Thinking Without Your Soul: Spiritual Intelligence and Why It Matters - Hardcover

Wolman, Richard N., Ph.D.

 
9780609605486: Thinking Without Your Soul: Spiritual Intelligence and Why It Matters
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0609605488 ISBN 13: 9780609605486
Verlag: Harmony Books, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

Using the PsychoMatrix Spirituality Inventory (PSI), the author shows readers how to evaluate their individual spiritual needs and explains how to use one's self-knowledge to strengthen relationships, enhance communication, and live more fully.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

RICHARD N. WOLMAN, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and has been on the faculty at Harvard Medical School for more than twenty-five years. He is the president and research director of PsychoMatrix, an independent educational, research, and testing service dedicated to bringing greater self-understanding to individuals and organizations.

Aus dem Klappentext

ual intelligence is the human capacity to ask ultimate questions about the meaning of life and to experience simultaneously the seamless connection between each of us and the world in which we live."<br>— Dr. Richard Wolman<br><br>The quest for more meaning in everyday life arises in all of us at one time or another. In fact, spirituality can be the touchstone of our lives — a single reliable constant that sustains us through life's most trying moments. Using the current theories of multiple intelligences as his springboard, Dr. Richard Wolman began his research into the nature of spirituality with the belief that each of us has a distinctive "spiritual intelligence." <b>Thinking with Your Soul</b> offers crucial insights into this most important of intelligences and how we can make it work for us. <br><br>Dr. Wolman presents the PsychoMatrix Spirituality Inventory (PSI), his groundbreaking system for evaluating the levels and areas of spirituality in pe

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Introduction

This book is based on my belief that each of us possesses spiritual intelligence, and that we have the capacity to think with our souls. The term spiritual intelligence may at first seem contradictory. The word spiritual evokes images of sacred experience, of the soul, of questions about the meaning and purpose of life, of subjective and personal reality. Intelligence, on the other hand, connotes the mind at work. Analytic problem-solving, computation, and scientific understanding of the workings of the external world are processes most often associated with contemporary views of intelligence.

Is it possible to fuse spirituality and intelligence into a new creation? I think it is. Spiritual intelligence is our human capacity to ask ultimate questions about the meaning of life; and to experience simultaneously the seamless connection between each of us and the world in which we live. The subjective world, with which spirituality deals, and the objective world, which intelligence seeks to comprehend, both reside within each of us. We need a language to describe sacred experience that can point to commonalities of encounters with the ineffable, but which is not burdened with religious or ideological overtones. We also need a methodology for studying, learning about, and understanding our spiritual selves and the intelligent ways in which we can live our spirituality.

In my opinion, spiritual intelligence is part of the normal--in the statistical and psycho-social sense--life of us all. Even those who voice unflattering views of anything they consider "spiritual" can, with a little prodding, begin to have insight into their own spirituality. Once embarrassment and inhibition fade, we witness the owering of spiritual awareness in the most unlikely (by conventional distorted standards) individuals.

My research into the nature of spirituality forms the centerpiece of this book, built around the methodology of the PsychoMatrix Spirituality Inventory, or PSI. The PSI is an eighty-item inventory designed to help people assess the focus and pattern of their own spirituality. This research instrument has been used with more than six thousand men and women in an effort to objectively study spiritual practice and experience. In this book I will describe my creation of the inventory and the findings of the research. In particular, I discovered seven factors that together comprise the spectrum of spiritual experience and behavior. Those factors may be described briefly as follows:

1. Divinity: the sense of connection to a God figure or Divine Energy Source

2. Mindfulness: awareness of the interconnection of the mind and body, with an emphasis on practices that enhance that relationship

3. Intellectuality: a cognitive, inquiring approach to spirituality, with a focus on reading and discussing sacred texts

4. Community: the quality of spirituality enacting connection to the community at large, whether in charity or politics

5. Extrasensory perception: spiritual feelings and perceptions associated with nonrational ways of knowing, including prophetic dreams and near-death experiences

6. Childhood spirituality: a personal, historical association to spirituality through family tradition and activity

7. Trauma: a stimulus to spiritual awareness through experiencing physical or emotional illness or trauma to the self or loved ones

These factors encompass the range of spiritual experience reported by this large representative sampling of people.

When you take the PSI for yourself, you will get a picture of your personal pattern of the dimensions of spirituality represented by the seven factors. Like your fingerprints, this pattern is similar to, but unlike the configuration of any other person. Understanding your spiritual style, as well as your spiritual strengths and limitations, can help you see yourself more clearly and improve your interpersonal relationships. Insight into our own behavior or internal experience and empathy for the experiences of others is crucial for daily living and for psycho-spiritual development. As a psychotherapist, I encourage careful listening and self-reflection in my patients--and in myself--because I believe that understanding the context and meaning of our actions frees us to make conscious choices, rather than enslaving us to respond reflexively to life's demands.

What works in the psychological world can, I believe, also work in the world of spiritual experience. Developing spiritual intelligence and finding a language with which to articulate ineffable and deeply moving moments provides a release of spiritual energy for many people who take the PSI. Such personal spiritual discoveries also create the possibility of dialogue with others about difficult-to-discuss concerns and personal beliefs. Some people back away from such discussions, or from invitations to try the Inventory, with statements like, "Oh, no, thanks, I'm not really very spiritual; that's not really my thing." When such individuals do take the Inventory and receive their personal reports, however, they are drawn into spiritual conversations by the power of their deep and personal experiences. These conversations are eloquent reminders that we are all spiritual, and only need the proper stimulus to evoke relevant thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Memories long buried are sometimes re-evoked. Personal reflection on the value of human interrelationships and the connection to a larger life force emerge spontaneously, sometimes to the person's surprise and joy. People who begin to share their own spiritual histories are often surprised by the force of their feelings--both positive and negative. In some cases the process is one of opening old wounds about religious conflicts that have healed insufficiently and have lain dormant for years. In others, the conversation inspires a feeling of homecoming and renewed dedication to spiritual practices that used to bring pleasure but have been shunted aside by the rush of daily life.

I find that many people have a willingness and need to discuss matters of life, death, and meaning with someone who is psychologically and spiritually open and lends a willing ear. For example, I met an old friend, Ron, at the tennis court. (All names used in the vignettes and examples throughout this book are fictitious, but refer, sometimes in composite form, to actual people.) I hadn't seen him for two years. He and I began to talk about the PSI and the work I was doing in this area of research. Before long, we were discussing his own concerns about spirituality and the fact that his thirty-five-year-old son was still having severe epileptic seizures, which would require yet another round of surgery. His concern for his son's welfare, the quality of the young man's life, and the overall meaning that the effects of the affliction were having on his child were palpable. We played for a short while, but spent most of our time together that afternoon focused on the role of spirituality and its relation to physical and emotional healing in his life and in his son's world.

The next day, as I was walking to the library, I unexpectedly met Sandra, a friend and former classmate of mine from the third grade, whom I see from time to time. She recognized me before I recognized her. Sandra's weight and appearance had changed dramatically because, as I learned, she was just recovering from surgery for a brain tumor. Once again, the issue of spirituality emerged as we discussed how close Sandra had come to death. "I feel grateful for every day," she told me. For us human beings, ultimate concerns are never far from consciousness. We don't have to look to the esoteric to find the spiritual. Everyday life supplies ample reminders of how fragile life is, and how thoroughly interrelated we all are.

I...

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Verlag
Harmony Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2001
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0609605488
ISBN 13 
9780609605486
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
288
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar