Transcriber: Gabriel M. F. Reviewer: Ilze Garda
Hello!
Hi, thank you very much.
I'm here today to share with you my big idea, and my idea is
that it is possible for us to build a bridge,
to build a bridge instead of walls between people.
And we can do that by seeking to see what we have in common,
instead of seeking to find our differences.
There's just one problem with this idea.
(Laughter)
You like her?
Other human beings.
Have you noticed that other human beings are incredibly difficult to be around?
(Laughter)
Most of us are quite annoying - at least to each other.
I'm not, but you are.
(Laughter)
Why is that? Why is it that we are so annoying to each other?
Well, in part it has to do with this sense of identity
that we take on as we're growing up.
We begin to develop a sense of ourself, and that includes certain preferences,
and as we develop those preferences, we build in-groups and out-groups:
the in-group of the people who are like me
and the out-group for the people who are not like me.
There's probably no more polarizing and difficult conversation
in our society these days, or in our world,
than the conversation around world religions.
You may even find yourself getting tense just looking at this slide.
I will tell you that I have, over the last 15 to 20 years,
really focused on developing an option for us
that allows us to build a bridge across this very difficult conversation.
It has been my personal edge,
and my goal that I set for myself was to develop an approach
that was faith-friendly, faith-neutral, and science-friendly.
This approach is based on behaviors and on 21 skills;
it is research-based -
there have been PhD's involved with this since the beginning;
and in particular, we have been very clear
with our definitions and with a list of synonyms
that help us to build this bridge.
The first definition that I usually have to clarify for people is,
"What do you mean by spirituality? What do you mean by religion?
And what do you mean by spiritual intelligence?
What are the differences in these terms?"
By the word "spirituality" I mean an innate human need
to be connected to something larger than ourselves,
something that we consider to be sacred, noble,
you might even prefer the word "divine".
By "religion" I mean a structure that supports us
in meeting our spiritual needs.
A religion typically has dogma or beliefs, a sacred text, a founder,
a community of practice, and certain rituals.
So "spirituality" is the larger word, "religion" is the narrower word.
So what is spiritual intelligence?
To begin to explain what I mean by spiritual intelligence,
I need to illustrate for you
the kinds of people who are exemplars in spiritual intelligence.
When you create a new field in the world of multiple intelligences,
one of the first things you have to do is identify the people
who are already really good at that, people that are recognized as exemplars.
I have asked many thousands of people this question, over the years,
and typically, we get very similar lists of names.
"Who do you consider to be exemplary in this domain of spiritual intelligence?"
You might call them "spiritual leaders",
and certain religious and spiritual teachers consistently pop up
- this is a partial list here, including Jesus and Buddha -
there are political change agents,
some of whom are also religious or spiritual teachers,
such as the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Martin Luther King might show up.
There are also scientists, philosophers, and various writers across time
that may show up.
What I also then ask people is,
"Why do you admire these people? What makes them exemplary?
What is different about them that is not just IQ
and not just emotional intelligence, but something more?"
This is a partial list of the characteristics
that people will give me:
they'll say that these people are courageous, they're calm and centered,
they're compassionate, wise, peaceful, non-violent, visionary,
they are persistent in the face of great difficulty,
and they are able to sustain faith through dark times.
And then one word comes up again and again: they are loving.
And we're not talking about romantic love here,
we're talking about a very large kind of love,
something that is larger than the small self,
something that is very transcendent, all-inclusive.
So initially I thought,
"What if we define spiritual intelligence as the ability to behave with love?"
Because this "love" word kept coming up.
But the word "love" in the English language
is fairly sloppy - you may have noticed this -
we say "I love my children" and "I love ice cream".
And those are not the same.
So I went in search of a better definition of love,
and I came up with this parable from the Eastern tradition that says,
"Love is a bird with two wings.
One wing is wisdom, the other wing is compassion.
If either wing is broken, the bird cannot fly."
And it gave me goosebumps.
It was the best of the head-wisdom with the best of the heart-compassion
coming together into loving action.
So now you will see where my definition of spiritual intelligence comes from.
Spiritual intelligence is the ability to behave with wisdom and compassion
while maintaining inner and outer peace, regardless of the situation.
Hopefully, this sounds like the kinds of people you would most admire
as spiritual leaders.
