Spiritual Intelligence: Practice and Application – How to Connect With, Have Access to Your Spiritual Intelligence and Live It

Title page

Spiritual Intelligence – Practice and Application – How to Connect With, Have Access to Your Spiritual Intelligence and Live It

By Swami Delven Ananda

Copyright

Copyright © 2014 Delvensoft

Smashwords Edition

License Notes

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Table of Contents

Title page

Copyright

Purpose of this work

Benefits to the reader of this book

PART-I: THEORY

Spiritual Intelligence: An Introduction to work done so far

Spiritual Intelligence and other intelligences

Spiritual intelligence and self-knowledge

Spiritual intelligence and its relation with your destiny

Spiritual intelligence and social skills

Dimensions of spiritual intelligence

Spiritual intelligence in worldly shrewdness

Spiritual intelligence and adolescence

Spiritual Intelligence during waking and sleep

Spiritual intelligence and age and death

Spiritual Intelligence and sex

Spiritual intelligence and problems in relationships: Marriage, wife, children and love

Spiritual Intelligence and Self-esteem

Spiritual Intelligence with work, occupation, profession

Spiritual Intelligence with money and wealth

Spiritual Intelligence with women

Spiritual Intelligence and suffering / misery

Spiritual intelligence and world religions

Organizational structure of the human being

PART II: PRACTICE

Characteristic features of spiritually intelligent: spiritual intelligence in action

Deriving spiritual intelligence from spiritual fountainheads of the world

Siddhartha Gautama @ Buddha

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Osho Rajneesh

Lord Krishna

George Gurdjieff

Prophet Muhammad

Methods to develop your spiritual intelligence

Technics of spiritual intelligence

Problems in practice

Spiritual Intelligence with name, fame and power

Spiritual Intelligence with being and becoming; ambitions and goals

Spiritual intelligence and ego

Ego and Soul

Conscious spiritual faculty vs. Rational physical faculty

How to overcome psychological disorders using spiritual intelligence

Importance of physical and mental exercises

Bibliography

Purpose of this work

This work is not to engage in the debate or to resolve the debate over the feasibility of spiritual intelligence, for scientific quantification. It is not a research thesis of scholarly kind. It is not about spirituality, religiosity or religious rituals as practiced by various religions of the world. It is not about discussions about god or knowledge of god or about ultimate reality. The purpose and use of this work is to give the reader the taste of spiritual intelligence. As my experience vouches, definitely there would be transformation in life by connecting to your element of spiritual intelligence.

The purpose of this work is to introduce you to an intelligence which can help you every moment, in your day to day life of the world, in your worldly affairs, too. Mature dealings of the worldly matters transform to spirituality. Vyavaharik (worldly affairs) when comes to fruition transforms into Adhyatmik (spiritual affairs). The rift between the worldly competence and spiritual competence will be bridged through this work. The purpose of this work is not only to prepare spiritually but also to effectively make a person perfectly fit for the world and worldly affairs.

The discrepancy that spiritual kind of people are misfits or unfit for worldly affairs can be removed, by awakening your spiritual intelligence. Spiritually intelligent are as equal as, if not better, than the worldly intelligent.

The objectives of this work are:

To orient the readers for their spiritual intelligence.

To enable the readers to familiarize themselves with different aspects of their spiritual intelligence.

To enable the readers to know and live spiritually intelligent life.

Benefits to the reader of this book

Build your self-confidence and self-trust

Get the confidence to be yourself

Simple, effective, practical and technical means and methods which will make you feel better and bring about lasting change.

Changes in your behavior and thinking

Ultimate benefit of permanent witness state, freedom from personal pain, mental / emotional pain / suffering.

Experience peace moment to moment.

Not being bothered by people and experiences that used to upset you.

Enhances your well-being on physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels.

Enable you to do and be anything you had envisioned in your mind and heart.

To make you insightful and self-reliant

Making judgments on own and others’ thought processes. Make high quality decisions

The ability to derive personal meaning and purpose from all physical and mental experiences, including the capacity to create meaning and a life purpose

Attain the ability to answer your own questions about your life

Ability to get direction, meaning and peace in life

To fully understand doing and happening

Spiritual intelligence gives or restores people (their lost) enthusiasm for life, the will to live it joyfully and creatively, and the passion for interests and projects. Spiritual intelligence restores them the ability to appreciate the positives in life. It enables them to make a commitment to action, or to make a difference in this world and to their life.

PART-I: THEORY

Spiritual Intelligence: An Introduction to work done so far

The word spirit comes from the Latin word spiritus, meaning breath. Spirit is the breath of life. The word intelligent is from the Latin, intelligentia, meaning choosing between. Spiritual Intelligence is our ability to choose between spirit and ego. We consciously practice spiritual intelligence when we intentionally choose being over ego, love over hatred, happiness over misery, light over darkness, truth over falsity, unchanging reality over the changing one and the highest good for all over selfish interest. It is soul’s intelligence connected to wisdom from beyond the ego or conscious mind. Spiritual intelligence is the innate ability of the human brain which finds and uses meaning in solution of the problems.

