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Many
spiritual people seem to be extremely suspicious of science, but I believe
that true science is fundamentally a search for truth. Yet we know that
historically in the scientific world, scientists generally have to fight
to overturn erroneous and outdated theories and complete lies are promoted
to maintain the status quo. Yet, I would also argue that the religious
and metaphysical beliefs are also prone to error and the certainty that
traditional beliefs are sacrosanct in a rapidly evolving world is foolhardy.
Who says that everything will always stay the same? What we do know
is that we have to understand "universal laws", and then utilize
our intellectual faculties and wisdom to discern how we should interact
as energetic conscious beings in a shifting energetic environment.
With
regard to my belief that we have to learn from history, I have included
the following Carl Sagan quotes:
"One
of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled
long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're
no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured
us, it is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves --
that we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist
as the new bamboozles rise.)" [Carl Sagan, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection]
"Finding
the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and
bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage.
But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope
to solve the truly serious problems that face us -- and we risk becoming
a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along."
[Carl Sagan, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection]
"Skeptical
scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts
can be winnowed from deep nonsense." [Carl Sagan]
"It
is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist
in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." [Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted
World: Science As a Candle in the Dark]
A
True State of Balance
In
my own irreverent style, I have started to contemplate that spiritual
intelligence can only be obtained when we are in a true state of balance
and I hit upon the idea of forming a cross within, composed of the left
and right side of the brain aligned in balance, with a strong balanced
vertical alignment established between the head and heart. This will become clear as we understand what happens to the brain during meditation and the relatively new science of the relationship
between the emotional brain and the intelligent heart.
Due
to my own varying experiences with meditation, I have generally advised caution,
but I appreciate the benefits of guided meditations and my own "free-style"
meditation would be better described as entering a state of inner reflection.
Yet, it has always baffled me why many people meditate, but then fail
to harness this state for their own empowerment. I will illustrate
my point with the following story.
In
November 2005, I took part in the Oslo Alternative fair, which is the
largest in Europe, with an expected attendance of 15,000 - 20,000. This
is a 3-day weekend event and I have found taking part at these alternative
fairs to be great learning experiences. On the Sunday, a man stopped
by my stand and stated rather excitedly, "It was you!" I looked
at him rather bemused and he repeated, "It was you!" It tured
out that whilst he had been meditating on the Friday, he saw me in a
vision. The meditator then said he saw me in the crowd on Saturday,
but lost sight of me, but now he had found me. I was a bit surprised,
but these days, I have come to accept that my higher self is quite active,
let's say. Anyway, he decided I should speak to someone who organised
trips around Norway and Sweden opening up vortexes. I was a bit embarrassed
by this request as this second guy viewed me with some suspicion, but I ended up talking about the
Russian pyramids which was the first thing that came to my mind.
The
meditator never told me the purpose of his meditation, or even why he
thought I appeared before him. He even failed to ask me what I was doing
at the fair. In fact, his only query was to ask me how I could even
afford the stand, which I found quite insulting. Well, since I have
not been contacted since, I have treated this as a lost opportunity.
Even if all the drama was needed to inform them about the Russian pyramids,
so that they could organise a trip, I am sure they needed to understand
the deeper significance of my message of why we need to personally balance in the
rapidly changing geomagnetic conditions on Earth and why Russians are
building pyramids to help balance the environment. As far as I am concerned,
if we are given insights, it is because we are supposed to do something
with the information. Thus, I still wonder what one needs to do to get through
to certain people, if appearing to them in a vision is not enough!
Anyway,
in the ordinary waking consciousness, the two hemispheres — the language-oriented,
linearly thinking, rational "left brain" and the perceiving,
intuitive, "right brain" — exhibit uncoordinated, randomly
diverging wave patterns in the electroencelograph (EEG). When a meditative
state of consciousness is entered, these patterns become synchronized,
and in deep meditation the two hemispheres fall into a nearly identical
pattern. The end result is a brain that is harmonized, allowing greater
synchronization between both sides of the brain. This means the intuitive, reasoning, compassionate, imaginative, inventive, caring,
creative and wisdom capabilities of the right side of the brain, is influencing
and interacting with left brain, which allows us to be more effective in our use of logic, as the left brain controls; analytical ability, skills of order and sequence, mathematics, problem solving, decision making, and formal language.
Yet,
we find the respected metaphysician Tom Kenyon, who describes himself
as "Neo-pagan Tibetan Buddhist and part-time Taoist", with
forty years experience as a meditator, who believes that many practicing
meditators use it as a drug and are getting stoned! He says that this
means that if they don't meditate, they get depressed because they have
become dependent on the psychoactive substances produced by the brain
during certain types of meditation. These people have found a way to
sedate the mind, thus dulling their emotional pain but they are not
obtaining any kind of enlightenment!
