Religious literacy enhances spiritual intelligence.

 

In Cindy Wigglesworth's model of Spiritual Intelligence, Awareness Of Own Worldview, is the first skill of twenty one. The question to be answered low, medium, high is "Do you think that you can explain to others the impacts of our culture, your upbringing, and your mental assumptions on how you interpret the world around you?"

Ariel Ennis in her book, Teaching Religious Literacy,  points to this skill in her quote above as one of the benefits of religious literacy. Unitarian Universalism is one of the view religious denominations which encourage this kind of knowledge.

Unitarian Universalism encourages the development of religious literacy and thereby enhances the level of spiritual intelligence in its members and the society of which they are a part.

How to enhance one’s spiritual intelligence?

What if I could name those Spiritual Intelligence skills and describe them on a spectrum from “novice” to “expert”? Could a framework of skills and levels of development help me and others know what to work on next?

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

If a person wanted to enhance their spiritual intelligence where would they start? If an organization existed whose mission it is to teach spiritual intelligence what would be the pedagogy?

A first step might be to define spiritual intelligence. Cindy Wigglesworth in her book Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual Intelligence defines spiritual intelligence as “the ability to behave with wisdom and compassion, while maintaining inner and outer peace, regardless of the situation.” p.8

There may be other key components to spiritual intelligence as well such as sincerity and genuineness and discerning God’s will.

Does religion enhance people’s spiritual intelligence? Does your church provide teachings and experiences that enhance the congregation’s level of spiritual intelligence? Does your religion and church have the competence to do so?

In Roman Catholicism there was an emphasis on “spiritual formation” and people were encouraged to focus on their “interior spiritual life.” In Unitarian Universalism these concepts are rarely mentioned, and no consistent effort is made to provide the resources necessary for the development of spiritual intelligence. The mission of UU A Way Of Life is to enhance spiritual intelligence among its members and in the society of which it is a part.

We are discussing "The Twenty-One Skills Of Spiritual Intelligence " on the Spiritualbookdiscussion@groups.io online spiritual book discussion group. You are welcome to join us. We would love to have you.

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Offering our own state of being.

 

 

The work of building a better society ultimately involves improving the “civic virtue” of individual persons, and this cannot be accomplished by cultural evolution alone. To effectively cultivate character development and thereby foster the authentic betterment of our people, the project of evolving culture ultimately requires spiritual growth.

 

McIntosh, Steve. Developmental Politics: How America Can Grow Into a Better Version of Itself (p. 128). Paragon House. Kindle Edition. 

 

The level of spiritual intelligence in the people of the U.S. is very low. They are not aware of their stages of points of view and that these points of view can be described from an evolutionary map: traditional, modern, postmodern.

 

Understanding that the primary values of people at the different stages transform as a person grows up is missing from our national consciousness. McIntosh makes the point that this map of evolutionary development begins with the individual and then becomes the norms and attitudes of groups and then becomes the culture of a society.

 

The facilitation of positive development begins with the raising of consciousness initiated by people whose level of consciousness is already at a more developed stage. This is done primarily by demonstration and example not by words. People at higher levels of spiritual intelligence have a salubrious effect on those they interact with. Actions speak louder than words.

 

Steve Gaskin said one time that in the end all that we have to offer another human being is our own state of being.

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.

Co-creating a beautiful future.

We all are leaders to the degree we help to create a better today and a better tomorrow. The true hero does not undertake the journey for personal glory, but for the benefit of all. While there is a great deal of good news globally - higher literacy rates, cures for many diseases, increased longevity, and decreasing levels of abject  poverty over the last one hundred years - there is much, much more that needs to be done to relieve suffering and create a sustainable health future for humanity and this planet. We can each do our part by developing ourselves, finding our higher purpose, and taking the wisest most compassionate actions we can. Collectively we will decide how the future turns out. I hope we co-create a beautiful future. SQ can help us do that.

John Mackey in forward to Cindy Wigglesworth’s book, The Twenty-One Skills Of Spiritual Intelligence. P. ix

When one becomes enmeshed in the onslaught of sensationalized hourly news from cable news shows and social media platforms, it is understandable how people become cynical, depressed, angry, and feel helpless.

While we cannot do much to influence external circumstances, we can always work on our own level of spiritual intelligence. When we become more spiritually intelligent our presence in the world has a salubratory, beneficial influence.

There are steps we can take to increase our spiritual intelligence. There are maps people can acquire to plan their journey and mark their progress. One of these maps are the seven principles of Unitarian Universalism. Another map is provided by Cindy Wigglesworth in her book, The Twenty-One Skills Of Spiritual Intelligence.

Spiritual Intelligence Skill #1 - Awareness of Own Worldview

One of the 21 skills of spiritual intelligence is understanding where you are in your world view. Having some idea of the next step you might want to take in the development of spiritual intelligence is a challenge and a good skill to practice.

The question that might be asked in this first SQ skill, "Awareness of Own Worldview" is :

"Do you think that you can explain to others the impacts of your culture, your upbringing, and your mental assumptions on how you interpret the world around you?"

Never            Rarely               Sometimes                  Often                  Consistently

In other words, do you know what makes you tick?

I don't know about what percentage of the population knows that makes them tick or could tell you their worldview. The level of spiritual intelligence in the United States in general is very low.

People who have lived in foreign countries, know foreign languages, live in diverse communities probably would score better on this skill. 

As a Unitarian Universalist we join together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. This takes a person beyond the golden rule to the platinum rule. "Do unto others as they would have you do unto them." This requires that you know something about their culture, their values, their beliefs, their practices. This takes curiosity and interest and empathy.

The definition of spiritual intelligence.

What is “spiritual intelligence”? Spiritual Intelligence, SQ, is a category of intelligence similar to intellectual intelligence, IQ, and Emotional intelligence, EQ. 

The working definition of SQ we will be using here is “The level of awareness of one’s relationship with their Transcendent Source.”

The purpose of religion is the nurturing of the development of spiritual intelligence over the span of the human life cycle. This level of development of spiritual intelligence can be applied to individuals, families, organizations and societies. 

The levels, stages, of spiritual intelligence can be thought of in many ways and each stage may be called different names depending on the model of spiritual development being used.

Michael Beckwith’s model of spiritual intelligence development is relatively simple with four stages: Victim, Manifester, Channeler, and Being. We will describe these stages more fully in coming articles.

The main concern of this article is that most churches do not understand their function in our post postmodern world. The function of the church in our current world is the nurturance of the development of spiritual intelligence. How can this function be performed? What are the church’s goals in carrying out this function? What are the activities which will achieve these goals? What are the resources necessary to carry out these activities? How can the degree of goal achievement be measured? How are the results of goal achievement measurements to be used in the further functioning of the church?

For now consider and answer this question: What is the function of the church in our contemporary world?