Emotion, Reason and Spirituality

I would like to share about spiritual intelligence, in the context of the dialogue that happens between the mind and intellect, I introduced the concept of spiritual intelligence in the workplace in early 1997.

In my book Endoquality, I asked how many people it takes to have a conflict. The answer is one. Internally, the mind and intellect often fight it out. Representing the mind is emotion. Representing the intellect is reason.

Emotions often dominates the intellect and vice versa.

An example. It’s a cold winter morning. I have gotten to bed late after a night out. The alarm clock rings stridently. The dialogue between reason and emotion begins:

Emotion: It’s too cold today and so warm in bed. I want the stay snoozing another 10 minutes.

Reason: You know it's time to get up. The last time you wanted another 10 minutes, you slept another hour arrived late at work. You know they are laying off people who make mistakes like this.

Emotion: Please, it´s only 5 degrees out and it’s raining. I only got to be at two.

Reason: No excuse. It’s a working day. Get up.

Emotion: Please just another 5 minutes. What about 2….?

This is how the internal dialogue often goes on. Wanting something (emotion) and knowing (reason) battle it out on the field of the mind. They use the subconscious recordings of similar situations to bolster their respective arguments.

Sometimes I want things I know are not good for me or I know things I don't want to know about. They are incompatible and so, a conflict takes birth, It only ends when spiritual authority reasserts itself and takes charge from the confused, weakened and overwhelmed ego.

What I proposed in this book was a spiritual quotient or a measure of spiritual intelligence. this is precisely what can give guidance and strength to the intellect and fulfilment and tranquillity to the mind.

Rational intelligence is what helps me to manage things, facts and numbers etc. Emotional intelligence is what helps me to deal with other human beings. Spiritual intelligence is the dose of spiritual insight and power that saves me from the excesses of the other two.

Spiritual intelligence synchronizes the mind and intellect to produce a sense of harmony. What questions and criteria can I apply regarding the effectiveness of my life? Some examples:

Am I spending more time and energy, money, and thoughts than I need, to get the results that I want?

Can I keep bilateral respect in my relationships?

Do I play a fair game when I'm working with others?

Do I keep my dignity while respecting the dignity of others.

Do I feel peaceful. despite having a lot to do?

Do I remain stable in chaotic situations?

Am I more aware of people's virtues than their defects?

The higher the mark in most of the answers, the more developed is my sense of spirituality.

Text from the Live and Meditate Channel (https://www.youtube.com/liveandmeditate and https://www.facebook.com/liveandmeditate/) Videos #009 and #010

Christmas Message 2020

COVID-19 has not cancelled Christmas 2020. Just the way we celebrate it.

This year Christmas is a time to digest and absorb the spiritual lessons that 2020 has brought us. Though it has been a strange and even terrible year for some, at this time we have to check our stock of good wishes for other human beings, the environment and ourselves.

When suffering is great many people seek solace in connecting with the One God no matter what the tradition. At this time Christians especially remember the life and example of Christ.
The first two words of the Lord's prayer, Our Father, convey a profound meaning to me. Christ did not say 'I, Father,' or 'My Father'.
'Our Father' puts Christ together with us. He may be one of the highest among us, but saying Our Father, he showed that he was one of our brothers.
The way he spoke about God suggests a natural relationship with the Father to which we all have a right.
My image of Christ is not one who came to earth pointing to himself but pointing our attention to God, the Father and the spiritual heritage to which we are entitled.
His birth shows us how we can reinvent ourselves as well in spite of the challenges.
In other words, have a spiritual rebirth. This means the birth of a new consciousness.
One that has nothing to do with the resurrection of bodies, but with the resurrection of our deep spiritual nature, which is similar to God - "in His own image."
Christ gave us an example of right behaviour - how to be loving, tolerant, generous, humble and pure in our intentions and interactions.
Instead of worshipping him, the greatest act of worship is to become like him, to sacrifice everything that is not divine, so that we may once again take up our divine nature and live in the light of God.

Text from the Live and Meditate Channel (https://www.youtube.com/liveandmeditate and https://www.facebook.com/liveandmeditate/) Video #138

Image: Credit: Thomas Hertwig/Dreamstime

Theories, beliefs and excuses

 

Practically all of our popular beliefs are still only theories:

• that we are the descendants of monkeys;
• that our ancestors were cave dwellers;
• that the universe started with a big bang or by some divine act;
• that such and such a founder of a religion is the only legitimate representative of the truth;
• that we are all equal;
• that violence is natural to the human being.

The list of our beliefs at a personal level goes on and on.
The beliefs about what can make us happy are mostly a bunch of premises, based more on hope than on a real perception of the world and our relationships.
Theories are not absolute truths. A good exercise would be to go through our convenient yet basically unfounded theories of beliefs and rewrite them:

• my husband, wife is ...
• my religion, race, culture is better than...
• I can't change...
• I'm too lazy...

