The next skill is called Complexity of Inner Thought. This may sound like something closer to IQ than SQ, but this skill is quite distinct from the logical and linguistic skills sets that are traditionally associated with IQ. Complexity of Inner Thought points to the ability to hold nuance and complexity. As an example, the first level of this skill includes the recognition that "rules are guidelines and sometimes a higher principle requires that I break the rules". Think about someone like Mahatma Gandhi -- a very principled man, a lawyer in fact, who chose to violate the British law in order to support a higher principle. He was not randomly breaking the law for his own selfish gratification. He meditated for a long time before he decided that there was a more important principle at stake, and he was willing to go to jail and to suffer the consequences, including the possibility of death at the hands of the police or soldiers, in order to advocate for that principle. In everyday life, this skill asks if we are blindly obedient to authority, or if we can be law-abiding except when principle demands otherwise.
Higher levels of development in this skill take us into territory where we begin to develop the ability to consider multiple points of view in decision-making, and understand that "right" and "wrong" are not simple matters. Doctors, for example, need this skill on a daily basis. A patient is being kept alive in an ICU on the insistence of his family, even though there is no hope of his ever recovering. How does one weigh the ethics of honoring the family's beliefs with the ethics of providing that same bed to another patient who may need it right away? Your young adult daughter bristles when she is told what to do, but she wants to follow a career that entails physical and financial risk. You want her to choose her own path and you want to provide the necessary warnings and guidance. You want to support but not enable. How do you do all this?
As we progress to the highest level of development in this skill, we develop the ability to recognize elements of truth in conflicting points of view, embracing and even enjoying paradox and mystery, which are central to mysticism. Holding the tension of opposites can create "third options" which creatively take everyone to a new level.
~ SQ21, The Twenty-one Skills of Spiritual Intelligence, by Cindy Wigglesworth
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