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The Power of Spiritual Intelligence: 10 ways to tap into your spiritual genius
The Power of Spiritual Intelligence
Tony Buzan
Dedication
The Power of Spiritual Intelligence is fondly and warmly dedicated to Lesley and Teri Bias; my Mum, Jean Buzan; Lorraine Gill, Vanda North, Nicky and Strilli Oppenheimer, Dr Petite Rao, Caroline Shott and Carole Tonkinson for their spiritual help in my personal life and for their dedication and hard work in making both this little book and giant dream come true.
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction: Journey to Paradise
Chapter 1: Getting the ‘Big Picture’
Chapter 2: Exploring Your Values
Chapter 3: Your Life Vision and Purpose
Chapter 4: Compassion – Understanding Yourself and Others
Chapter 5: Give and Receive! Charity and Gratitude
Chapter 6: The Power of Laughter
Chapter 7: Onward to the Child’s Playground
Chapter 8: The Power of Ritual
Chapter 9: Peace
Chapter 10: All You Need is Love!
Mind-Maps®
Acknowledgements
Other books by Tony Buzan
Copyright
About the Publisher
We are not human beings
having a spiritual experience;
we are spiritual beings
having a human experience.
(Teilhard de Chardin)
Are you a spiritual person? Many people confuse being spiritual with being religious, but they are very different things. When you are Spiritually Intelligent you become more aware of the ‘big picture’ – for yourself and the universe, and your place and purpose in it.
Spiritual Intelligence is considered by many to be the most important of our many intelligences, and has the power to transform your life, civilization, the planet and the course of history. In The Power of Spiritual Intelligence I will explore the nature of spirituality, and show you how you can develop this wonderful intelligence. You will be able to develop your personal values – concepts like truth and honesty – and become involved first in understanding and knowing more of yourself, and then reaching out to participate in and help the community at large.
Happily, developing your Spiritual Intelligence will allow you to see the lighter and more humorous side of things, and to regain those qualities such as enthusiasm, cheerfulness, energy and persistence that characterize children. Not only that – I will show you how you can increase your inner peace and strength, and so become better able to control and reduce the stresses that often blight our modern, busy lives.
First, I would like to tell you about my own spiritual career, and how I came to realize that there was such a thing as Spiritual Intelligence.
Two stories tell the tale:
Story 1:
Chocolate Bars, Purity of Soul and Bribery!
When I was a young teenager, I began to ask ‘the big questions’ such as what is the meaning of life? Why is there so much suffering in the world? Do animals have emotions? Why do we die? What’s the point of being honest or good? Are there other planets with life on them? How big is the universe and where does it end? And so on. My friends and I thought we might get some answers by going to the church Sunday School, so this we dutifully did.
Our Sunday School teacher was a bullying, arrogant man, with a domineering and authoritarian style. One Sunday he said to us that if we brought in new recruits to the Sunday School the following week, he would give us a chocolate bar for every new person brought in.
My hand immediately shot up! I pointed out to the teacher that he had, in a previous lesson, talked about purity of soul and the evils of bribery. Should we not, if we were truly spiritual, bring people to the Sunday School because we wanted to help them on their paths? Should we not, therefore, do it purely for the love of the other person? Should we not do it with pleasure, enthusiasm and generosity, expecting no reward whatsoever? By offering us all chocolate bars, was he not, in fact, bribing us?!
I was told never to ask such questions again, and to leave the class for rudeness and insubordination!
I never returned, and decided from that point on that anything to do with spirituality was either a con, irrelevant or wimpish, and that logic and argument were a far more ‘true path’.
Story 2:
Logic versus Spirituality
By the time I was 20 and at university, I had hardened my views on the supremacy of logic and the weakness of spirituality and emotion, while becoming a confirmed atheist. I had honed my verbal and logical reasoning skills and relished a good intellectual argument! Imagine my delight when my doorbell rang one day, and a frail, middle-aged lady announced that she had come to try to save my soul!
Like a spider preparing to ensnare a fly, I invited her in to let her explain her views on the need for me to be more spiritually aware. By this time I had become well-versed in the history of philosophy and the great debates on morality, God, and the meaning of life. In less than 15 minutes I had this gentle lady floundering but, to my surprise, still upbeat and unbowed.
