Spiritual Intelligence Skill One - Self awareness: What Makes You Tick?

The first quadrant of skills in Cindy Wigglesworth’s model of Twenty-One skills of spiritual intelligence is called “self awareness.” In other words, does a person know what makes them tick?

The first spiritual skill of the twenty-one is “Awareness of Own Worldview - What filters do I see through?” Wigglesworth writes: 

“...the recognition that the way you see is not simply “the way things are”—it is a particular view. The word “worldview” comes from the German weltanschauung, composed of the words for “world” and “outlook.” It is commonly used to refer to the framework of beliefs and ideas through which we interpret the world around us. Those beliefs and ideas are inevitably going to be shaped by the culture in which you have grown up, your religious background, your ethnicity, and many other factors.”

Wigglesworth, Cindy. SQ21: The Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual Intelligence (p. 49). SelectBooks, Inc.. Kindle Edition. 

Another term for this “world view” is “thought system.” What is the thought system through which a person perceives the world and interprets one’s perceptions?

Ken Wilber describes two developmental paths when it comes to spirituality: “waking up” and “growing up.” Waking up is the development of consciousness from physical to psychological to social to spiritual to transcendent. The lowest level is egocentric and the highest level is nondual consciousness or what some seekers call “enlightenment.” 

Growing up is the development of thought systems which go from magic to mythic to rational to holistic to integral.

The basic skill is knowing that one’s thought system is only one of many that people experience and that there are developmental levels of maturity through which one can grow and wake up. Wilber makes the distinction between waking up which is an experience and growing up which is a structure of thinking.

The question to be considered in assessing one’s skill level is “To what extent can you describe the impacts of your family upbringing, your culture, your peer group, the media, on your mental assumptions about our own functioning and the world in which you participate?” Low, medium, high.

In other words, to what extent do you understand and can explain what makes you tick?

In Unitarian Universalism the fourth of seven principles is to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This search involves understanding the thought system from which one is operating and the desire to grow up and wake up. As the bumper sticker says “Change is inevitable. Progress is optional.”