Spiritual Intel
The Key to Becoming Fully Human
Cindy Wigglesworth
that requires us to grow and stretch ourselves. Do you feel the call to grow? Some of us go through childhood with this yearning. Others discover that restless self later in life. Once this hunger awakens, no distractions, purchases, or promotions will satisfy it. You just know there is “something more.”
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We are drawn toward our own higher potential; we are seeking something. Yet we often cannot describe the discontent we feel or how we would go about reaching the place we are trying to “get to.” Even the experts—the mystics, teachers, saints, and sages from the great wisdom traditions— don’t seem to agree when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of spiritual transformation. There are numerous names for this goal—self- actualization, self-transcendence, spiritual realization or awakening,
enlightenment, individuation, and many more. And each culture and faith tradition has its own path, while some faiths seem convinced that the way they describe is the only true one.
This tendency to be exclusive and to make other paths wrong has troubled me for most of my life. Should it not be possible to describe our human development in a faith-neutral and objective way? Using tools pioneered by psychol- ogy and other sciences, should we
October/November 2012
ecoming fully human is a great adventure—one
not be able to create and refine a statistical- ly reliable system by which progress in the spiritual dimension of human development can be measured? Within such a struc- ture, each spiritual path could continue to teach its adherents how to grow, and yet we could show that many other paths can work also.
My life and work have been dedicated
for the past few decades to this possibility. I began with two simple questions: Whom do I admire as a spiritual leader? And why? I have asked these questions to thou- sands of people from a variety of spiritual or religious persuasions— from devoted believers to avowed atheists. What I find both reassur- ing and fascinating is when asked this simple question we agree much more than one might expect.
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