Robert Emmons (2000) defined spiritual intelligence as the adaptive use of spiritual information to facilitate every day problem solving and goal attainment.

Singh G (2008) defined spiritual intelligence as an innate ability of thinking and understanding of spiritual phenomenon and to guide the everyday behavior by spiritual ideology.

Zohar and Marshall (2003) defined spiritual intelligence as the intelligence with which we can place our actions and our lives in a wider, richer, meaning-giving context; the intelligence with which we can assess that one course of action or one life-path is more meaningful than another.

According to Zohar & Marshall (2000), An individual’s spiritual Intelligence is his/her spirit’s (soul’s) intelligence. It is the intelligence with which we heal ourselves and with which we make ourselves whole. It is the intelligence that rest in that deep part of the self that is connected to wisdom from beyond the ego, or conscious mind. It is the intelligence with which we not only recognize existing values, but with which we creatively discover new values.

David B King (2007) defined spiritual intelligence as ........a set of adaptive mental capacities which are based on non-material and transcendent aspects of reality, especially those which are related to the nature of one’s existence, personal meaning, transcendence, and heightened states of consciousness. When applied, these processes are adaptive in their ability to facilitate unique means of problem-solving, abstract-reasoning, and coping.

Factor 1 critical existential thinking.

Factor 2 conscious state expansion.

Factor 3 personal meaning production.

Finally, Factor 4 transcendental awareness.

Francis Vaughan (2002) defined "spiritual intelligence is concerned with the inner life of mind and spirit and its relationship to being in the world. Spiritual intelligence implies a capacity for a deep understanding of existential questions and insight into multiple levels of consciousness. Spiritual intelligence also implies awareness of spirit as the ground of being or as the creative life force of evolution.

Cindy Wigglesworth defines spiritual intelligence as the ability to act with wisdom and compassion, while maintaining inner and outer peace, regardless of the circumstances. She breaks down the competencies that comprise SQ into 21 skills, arranged into a four quadrant model similar to Daniel Goleman's widely used model of emotional intelligence or EQ. The four quadrants of spiritual intelligence are defined as:

Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) Skills (Courtesy: Cindy Wigglesworth)

Quadrant 1: Higher Self/Ego self-Awareness

1. Awareness of own worldview

2. Awareness of life purpose (mission)

3. Awareness of values hierarchy

4. Complexity of inner thought

5. Awareness of Ego self / Higher Self

Quadrant 2: Universal Awareness

6. Awareness of interconnectedness of all life

7. Awareness of worldviews of others

8. Breadth of time perception

9. Awareness of limitations/power of human perception

10. Awareness of Spiritual laws

11. Experience of transcendent oneness

Quadrant 3: Higher Self/Ego self-Mastery

12. Commitment to spiritual growth

13. Keeping Higher Self in charge

14. Living your purpose and values

15. Sustaining your faith

16. Seeking guidance from Higher

Quadrant 4: Power or Higher Self

Social Mastery / Spiritual Presence

17. A wise and effective spiritual teacher/mentor

18. A wise and effective change agent

19. Makes compassionate and wise decisions

20. A calming, healing presence

21. Being aligned with the ebb and flow of life

Major Components of Spiritual Intelligence (SQ)

Core capacities of SQ

Concern with cosmic/existential issues and the skills of meditating, intuition, and visualization

Core values of SQ

Connectedness, unity of all, compassion, a sense of balance, responsibility, and service

Core experiences of SQ

Awareness of ultimate values and their meaning, peak experiences, feelings of transcendence, and heightened awareness

Key virtues of SQ

Truth, justice, compassion, wisdom and caring

Symbolic systems of SQ

Poetry, music, dance, metaphor, talks, discourses and stories

Cognitive states of SQ

Rapture as described by Persinger (1996) and Ramachandran and Blakeslee (1998)

[Courtesy: Sisk and Torrance (2001)]

SQ Traits and Ways to Strengthen Them for Learning

Likely traits and Ways to strengthen

Uses inner knowing - Provide time for reflective thinking

Seeks to understand self - Use journal writing and processing

Uses metaphor and parables to communicate - Read lives/works of Spiritual Pathfinders

Uses intuition - Use problem solving (predicting)

Sensitive to social problems - Conduct service-learning projects

Sensitivity to their purpose in life - Use personal growth activities

Concerned about inequity and injustice - Use problem-based learning on real problems

Enjoys big questions - Provide time for open-ended discussion

Senses gestalt (the big picture) - Use mapping to integrate studies/big themes

Wants to make a difference - Use group personal growth activities

Capacity to care - Study