She explained that helping other people was a relatively new direction in her life, a life which had known a lot of pain and suffering, and which was now much more beautiful and calm. She cheerfully asked if she could come back next week with someone more experienced in the field, and I agreed, anticipating another logic battle, with a more ‘worthy’ opponent.
A week later she duly returned, proudly introducing me to a young man who had just graduated from university and who was extremely knowledgeable in the field. We immediately locked horns, and a great intellectual tussle took place. Finally, after an hour, he made one fatal logical mistake, and I pounced. The victory was mine!
Still unbowed, the lady asked if she could return the following week with one of the most senior members of her organization. Once again I said yes.
On the day of the next meeting, a snowstorm had blown up, and it was bitterly cold. Nevertheless, my Angel of Mercy was there. She introduced me, with pride and respect, to her companion: a middle-aged man who looked like a character out of a cheap gangster movie, who was a very senior person in her organization. He appeared to be the opposite of everything that spirituality stood for, knew little about ethical or moral arguments, and seemed intent only on raising money from me and parading his status. I accused him of ignorance, greed and dishonesty and had him red-faced and speechless within five minutes.
Another great victory!
This, however, was soon to turn to dust. When the pair left, the lady looked up at me with a fractured face, her expression one of failure, disillusionment, loss, pleading and an almost unbearable pain. As I closed the door on her forever, those same feelings surged through me.
What had I done?
This gentle lady had spent several weeks of her life preparing for and meeting me, with the sole purpose of helping to save my soul. And what had I done to express my thanks and gratitude for this totally unselfish gesture on my behalf? Beaten her with the truncheons of logic and words; humiliated and demeaned those she loved and respected in front of her; attempted to destroy the foundations of a newly structured, innocent and loving life; and after gloating at my ‘triumphs’, had turned her out into the snow. I sat down, stunned at the horror of what I had just done. Logic and words suddenly seemed irrelevant, and my whole being was overwhelmed with sorrow and remorse.
Without knowing it, my Angel of Mercy had more than accomplished her task and, in the final analysis, had won her argument hands down and spirit up! Wherever you are, dear lady, I eternally thank you for your wonderful and successful rescue mission!
In one flash of heart-rending realization, my life had been changed. I came to see that there was more to intelligence than simply words, numbers and logic. (In fact, I was soon to discover that there were multiple intelligences – Creative, Personal, Social, Sensual, Physical, Sexual, Spatial and Spiritual, as well as Verbal and Numerical, which I explore in my book Head First.)
Spiritual Intelligence – A Definition
We often hear of:
but just what are ‘spirit’ and ‘spiritual’?
The whole concept of spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning breath. The modern term refers to your life energy and to the ‘non-physical’ part of you, including your emotions and character. It includes your vital qualities of energy, enthusiasm, courage and determination. (It is interesting to note that spirit also means a form of purified alcohol. Note that the emphasis is on purified!)
Your Spiritual Intelligence is concerned with how you grow and develop these qualities. It is also concerned with the protection and development of your soul, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as your ‘moral and emotional identity’ and the intensity of its ‘emotional and intellectual energy’.
Spiritual Intelligence progresses naturally from your Personal Intelligence (knowledge, appreciation and understanding of yourself), through Social Intelligence (knowledge, appreciation and understanding of other people), to the appreciation and understanding of all other life forms and the Universe itself. In fact, contact with, understanding, and an appreciation of nature is a major aspect in the development of your Spiritual Intelligence.
Self-actualization
Self-actualization is the ultimate state of achievement described by the respected American psychologist Abraham Maslow, in what he described as his Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow discovered that, regardless of what tribe or place on the planet they were from, all human beings went through ascending stages of survival and spiritual development. These included:
It is only when all these are met that people reached their ultimate stage of human development: Self-actualization.
Maslow defined self-actualization as a spiritual state, in which the individual poured out creativity, was playful, joyful, tolerant, with a sense of purpose and a mission to help others to achieve this state of wisdom and bliss. All of these are to be accomplished in an environment of growing compassion and love.
Maslow was describing what we now call Spiritual Intelligence!
The Global Hunger for Spiritual Intelligence
The new global emphasis on developing the power of Spiritual Intelligence has come at just the right time for a world that is often described as spiritually sick.
