| |
Humans are essentially spiritual beings, evolved to ask fundamental questions. "Who am I?" "Where am I going?" "What do others mean to me?" It is an ability to answer questions like these that lead people to personal growth workshops. Spiritual intelligence motivates people to balance their work schedules to spend time with the family. Or an executive with a high Spiritual Quotient (SQ) might look beyond profit margins and devote time for voluntary work with orphans. Spiritual intelligence also addresses the need to place one's life in a shared context of value.
The transformative power of SQ distinguishes it from IQ and EQ. IQ primarily solves logical problems. EQ allows us to judge the situation we are in and behave appropriately. SQ allows us to ask if we want to be in that situation in the first place. It might motivate us to create a new one. SQ has little connection to formal religion. Atheists and humanists may have high SQ while someone actively religious may not.
We use spiritual intelligence to transform ourselves and others, heal relationship, cope with grief, and move beyond conditioned habits of the past. To develop high SQ, each person needs to approach the task according to his/her personality.
Spiritual Intelligence, according to Dana Zohar, is:
- Self-Awareness … you know who you really are and you know that you are connected with the whole universe.
- Vision & Values Led – or Idealism. Children naturally want to serve, and so do we. Vision and values led is definitive of our humanity.
- The Capacity to Face and USE Adversity…owning our mistakes and adversity and using pain and tragedy to learn
- To be Holistic: seeing the connections between things. Being open to and interested in EVERYTHING.
- Diversity…thriving in and celebrating diversity. I look at you and see what is different in you and I say “Thank God for that!”
- Field Independence (Courage)…a term from psychology that means the courage not to adapt, to be independent.
- The Tendency to Ask WHY? Questions are infinite. In Quantum Physics questions CREATE reality.
- The Ability to Re-Frame…put things into a larger context of meaning.
- Spontaneity. This is NOT acting on a whim…it comes from the same Latin roots as RESPONSE and RESPONSIBILITY. It is not conditioned by fear. It is appropriately “responsive to” the world.
|
|
