We all have angels in our lives: sometimes we see them, sometimes we don’t. Angels are spiritual beings often depicted as messengers of God. The Hebrew and Greek words originally mean messenger, either human or one that is supernatural.

Heavenly angels, often referred to as guardian angels, are mentioned numerous times in the Scriptures. Therein we learn that angels are spiritual beings created by God to serve him; and sent by God to watch over the human race; to deliver his messages; to guard and protect us from danger; and to do battle with the other spiritual beings on our behalf. Since the beginning of time, angels have delivered God’s messages to mankind. Sometimes the messages are warnings of impending danger, sometimes they are instructions as to what we are to do in a particular situation; they have been known to bring joyful announcements, and yet sometimes they are simply there as protection from enemy forces.

Why do we need angels? In truth, I do not know. God can deal with us in any way that pleases him to do so. He can speak with us directly, in a burning bush, in our dreams, visions and specifically through the Scriptures. Yet, he also employs angels. The Scripture says angels were created for his pleasure. Perhaps it is as simple as that — it pleases God to send the supernatural heavenly beings we call angels to minister to his children. Some of the roles of angels include protecting, guiding and directing human beings to carry out God’s tasks.

Angels can guide you in your life where you are stuck, leading you to discover the blocks in your life and helping you to work through them. When you are sick, feeling lonely, depressed or lacking energy and unable to motivate yourself, you may wish to ask the Angels for their healing support. Children have no trouble seeing and believing in angels, because their personalities or their egos have not fully developed. In fact children, until discouraged, will often tell you about the angels they see appearing in the form of a grandfather or grandmother they have never met. What makes us lose our spiritual intelligence and distrust that is natural to children?

Angels really want to help guide you, but most of the time we are not listening. This is when something called our EGO (Edging God Out) gets in the way and blocks our spiritual intelligence. As we get older, we develop roles to play in our lives to stay safe and loved. It is then we learn that love comes from something outside of ourselves, and that we must do something to get love. Our personalities, or our egos, become somewhat deaf, blind and forgetful to the truth of who we truly are, stopping us from seeing our true, divine selves. Thus, we have messengers in our lives, called angels to remind us.

Is it possible to have met an angel without knowing it? Angels can act as symbols to remind ourselves of our true purpose when we become distracted. Symbols have been around for ages. Plato cites Eros as a mighty demon, halfway between God and man. Eros, always present in the unconscious background of the psyche, animates the inner world and keeps the channels open between the ego and the unconscious. Our angels are catalysts we can use to get in touch with our inner genius. They act as a bridge between our rational and spiritual intelligences. In this way we are able to elevate the conscious mind beyond the boundaries of ego.

When people embark on a journey of personal growth, they hope to overcome feelings of fear, addiction, self-hatred and unworthiness. Becoming identified with mind and emotion can sabotage our relationships, preoccupy our thinking, increase our state of anxiety and unhappines and keep us out of a state of joy. As we begin to identify with our minds and emotions, we identify with ego, and any time we become identified with something, or label ourselves, we feed the ego and not the soul.

On some level, our soul always tries to express itself through unconscious means.

Our unconscious may be out of awareness, however it directly influences our behavior, finding expression through dreams, slips of the tongue, forgetting, delusions and projections. Our spiritual growth process is achieved by breaking the barriers to our repressed Higher Unconscious (i.e., fear of letting go and surrendering) and embracing it, representing an increase in the experience of higher, mystical and spiritual states of consciousness.

The trick is to become fully present to hear these messages from our divine. The ego is very busy blocking these messages through words, labels, judgments and criticisms. When we become present, either through joy or fear, our egos surrender, move out of the way and give up control. We need to move back from our rational intelligence to our spiritual intelligence that we once had as children. Sometimes we do not surrender until we are older and forgetful. Perhaps if we can get in touch with our angels, we will not have to wait that long.

To go further, there are many dimensions of reality below what we normally see and hear. We need to be open to the mystery, as well as the mystical experiences, to begin to see each happening and circumstance as a message from God. The secret of successful change is that although the change may look negative on the outside, it is creating a new space for you to grow and develop. Although soul works through individuals, its focus is on the needs of others and on service to humanity. So we will live in a wonderful state of mystery and not see it as something we need to control. Once we become open to connect with something, we open to its essence, its purpose, and meaning. When our hearts and minds are truly open, we can really hear what’s being said, or really see what’s happening in the moment. Openness demands that we be willing to move to places we’ve never been before. It asks us to continually challenge the foundations of our belief systems so we can test out new ideas. And to do that we need to accept insecurity. It means we are continually learning, unlearning and relearning.