The
healer/medium Betty Shine helped me resolve my own reservations about
meditation, when she wrote in the book, Mind to Mind(1989) that; "formal"
meditation was not all that safe and that if people were too rigid in
their practice, it could result in the aura closing down rather than
expanding. When the aura closes down, depression will ensue. She taught
that "day dreaming" and readings books, was a far safer meditation
and that mind energy could link up to other mind energies throughout
the Universe through books. Since I love books, and had already experienced
several mystical experiences whilst reading books, so I was reassured and since this piece of advice, I never looked back! So, while many studies have proven that there are tangible benefits
associated with meditation and the downloading of inter-dimensional
energy can be such that statistical effects can be measured in those
around, it would seem that as part of our development, recognizing the
pitfalls from our own and others mistakes in regard to meditation has
to be fully understood. Yet, we are coming to understand that as emotional
beings, to be in complete harmony with ourselves, the emotional brain
and the intelligent heart must be engaged in a balanced way.
Heart
Focus
In
esoteric tradition, the heart is considered the gateway to higher consciousness.
Mystics from the East and West believe that the heart center being open
permits certain energy pathways in the body to become active, accelerating
spiritual evolution. The adept Da Love-Ananda makes a point of directing
spiritual seekers to what he calls, The Way of the Heart. He
states:
"The
Heart is the key to the practice of real or spiritual life. It is at
the heart, at the place of Infinity, the root of being, the feeling
core of the body-mind."
Interestingly,
the electromagnetic field of the heart shows a perfect, fractal, toroidal
(donut) shape, which is a subtle energy transducer, i.e. it converts
one form of energy to another. This generates an infinite number of
harmonics allowing a step down or demodulation of higher energies. Energy
travels through harmonics with no loss of power, so it can be thought
as a transformer for 'higher' energies. Yet, only when the heart
is coherent, as in feelings of love and connected-ness, can this energy
come through in force. Resonance and coherence in an orderly system
are the apparent keys to tapping this supply of energy. The extensive
research presented by heart specialists suggests there is much agreement
between spiritual seekers and scientists about the important role of
the heart.
The
heart is a highly complex, self-organized information processing center
with its own functional "brain" that communicates with and
influences the cranial brain via the nervous system, hormonal system
and other pathways. Paul Pearsall is a psychoneuroimmunologist with
more than thirty years of scientific training. He is the founder and
director of a large psychiatric clinic for seriously ill patients, many
of whom had received heart and other organ transplants. From interviewing
heart transplant recipients and their families, he says:
"I
have little doubt that the heart is not only the major energy center
of the body, but that it also has its own intelligence, an intelligence
superior to the brain's and that its cells hold memories that influence
not only every other cell in our bodies but also every cell in the bodies
of those close to us, and even those far away, in both space and time."
Scientists
now observe that the heart acts as if it had a mind of its own and profoundly
influences the way we perceive and respond to the world, affecting intelligence
and awareness. The Heartmath research paper entitled The Coherent
Heart: Heart-Brain Interactions, written by the director of research,
Rollin McCraty, informs us that about half of the heart's neural cells
are involved in translating information sent to it from all over the
body, so that it can keep the body working as one harmonious whole.
The other half makes up a very large, unmediated neural connection with
the emotional brain in our head, maintaining a twenty-four-hour-a-day
dialogue between the heart and the brain.
What's
more neurologists now understand that there is a significant emotional
component to all personal decision-making. Researchers have found that
people who have had strokes or brain tumors that caused injury to the
prefrontal lobes of their brains, where the emotions are processed,
have a very difficult time making even routine personal decisions, such
as scheduling appointments. Scientists say that our emotional reactions
show up in brain activity before we even have time to think. We evaluate
everything emotionally as we perceive it and think about it afterwards.
Thus, it is now becoming increasingly understood that the power of the
heart when aligned with the emotional brain permits higher brain function
and a direct link to higher intelligence or our higher self.
Practicing
Spiritual Intelligence
Well,
it all seems very well 'knowing' about the science and metaphysics associated
with developing our spirituality, but this knowledge is no good if it
is not practiced. Here, we can use the analogy of enlightenment as being
like a light bulb that is switched on, but only dimly lit. The process
of enlightenment means the light bulb can become infinitely bright.
Many people 'think' they are enlightened but can only demonstrate
low spiritual intelligence in their interactions with others. I believe
the reason is caused by the lack of balance between the emotional brain
and the intelligence of the heart, which results in 'heartless' spirituality.
This can be also be inferred by the inability to empathize with others
or feel compassion.
The
following lists are some factors that can be associated with high and
low spiritual intelligence.
