The plan is to dive into Integral Spirituality.  So this should be interesting!

Everyone else has been blogging about this, so I figured I would too.

There is another study showing that, yes, meditation DOES alter the structure of your brain.

Brain imaging of regular working folks who meditate regularly revealed increased thickness in cortical regions related to sensory, auditory and visual perception, as well as internal perception -- the automatic monitoring of heart rate or breathing, for example.

The study also indicates that regular meditation may slow age-related thinning of the frontal cortex.

"What is most fascinating to me is the suggestion that meditation practice can change anyone's gray matter," said study team member Jeremy Gray, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale. "The study participants were people with jobs and families. They just meditated on average 40 minutes each day, you don't have to be a monk.

Well, that's a good thing, since I'm not a monk! 

This has been a question of debate here in the integral blogosphere - whether the earlier studies actually showed some brain changes.  From what I recall (I've been looking for the study, but I've run out of time, and wanted to get this posted), the brain changes claimed by the other study weren't the same.

Still, it makes sense that changes from meditation happen.  Alterations in brain chemistry come about because of exercise, for an example (in terms of a better mood), so why should meditation be any different?

It will be interesting, in the coming years, to find what parts of the brain are "fixed", and what parts have some malleability.  Especially with more experience in chemistry, and over a decade of targeted smart drugs, who knows what is on the horizon?