The transition from the level of the ego to the existential requires the ego to deconstruct, let go, suspend controls with pleasure and to permit ideas and fantasies to emerge in a regressed state, thus furthering imagination, play, humor, inventiveness and creativity (Pahnke and Richards, 1972).

Identify Nine Core Characteristics of mystical experiences:

1. Unity: Internal (the usual sense of individuality falls away) or external (one’s identity merges with the sensory world in recognition of an underlying oneness).

2. Noetic quality of experience: Direct insight into the nature of being, accompanied by the certainty that such knowledge is truly real and not delusion.

3. Transcendence of space and time: The experience of time and space shifting their usual parameters.

4. Sense of sacredness: A non-rational, intuitive and quiet response to inspiring realities.

5. Deeply felt positive mood: Feelings of joy, love, blessedness, bliss and peace.

6. Paradoxicality: Experience of unity of opposites is felt to be true in spite of violating normal logical principles.

7. Ineffability: The inability to adequately express the experience in everyday language.

8. Transiency: The transient nature of the experience relative to the apparent permanence of everyday consciousness.

9. Positive change of attitude or behavior: Resulting from having had the experience.

The angels can help us to develop our spiritual intelligence, to surrender and give up control and listen to the angels and the messages they bring. When we develop our spiritual intelligence, we include values, such as courage, integrity, intuition, compassion and love, implying responsibility to one another. Developing our spiritual intelligence is critical today, so that we can have a strong enough inner world to sustain our need for belonging, self- esteem, contribution and love. Maybe we can ask the angels for help.

I have experienced many angels in my life, some I have seen and some I have felt. They come in the form of teachers, mentors, helpers, my children and my parents. These angels have guided, inspired and protected me. Sometimes an angel appears as a stranger that says hello, and we simply ignore this.

Angels can appear through our senses and intuition. When we see, hear, feel and smell them, we are fully present to their divine guidance. There are many angels, and they are not to be worshipped, but simply seen as co-creators with our divine selves. Who are the angels in your life? They are the ones who often make you see things in a different way. Perhaps we as humans are simply fallen angels.

Our large groups consisted of 3 day trainings in Bali of 100 participants, 230 in Salitiga Java, 100 in Jakarta and 120 in Ambon in the Maluku Islands. For the majority of the participants, the action methods of Souldrama, psychodrama, sociometry and group psychotherapy were brand new.  Therefore, establishing trust in the presenters was a challenge for the group members. It was the task of the presenters to warm up the group by developing cohesion and connection among group members. Trust and faith are the first stage of Souldrama.

By the end of the three days, each group was warmed up to and enthusiastic to participate in this new method of group counseling.  The large group of 230 participants at the University of Salitiga were broken down into four separate groups on the second day.  Each of the four groups rotated between learning some of the skills of psychodrama, sociometry, music therapy and the philosophy of Souldrama.  On the last day at the university in Salitiga, Souldrama was demonstrated, the group choosing the protagonist.  The group unconsciously formed the beautiful image of a heart at the end of the drama.

The only problem we seemed to have were the use of cell phones during groups –texting and receiving calls. Indonesia has the highest use of cell phones in the world. Participants were repeatedly invited – to no avail-to turn off their cell phones during the group sessions. Therefore, there were many interruptions during the group. I decided to “go with the flow on the third day and use phones as an intervention.

I asked each person to put their cell phone number on a piece of paper and put the numbers in a box.  Each person then turned on their phone and was instructed to take a number from the box. On the word “GO” they were to call the number they chose.  Our wonderful interpreter randomly took one number out of the box so that one person would not get a call. Imagine 99 cell phones ringing! You can see this in action on the you tube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TeBO2jpfu4.

Earlier in the day following a history of J. Moreno, we did a warm up asking each participant to play a fantasy character from childhood. Interestingly enough, the person who did not get a call chose to play the fantasy role of Judas. He said “I did not get a call and I told him he did. I told him “God is calling –would you like to speak with him?”He agreed to do so and the drama began. The participant, who played the auxiliary role of God, had warmed up to the fantasy role of Jesus earlier in the day. We now had   “Judas” confronting “Jesus.”
The protagonist had two issues. One was his addictive behavior for which he felt he needed to be forgiven.   The other was his anger at God for taking his father when he was still a child. The drama was completed and in the end many people were crying and sharing.

