box of pills without even looking

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tipped one out and swallowed it

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before long I loosened up and felt much better

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only later did I find it was no painkiller at all

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it was a box of vitamins that had sat there for ages

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I stood there stunned for a long moment

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the pill did nothing

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what worked was my believing it would work

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do not underestimate this

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it points to one simple truth

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sometimes what acts on you is not the thing itself

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but your belief in it

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so how does expectation get stronger

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this is where ritual walks on stage

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think about it

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an ordinary sugar pill versus a solemn ceremony

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which one convinces you something big is about to happen

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a figure in robes sits at the center of the mandala

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incense is lit and mantras begin

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you kneel below

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knowing you have waited a long time for this moment

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every sense what you see what you smell what you hear

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all telling you the same one thing

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this moment is extraordinary

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what does all of this add up to

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it pushes your expectation to a height you never normally reach

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and many rituals like this are not done alone

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a row of people kneel beside you chanting bowing waiting together

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what a person feels in a crowd is nothing like being alone

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a group making the same gesture the same sound

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each person's conviction that this really matters

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spreads between them and raises the stakes

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you get swept in more easily

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and find it harder to stand back and watch coldly

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solemn scenes never lack this power of mutual ignition

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here is an idea that matters a lot in recent brain science

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it is called predictive coding

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it says the brain is not a passive camera

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taking in whatever happens to be out there

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it is more like a machine that never stops guessing

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it first guesses what will happen next

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then checks that against the real sensory signal

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here is a very small example

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walking at night you see a dark shape by the road shaped like a person

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your chest tightens

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only up close do you find it is clothes hanging on a tree

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ever wonder where the person you saw in that instant came from

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your eyes did not deliver it

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your brain guessed it first

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when information runs thin it rushes to fill in an answer

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the fear was real

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but that person was painted by your brain

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the brain does this all day long

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this channel once explained why chanting needs total belief to work

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that was the same mechanism

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the key is that the brain trusts these guesses unequally

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some are held loosely

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some are held with absolute certainty

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academically this trust is called precision weighting

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a guess you are utterly certain of

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can genuinely rewrite what you feel

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now put these two things together

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an extremely solemn ceremony

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is exactly what takes the thought I am about to receive the lineage

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and drives its precision weight all the way to the top

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when a thought is pushed high enough

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your body your emotions your sensations really follow

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some feel heat flood the body during the empowerment

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some weep

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some feel a certainty they cannot put into words

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these reactions are not faked

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from the brain's side they really do happen

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at this point

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a deeper question surfaces

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are these real changes

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actually poured into you by the acharya

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or already yours and only woken by this ritual

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on this I have seen two explanations

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I will lay out both

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and let you weigh them yourself

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the first says empowerment is a transfer of energy

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the guru holds blessing power

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and the ritual pours that force into your body and mind

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so you receive what he transmits

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those who hold this view believe

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those few drops that mantra are a real channel

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and something flows along it into you

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the second comes from some very deep practitioners

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they say empowerment never adds anything to you

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the guru the mandala the mantras the incense are all conditions

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outer conditions that lend you a hand

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what truly lights up is what you already had

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however grand the ritual it only helps you

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recognize it in one instant of intense focus

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by this account empowerment does not contradict seeking within

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it is simply a very solemn supporting condition

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these two explanations point in completely different directions

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one seeks outward

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believing the good thing sits in another's hands to be collected

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the other recognizes inward

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believing the good thing was always yours just unseen

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interestingly judged by what changes in the brain

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these two paths may look almost identical in the moment

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the same certainty the same heat the same oneness

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instruments cannot tell which path you took

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only the days that follow can tell

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let me be honest about what brain science can see today

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the University of Pennsylvania researcher Newberg

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scanned the brains of longtime deep practitioners

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and found that when they entered the deepest state

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of oneness with all things where the self disappears

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a region of the brain in charge of marking

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where I end and where the world begins

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dropped markedly in activity

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once it goes quiet

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the line between me and the world fades

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and you feel merged into everything with no boundary

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see

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science can measure the brain changes while the experience happens

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it can tell you that certainty that oneness that warm current

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really do have neural correlates

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not an illusion not a hoax

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but what science cannot measure is which of the two explanations

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is the true one on the metaphysical level

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whether energy really flows in from outside

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or something innate is simply lit up

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at this step no instrument can help you

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and that is exactly what I want to make clear today

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this is the closest correspondence I can think of

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but it surely has holes

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brain science cannot fully translate empowerment yet

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we have only found a very interesting resemblance

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a grand ceremony and the brain's mechanism

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in which expectation rewrites feeling line up structurally

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now let me pull this from the temple back to daily life

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you may feel empowerment is far away from you

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but you live this ritual changes people mechanism every day

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think of a graduation

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the president moves the tassel from one side to the other

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nothing has actually changed

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you know not one bit more

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yet in that instant many people truly feel

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they left one identity and entered another

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then think of a wedding

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for two people to build a life the certificate is enough

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so why the ceremony the crowd the long vows

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because the solemnity of that moment presses into both hearts

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something far heavier than paper

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oaths work the same way

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an oath at a new job an oath of office

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those words carry no legal force on their own

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but saying them or not feels completely different inside

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then there is the coming of age rite many had as kids

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or the first day as a soldier the morning you first wore a uniform

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the events themselves are ordinary

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yet because one solemn moment presses down on you

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you feel you must now live like an adult like a soldier

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nobody poured anything into your body

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yet you really did change

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what changed was not the body

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it was how you define yourself

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have you noticed

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our species seems born needing ritual

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we need one solemn visible act

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to mark an invisible transformation

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inner things are too light too light to grasp

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so we find a heavy solid form to bring them down to earth

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a drop of water a vow a cap a turn

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all of these are such forms

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seen this way empowerment is that ancient human need

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taken to its extreme inside spiritual practice

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it is not mysterious

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it is very old

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as old as the human heart itself

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so what can we learn from this brain mechanism

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I want to leave you an angle you can observe yourself

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not a conclusion drawn for you

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if a ritual a solemn moment

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leaves you standing more firmly on your own two legs

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more able to walk by yourself

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then it probably opened up something you already had

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but if a ritual leaves you feeling

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you can no longer do without the person and place that gave it

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needing to go back again and again for a refill to feel steady

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then what happened in there may be another matter entirely

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you may not tell these two apart at a glance

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but you can feel your way into it slowly

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is the change in you making you freer or more dependent

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that feeling is more honest than any doctrine

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I have always found something deeply moving in the dharma

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it seems to work tirelessly so that you finally need no crutch

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including itself

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what a good guide carries in his heart is

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the hope that one day you will not need him

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so back to that friend's question

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when those few drops land is anything poured in

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I cannot answer that for you today

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all I can do is push the door open a crack

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so you can see what the brain is quietly doing behind it

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and see that this is not as mystical as you assumed

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nor as simple as you assumed

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the rest you walk in and see for yourself

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and what about you

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has there been some solemn moment in your life

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that truly made you feel something had changed

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did the outside give you something in that moment

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or was something inside you lit up

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I would love to hear your story

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I am Leo Wang

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see you next time