Well, let's tease apart one of these words
just a little further.
Let's look at compassion. What is compassion?
I find this five-level hierarchy very helpful.
If you think about the bottom of the hierarchy
as antipathy, or "You annoy me", that's kind of where we're starting from,
we're all irritated and annoyed with each other.
You might find that other people make you really hostile or angry.
So the move is from antipathy to apathy. That would actually be a step forward.
(Laughter)
Sad, but true.
That we could just get to the point of at least being
neutral about each other, to being mildly disinterested,
could be an improvement in some situations.
(Laughter)
From apathy, the next step up is to sympathy.
Sympathy is "I notice you, I see you, I can see that you're suffering,
and it's bothering me that you're suffering",
but there is still a little bit of "one up, one down".
In this relationship, sometimes people will say,
"Don't pity me, I don't want your sympathy",
because they're feeling the "one up, one down".
But it's a big step forward from apathy, so this is good.
Empathy is the next step, and this is a peer-to-peer emotion.
"Your sadness is my sadness. I am feeling it in my body."
Empathy is a huge move developmentally.
Our heart expands, and we start feeling with the world around us.
This is also tremendously difficult,
because when you start feeling all the suffering on this planet,
you can feel overwhelmed and want to contract away.
So the next move is to compassion, and what the research is showing us
is that when you're able to move from empathy to compassion,
you can keep your empathic resonance with the world
without being overwhelmed.
The distress circuits of the brain are managed.
So you can be fully present to suffering
and take wise action without feeling overwhelmed by that.
This is clearly a beautiful thing, and a place we might like to get to.
So what gets in the way?
Well, part of what gets in the way
is this identity thing that we've talked about.
In the spiritual world,
sometimes we refer to this identity as our immature ego.
This is the part of us that is self-focused, "all about me",
or outward-focused when it's blaming:
it's your fault, and it's your fault, and it's your fault.
So the immature ego needs to grow up,
and it's this part of us, this immature ego,
that tends to be highly alergic to everyone else in the world.
(Laughter)
This is the reason all y'all are irritating.
(Laughter)
[Because] when my ego shows up, I'm having alergic reactions.
So what is the spiritual anti-histamine, if you will, for this?
What is the solution?
The solution is to be able to shift to the wiser, more compassionate voice
inside of us, our noblest self, our higher self,
that place from which we are not so allergic to other people,
and we're able to be truly present to them.
As I've worked with clients in this world of spiritual intelligence,
in a variety of settings,
they've told me consistently that the golden gift of this approach
is these generic terms of ego self and higher self,
because then we can use synonyms to help people bridge,
to connect their faith tradition or their belief system
to these more generic, larger terms.
Here are some synonyms for higher self. You might prefer one of these words.
You might prefer Soul, or Spirit, or Christ Consciousness, or Buddha Nature,
or your own Divine Nature, or Non-Dual Self, or your Authentic Self.
There are dozens of other synonyms that you could pick from.
The idea is you find the synonym that works for you,
but collectively, we bridge by using this generic language.
As we do this work of shifting to higher self,
we're actually developing the 21 skills of spiritual intelligence.
And the one that in particular I've been describing for you here today is skill 7:
being able to be present and aware of other people's worldviews,
other people's views of the world.
At level 1 on this skill, which is the Novice,
it's just being able to listen to different points of view.
This is actually a difficult first step, being able to listen to each other.
At level 2, we seek opportunities to learn about other people's perspectives.
At level 3, we listen to other people's perspectives
even during conflict.
At level 4, we can feel with and understand compassionately
the fears and hopes of all other humans
as we struggle to make our way through this life,
and we hear very differently.
And at level 5, I can take the perspective of any other human on the planet,
even those who act to harm me.
Now, this is not to say we don't set boundaries with people,
of course we need to,
but once we can be compassionate with people,
we set wiser, more effective boundaries.
So this is not about giving up boundaries,
but rather setting more effective boundaries.
And as we learn to do all of this work,
as we learn to shift from ego self to higher self,
the world becomes a much more joyous place.
We can embrace our differences and find great pleasure in them
while retaining our individuality.
So this is my cutting edge, I work on this myself every day,
and I'd like to know if you'd be willing to join me.
Would you be willing to join me on this edge
and step out together?
Let's build a bridge.
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)