First written 29 January 2025.

Spiritual Emotional Intelligence is all about connection. Connection with ourselves as individuals in becoming all that each of us were created to be in this world and perhaps in the next. Connection with our close communities, those more vulnerable relationships where we may be invited to let our guard down and let those closest to us really see us—our hurts, our concerns, our mistakes, our gifts, our talents, and our joys. And lastly, connection with the world at large—people we may not even know or something larger than ourselves—our shared humanity, regardless of our country or culture of origin or station in life.

Considering connection as this three-fold model depicted above, each of these domains of connecting in our human lives play a key part in realizing the worth and dignity of each individual person and our shared humanity.

Awareness helps us make connection with ourselves, pay attention to our human physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs and desires and make them harmonious with the whole of our lives.

Belonging helps us realize that our close relationships require that we go beyond ourselves for those we love or befriend most closely. There is a necessary reciprocity in these relationships—we do not have them in any significant depth if we are unwilling to make ourselves vulnerable to the important others in our lives.

Insight is about connecting with something greater than ourselves—and this can include something larger than ourselves, whatever that means to each of us in our particular faith structure. It is Insight that allows us to go beyond ourselves, beyond our close communities, beyond what we believe or have come to understand to realize there may be something even greater in that space of shared humanity.

From this space of shared humanity, the themes of Life and Peace come through as a star that lights the way for each of us to move forward, individually and collectively. What is the higher vibration that each of us may emit when we are connected with something larger than ourselves? When we have cared for our own needs so that they are not clamoring for attention? When we support and are supported by those people we hold most dear in relationship? What is out beyond our small view of the world that may be possible through our collective connection with more than we may understand, more than we can see, and more than we can know with our logical minds?

While we are breathing on this planet, what is the most important work that we will do? What is life when we consider that we are only a part of the larger community? What is peace when we consider that we are only a part of the larger community?

Life and peace…What is the fullest and most meaningful life that you can imagine? How might you move closer to that ideal for our world together?

Direction helps us move toward our desired future, individually and all as one shared humanity. Service is the ultimate gift to another as we each share this life together—even with those we may never meet in person. Balance helps us not forget to tend our own needs and the needs of those we most love in this world and beyond, so that we never forget there is something larger than ourselves.

Rumi says it better than I can. His lines beginning “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing” describe a field where the categories we argue over stop making sense. You can read the passage in full at the Poetry Society, in Coleman Barks’s translation.

In our shared humanity as the guiding light, there is life and peace. Spiritual Emotional Intelligence can be the lamp holder to illuminate our shared humanity.