The Spirituality political problem

Thu Jan 8 12:30:16 CST 2009

I like all of what you are saying and it ties into my new book using Souldrama to access our spiritual intelligence. I love these discussions. O believe that we need both the ego ( left brain) and soul (right brain) and they need to be in alignment.

We all have a Peace, which is the Presence of God within us. We can access this presence by using our conscious, spiritual thinking. We are not seeking the Peace, but the wisdom.We do not try to get the wisdom to get the peace, but the peace to get the wisdom.This wisdom is called spiritual intelligence. Much as Moreno suggested.Spiritual intelligence does not mean being clever for that implies short sightedness and this is different from true spiritual wisdom.Many corporate leaders and politicians are clever in order to attain a goal outside of themselves and are motivated by self interest; the gains are short sighted. Spiritual intelligence sees the larger whole and how we are all connected.Just as cleverness divides, feeding the ego saying ?I am better than you?, Spiritual Intelligence includes and unites.Spiritual intelligence is described as "the intelligence with which we address and solve problems of meaning and value, the intelligence with which we can place our actions and our lives in a wider, richer, meaning-giving context, the intelligence with which we can assess that one course of action or one life-path is more meaningful.

Gardner (1999) devised the PSI Spirituality Inventory (PSI) to assist people in assessing the focus and pattern of their spirituality. He suggests that seven factors that are necessary for spiritual intelligence and behavior:
divinity, the sense of connection to a God figure or Divine Energy Source;mindfulness, an awareness of the interconnection of the mind and body, with an emphasis on practices that enhance that relationship;intellectuality, a cognitive and inquiring approach to spirituality, with a focus on understanding sacred texts;community, the quality of spirituality connecting to the community at large;extrasensory perception, spiritual feelings and perceptions associated with non rational ways of knowing;childhood spirituality, a personal, historical association to spirituality through family tradition and activity; trauma, a stimulus to spiritual awareness through experiencing physical or emotional illness or trauma to the self or a loved one. Spiritual capital serves as the spiritual base to enhance the meaning and beauty of life in the world. Spiritual capital is built by using our spiritual intelligence. Spiritual intelligence gives us access to deep meaning, fundamental values, and a genuine sense of purpose in our lives; makes us look at the role that our meaning, values, and purpose play in our lives; as well as the strategies and our thinking processes. SQ makes people ask why we are doing, what we are doing and makes us seek some fundamentally better way of doing it. Spiritual Intelligence is no less important than our emotional or rational intelligences. It is badly needed in our market economies today. It allows people of different backgrounds to understand each other in friendly terms and to put themselves in their shoes. It allows people to think creatively and change the rules and their roles according to new situations. It allows people to think about all kinds of possibilities and vision in life. SQ has the ability to dissolve old way of thinking of putting too much emphasis on material capital, while neglecting important mental and emotional part of human beings. 
One of the qualities of SQ is wisdom. This includes knowing the limits of our knowledge. Other ingredients that are important are values such as courage, integrity, intuition, and compassion and love. With SQ, more is less; as you learn, the process may involve unlearning what other people have taught you. Spirituality is an essential component of a holistic approach to life and work. It finds expression in creativity and all forms of the arts. 
The task of this generation is to cut through the illusion that we live in separate worlds.We are all agents of change. Today, if we want to change systems, we have to change human behavior; however, human behavior is not so easily changed.The main responsibility of a spiritual leader today is to change the motivations that drive behavior, enabling people to achieve real transformation. The only way the world will be transformed is for individuals to make changes in individual levels of consciousness.One way to do this is to move from our rational intelligence to our spiritual intelligence.This involves changing the ?I? in the IQ to a more Universal intelligence or ?UQ?. This is the task of the group action method of Souldrama that aligns the ego and soul so that we can access our SQ. Then we will be able to awaken our higher purpose and create spiritually intelligent leadership.Turning on higher intelligence is not only fun and joyous, it is absolutely necessary if we and, our intelligent civilization are to survive the coming decades. By higher intelligence, I mean the whole universal intelligence - not just greater intellect, but greater emotional sanity, love, compassion, creativity, inspiration, and especially, the inspirational experiences.Long term mental and emotional health requires more than a temporary reduction of symptoms.What seems to be required is a higher consciousness, or a spiritual intelligence, from which a larger sense of self can be derived.