No beliefs or theories are fixed forever. If we could really go to a deeper level of perception we would probably change them. If we have the power also, we would be able to see how excuses are the main weapons of our shaky premises and how excuses actually block the truth.

Recently I came across a phrase from an anonymous source.
"Excuses are tools of incompetence.
They build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness"
I would go a step further and suggest they are bigger and smaller lies to escape responsibility, embarrassment or the realization of the extent of some bad habit.
What we need to do to is to learn to explain honestly any failures we may have.

• I ate that third piece of pizza because I wanted to please the person who made it. I really did it because of unmitigated greed.
• I didn't get up this morning for my meditation practice because I had a hard day yesterday. I really didn't get up because of pure laziness.

The phrase, I know I had to do X but I did Y because of..., is only real if the Y was so important or unavoidable that I couldn't do anything else. It should not be a lame attempt to avoid shame or the revelation of my incompetence.
If I become a specialist in making excuses, two things will happen:

• I will start to believe in them.
• Real self-progress will stop. 

If I continue always making excuses then I will seldom accomplish anything worthwhile.
If I learn to clarify honestly what really happens l will learn from it, retain my self-respect and really contribute to a better self and a better world.

Text from the Live and Meditate Channel (https://www.youtube.com/liveandmeditate and https://www.facebook.com/liveandmeditate/) Videos #16 and #17

What to do about chaos

In 1987, as the Cold War was ending, the US military started to use the term VUCA to describe the way the world was heading. VUCA is an acronym for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous.
Later this term was taken up in education and especially in the corporate world related to management and leadership. Since then all of these conditions have become worse.
Volatile because of the nervous nature of change as it happens and the reaction to it.
Uncertain because anything can happen to anyone, at any time, anywhere. A general lack of predictability. Constant surprises.
Complex because of the interconnectivity and interdependence of multiple components in our systems.
Ambiguous because of the lack of clarity and the excessive misunderstanding related to things that happen.
There is no easy answer to being able to deal with these factors at any level - governments, organisations, civil society or individuals. Since this channel is dedicated to helping individuals live better in and with the world around I would like to add a couple of things.
Firstly, whatever we have learned in the past about ourselves and the world, may not be enough to deal with the chaotic nature of situations and people around us as they worsen.
Secondly, though we can't control the chaos, we can control ourselves better. For this, we need perhaps another acronym, USIF. Understanding, Stability, Inner Power and Freedom.
We have to understand the basics of life at a spiritual level. We have to work on my mental and emotional stability no matter what happens. We have to develop inner power through meditation practice. We have to become free from attachment to people and things and even own past so that we can act in the best way possible for ourselves, our families and the world.

Text from the Live and Meditate Channel (https://www.youtube.com/liveandmeditate and https://www.facebook.com/liveandmeditate/) Videos #18

Spiritual Maturity

Since spending a lot of time in our retreat centre near Sao Paulo in Serra Negra, I have been able to observe the exuberant nature here, how all of the elements are able to live with each other in harmony. You don't find trees fighting with each other in their effort to put their highest branches in the sunlight.

You don't find the grass making huge efforts to push its shoots through the topsoil to reach the same light. You can see how the wind, clouds, rain and sun combine to produce refreshing scenes every day. It's forever recycling itself. Just look at these beautiful irises in front of the building where I am (picture above). The potential for their splendid manifestation is in the bulb. Every year, around this time they bloom.

Even looking out the same window, where my office is, everything is different every time I look out - clouds and sunlight are always changing.

These are the things that remind me of spiritual maturity. For me, it is a sense of sufficiency, that everything is moving along nicely, not in the sense of standing back and just going with the flow. It's really because there is a relationship between internal order and how this influences the world we live in.

There is an understanding that worry is low-quality thinking, and that it's much more profitable to have inner control and peace and watch the wonders that happen around, from that state.

I've been thinking more about spiritual maturity in terms of some indicators. How humble do I feel? How protected do I feel? Does my spiritual state reflect the more than 40 years I have dedicated to developing it?

I can honestly say I don't have limited pride about what I have learned and know. It's that I'm really glad about how spiritual knowledge has helped me and others throughout my life. I do not feel that I'm better or worse than anyone else, just different.

There is an intuitive understanding that I don't need to compare myself with others. I just have to recognize and celebrate the many things we have in common. And any intellect or personality differences only provide variety for the play of life.
I understand that truth will always be self-evident. I do not need to prove anything. Only that which is really true has a future. Everything that is intrinsically wrong does not last.
I recently found two words in Sanskrit that reflect an important part of spiritual maturity.
Gaunibhakti is ego-based devotion, in which the person feels that he is "saved" and looks with disdain at any other kind of faith. This means to love one ideal, but feel aversion to other ideals.
Parabhakti (the highest level of devotion) means total loving devotion to the truth, so much so that there is no room for hatred of any kind.
This to me is the essence of spiritual maturity.

Text from the Live and Meditate Channel (https://www.youtube.com/liveandmeditate and https://www.facebook.com/liveandmeditate/) Videos #14 and #15