‘What is the world coming to?’ we ask, when words like ‘divine’ are downgraded to describe, breathlessly, new furniture or clothes; when people describe themselves as ‘transported’ when their suburban gardens are given makeovers by TV experts; and when ‘ecstasy’ is used to describe not a state of transcendence, but a cheap and brain-damaging drug?
However, all is not as bad as it seems – the very fact that people are looking for ‘that buzz’ confirms that the spirit is still alive! It is simply looking for guidance to find the right path, and has momentarily lost its way among the mundane and commonplace.
Even the incessant stream of bad news which daily pours out of our radios, our TVs and the papers contains some silver linings. Natural disasters like earthquakes, avalanches and floods cause undeniably awful pain and suffering; but similarly they can result in extraordinary displays of compassion and community of spirit. Such events often help jolt us out of the semi-robotic way in which we allow our lives to run, and into a new awareness that is out of the ordinary. This is an awareness and insight that can be brought about also by birth and death, loss of loved ones, a sunrise, a painting, and all those things that have inspired the greatest art, poetry and music throughout the centuries.
There is more good news!
More and more people in affluent societies are growing tired of the shallowness of their materialistic lives, and are searching for a new set of values by which to live; values which emphasize a new sense of collective belonging to and responsibility for a world that is in an increasingly fragile state.
A recent survey conducted by John Naisbitt, the author of Megatrends 2000, showed that for the first time in history more people were moving from the big cities to the suburbs; from the suburbs to the exurbs; and from the exurbs back to the countryside than were moving into the cities.
Why? Because, people reported, they felt that in some way they were ‘losing their souls’ and that they needed to get back in touch with themselves, with Nature, and with the sense of human community for which they longed. They wanted more Quality of Life; a life that fed, rather than depleted their spirits.
At the same time, the world is experiencing a new Renaissance. In country after country, more art galleries, concert halls and museums are being built. And in many countries more people than ever before are studying (professionally and for personal enjoyment) music, drawing, painting, creative writing, theatre and dance.
You are living, at the beginning of this 21st Century of the Brain and the Millennium of the Mind, in a world that is transforming itself from a relatively ‘dark night of the soul’ to an age of Spiritual awareness, development and enlightenment. You are part of that process.
‘Great men are they who see that the spiritual is stronger than any material force.’
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Case History – Valentina Tereshkova
Many leading individuals are publicly calling for greater attention to be paid to Spiritual Intelligence and a more caring and nurturing approach toward the children of the future and the planet. One particularly notable example is Dr Valentina Tereshkova. On 16 June 1963, a powerful rocket boosted the space capsule ‘Vostok 6’ into outer space and Valentina piloted it 48 orbits around the earth. Three days later she landed her space capsule safely, and became and remains the only woman in the world to accomplish solo flight into space. She received many awards and decorations, and has devoted an increasing part of her time to speaking at international peace conferences. She was recently nominated for the Women of the Year award of ‘The Woman of the 20th Century’, and in her acceptance speech she stressed the responsibility we all have for the future of human civilization:
‘We all have to understand and in full measure accept our responsibility for the future of human civilisation in all areas of activity – in the economy, in science and culture and art … I believe we all know which dangers we have in mind. The pollution of the environment due to the retroactivity of men, the pollution of outer space, and the problem of the sensible use of the scientific and technological achievements [for] the benefit and not the detriment of humanity.
‘Another problem is to protect the spiritual health of our children, to provide them with a moral compass to choose the right road in the limitless cyber space. Can we solve all these problems? Yes we can, thanks to responsibility and solidarity.’
The recent Olympics 2000 in Sydney, Australia give a vivid illustration of the benefits and effects of people using their Spiritual Intelligence. For two weeks 17 million people overcame the most horrendous logistical problems, put aside personal considerations in order to care for others, handled all kinds of stress, and in four million individual cases, volunteered their time, money and energy to celebrate human achievement. Commentators from around the world were ‘gob smacked’ at the sight and sound of people forming spontaneous choirs on trains, boats and airplanes; of everyone helping everyone else; and of the continuous, almost hypnotic spirit of cheerfulness and playfulness that pervaded the entire country.