The International Institute of Souldrama 
620 Shore Rd 
Spring Lake Heights 
NJ 07762 USA 

1-800-821-9919 

-----Original Message-----
From: CGayle [mailto:cgayle at zipcon.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 8, 2009 01:03 PM
To: 'Ivo Banaco', 'Grouptalk Listserv', iagp-psychodrama at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: The Spirituality political problem

I watched the video. I felt words on all sides were dancing around the issue. My projection is she was really lamenting about her deep spiritual hunger, and she has been taking this "ego" as-something-negative-talk in as something wrong with her, b/c she's hungering for a deeper connection within spiritually and is not able to sustain it.

Personally I have a problem with the ego-as-something-negative-talk that is so common in much new age theology or discussions. God or spirit or holy sparks are everywhere, including in ego and the "small self". Perhaps that is what the teachers were trying in a way to get to...but it is hard to talk about ego being a culprit without getting into a duality perspective (good/bad), rather than seeing ego as part of the complexity of wholeness. 

Not sure how this relates to political problems except in that deep spiritual hunger, and disconnection from belonging, which is also a spiritual hunger, is a political issue...because these lacks...lack of connection with one's core within, lack of belonging in family and community and society...lead to the corruption of leadership and institutions of all sorts, religious, political, etc. Moreno's core message.

Cynthia Gayle

----- Original Message ----- 
From:Ivo Banaco
To:Grouptalk Listserv ; iagp-psychodrama at yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:29 AM
Subject: The Spirituality political problem

According to the press: 
"A post-mortem examination determined last night that John Travolta's chronically ill son died of a seizure, as controversy erupted over the Scientologist actor's handling of the boy's medical condition. According to the family, Jett, 16, suffered a seizure and hit his head on a bathtub at their holiday home in the Bahamas, where he was found dead on Friday." ...Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston, issued a statement saying they were "heartbroken that our time with him was so brief. We will cherish the time we had with him for the rest of our lives." The couple said that Jett suffered from Kawasaki disease, a condition that causes inflammation of small and medium-sized arteries. The disease affects the lymph nodes, skin and the mucous membranes in the mouth, nose and throat. Experts said that the disease was rarely fatal and seldom affected children over the age of 8....Critics of Scientology suggested yesterday that Jett may have been suffering from autism, a condition that the church does not recognise because it considers mental illness to be psychosomatic and argues that it should be treated through spiritual healing...." From The Times January 6, 2009
Well, I will not discuss the way this church or others deal with humans. I think that the problem is deeper than this and deserves an urgent and serious consideration. My question is: What are the political consequences of spirituality? I will not bother you with this historical problem, but with the clear fragmentation between Governments and Institutions related to "faith" and "Spirituality" a big and increasing hole is there for we all to see if we want and have the courage to see it. The consequences can be disastrous if all remains the same. Governments can not pretend that the New Age Movement doesn't exist as a genuine mode of discourse or other types of movements that are pupping up now. With post modernism the respect for all kinds of truth are being mistaken for all truths are equal. And We all know this is simply not truth in our relative world. Note the paradox. They say "All kinds of truth are equal" forming in that very moment another kind of truth. I will attempt to say that in our relative world there are not only various types of truths but various degrees of truths. I will call this degrees simply Evolution, defined as a truth that emerge, transcend and include the previous truth (but the topic is too complex to expose it here, I think, because it would divert from the real intention of my e-mail)
Spirituality have to enter in the political discourse again, I believe, simply because spirituality, by whatever name is an intrinsic part of a human being, and the bad use of it makes the world poorer. By political discourse, I mean in the broadest sense of the world, including the explicit consequences of the work and the understanding of science, of arts, of culture, etc that have to result in a better informed political decisions. This, I believe, can only be met by a real transdisciplinary approach. Is Sociatry Era coming at last?
Ivo Banaco

PS: I would like, if possible, that this could be an entry to a discussion right here right now with Grouptalk and IAGP together. I admit thay my opinions are a bit closed to enter in dialogue, so to warm-up a bit I'll send you below a youtube video that I saw yesterday. The context is a workshop dealing with some of this issues about spirituality. A Women starts to address some of her questions...Look at the dynamics, look at the way the two leaders (very well known in some spiritual circles) handle the situation... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTb2kp9Y4Is

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