Know Thyself

2008-07-20T22:24:00.000-05:00

Spiritual Quotient Assessment

2007-08-06T23:05:00.000-05:00

Take this quick test to assess your Spiritual Quotient.
Perspective's Spiritual Quotient Assessment.

Are you hurting?

2007-08-04T14:40:00.001-05:00

If you checked more than a few of these -

it's time to

change your perspective on life.

Mental Operating States

2007-08-04T14:26:00.000-05:00

At any given time, we operate from a state of mind that accesses different levels of knowledge or information. We are more productive if we are consciously aware of this state and can actively move up or down as needed.

For instance, if we're trying to solve a problem for which we don't have enough information, Analysis can not lead us to the answer. Spending too much time in that mode will only frustrate us. Actively moving up to Common Sense or Perspective, or down to Memory to access additional information, will take us closer to our objective.

Each of these states is useful for its own purpose, but applying one where another is needed will not lead to clear decision making. However, the higher states of mind are generally more effective in solving complex problems because they often incorporate information available in the lower states, without our knowing it.

The key to behavior

2007-08-04T12:13:00.000-05:00

The Psycho Somatic Behavior Reinforcement Cycle ©

"Our mind-body connection is the key driver of all behavior. Our behavior determines how others perceive, respond to and interact with us. That in turn governs our effectiveness and productivity in work and personal relationships. It also influences the drive, initiative and energy available to set and achieve our work and life’s goals – by creating barriers that artificially limit our choices and inhibit our free will."
- M. Mohan Shukla

See Psycho Somatic Behavior Reinforcement Cycle for details

Psyche is defined as "the center of thought, feeling, and motivation, consciously and unconsciously directing the body's reactions to its social and physical environment"
American Psychological Association (APA): psyche. (n.d.). The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition.

Soma is defined as "the body of an individual as contrasted with the mind or psyche"
American Psychological Association (APA): soma. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.

Spiritual Quotient

2007-08-04T11:26:00.001-05:00

Spirituality can not be measured or quantified. Nor can there be a standard set of behaviors, experiences, beliefs or outcomes to compare one person's degree of spirituality against another.
The term Spiritual Intelligence is still in its infancy while the world becomes more comfortable with this amorphous concept. The world, however, is coming to the realization that spirituality has a fundamental part to play in the productivity of people at work, in the strength of relationships between people and in the solution of global problems.

It is valuable now to identify some tangible aspects of the way spirituality affects the lives of people themselves and those they interact with. This would lead to a better appreciation of the impact of spirituality in our personal and work relationships and potential application in the corporate world.
Perspective's Spiritual Quotient has been developed with that goal in mind. This is a directional measure of the degree to which a spiritual connection influences a person's experience of life. The 25 questions included in the Spiritual Quotient Assessment (SQA) are behavioral and explore the impact of a spiritual perspective on one's thoughts, beliefs and actions. They are independent of faith, worship and religious persuasion. The questions cover five relevant areas.

Self Awareness: deeper than described by Emotional Intelligence, it includes the understanding of self as a conscious entity separate from observed experience.
Self Mastery: the ability to steer thoughts and feelings actively to ensure decisions, actions and behavior are aligned with purpose.
Connection: a relationship with others based on the immanence of a common source, and the ability to experience empathy without entanglement.
Purpose: guided by a commanding purpose that drives all goals in life and creates intention, determination, commitment and congruence.
Transcendence: experience of a consciousness beyond the physical and emotional, leading to insight, clarity and connection with a higher source.

The SQA test was validated with a diverse group of volunteers from various age groups and backgrounds. The rating is based on normalized results obtained from that distribution. This test is informational only. No scientific study of the correlation between scores and any quantifiable measure of performance has yet been conducted.

To learn more about Spiritual Intelligence, click here.
To take the Spiritual Quotient Assessment, click here.