This was an example of an entire country, itself composed of many races, religions and creeds, hosting those from the entire planet and succeeding, miraculously, in creating a momentary paradise-on-earth.
Case History – Diana, Princess of Wales
The shared outpouring of public grief at the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 was seen by some as a worrying manifestation of the power of celebrity and how the emptiness of some people’s lives led them to attach themselves to popular icons, living their lives vicariously through them. While that is one way of looking at it, there is a more Spiritually Intelligent view of the events – that people overcame their differences to share their grief for a woman who had done so much to help others through her charity work that she had become a symbol of hope and compassion.
Diana will be remembered by millions the world over for her high-profile stand on the use of land mines, and her compassion for AIDS patients. Although she suffered personal problems, she reached out to others in greater need and, by her example, she inspired others to do likewise.
Far from ‘going to hell in a hand-basket’, the world in which you live is undergoing a wonderful period of spiritual growth. This spiritual power that you, your family, friends and all of us have, is infinite. This book is designed to help you tap into that power, and to use it for your own and others’ good.
‘We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.’
(Galileo Galilei)
The Power of Spiritual Intelligence – An Overview
The ten chapters of The Power of Spiritual Intelligence deal with the ‘Ten Graces’ that combine to form Spiritual Intelligence.
Chapter 1 – Getting the ‘Big Picture’
In this chapter I will demonstrate to you that you are a miracle, and you will learn some incredible facts about you and your relationship with the universe. Each one of us has a tangible effect and impact on history, and you will read the thoughts of some of the world’s greatest thinkers about yourself, about your amazing capacities, and about your power.
Chapter 2 – Exploring Your Values
Your values and principles determine your behaviour, and have a massive effect on the probability of your success in life. By applying the lessons you will learn, you will, literally, improve your own and your friends’ chances of survival! In this chapter I shall explore the establishment and development of these principles, and will introduce you to thoughts of Buddha, Muhammad and others on this subject.
Chapter 3 – Your Life Vision and Purpose
In Chapter 3 you will be introduced to the power of your vision and your ability to plan. By applying this power you will be able to transform your life for the better. For this purpose I will provide you with a special technique that I have used to help Olympic athletes, business people, and tens of thousands of others world-wide who were seeking to increase their probability of success.
With a clear and defined purpose, your life will gain meaning and direction, and you will become healthier, stronger and more confident.
Chapter 4 – Compassion: Understanding Yourself and Others
Chapter 4 will explore further the ‘Amazing You’. I will show you games and exercises that will demonstrate to you how creative and unique you are. These same exercises will reveal to you all the spiritual qualities you share in common with the rest of humanity.
You will also be introduced to the thoughts of great spiritual leaders on compassion and understanding such as Gandhi, and the reflections of John Donne, Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Each of these will help you develop your own Compassion and Understanding.
Chapter 5 – Give and Receive! Charity and Gratitude
When you learn the twin graces of Charity and Gratitude, you multiply your Spiritual Intelligence several-fold. Your soul learns to breathe in (gratitude) and to breathe out (charity). One of the richest men of the 19th century, Andrew Carnegie, is a wonderful example of these qualities.
By applying the lessons of this chapter, you will become spiritually stronger and healthier, while at the same time becoming more nurturing, gentle and kind.
Chapter 6 – The Power of Laughter
Laughter is a vital quality of Spiritual Intelligence, and benefits you in many ways, including reducing stress levels and generally leading to a more cheerful and happier life. Research also demonstrates that laughter can help you live a longer and healthier life. You should end this chapter one ‘happy bunny’!
Chapter 7 – Onward to the Child’s Playground
How can it be beneficial to become like a child again? You will find out in this chapter! Investigations have shown that the more Spiritually Intelligent you become, the more the childlike qualities of innocence, cheerfulness, joyfulness, spontaneity, enthusiasm and adventure increase in your life.
Chapter 8 – The Power of Ritual
How do you improve your spiritual and emotional stability, reduce your stress, become more persistent and determined and, as a result, stronger and more confident?
Is there a magic formula? Yes! It’s called ritual, and in this chapter you will learn some important lessons from Indian Yogis. You will finish the chapter knowing how to create your own rituals, and appreciating the incredible effect they have on your brain, body and spirit.
