Learning

January 12, 2024

Spiritual learning does not depend on our Intelligence Quotient. Being cognitively adept at perceiving, synthesizing, storing, and utilizing information is a wonderful capacity without which the world would not have advanced in medicine, technology, and all the integral fields that depend on cognitive ability. Yet, we cannot rely solely on our intellects.

Ironically, intellectual advancement alone has brought us to the point where we have the technology to blow ourselves off the face of the planet in seconds. How advanced is that? And now, with Artificial Intelligence, we face a world in which the intellect has been so isolated and concentrated that it has the power to lead us, independent of human presence.

The advancement and preservation of our entire species is not through the mind only but through the human soul. The soul does not depend only on cognitive abilities. Instead, it intends to advance its capacity to love, which is available to all intellectual areas of development. The soul uses all life experiences to learn to love more fully. Without that capacity, it is arrested in the stage it attained when it stopped growing.

I know spiritually advanced souls from all educational, social, and situational levels. As a young man, I sat at the feet of a simple elderly lady confined to a one-room house who was an inspiration to everyone around her. I was graced by knowing a railroad executive and Harvard graduate who used his intellect to improve the environment and the lives of everyone he knew. I was fortunate to have known a lady from an aristocratic family in England who rolled up her sleeves and helped begin the hospice movement.

I was honored to know a lady who, though stricken with Alzheimer's disease, gave from the heart when her mind was losing its abilities. It humbled me to know a mentally disabled man whose IQ was well below average, who shared only with those he trusted his extraordinary skills to see and communicate with departed loved ones and with angels. I was blessed to know a terminally ill child who taught all of us how to live in the present.

I believe the soul's development is the key to true human advancement. Once there's a critical mass of souls who put spiritual progress before any other endeavor, the world will increase its capacity to love their friends and family and those they have never met. This is a way to avert our self-destruction.

Inquiry: What are three areas in which you are spiritually progressing?

Dear God,

I kneel before you, asking for the soul qualities that will increase my ability to love. Those hardest for me to love are those who ignore me, insult me, or deprive me. When in my ego, I ‘other’ these people as a way to deal with my wounds. Othering other people blocks me from being able to love them. Oh, but if I had the capacity to look beyond my hurt feelings, I would have no axes to grind and no resentments. I would be free to love them. But to look beyond, I would have to prize my intimacy with you above all, even my expectations and my woundings. This is a capacity of my soul. To have this capacity is my most fervent prayer today, Oh God. Amen

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