Spiritual Intelligence

2007-08-04T11:15:00.000-05:00

In order to function effectively and in health, we are born with various kinds of intelligences. The most commonly understood one is measured as the Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Over the past decade, the Emotional Quotient (EQ) has become a more important measure of one's ability to manage relationships and perform more effectively.

Recent studies and research have revealed another aspect of our innate abilities that drives success in life and guides IQ and EQ. Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) is the innate ability to know one's purpose in life and drive all decisions and actions to resonate with it.

IQ is the mental capacity to recognize and apply thought processes to solve problems. Emotional Intelligence creates awareness of the ebb and flow of emotions and the effective management of consequent actions and behavior. Spiritual Intelligence is the transcendence of consciousness beyond the mental-emotional (thinking-feeling or Neurophysiological) experience that results from interaction with the physical environment, and leads to a connection with purpose.

Analytical intelligence is very helpful in determining What we should do in a given situation, based on apparent facts. Emotional Intelligence enhances those decisions by including hidden data provided by feelings and intuition, providing direction on How to approach the situation. Spiritual Intelligence addresses the fundamental question of Why we should be in that situation in the first place, guiding the course of our actions in alignment with our purpose.

The first two types of intelligence enable us to work effectively within the boundaries of our experience, letting the situation guide us. Spiritual Intelligence enables us to assess the meaningfulness of our choices, so we can actively guide the situation from beyond the limits of our experience. Spiritual Intelligence brings meaning to all work, relationships and life itself - by generating resonance, authenticity and integrity.

To learn about Perspective's Spiritual Quotient for measuring Spiritual Intelligence, click here.

This is your brain ...

2007-08-04T10:59:00.000-05:00

The human brain is a rather anachronistic mechanism. Imagine a small family living in a small house. They have few needs and everything they require for their daily life is contained therein. Now the family grows. With children of different ages, the needs grow in variety as well as quantity. So they add another room and equip it with the new facilities. And then it grows further. Perhaps grandchildren show up. Now they add a few more rooms and the grandchildren inherit their parents' toys. The parents now need exercise equipment, and the grandparents possibly need to add a ramp to the entrance for their wheelchair.

The house looks haphazard. The exercise room is far from the parents' room and the play room on a different level than the children's rooms. It still fulfills the needs of the family, and is sufficiently functional. It's just not that efficient. It may take more time and effort to do the laundry, for instance, because the people are living in various parts of the house rather than in close proximity to the service facilities.

The most primitive parts of our brain are at least ten million (10,000,000) years old. They were designed to manage simple functions for animals with simple lives, and are collectively referred to as the reptilian brain (see Triune Brain model for details.) Those creatures did not have to go to the mall and select a pair of shoes, so their brains never created the facility to be attracted by the latest designs from Prada. The younger part of our brain, called the mammalian brain, is perhaps a few million years old. Since early primates began working and living together in groups, their brains developed the functionality needed for social interaction. For even earlier mammals, the critical faculty required was the response to danger, without which survival would be impossible.

And the most recent part of our brain matured only tens of thousands of years ago. This infant organ, called the neo-cortex, enables the uniquely human ability to "think about thinking." Although other primates possess a small neo-cortex as well, no animal has the fully developed conscious ability to reason, discriminate between choices and strongly resist behavior that would gratify the other (lower) parts of the brain.

It is this unique ability to overwhelm our desires with our reason that differentiates us humans from the other animals. That is the foundation of our spiritual framework.

Global Spiritual Life Survey results

2007-07-05T22:17:00.000-05:00

Global

SPIRITUAL LIFE SURVEY results

In the month of July 2007, a global survey was conducted to gather information regarding the impact of a spiritually oriented life on people. Here are the findings.

Background
The questions in the survey are based on five attributes of Spiritual Intelligence – Self Awareness, Self Mastery, Connection, Purpose and Transcendence. For details about the attributes and how the assessment was created, click here. For information about the concept of Spiritual Intelligence (SQ), click here.

