Spirituality: It’s Not About Taking A Separate Path To Fulfillment

When a specific part of a machine does not work, it won’t function efficiently. The machine either slows down, gives delayed output, and eventually breaks down.

Similarly, when the organs of a person are compromised, such as liver dysfunction, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure, health in its entirety is affected. When the mind is not at peace, a person experiences stress and anxiety.

This means that we need to function as a whole and not focus entirely on a single aspect. For instance, a person who wishes to experience spirituality does not have to quit his or her worldly living and set out in search of spirituality. Unlike those who are willing to do so, many others believe that they need to follow a singular path reluctantly. However, letting go of worldly living is not the solution, rather spiritualizing one’s interactions is a path worth seeking.

Great sages like Lord Buddha and Swami Vivekananda may have willed to live a simple life and gain eternal redemption. However, many other leaders out there need not do the same if they do not wish to. There is no one way set in stone but just a bit of tweaking that’s required.

Spiritualizing Interactions with the World as a Leader

“We were all of us cogs in a great machine which sometimes rolled forward, nobody knew where, sometimes backwards, nobody knew why.”

~Ernst Toller

Most often when one does not know where they are headed, they go with the flow. However, as one flows in a direction, unknown and undecided, external factors become the guiding force.

We are influenced by factors that do not possess any of the five aspects of health to help us transcend into spirituality. The five aspects of health include the physical, emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual aspects. It is like following a machine that has no humanness in it and yet we take instructions and follow blindly.

Officer Peralta: “I’m not sure what you’re so happy about. I have backup now.”

Doug (criminal): “I’m choosing to focus on the journey, not the destination.”

Officer Peralta: “Suit yourself… wait, this isn’t part of your plan to escape is it? Are the state troopers actually your guys?”

Doug: “Sounds like something I would do.”

Officer: “I mean, how would you even have contacted them? Unless somebody messed with Holt’s phone.”

Doug: “Classic Doug.”

Officer Peralta: “That’s crazy, you’re just bluffing.”

Doug: “Also, classic Doug.”

GPS in Peralt’s car announces “Rerouting”

Doug: “It’s probably nothing, I am sure we’re going down the side road away from the prison for a good reason.”

Officer Peralta: “Hey, this is Peralta. Why’d you guys just turn? Where are you going?”

Officers leading ahead in another car: “This is the way to the prison.”

Officer Peralta <worried>: “I’m heading into a trap, aren’t I?”

Doug: “Hard to say.”

Officer Peralta: “But if those are your guys, what are they waiting for? But if they’re not your guys, where are we going?”

Doug: “Unclear.”

Officer Peralta <panicking, speaks loudly to himself>: “Okay, Jake” (Jake is Peralta’s first name) “Stay calm. This all makes sense. You called for backup. Then Holt said backup was coming and now they’re here. These guys are real. If you can’t trust them, you can’t trust anyone.”

Doug: “You’re right. That’s good logic.”

Officer Peralta <Throws out the police walkie-talkie>: “I can’t trust anyone!” (Drives off the road and enters a different lane.)

Now this is a conversation between Officer Jake Peralty and a criminal aka a friend called Doug Judy in the popular comedy sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine. This scene is a clear example of what I would call becoming a servant of the servants of our servant.

For a moment, look at Doug (the criminal) as the external factor affecting Officer Peralta. Peralta is easily influenced by whatever Doug has to say. It is most definitely a form of manipulation that Officer Peralta falls for and makes the wrong decision while transporting Doug to Prison for a crime he committed.

However, Doug takes advantage of his friendship with Peralta and manipulates him to take the wrong route, away from the road that leads to prison. Here, Doug is the external factor that plays tricks on Peralta’s mind, and in turn, drives Peralta to make an uninformed decision.

The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.