Low
Spiritual intelligence
- Inflated ego, lack of humility
- Projection of beliefs and desires onto others
- Being passive aggressive
- Manipulative
- Rudeness, unkindness, unthoughtfulness
- Refusal to learn from others
- Refusal to face reality (burying our head in the sand)
High
Spiritual intelligence
- Sense of self
- Respecting, honoring others differences
- Consideration of others, kindness, sincerity, tolerance
- Wisdom, empathy, compassion
- Honesty
- The ability to learning from one's mistakes and that of others
- Willingness to share and contribute
- Awareness of the 'bigger picture'
The
following examples are my own experience of people who consider they
are enlightened, yet clearly demonstrate low spiritual intelligence
1.
In my normal practice of trying to be kind and considerate when possible,
even when there was nothing to be gained, I was once asked point blank,
"Why do you care about these people?" As the question came
from an acquaintance who considered him self to be spiritual, I was
flabbergasted. I got the clear impression that this person honestly
believed that people are only worth caring about, if they can be useful
in some way. Assessment; low compassion and low empathy, equal low spiritual
intelligence.
2.
When my kundalini energy was raised and I was literally 'on fire' within
one hour of attending my first ever New Age gathering, hence I was obviously
quite distressed. Since I new nothing about this mystical experience,
I politely asked one of the 'leaders' if they could tell me what was
happening. I realized that the condition had been triggered by the exercise
of raising Earth energy, which I had never done before, but I though
I could at least get an explanation and some advice. The 'leader' demonstrated
no interest in my discomfort, as they just muttered 'kundalini' and
walked away. Unfortunately for me, they did not care enough about a
total stranger as selling books and CDs took precedent, even when they
were partly responsible for my condition. Assessment, low compassion
and low empathy equals low spiritual intelligence.
3.
I once asked a spiritual leader, about the concerns of an intuitive
who believed there was a need to know how to "balance huge groups
of people". My assumption was that the intuitive knew that at some
point in the future, the magnetic poles of the planet would become very
unstable and many people would be struggling to cope in the fluctuating
geomagnetic conditions. The haughty response from the spiritual leader
was, "what do you think I already do?" This response appeared
to show a fundamental lack of being able to focus on anything but their
own contribution. The inability to think deeply enough to comprehend
that there was over 6 billion people on the planet and the
imperative need for many people to have this level of mastery was quite
shocking. When you consider the seriousness of the question, this example
illustrates a person with a large ego and therefore low spiritual intelligence.
Assessment; a large ego promotes irrational thinking, low empathy and
compassion for others, this equates to low spiritual intelligence.
4.
Someone once told me that their level of integrity was regularly tested
by their guides. My response was to be shocked that this person did
not realize they had a character flaw that was a cause for concern.
My immediate reaction was, if your guides are not sure, then I can't
be either! At this level of spiritual intelligence, the testing was
seen as a matter of their importance, but from my own perspective, where
I believe that spiritual leaders need to demonstrate the highest levels
of truth and integrity possible, the need for regular testing was viewed
very differently. Assessment, low rational thinking skills and large
ego equals low spiritual intelligence.
5.
Whilst giving a one hour presentation to a group of people, the event
organizer walked up to the front and interrupted by setting down a clock
after 25 minutes. I took this action as a clear act of passive aggression,
with the aim of demonstrating authority over me. I just ignored the
intrusion and carried on with my talk and the enthralled audience came
to my defense by giving me a huge clap and cheers for sharing some details
of my unpublished book. Yet, I was appalled at the attempt to humiliate
me. This must be viewed as sign of extremely low spiritual intelligence
related to issues of self-worth. Assessment, large ego and low rational
thinking skills equals low spiritual intelligence.
Humility
and Reason
In
all these instances, I have had to open my heart and allow the energy
of compassion to help me forgive these people and not allow bitterness
and hurt to close my heart chakra, which I believe is critical for me
to maintain my power. My response is to demonstrate my spiritual intelligence.
As often stated; Knowledge is power, but I believe true knowledge
brings humility. This is a nice quote:
The
greatest friend of truth is time, her greatest enemy is prejudice, and
her constant companion humility. [Chuck Colson]
So
as we endeavor to evolve, I believe we need to develop our skills of
reasoning. Our spiritual journey will provide challenges of how to view
people and situations but being able to view our predicaments from the
perspective of others and from a higher state of consciousness will
develop our humility and reason. On the Map of Consciousness,
the ability to reason stands at 400, which is quite high, therefore,
when we use reason and come to an assessment of a situation, the higher
states of consciousness like peace, joy and bliss will help us to translate
our response into ways that will benefit ourselves and our fellow man.