The respondent demographics
The survey had respondents from North America, South America, Europe and Asia. 81% consider themselves to be spiritually inclined. Half of them follow a specific faith, tradition or religion, while another fourth follow a range of practices. A variety of faiths were represented, including many professing no faith, atheism, humanism or humanity as their choice. 71% of the respondents identified themselves as male. A little over half of the respondents were between 26 and 50 years of age, and 8% were under 25.

Statistics
Since the goal of the survey was to develop a basis for defining a measurable Spiritual Quotient, the answers for each question were rated, with a value of 1 through 4. The net score received by an individual would range between 25 and 100. The responses received from the survey respondents were converted according to this scale and the result showed a near-normal distribution as depicted by the chart below.

The mean score was 71.7 with a standard deviation of 9.8. The mean is biased toward the lower side of the peak, as is the median. The quartiles are shown in the chart as well.

Spiritual Quotient rating
One of the objectives of the survey was to create some sort of a measurement to group individual results into meaningful categories. Given the nature of our subject, we decided to create a broad middle category that would cover most people, with smaller outliers at each end. We thus created three groups based on one's score from the Spiritual Quotient Assessment.

The middle 70% of the population would receive a "Spiritual" rating with the lower 15% receiving a "Traveler" and the upper 15% receiving an "Adept" rating. The assumption is that individuals taking this assessment would be a self-selected group inclined to be thoughtful toward the subject of spirituality. The chart gives an idea of how one fares with respect to the population, and the assigned rating is only a guideline.

The underlying idea is that we are all on a spiritual journey, albeit at different points. A Traveler is one who has just begun and an Adept has figured out how to apply the learning in all aspects of life. Most of us fall somewhere in between.

The following text description accompanies the ratings.
Traveler (60 or lower)
"You are moving along your journey toward a spiritual life. If you find undue stress, conflict or pain in your life, you may want to seek deeper answers to your problems. A fresh look at life, a new perspective on your challenges would be very helpful."

Spiritual (Higher than 60 and lower than 8)
"You have found some answers to life's fundamental problems and try to apply them regularly. As you progress on your journey, greater joys will unfold when deeper truths about life are revealed to you. Any areas of pain or conflict you experience are clues to those truths."

Adept (81 or higher)
"You live most of your life from a spiritual perspective and have probably found the key answers to most problems. There shouldn't be much pain or conflict in your life. You should be helping others on their journey - that is a path of further enlightenment for you."

Feedback
Of the respondents that chose to provide feedback on the survey, 71% had positive or highly positive comments. One respondent disagreed with the premise behind the survey and the assessment, on the grounds that spirituality can not be measured. Another was upset about the demographic information, believing it should not have been asked for.

Many of the respondents provided excellent, specific suggestions for improvement, which have been incorporated into the assessment instrument. Here is a summary.
a. There should be multiple choices allowed since more than one of the answers were true in many cases.
b. Some of the questions were too profound for the average person.
c. The answers were inclined toward the spiritual and excluded potentially "unspiritual" or materially oriented choices.

Response
a. It is indeed a little difficult to choose amongst the possible answers for some of the questions. However, the survey is purposely designed to force a choice in order to allow the respondent to evaluate the meaning behind the choices and the spiritual impact of each.
b. This survey is designed for individuals interested in the subject of spirituality and hence the tendency to ponder thought-provoking questions. Some of the questions may therefore appear to be "profound".
c. One of the objectives of the survey is to create a meaningful scale of results across the spiritual spectrum, and not to differentiate between people as being spiritual or not. The choices offered in the answers support the focus on learning and growth rather than categorization.

To take the Spiritual Quotient Assessment yourself, click here.

Levels of Self existence

2007-07-05T17:46:00.001-05:00

So what exactly is my "Self" ? Where and how do I exist ?

Some believe that the human body defines our existence, while others hold the mind responsible for the awareness of self. Many rely on an entity that is separate even from the mind – generally called the spirit or soul and often endowed with a higher level of consciousness.