As co- creation works within a group, During the sharing,  the participant who played the role of God  had the same issue as did the protagonist.  The men were crying after the drama. This is the first time, for many of them that they could cry in public. The relief in the room was incredible.

Earlier in the day many people bought “I love Souldrama “tee shirts that were sold by the sponsoring organization.  The tee shirts have a big heart on the fronts that say “I Love Souldrama” Before the afternoon session, I took pictures of the group wearing the shirts. These people turned out to be the main auxiliaries, God, the person who played the protagonist as a child and the protagonist’s father and the angels. The protagonist was the only one without the large heart on his chest.

There  are a large amount of pastors in Indonesia and their problems are universal.  Instead of having many psychologists and counselors, most of the counseling is done through the church. There are 17,000 islands in Indonesia with many churches and pastors.  There is nowhere for the pastors to go to work out their own addictive behavior as many of them are set up by their parishioners to be “God”

I truly felt the presence of Moreno and the co creation with God in the group.  The pastors need a place to release their feelings, to do their own work, and to learn new methods. God was truly calling. The following evening when we closed the group the protagonist was wearing a new tee shirt!  All of our hearts were touched.  So God is calling all of us to help the future of mankind.

We all volunteered our time and money to go and help this country.  If anyone wants to make donations to the work we are doing in Indonesia please go the website on the page, donations for Indonesia. My book has been published in Indonesian also to help the country learn action methods,  Starve the Ego Feed the Soul.  All profits go to this cause.

Connie Miller, TEP,LPC, NCC, is founder and director of the International Institute for Souldrama and the owner of the Spring Lake Heights Counseling Center in NJ. Connie has developed Souldrama to help clients to move past resistance to remove the blocks that stop one from moving forward onto their higher purpose by aligning the ego and soul.  She is the recipient of the 2010 Innovators Award and a Fellow of the ASGPP. Connie runs trainings internationally and is the author of two books. Routledge press includes her chapter “Psychodrama, Spirituality and Souldrama” in the book New Advances in Psychodrama (published June 2007). Her recent work is focused on training the pastoral counselors and psychologists throughout Indonesia in Souldrama and action methods.

Address:    connie@souldrama.com or  see   http://www.souldrama.com/ .

Chapter One

“What matters is to spontaneously open to the reality of God.”
Thomas Merton, (1985)

Meeting Iye in the State of Ego

“Why can’t I ever find a relationship that lasts?  Why do I fell so alone and that something is missing in my life? Why can’t I find the girl of my dreams?” This was Iye’s familiar lament.  

Iye’s last breakup with the woman in his life was so painful that he invited me into the land of Rational Intelligence to present a Souldrama workshop. At first, I resisted revisiting the state of Ego for I remember how unhappy I had been there.  I am a bit wiser now for I know that every time I resist something, I am given an opportunity to grow.  So here I was back in the land of Rational Intelligence, in the state of Ego, wondering again what I was doing here.

Iye met me at the airport and the first thing I noticed when I arrived was that although the land looked very fertile, there were no flowers or gardens. When I pointed this out, Iye said “Everyone is busy preparing the soil, turning it over and over and creating fences and boundaries for their gardens and perfecting the seeds. They are always planning for every possible problem that could happen when the garden is planted; therefore, the seeds never get planted!  They stay on the shelf.”

“This seems to be a metaphor for life,” I told Iye. “If we never take the action to plant the seeds, our gardens will never grow. The seeds are our creativity — our life’s purpose — the part of our soul that needs nourishing and growth. In our recovery process, the missing piece is the planting of the seeds. This is the part of life that offers forward movement with the energy of joy.”

Even though Iye, age 50, had been in recovery from Alcoholism for the past 15 years, he could not seem to get his relationships right. Iye had a successful career as a prominent research scientist for the past 25 years. Having been divorced twice, he was bored with life, felt isolated and often depressed in his job, and unhappy in his relationships.  He has two children from his second marriage, a boy Chet, age 13, and a girl, Sage, age 11. His hobby is photography. All Iye can think about is his next relationship and how when he meets the girl of his dreams, everything will be fine.

 Iye cannot meet the girl of his dreams because for him, dreaming is more fun than the reality of a relationship.  You see, when he dreams, he can control the beginning and endings. When he actually gets into a relationship, he has to deal with the reality. There he has no control. 

