Spirituality vs. Intelligence
Several years ago I would have said yes to these questions. But today I see that this conflict is nothing but an illusion. In fact, I think intelligence and spirituality ultimately follow the same path, and I don't mean this in the sense of trying to program your head with religious doctrine and then trying to convince you of it by manipulating the facts. I mean that by embracing your intellect to its fullest extent, you will eventually arrive at a sense of spirituality. You may not label it as such, but you will find yourself generating similar results to some of the most enlightened people around.
In terms of the question of intelligence vs. spirituality, the problem arises from the perceived sense of conflict between these two supposed opposites. This perception prevents us from trusting and following either side far enough. We'll only go so far down one side or the other before flipping back to the other side. We have our intellectual pursuits and our spiritual pursuits, and never the twain shall meet. They are both kept separate and compartmentalized. In the business world, our actions are governed by intelligence; we achieve the best results when we make the most intelligent decisions. But if we go home, meditate, and begin asking questions like, "What is the purpose of my life?" we have to load up a different set of rules. Now we've supposedly left the territory of the intellect and entered the spiritual realm. We try to interact intelligently with our outer world and spiritually with our inner world.
However, this perceived conflict is a fabricated one. If you were only to follow your intelligence or your spiritual beliefs far enough — really push them to the limits — you'd see they end up at the same place. The conflict is purely imaginary. It exists only in our thoughts.
Let me explain how this is possible and how this realization played out in my own life.
My upbringing fell squarely on the intellectual side. My mother was a college math professor, and my father an aerospace engineer. My family was fairly religious, but I never considered us to be spiritual. I was raised with a strong sense of religion – attending church every Sunday and going through 12 years of Catholic schooling made it hard to ignore – but for me there was no deeper spirituality behind these installed beliefs. Religion was just another school subject like mathematics or history. It was mostly about memorizing things, following complicated rules, and enduring sacraments like confession where I had to tell a stranger all of my sins and then do penance. By the time I was 17, this disconnect caused me to shed what little religion I had, so I became an atheist, much to the chagrin of my family. I think this decision made perfect sense. I was taught to be intelligent and to make rational choices, and I found my religious upbringing to be highly irrational. In my own way I probably thought I was correcting a logical error made by my parents, an impression which only grew stronger after experiencing their reaction to my decision, which as you can probably imagine left the realm of rationality far behind. I was happy to move out after graduating from high school. And aside from weddings and funerals (not my own in either case), I never set foot in a church again.
In terms of the question of intelligence vs. spirituality, the problem arises from the perceived sense of conflict between these two supposed opposites. This perception prevents us from trusting and following either side far enough. We'll only go so far down one side or the other before flipping back to the other side. We have our intellectual pursuits and our spiritual pursuits, and never the twain shall meet. They are both kept separate and compartmentalized. In the business world, our actions are governed by intelligence; we achieve the best results when we make the most intelligent decisions. But if we go home, meditate, and begin asking questions like, "What is the purpose of my life?" we have to load up a different set of rules. Now we've supposedly left the territory of the intellect and entered the spiritual realm. We try to interact intelligently with our outer world and spiritually with our inner world.
However, this perceived conflict is a fabricated one. If you were only to follow your intelligence or your spiritual beliefs far enough — really push them to the limits — you'd see they end up at the same place. The conflict is purely imaginary. It exists only in our thoughts.
Let me explain how this is possible and how this realization played out in my own life.
My upbringing fell squarely on the intellectual side. My mother was a college math professor, and my father an aerospace engineer. My family was fairly religious, but I never considered us to be spiritual. I was raised with a strong sense of religion – attending church every Sunday and going through 12 years of Catholic schooling made it hard to ignore – but for me there was no deeper spirituality behind these installed beliefs. Religion was just another school subject like mathematics or history. It was mostly about memorizing things, following complicated rules, and enduring sacraments like confession where I had to tell a stranger all of my sins and then do penance. By the time I was 17, this disconnect caused me to shed what little religion I had, so I became an atheist, much to the chagrin of my family. I think this decision made perfect sense. I was taught to be intelligent and to make rational choices, and I found my religious upbringing to be highly irrational. In my own way I probably thought I was correcting a logical error made by my parents, an impression which only grew stronger after experiencing their reaction to my decision, which as you can probably imagine left the realm of rationality far behind. I was happy to move out after graduating from high school. And aside from weddings and funerals (not my own in either case), I never set foot in a church again.