Spiritual Intelligence Skill Three- Values Hierarchy.

 

What matters the most to me in my life are _____________,  ____________________, and ______________. Sometimes I ask, “If you could have three wishes what would you wish for?”

Values are things we do when we put our money where our mouth is, when we walk the talk. Spirituality has to do with the things that are of ultimate importance.

The questions are “Can you name and rank your top  five personal values? Do you keep them in mind when making important decisions?”

As we grow and mature our value priorities change. We tend to move from the egocentric and ethnocentric to world centric and integral. An indication of a person’s maturity is their values hierarchy.

In Unitarian Universalism we join together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Truth and meaning comes from reflecting on the things that are most important to us in our lives.

What would Love have me do?

To think you can oppose the Will of God is a real delusion. The ego believes that it can, and that it can offer you its own “will” as a gift. You do not want it. It is not a gift. It is nothing at all. God has given you a gift that you both have and are. When you do not use it, you forget that you have it. By not remembering it, you do not know what you are. Healing, then, is a way of approaching knowledge by thinking in accordance with the laws of God, and recognizing their universality. Without this recognition, you have made the laws meaningless to you. Yet the laws are not meaningless, since all meaning is contained by them and in them. T-7.IV.6:1-11

A Course in Miracles (pp. 252-253). Foundation for Inner Peace. Kindle Edition. 

Peace and bliss is experienced when we bring our will into alignment with God’s will for us. The above passage does not negate free will. We are free to deny or ignore God’s will for us. We can choose the world of the ego or the Kingdom of God.

In Unitarian Universalism some of us join together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning which is seeking to discern God’s will in all that we choose to do.

Today it is suggested that as we go about our day in the back of our minds we continually ask “What would Love have me do?”

Spiritual Intelligence Skill Two - Awareness of Life Purpose

Paul Pearsall, the neuropsychologist, said that the three big existential questions that every person has to deal with are: Why was I born? What is the purpose of my life? What happens when I die?

The ability to understand and appreciate one’s purpose in life is to provide direction and meaning. This ability to set goals for oneself and pursue them even in the face of obstacles, barriers, and frustration is considered one of the important skills of emotional intelligence. The psychologist Angela Duckworth calls this tolerance of frustration, and persistence in spite of it in pursuing one’s goals, “grit.”

In Christian Pastoral counseling this desire to clarify one’s purpose in life is called “discernment.” The idea is attempting to discern one’s calling from God to become the person God created us to become and to do with our life what God is calling us to do.

The word, “vocation,” comes from the Latin word “vocare” which means to call. Our life’s purpose is a calling from God. To never apprehend this purpose or seek it or to ignore one’s calling is to never have lived one’s authentic life. Socrates said, “An unexamined life is not worth living,” and the bumper sticker reads “An unlived life is not worth examining.”

So two questions for consideration in developing this skill are: “To what extent (low, medium, high) do you think you can explain your life purpose to others? Do you stay focused on it consistently?”

Back in the 60s we would ask whether people have their shit together. Some do, some don’t, most are struggling. Having your shit together in more professional language is what psychologists call a “well integrated personality.”

In Unitarian Universalism some people join together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This search includes the desire to discern God’s will for who I am to become and what it is I am to do with my life.

Which do we choose: the world of the ego or the Kingdom of God?

The ego’s goal is as unified as the Holy Spirit’s, and it is because of this that their goals can never be reconciled in any way or to any extent. The ego always seeks to divide and separate. The Holy Spirit always seeks to unify and heal. As you heal you are healed, because the Holy Spirit sees no order of difficulty in healing. Healing is the way to undo the belief in differences, being the only way of perceiving the Sonship as one. This perception is therefore in accord with the laws of God, even in a state of mind that is out of accord with His. The strength of right perception is so great that it brings the mind into accord with His, because it serves His Voice, which is in all of you. T-7.IV.5:1-7

A Course in Miracles (p. 252). Foundation for Inner Peace. Kindle Edition. 

The ego tells us we are drops while the Holy Spirit tells us we are the ocean. Which is right? Which do you want to believe? Which thought system will bring us peace and bliss?

In Unitarian Universalism some of us join together to affirm and promote the respect and love for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. The Holy Spirit nurtures us to a nondual level of consciousness which is similar to the interdependent web or creation.

Today it is suggested that we reflect on what we prefer to focus on: the world of the ego with its divisions and separations or the Kingdom of God which is the nondual awareness of healed consciousness?

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.”

Ask the Holy Spirit to help remember from whence we have come.

All abilities should therefore be given over to the Holy Spirit, Who understands how to use them properly. He uses them only for healing, because He knows you only as whole. By healing you learn of wholeness, and by learning of wholeness you learn to remember God. You have forgotten Him, but the Holy Spirit understands that your forgetting must be translated into a way of remembering. T-7.IV.4:1-4

A Course in Miracles (p. 252). Foundation for Inner Peace. Kindle Edition. 

Do you remember the Oneness from which you emerged? As a drop of the Ocean do you remember the Ocean or think that you are one of a kind and self sufficient all on your own?

In Unitarian Universalism some of us join together to affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of which we are a part.

What is spirituality?

Spirituality, as I define it, is the innate human need to be connected to something larger than ourselves, something we consider to be divine or of exceptional nobility.

Wigglesworth, Cindy. SQ21: The Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual Intelligence (p. 8). SelectBooks, Inc.. Kindle Edition. 

There are increasingly materials being produced which describe the difference between spirituality and religion. Very briefly spirituality is our relationship with our Higher Power while religion is an organization that one can join. Sometimes spiritual people are religious but increasingly people say on surveys that they are spiritual but not religious.

Cindy Wigglesworth defines spirituality as defined by 21 skills which can be measured and the level of skill achievement equals a person’s degree of spiritual intelligence. The skills fall into four quadrants: self awareness, universal awareness, self mastery, and spiritual presence. The skills can be measured as low, medium, or high as exercised by the person. 

There are four types of intelligence: cognitive intelligence as measured and called IQ; emotional intelligence as measured and called EQ; physical intelligence as measured and called PQ,: spiritual intelligence as measured and called SQ.

In following posts, each of the 21 skills of SQ will be described.

It has been reported that the level of SQ is relatively low in the United States. The mission of religion in society should be to nurture and facilitate the growth of SQ but not only do religious organizations not carry out this function well, but often hampers and blocks the development of SQ in its members and the communities and society in which they reside..