What is Spiritual Intelligence?

Inquiry into spiritual intelligence suggests that it is one of several types of intelligence and it can be developed relatively independently. Spiritual intelligence consists of many ways of knowing and blending of the inner life of mind and spirit with the outer life of work in the world. It can be developed through pursuit, inquiry, and practice. Spiritual experiences may also contribute to its development, depending on the context and means of integration. Spiritual maturity is conveyed through wisdom and kind acts in the world. Spiritual intelligence is essential for making spiritual choices that add to psychological happiness and generally healthy human development.

Spirituality exists in minds of men and women everywhere, within religious traditions and independently of tradition. Spirituality is the domain of ultimate concern, and then everyone is spiritual because everyone has ultimate concerns. However, the term ultimate concern can be interpreted in many different ways. Some do not consider themselves or their concerns to be spiritual. Spirituality, like emotion, has varying degrees of depth and expression. It may be conscious or unconscious, developed or undeveloped, healthy or pathological, naive or sophisticated, beneficial or dangerously distorted.

Spirituality involves highest levels of any of the developmental lines, for example, cognitive, moral, emotional, and interpersonal.  Spirituality is itself a separate developmental line.  Spirituality is an attitude such as openness to love at any stage.  Spirituality involves peak experiences not stages. An integral perspective would presumably include all these different views and others as well.

Spirituality is ultimate belonging or connection to the transcendental ground of being. Spirituality can be in terms of relationship to God, to fellow humans, or to the earth. Spirituality can also be devotion and commitment to a particular faith or form of practice. To understand how spirituality can contribute to the good life, defined in humanistic terms as living authentically the full possibilities of being human, it seems necessary to differentiate healthy spirituality from beliefs and practices that may be detrimental to well-being. This leads to the challenge of defining and cultivating spiritual intelligence.

Because there is little agreement about definitions of spirituality, discussions of spiritual intelligence need to be exploratory rather than definitive.  By asking what is meant by spiritual intelligence, we can hope to stimulate further understanding of spirituality that I think merits further investigation.