Iye suffers from what I have coined “IDD” Internal Dialogue Disorder.  He is very busy figuring out every possible problem that could occur from any action he may take and the problems from any future actions.  As a result, Iye does not live in the present and is too afraid to move forward in a life that now has no meaning or purpose.  He is afraid to plant his own garden. Further, he often asks, “Is this all there is?”

Iye’s father was an engineer.  He was a very quiet man until he was provoked by Iye’s mother, a very emotional woman. When his mother, a teacher of romance languages could not get an emotional response from his father, she would provoke him until he exploded. Some response, she thought, was better than nothing.  His father then would just start to drink and isolate.  Isolation became a pattern of how to deal with emotions within this family.

As an only child, Iye would go to his room and isolate when his parents fought.  He would sit on his bed and look out the window and just think. He would go up into his head and try to figure out what was happening. When the lights went out he would worry and become hyper vigilant.  To stop himself from feeling and worrying, he would distract himself reading for hours finding safety in his books and in words. His books and his mind were his constant companion. They were his friends.  Later, he turned to photography to capture moments of beauty and love.

In order to get his father’s full attention, Iye would do research in one of his books and present him with any new fact or information.  His father then would notice him and give him some attention. What he learned was that in order to get love from his father, he had to have a lot of new facts and information. He therefore took on the role of “information getter” for his father.

Iye did not look for his mother’s attention, rather tried to avoid her and when he had to be in her presence, he learned to mostly tolerate her. She was always smothering him, trying to find an emotional companion and confidant. She would pour out her feelings about his father’s behavior and his lack of emotion. Iye learned to avoid his mother as much as possible because he did not want to be smothered nor hear about his father’s inadequacies. Thus, he learned how to leave situations that required intimacy for fear of engulfment. He developed two main roles in life in order to survive in this family; the avoider or distancer and the information gatherer.

“You have a very interesting name, Iye, does it have a meaning?”

“Yes, he said. In Native American language it means “Smoke”.

“Well, let’s hope that this process can help you begin to see clearly!”

Our Rational Intelligence and our Brains

We sat down to have lunch and Iye asked “Why can’t I move forward in a relationship? I seem to find the same woman with the same problems?  Why can’t I find true love and the relationship of my dreams?  Why can’t I commit or find anyone? I feel so alone.”

By Connie Miller Endorsed by Zerka Moreno, Clark Baim and Stevan Thayer!

You can go see it at http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/starve-the-ego-feed-the-soul-souldrama-ignite-your-spiritual-intelligence/6390589

$24.99

Ships in 3–5 business days Today, we seem to search for meaning and purpose in our lives and begin a spiritual journey as we ask ourselves,”Is this all there is?” In troubled times, new approaches and new initiatives are needed to break through the present impasse to restore health and vibrancy. What keeps people stuck in relationships, careers, addictions? Souldrama is a dynamic new therapeutic process that integrates psychology and spirituality,and aligns the ego and soul to move past the resistance in our lives preventing us from accessing our higher purpose. Similar to the stages of a pilgrimage, moving through seven levels of transformation, Souldrama integrates all three levels of intelligences, our rational, emotional, and spiritual, through a group process that puts spirituality into action. The end result helps us to create spiritually intelligent leadership. Souldrama moves group therapy and psychodrama to another level, that of the transpersonal.

Connie Miller TEP, LPC. NCC
http://www.souldrama.com/
The International Institute of Souldrama

I felt very welcomed and safe with Mesach and Miriam  in a safe walled resort   The next day Mirium took me shopping in the city.( By the way, one size does not fit all)  There is so much poverty. People loved having their picture taken. I spent the rest of the day with the translator for the workshop.

The workshop began the next day with a wonderful warm welcome. It seems that the pastoral counselors are depleted of hope themselves.  They really are looking for answers and new methods! I am honored I am here. The look of love, gratitude and warm welcome was so great in the faces of the participants, it cancelled all my fear.    They are so open to new methods I am sure that any help will be appreciated – I am hoping that Souldrama and psychodrama will help instill some faith and empowerment for hopelessness comes from feeling helpless.  I begin to think that I really need a team of trainers-especially with this amount of people.  The first day of the workshop the group unleashed a tremendous amount of spontaneity that seemed to be suppressed through holding their own fears in,  It was difficult to quiet them –they warmed up in groups of islands depicting the problem from their island in action.  The problems included murder, abuse, cross cultural marriages, gambling, drinking, poverty, disasters. Each island then made one tone and joined their tones to make music together. It was beautiful to explain that if they kept making only one tone from one island there would be no music as it is the space between the notes that makes the music, sharing and moving from one tone to the other.

