Just as we might go to a gym to work out, or into the hills for a hike, we have a basic understanding that improving our fitness requires immersing ourselves in environments where the activity is sufficiently strenuous but not too much to manage.
Of course, if we never exercise, our muscles will lose tone and start to atrophy. Nature’s law is Use it or lose it.
The same principle holds true for our emotional, volitional, rational, and spiritual fitness as well. If we don’t “exercise” these faculties of human intelligence, they will become weaker to the point where they are not only ineffective but also begin to undermine or interfere with the others.
In this post, we will consider some of the consequences of an underdeveloped or atrophied spiritual intelligence. The “fitness environment” for our spiritual formation is called religion, whose word origin is in the metaphor of “linking together,” where we can almost see the cables and pulleys of gym equipment.
My returning reader knows that by religion I’m not necessarily or exclusively thinking about the familiar brand names and their numerous sects or denominations.
Essentially, religion refers to the system of stories, symbols, routines, practices and beliefs that ‘link’ our self-conscious experience to the ground within us, to our community and its history, to Nature and the web of life, and to the cosmic context of our Universe. However we manage the “cables and pulleys” of our life in time as human beings is our religion.
The familiar (name brand as well as off brand) religious features of deities, sanctuaries, liturgies, holy days, scriptures and orthodoxies are secondary components to what religion is in essence.
Without some kind of religion – informal or institutional – our spiritual intelligence cannot develop and function optimally.
A major challenge facing humanity today is a consequence of religion’s decline in the modern and postmodern eras. This has much to do with the inability – more frequently, the willful resistance – in the various traditions of theism to remain relevant to the context and concerns of contemporary life.
When theologians insist on the literal truth of their myths and the objective-factual existence of their god, intellectually attuned church members and citizens of the global scientific milieu just cannot pretend it’s for real.
More are choosing to leave and fewer are deciding to join.
One of the primary interests of post-theistic religion is in cultivating a spirituality that is relevant – but also vibrant, creative, relational, practical and morally responsible. The emerging post-theistic cultural landscape might still feature denominational churches, seminary campuses, and centers of outreach.
But the mindset of dogmatic belief and the missionary atmosphere of “saving lost souls” for heaven will be a vanishing exception instead of the rule.
Instead of doing away and living without religion, humanity’s future will depend on how intentional we are in linking our lives to those four dimensions identified earlier: to the ground of being within, to other persons in community, to the web of life on Earth, and to the Universe itself. At the moment, the recession of organized religion is leaving more and more of us without a proper “fitness environment” to exercise our spiritual intelligence.
For some context to help us better appreciate what’s at stake and what we can do about it, my diagram illustrates the model of human intelligence I have been developing in this blog on creative change. Named our Quadratic Intelligence for the four distinct faculties, centers, and threads of intelligence that together comprise its “braid,” my model offers a way to appreciate them as a system working together.
In this post we will give the rest of our time to understanding the virtues and benefits of a well-developed spiritual intelligence, as we also consider some evidence of its current neglect and atrophy. The distinctive contributions to the quadratic system of our visceral-volitional intelligence (VQ1 Body and VQ2 Will), our emotional intelligence (EQ Heart), and our rational intelligence (RQ Mind) are explored in more detail elsewhere in this blog.
In the middle my diagram is the center of our self-conscious identity, or Ego, whose very existence (existere = to stand out) entails a separation from the Body and its present reality – a cause of deep insecurity and neurotic suffering.
This is the very separation, by the way, that religion evolved to address and overcome with its system of “cables and pulleys” (religare = link together).
Our spiritual intelligence is conducted by a faculty along a thread uniting two poles or centers: SQ1 Soul and SQ2 Spirit. As suggested in the illustration, our spiritual intelligence serves the healthy functioning of faculties in closer proximity to the Ego (centering our human needs for presence, connection, meaning, and purpose). It does this by grounding us in deeper oneness or communion (SQ1 Soul), as it simultaneously elevates our sense of belonging to a higher wholeness or harmony (SQ2 Spirit).
Whereas those more ego-proximate needs are felt as “mine” and “part of who I am,” the effect of grounding is to dissolve the Ego while belonging transcends it. In healthy spirituality and personal development, the well-practiced routines of grounding serve to cultivate faith, fortitude, equanimity, and inner peace. At the other end of the spiritual intelligence continuum, our amplified sense of belonging activates gratitude, wonder, generosity, and joy.
Place those virtues and benefits of spiritual fitness – faith, fortitude, equanimity, peace, gratitude, wonder, generosity and joy – alongside what we see across our human situation today, and the consequences of being spiritually out of shape are immediately evident.
- Not faith but anxiety
- Not fortitude but fragility
- Not equanimity but agitation
- Not peace but discontent
- Not gratitude but entitlement
- Not wonder but conviction
- Not generosity but greed
- Not joy but depression
This list of spiritual maladies ranges from anxiety to depression – the very bipolar macrostructure of mental disorders that seem to be multiplying every year.
The worldwide spiritual wisdom traditions known collectively as the Perennial Philosophy or Sophia Perennis caution us against merely treating symptoms, or trying to fix a weakness in one faculty of intelligence by building up the others. We might try to think (RQ) our way through an emotional tangle (EQ), for instance, or make a goal (VQ2) to be present (VQ1). The result of our effort is predictably more pain, more dysfunction, and more suffering.
Our spiritual intelligence holds the promise of a more authentic, abundant, and liberated life.
It’s time to get to the gym.
Tracts of Revolution 