~Nikola Tesla

Ideally, our mind serves us while we control or navigate its thought process. At the level beneath the mind are the sensory inputs that the mind captures. These sensory inputs include pain, touch, hearing, taste, smell, and vision, among other senses. This is supposed to be the suitable hierarchy of mental flow where we are in control. However, the deal is often reversed in people with low SiQ levels.

Hierarchy gone wrong:

· Step 1: When the mind receives sensory inputs after connecting or interacting with external factors, it switches on the control mode over a person. Here, the mind is controlled by external factors.

· Step 2: Then the person receiving these inputs will use them to discriminate among a few options to make a decision.

· Step 3: Whether or not something deserves attention is decided based on external factors like reading the news, having an argument, watching a comedy show, remembering past experiences, dealing with complex situations, etc.

· Step 4: Finally, these external factors drive emotions that ultimately cause the intent to act upon a situation.

As a result, we are setting our minds to work in reverse wherein our mind controls us. That’s hardly the way to go! However, in realizing that we own the control room of our mind and its subservient sensory inputs, we turn the tables.

With a high Spiritual Quotient, a leader need not seek an experience nor avoid it. The leader can spiritualize their day-to-day life by neither becoming terrorized nor tempted by external factors.

Instead, the leader with a high SiQ develops steadiness, bringing clarity in situations, and developing the necessary calmness to navigate the complexities of this world.

In doing so, one can align the harmony between the head, heart, and hand.

Had Officer Peralta not let Doug influence him, he would not have gotten emotional and taken the wrong step. He would have stayed on course and done his job well of transporting a criminal to prison. The way our mental flow works, therefore, brings me to the 3-H Alignment.

The 3-H Alignment

As I mentioned cogs in a machine, have a look at the above image and notice how the hand is associated with taking action, referring to the physical quotient. Similarly, the heart is associated with one’s emotional quotient, the head with the intellectual quotient, and the social interactions with the social quotient. What aligns all of these quotients together? One’s Spiritual Quotient (SiQ).

· Physical Quotient (PQ): Hand

· Emotional Quotient (EQ): Heart

· Intelligence Quotient (IQ): Head

· Social Quotient (SQ): Environment

· Spiritual Quotient (SiQ): Ability to align PQ, EQ, IQ, & SQ

Therefore, with a high SiQ, leaders develop a strong ability to enhance the other aspects of their health, and in turn spiritualize the daily transactions of their lives, feeling fulfilled and accomplished beyond worldly goals.

This in turn means that if a leader with a high SiQ can successfully adopt the 3-H Alignment and take control rather than being driven by external factors, they can ultimately spiritualize their transactions with the world.

Hence, instead of quitting worldly living and joining the ascetic life, one can work on spiritualizing their interactions and lead in the world simultaneously.

The world is a beautiful place! By leaving it completely, you are missing out on life’s adventures. By not taking up spirituality at the same time, you are blocking out the manifestation of divinity within you. It is much like a wonderful poem I read by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

The World is a Beautiful Place

The world is a beautiful place to be born into

if you don’t mind happiness not always being

so very much fun if you don’t mind a touch of hell

now and then just when everything is fine

because even in heaven they don’t sing all the time

The world is a beautiful place to be born into

if you don’t mind some people dying all the time

or maybe only starving some of the time

which isn’t half bad if it isn’t you

Oh the world is a beautiful place to be born into

if you don’t much mind a few dead minds

in the higher places or a bomb or two

now and then in your upturned faces

or such other improprieties as our Name Brand society

is prey to with its men of distinction

and its men of extinction and its priests

and other patrolmen and its various segregations

and congressional investigations and other constipations

that our fool flesh is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all for a lot of such things as

making the fun scene and making the love scene

and making the sad scene and singing low songs and having inspirations

and walking around looking at everything and smelling flowers

and goosing statues and even thinking

and kissing people and making babies

and wearing pants and waving hats and

dancing and going swimming in rivers

on picnics in the middle of the summer

and just generally ‘living it up’

Yes but then right in the middle of it

comes the smiling mortician