The conferees then broke into smaller groups by matching numbers from a deck of cards.  They shared their own commonalities and feeling of hopelessness among themselves. They were surprised how much they had in common. I explained the process and stages of Souldrama, codependency, action methods, and role development and demonstrated how we begin to internalize our parents as being our higher power and begin to look outside of ourselves for love. It is difficult for these pastoral counselors and pastors to be put up on a pedestal by their congregations and then have nowhere to take their own problems.  I explained the importance of the group as a therapeutic factor and also the importance of the first stage of Souldrama which is faith. Without faith in each other could enough trust be built within the group.

The next day the groups shared among themselves what keeps them blocked personally. They then chose a potential protagonist from their own group.  Then the 20 potential protagonists then chose a protagonist and unanimously chose one person, a prominent pastor. His issue was that he never knew his father, a common factor in these islands. The entire group of attendees were quiet and attentive during the drama.  Translation had to be done on a microphone and I lost three translators as they were overcome by emotion. This was a healing time for the group and the sharing was beautiful. .

The following afternoon we ended by sharing and connecting even more.   They were asked to put their hand on the shoulder of the person who they thought helped them the most this week.  As they stood they did so and incredibly formed a cross, the symbol in Souldrama of the third door of compassion and forgiveness. When asked how much hope they had in their own lives now they stood on the spectrogram and now we had 70 percent above the middle line.   They invited me to all their islands and I could not get away from being photographed. They begged me to come back. I volunteered my time here and paid my own costs. I came to give something back to the world but by going I received more than I gave.

Yes this will be a wonderful experience to remember. Moreno is here in spirit.   Maybe one size does not fit all here when I shop but the love here knows no size- it fits everyone–it is limitless and flows through  all cultures. We live in a world that needs more soul and vision. Especially now, we all have the collective responsibility – the task, really,  of bringing soul into the world, or releasing soul into the world. We do this, first of all, in ourselves and in our own personal world; then we do it in our groups including family; and then we do it in our society through our work, relationships and presence there.” As we ended the session someone in the group asked what the difference between regular therapy and Souldrama is. I asked everyone to point to themselves and then  asked them where they pointed.  They all agreed:  to their hearts. When I asked how many pointed to their heads they all looked around. No one answered because they had all pointed to their hearts.  This is the difference I said.  The difference is in the heart-the difference is love.

After about five years, something happened.  We began to have ideas of how a  friendship ‘should be’. I even wrote a book about relationships called, The Book of Rules about Relationships. The trouble was that I had the only copy.

Our relationship changed from a state of being to one of doing. It changed from a verb, which is a state of spontaneity and action, to a noun implying a ‘thing,’ which is still and dormant.

Slowly, our relationship changed from a state of being to one of doing. Sadly and not surprisingly, our friendship died. It was easier for us to end the relationship than to look deeper into what was really going on.

Each time we set up rules, conditions, and expectations that the other can most likely never fill, we feed the ego. The ego loves rules, so that we believe that we are insidiously controlling the other. This is one
way that we can feel superior to another.  Each time we put our obligations, responsibilities, and expectations on others, we set up guilt, judgment and fear because we are afraid of our inability to meet the conditions or requirements set forth in the friendship. We become very busy judging each other for not meeting the other’s expectations, and become competitors keeping score of who did what to who, instead of co-creators.

When we feed the ego, our identity and value come from outside and not inside us, and we begin to demand performance in return for love. This is when we forget who we are in relationship to each other and begin to live in fear and disappointment of not being loved. We cannot have a friendship with someone we fear, or we will be fearful within.

Love is the way

Often I see relationships deteriorate between parents and children, husbands and wives, employers and employees. True friendships and relationships have no agenda and are not controlled by some set of conditions or rules set up from outside. True relationships are governed by love of the other, not expectations, obligations, and responsibilities. We all want to be loved for who we are and not what we do.

