I'm about a hundred pages into Finding Radical Wholeness by the integral philosopher Ken Wilber. His core claim is that wholeness isn’t one big thing, but consists of five distinct dimensions: waking up, growing up, cleaning up, opening up, and showing up. Most of us develop one or two of these dimensions.
I’m finding it endlessly fascinating because it’s helping me connect the dots between developmental psychology and spirituality, two fields I’ve been immersed in for the past decade. I’m starting to see more clearly where the two converge, and where they don’t.
A few nights ago, after the kids went to sleep, I made my way through chapter 4. It explores the difference between spiritual experience and spiritual intelligence.
Experience is direct: the states of consciousness that emerge on retreat, in a ceremony, or on the cushion. Intelligence, on the other hand, is how you make sense of your experience. You don't need a spiritual experience to have spiritual intelligence.
Wilber frames spiritual intelligence around one central question: what is of ultimate concern for me?
He borrows that phrase from Paul Tillich, the German-American theologian. Your ultimate concern is whatever sits at the center of your life, whatever you treat as supremely important, whether or not you’d ever call it God or consider yourself spiritual.
Then he offers an invitation:
"Make a list of all the truly and deeply important things in your life—the most important of the most important things—and at the top of that list is your ultimate concern. That's your God. You do have one."
Yesterday morning, I grabbed my journal and answered the question. At the top of my list wasn’t Eliza, my kids, my home, my clients, or my life savings, though they were all on it.
Within a few minutes, I knew what it was, at least in this chapter of my life: my connection to life and nature, what I refer to as deep relationality. It’s the knowing and experience of always being in relationship with something. That’s my ultimate concern, and everything else on the list is an expression of it.
What’s your ultimate concern?