One way to explore the various inter-related parts or states of existence is from a functional perspective. We then perceive the following as separate entities.
- the body or physical self, which physically interacts with the world around us
- the personality or emotional self, which dictates how we react reflexively
- the intellect or the mental self, which makes decisions and directs conscious effort
- the consciousness or the spiritual self, which observes the experience of existence

The body is the visible, tangible and touchable aspect of our self – for others and ourselves. Our senses interact with it and create this powerful measure of identity. I am here, I am there. I am talking, I am eating. I see you, I hear you. One reason this identity is so powerful is the process of projection. We see other "bodies" and relate to them as other individuals. This helps us form a conception of ourselves, similar to it – and hence the identification with the body. Even our language uses terms like every-body, no-body and any-body while referring to people.

My behavior and all my interactions with other people and things in the environment are actuated with the body, but driven by the unique programming that defines me. In the exact same situation, two people will see and hear different things. Even if they have the same sensory experience, they will process it differently and each react in their own unique way. Their individual neurophysiology – the way their sensory organs filter incoming data and the way components of their brain (hippocampus, hypothalamus, thalamus and amygdala) process what they receive – is unique to them. This limbic system mobilizes our emotional self and hence our personality.

Most of us react reflexively in response to stimulus from our environment – whether it's a thunderbolt or a simple expression of anger by a friend. This reflex is the result of feedback from our subconscious programming and rarely in our control. It is later on, about 500 milliseconds (or half a second) after the initial stimulus, that the thinking, conscious part of our brain gets notified. By the time the frontal cortex gets the message, however, we may have already reacted. The intellectual self is the third level of our being and is what differentiates us from the animals. It has the power to reflect, consider, gather additional data and then determine what to do next. It may decide to do nothing. Recent studies have shown that people who use their left pre-frontal cortex more often have stronger connections along that pathway and respond with love and compassion more easily. On the other hand, those that create stronger pathways to their right pre-frontal cortex (through overuse) tend to respond with anger and frustration more often.

Finally, there is something, a separate entity of my being, that perceives and observes the intellect. "My body" can feel pain, so I am not the body. "My feelings" can be hurt, so I am not the emotional self. "My mind or brain" can be tired, so I am not the intellect. Whatever is left, whatever is beyond those levels of experience – is this higher self. We can call it the conscious or spiritual self.

That is who "I" am.

Who Am I ?

2007-06-28T22:04:00.000-05:00

Most of us are in quest of an answer to this timeless question. If you consider yourself spiritual, you probably have an active agenda that you follow. It may be specific things you do, your beliefs and very likely your approach to every encounter of life that screams for a response from you.

On the other hand, you may consider yourself a rather worldly person, in pursuit of the material goals in life, with nary a minute available to think about the possibility, the probability or even feasibility of "other" worlds. Living an ethical life, being of service to others where possible and following the golden rule, you believe, is the framework that guides your thoughts, actions and behavior.

There's a third group, that I believe falls in between these two – but with a twist. Many of us in this third group tend to be religious in nature. We subscribe to a specific world-view that prescribes many of our life's choices – from diet, beliefs and attitudes toward others to the way we wash our hands, for instance.

The information age has brought this confluence of science, reason, religion and spirituality to a state where each is affecting the way the others are pursued. Scientific advances continue to challenge age-old truisms, while the failure of science to bring us health and peace leads many to seek other avenues for answers to life's little problems. Recent debates about our very make-up raise the question of whether as humans we are "Wired for God" as Newsweek asked, or is some higher creative power behind our existence, as the Intelligent Design theorists propose.

This chicken and egg conundrum may never be solved. So many of us try to resolve it for ourselves by inquiry into the spiritual experience. Perhaps they are both true.

I grew up in a rather spiritual family, surrounded by primarily religious neighbors and trained to become a reasoning man of science. I have been conscious of this fact, and its impact on my life since my teenage years. I'm still seeking answers to some of the questions I raised for myself those merry decades ago !

I invite you to join me in a dialog so we may all learn from each other.