The question arises how do we go past the fear, delusion and need for power, which causes so much personal conflict in relationships within us and between others? Fear, greed, and power come from the ego’s need to attach itself to something outside itself to obtain recognition and identity. Until we shift our consciousness to move through our own blocks in our lives by moving from our rational intelligence (what I think), through the emotional intelligence (what I feel) to our spiritual intelligence (what I am) can there be a change?

Turning on our higher intelligence is not only fun and joyous, it is absolutely necessary, if our intelligent civilisation and we are to survive the coming decades. By higher intelligence, I mean the whole universal
intelligence – not just greater intellect, but greater emotional sanity, love, compassion, creativity, inspiration, and especially, the inspirational experiences. Long-term mental and emotional health requires more than a temporary reduction of symptoms.

What seems to be required is a higher consciousness, or a spiritual intelligence, from which a larger sense of self can be derived. It is important to develop our spiritual intelligence as well as our spiritual
maturity for without this we will not have friendships but ‘fearships’ in all our relationships.

Intelligence refers to the skills, abilities, and behaviours we need to help us balance the expansive love that flows through our hearts and all of creation with the need for discipline and responsibility. When we successfully balance these polarities in our own feelings and in how we treat others and the world, we are able to create forgiveness, healing and connection. In fact we are co-creating with God, being able to believe
in ourselves, our purpose, and to be vision and value-led, acting from beliefs, principles and self-love.

When we can access these deep dimensions of love, we can transcend our usual ways, defences, identity, and beliefs about self and world. Here we trust that we are loved and that there is a sense of creativity and humility and an ability to access higher meanings in life.

Spiritual intelligence sees the larger whole, and also, how all of us are connected.  Cleverness divides, feeding the ego saying, “I am better than you”; spiritual intelligence includes and unites.

When we put God in the centre of our lives we do not function by priorities but God weaves in and out of all our relationships, friends, family, work as a state of being and not doing. There is no control or agenda.  We begin to respond to others from a state of love and trust, just like a child. Well yes, after all, I guess we are all children of God!

Hal, wherever you are, I hope that you get to read this. Thank you for our friendship and helping me to grow. I miss you.

“Paracelsus”

Today we seem to search for meaning and purpose in our lives and begin a spiritual journey as we ask ourselves…is this all there is? There is much interest in spirituality as we are trying to reconnect within and to each other.   If we want to become spiritual leaders, is important to continue our own spiritual journey.  Many of us need a safe place to go, to learn a new way to begin this journey with new creative tools that help use our spiritual energy to move past resistance. This enables us to access our spiritual intelligence and to create spiritually intelligent leadership.   We all want to make a difference, to know our life has been worthwhile. However we cannot make a lasting difference at home and in the world unless we do so from a higher level of consciousness than our personalities. This higher level is soul life, our essence. It is here that we can to begin to reconnect to our spiritual intelligence; we reconnect to that element of self that became disconnected and fragmented.

In the early part of the twentieth century IQ or rational intelligence was the big issue. More recently, emotional intelligence (EQ) has been identified as a requirement for the effective use of IQ. Now there exists much scientific data that points to the presence of a spiritual intelligence (SQ), the ultimate intelligence that serves as a necessary foundation for the effective functioning of both IQ and EQ.  I would like to suggest another category of skills that is crucial for wholeness, happiness, and effective living. I call it Spiritual Intelligence. (Miller 2007). Spiritual Intelligence refers to the skills, abilities and behaviors we need to help us balance the expansive love that flows through our hearts and all of creation with the need for discipline and responsibility. When we successfully balance these polarities in our own feelings and in how we treat others and the world, we are able to create forgiveness, healing and connection. It is then that we in fact are co-creating with our Higher Source of Being.

If cognitive intelligence is about thinking and emotional intelligence is about feeling, then spiritual intelligence is about being.  In a holistic view of life, we are creatures with a mind, a body, and a spirit—all interconnected and arranged in a pattern that means that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. In the same way we can look at our intelligences. (Miller 2007)

What is spiritual intelligence?

Spiritual intelligence is inherently difficult to define. It is quite separate from organized religion. SQ is about questions more than answers. It lives in stories, poetry and metaphor, uncertainty and paradox. The word ‘religion’ comes from roots which mean to ‘tie together,’ that the spiritual involves not only faith which is vision, a way of seeing and a way of doing life with prayer and values, but also obligations to and support from others. (Miller 2007)

One way of conceptualizing spiritual intelligence is offered by Adams (1995) as a devotion to discovering, exploring, and living in accordance with the depth dimensions of existence. The depth dimensions are ways of being that transcend our usual ways, defenses, identity, and beliefs about self and world.
We all have a Peace, which is the Presence of God within us. We can access this presence by using our conscious, spiritual thinking. We are not seeking the Peace, but the wisdom.  We do not try to get the wisdom to get the peace, but the peace to get the wisdom.   This wisdom is called spiritual intelligence.