In
developing our spiritual intelligence, when making assessments about
people, situations, challenges, opportunities and information, I suggest
we can employ the following analytical skills;
- Question the truthfulness or integrity of the subject
- Do not take anything for granted or make assumptions
Hence
we can solve issues by:
- Thinking outside the box (lateral thinking)
Another
way to develop our spiritual intelligence is by using our discernment.
In situations where we have to make choices, we can use the following
tests.
- Am I being loved, respected and honored?
- Am I being manipulated in any way?
- Is there a balance of giving and receiving?
I can
give an example of my own way of dealing with a situation that brought
me great heartache. I had to use my reason to find out why I was so
upset by people who I considered to be enlightened and spiritual, but
I was baffled by their seeming lack of enlightenment as indicted by
their actions. In the end, I realized that I had made a false assumption.
I had assumed that they had a high enough level of consciousness to
think of others rather than themselves. I reasoned that I had to come
to terms with my own need to forgive these people, as their behavior
was in accordance with their level of consciousness. Practicing forgiveness
then allows me to generate higher states of consciousness, such as peace,
love and joy.
Sounds
wonderful doesn't it? I will admit that the action of selfish and
thoughtless people can be difficult to cope with and sometimes the best
healer is just time. I have found the following statement most profound and helpful concerning those who consider themselves to be enlightened but demonstrate otherwise.
Excerpted from interview with Mata Amritanandamayi (aka Amma, "the hugging saint").
"When You Go Beyond the Ego You Become an Offering to the World" by Amy Edlestein (from What Is Enlightenment? magazine, issue 17/Spring-Summer 2000).
WIE: There have been some very powerful spiritual teachers who seem to have been driven by the impure motives of the ego. Do you think that spiritual experiences could at times empower the ego rather than destroy it?
MA: Amma doesn't agree that those teachers to whom you are referring are realized. A Self-realized master is completely independent. Such beings don't have to depend on anything external for their happiness because they are full of bless, which they derive from within their own Atman. Amma would say that everyone forms part of the crowd, except the realized masters. In fact, except for those rare souls, there are no individuals. Only one who is realized is uniquely individual and totally independent of the crowd. Only such a soul is alone in the world of bless.
True spiritual masters have to set an example through their actions and their lives. Those who abuse their position and power, taking advantage of others, obviously do not derive all their happiness and contentment from within themselves, and so they cannot be realized masters. Why would a realized master crave adulation and power? Those who do are sitll under the grip of the ego. They may claim to be realized, but they are not. A perfect master doesn't claim anything. He simply is - he is presence.
Until the moment before realization takes place, a person is not safe from the temptations of his or her desires.
WIE: So would you say that people like this have become more proud as a result to having had spiritual experiences? Can spiritual experiences at times strengthen the ego in a negative way?
MA: The people to whom this happens are deluded, and they confuse others as well. They will actually push others into delusion. Some people gain a glimpse of something, or have a spiritual experience, and then think they have attained moksha. Only someone who is not realized will think, "I am spiritual, I am realized," and this will create a strong, subtle ego. A subtle ego is more dangerous than a gross ego. Even the individuals themselves won't understand that the subtle ego is leading or motivating them, and this subtle ego will become part of their nature. Such people will do anything for name and fame.
Amma also feels that this kind of pride makes people lose their capacity to listen. And listening is extremely important on the spiritual path. A person who does not listen cannot be humble. And it is only when we are truly humble that the already existing pure Consciousness will be unfolded within us. Only one who is humbler than the humblest can be considered greater than the greatest.
WIE: Since it is possible for spiritual experiences to feed the ego, is it necessary to cultivate purity first?
MA: There is no need to get obsessed with purity. Focus on your dharma, performing it with right attitude and with love. Then purity will follow.
WIE: What is dharma, in the way you are using it?
MA: By loving life with the right attitude and having the right understanding, we will know what the right thing to do is. And then, if we perform our dharma, purity will come...[End of excerpts]
In the final analysis, our own personal development
of spiritual intelligence is critical at this time. As individuals
evolve to higher states of consciousness those around are also re-calibrated,
as evolutionary energies are allowed to flow. The following Hathor quote
channeled by Tom Kenyon is extremely poignant.
"In
many ways, survival is an intelligence test. In this light, we would
say that the cosmic test of increased spiritual evolution is putting
you and everyone else under extreme pressure. Nothing less than an upward
movement in global consciousness will suffice. Nothing less than spiritual
mastery will allow you to pass through the eye of the needle that is
upon you. Those who master the new vibratory realms of consciousness
and find ways to express them in physical reality?in how they live
their lives?these will be the stewards who bring in the new age and
the new world." [Kenyon T, A Catalytic and Volatile Phase of Global
Transformation. The Hathors, Spain, 3.17.06]
Image courtesy of Jennifer Hoffman
By Susan Joy Rennison,
13th
September 2007, updated 4th October 2007
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