How Spiritual Are You?

by Sally Kempton

There’s no universal test for spiritual IQ. But that doesn’t mean you can’t assess your progress

Growing up, I thought that the capacity for spirituality was a rare and special gift, like musical genius or natural charm. Some people, I figured, were just born with an ability to experience the mystical underpinnings of things. They felt oneness with others, or at least they were able to be nice all the time. As for the rest of us, we were stuck with our basic ordinariness and selfishness, though like piano students stumbling through the scales, we could work at being spiritual. We could do our best to behave as if we actually felt deep, spiritual love or a connection with the sacred.

Then, in my twenties, I had my first conscious openings into expanded awareness and decided, with some self-satisfaction, that I must be among the spiritually intelligent. The confusing part, though, was that my experiences didn’t seem to make me any less angry or less prone to judge myself and others. In fact, it took years (and a great deal of what is sometimes called inner work) for my character to catch up to my spiritual insight. The humbling experience of learning how to close that gap made me question my own assumptions about what it means to be truly spiritual.

We use the word “spiritual” to refer to a range of interests and traits—having faith in a higher power, practicing yoga and meditation, sensing our kinship with nature and with all life—as well as to high states of mystical awareness and oneness with God. As for assessing it, well, we know that the Dalai Lama is spiritual. But what about that woman you met at the gym who channels a being she claims is an ascended Himalayan master and freely dispenses intuitive financial advice over the phone?

Part of our problem in defining spirituality may come from the fact that we often separate our “sacred” moments from the rest of our life. We might feel open-hearted or peaceful when we’re walking in the woods, yet we lose touch with those feelings the moment we get to the office or see our teenager’s messy room. Author Ken Wilber makes a useful distinction here between spiritual states, which come and go, and traits, or character qualities that appear only when we’ve integrated these states into our lives. Think of a man who’s an awesome energy healer but never sees his kids and is so shifty with money that his friends won’t do business with him. This person would have no problem accessing high intuitive states, yet he might be undeveloped ethically.