Spiritual intelligence does not mean being clever for that implies short sightedness and this is different from true spiritual wisdom.  Many corporate leaders and politicians are clever in order to attain a goal outside of themselves and are motivated by self interest; the gains are short sighted. Spiritual intelligence sees the larger whole and how we are all connected.  Just as cleverness divides, feeding the ego saying “I am better than you”, Spiritual Intelligence includes and unites.  Spiritual intelligence is described as “the intelligence with which we address and solve problems of meaning and value, the intelligence with which we can place our actions and our lives in a wider, richer, meaning-giving context, the intelligence with which we can assess that one course of action or one life-path is more meaningful.”(Zohar and Marshall 2000, pg 7)

Spiritual intelligence and your Career

For many of us, work is a means to an end–to acquire possessions, maintain our sense of identity, and improve our lifestyle. For some people, however, work can also be a means of avoiding distress through channeling their energies into busyness, relationships or addictions.  Our work can be an expression of who we are or it can be a job. We can make a living or a dying. Finding our purpose and expressing our gifts can be a life long journey. Rather than referring to a “career,” we may need to reflect about the meaning of our work at various stages in our lives. More commonly today, it takes a few turns and changes of direction for us to find us fulfillment in life.

Building your SQ may help you when you reassess your work situation. For different reasons, many people around the world are unhappy and this can be an opportunity to look at work as a possible area of change.  Sometimes it takes a crisis or serious illness to get us to make changes.

Gardner (1999) devised the PSI Spirituality Inventory (PSI) to assist people in assessing the focus and pattern of their spirituality. He suggests that seven factors that are necessary for spiritual intelligence and behavior:

• divinity, the sense of connection to a God figure or Divine Energy Source;
• mindfulness, an awareness of the interconnection of the mind and body, with an emphasis on practices that enhance that relationship;
• intellectuality, a cognitive and inquiring approach to spirituality, with a focus on understanding sacred texts;
• community, the quality of spirituality connecting to the community at large;
• extrasensory perception, spiritual feelings and perceptions associated with non rational ways of knowing;
• childhood spirituality, a personal, historical association to spirituality through family tradition and activity;
• trauma, a stimulus to spiritual awareness through experiencing physical or emotional illness or trauma to the self or a loved one.

Danah Zohar has written a great deal about the types of intelligence that correlate to the three types of capital those truly great spiritual leaders must integrate:  material, social and spiritual.  Danah Zohar (2005) states that great leadership depends primarily on vision that we can appreciate intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.  She goes further and states that vision is the passion and driving force of our enterprise.  What appear to be lacking today are leaders without vision. We all have a vision and purpose.  “One reason that visionary leadership is in short supply today is the value our society places on one particular kind of capital–material capital.  Too often the worth or value of an enterprise is judged by how much money it earns at the end of the day, or how much worldly power it gives us over others. This obsession with material gain has led to short-term thinking and the narrow pursuit of self-interest.  It is true that any kind of enterprise we want to engage in requires some kind of financial wealth if it is to succeed in the short term.  But for leadership to inspire long-term, sustainable enterprises, it needs to pursue two other forms of capital as well: social and spiritual. These three types of capital resemble the layers in a wedding cake. Material capital is the top layer, social capital lies in the middle, and spiritual capital rests on the bottom, supporting all three. IQ, or intelligence quotient, was discovered in the early 20th century and is tested using the Stanford-Binet Intelligence scales.  It refers to our rational, logical, rule-bound, problem-solving intelligence.  It is supposed to make us bright or dim. It is also a style of rational, goal-oriented thinking.  All of us use some IQ, or we wouldn’t be functional.

EQ refers to our emotional intelligence quotient. In the mid-1990s, in Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, Daniel Goleman articulated the kind of intelligence that our hearts, or emotions, have.  EQ is manifested in trust, empathy, self-awareness, and self-control, and in the ability to respond appropriately to the emotions of others.  It’s a sense of where people are coming from; for example, if a boss or colleague seems to have had a fight at home before coming into the office that morning, it’s not the best time to ask for a pay raise or put a new idea across.

SQ, our spiritual intelligence quotient, underpins IQ and EQ. Spiritual intelligence is ability to access higher meanings, values, abiding purposes, and unconscious aspects of the self and to embed these meanings, values, and purposes in living a richer and more creative life.  Signs of high SQ include an ability to think out of the box, humility, and an access to energies that come from something beyond the ego, beyond just me and my day-to-day concerns. SQ is the ultimate intelligence of the visionary leader. It was the intelligence that guided men and women like Churchill, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Teresa. The secret of their leadership was their ability to inspire people, to give them a sense of something worth struggling for.”

What is the driving force for our behaviors in today’s highly competitive market conditions? How do we establish a base on which mutual trust and communications in organizations are built in today’s highly competitive market conditions? Here is where we can talk about spiritual capital. Spiritual capital reflects the core values, the person’s value systems and the internal driving force of human beings and these qualities are essential to build lasting relationships among people of different backgrounds.

Spiritual capital serves as the spiritual base to enhance the meaning and beauty of life in the world. Spiritual capital is built by using our spiritual intelligence. Spiritual intelligence gives us access to deep meaning, fundamental values, and a genuine sense of purpose in our lives; makes us look at the role that our meaning, values, and purpose play in our lives; as well as the strategies and our thinking processes. SQ makes people ask why we are doing, what we are doing and makes us seek some fundamentally better way of doing it. Spiritual Intelligence is no less important than our emotional or rational intelligences. It is badly needed in our market economies today. It allows people of different backgrounds to understand each other in friendly terms and to put themselves in their shoes. It allows people to think creatively and change the rules and their roles according to new situations. It allows people to think about all kinds of possibilities and vision in life. SQ has the ability to dissolve old way of thinking of putting too much emphasis on material capital, while neglecting important mental and emotional part of human beings.

According to the Zohar and Marshall, there are twelve necessary components (Zohar (leader to leader) recognizes for spiritually intelligent leadership.

Self-Awareness: Knowing what I believe in and value, and what deeply motivates me.

Spontaneity: Living in and being responsive to the moment.

Being Vision- and Value-Led: Acting from principles and deep beliefs, and living accordingly.

Holism: Seeing larger patterns, relationships, and connections; having a sense of belonging.

Compassion: Having the quality of “feeling-with” and deep empathy.

Celebration of Diversity: Valuing other people for their differences, not despite them.

Field Independence: Standing against the crowd and having one’s own convictions.

Humility: Having the sense of being a player in a larger drama, of one’s true place in the world.

Tendency to Ask Fundamental “Why?” Questions: Needing to understand things and get to the bottom of them.

Ability to Reframe: Standing back from a situation or problem and seeing the bigger picture; seeing problems in a wider context.

Positive Use of Adversity: Learning and growing from mistakes, setbacks, and suffering.

Sense of Vocation: Feeling called upon to serve, to give something back.

One of the qualities of SQ is wisdom. This includes knowing the limits of your knowledge. Other ingredients that are important are values such as courage, integrity, intuition, and compassion and love. With SQ, more is less; as you learn, the process may involve unlearning what other people have taught you. Spirituality is an essential component of a holistic approach to life and work. It finds expression in creativity and all forms of the arts. We heal because of who we are and not what we do.

The task of this generation is to cut through the illusion that we live in separate worlds.    We are all agents of change. Today, if we want to change systems, we have to change human behavior; however, human behavior is not so easily changed.  The main responsibility of a spiritual leader today is to change the motivations that drive behavior, enabling people to achieve real transformation. The only way the world will be transformed is for individuals to make changes in individual levels of consciousness.  One way to do this is to move from our rational intelligence to our spiritual intelligence.  This involves changing the “I” in the IQ to a more Universal intelligence or “UQ”. It is then that we will be able to awaken our higher purpose and create spiritually intelligent leadership.  Turning on higher intelligence is not only fun and joyous, it is absolutely necessary if we and, our intelligent civilization are to survive the coming decades. By higher intelligence, I mean the whole universal intelligence – not just greater intellect, but greater emotional sanity, love, compassion, creativity, inspiration, and especially, the inspirational experiences.   Long term mental and emotional health requires more than a temporary reduction of symptoms.  What seems to be required is a higher consciousness, or a spiritual intelligence, from which a larger sense of self can be derived.

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