Raising Ourselves out of the Mud

In this grey landscape of ambiguity we live in, there is a need for leaders with spiritual intelligence. Leaders who are able to connect deeply with the underlying need for meaning in our society and with the skill and insight to create spaces where people can connect deeply and significantly. We are in one of the most exciting times of history and experience a revolution when it comes to available knowledge and wealth compared to previous generations. But knowledge overflowing over internet waves does not mean we have found the well of wisdom. Spiritual discernment and wisdom is something we need to cultivate on a deep level in our societies today. Efficiency we strive for, but compassion we often lack.

Recently I walked around in a city centre during the blistering cold winter here in Europe, and saw the faces of people passing by almost as if they are living in the matrix. The sky is grey and the cold air cuts through ones veins. Some people seem to be in a never-ending-rat-race and deeply in search of meaning, although they do not always seem to know it. One can see the questions in their souls, and the stories that are begging for an alternative plot in their layered narrative(s). But people here are closed off, almost as if they have learned to build an invisible glass frame around themselves to protect them from the outside. This, I believe is a mechanism that has been cultured in our/their society after so many experiences of hurt and disappointment. We learn to cut ourselves off, to feel less, and to be spiritually numb. The other day an old lady wanted to get into the bus. She walked very slowly and after eventually getting her ticket stamped, she tried to find a place in front of the bus. However, there was a young man in his early twenties with an ipod in his earns who simply ignored her request to provide some space next to him. She spoke harder and harder but he still ignored her. I wanted to say to the young man: “Have mercy, snap out of the matrix, break through your man-made shell of ignorance and numbness”. But I was outside looking into the bus stuck in my own glass frame.  

This and other similar incidents bothered me since then. One day I read Victor Frankl’s book “Man in search of Meaning”.  He told of his time as a prisoner in a German concentration camp during WW2, and as psychologist reflected on the stages the prisoners went through in the camps. He says that at a stage people experience so much pain and destruction that a certain coping mechanism of apathy and numbness takes over. He tells of the days where fellow prisoners died and people unemotionally stripped whatever they could from the body, because perhaps the worn-out mittens of the lifeless body would ensure some more protection against the cold for the one who is still alive. That kind of numbness was a coping mechanism and survival strategy – survival of the fittest. 

Frankl also tells that during these troubling times one also sometimes discover moments of art that touches you so deeply that you see beauty beyond the walls of the prison you are in, and suddenly become aware of the transcendent beyond. For instance when in the camps a beautiful sunset scene broke through the greyness of their existence in the mud and the cold. That moment sparked a light of joy and wonder amidst the darkness of despair and numbness. It brought back a sense of life and purpose. At that moment, one (re)discovers the power of beauty in the ordinary, the presence of the divine that restores a deep human need for meaning and significance and tap into a power or energy that not only restores brokenness - even if it is just for a few minutes - but also a spiritual power that moves one to see the “Other” and find some hope beyond the hopelessness of the present. That is when one moves out of the matrix of self-focused survival-mode into the matrix of hope, love and saving grace. 

In the Christian tradition we believe that Christ taught us to break out of the matrix, out of the grip of grey despair and to be moved by beauty and light which restores our hope. Christians also believe that they are called to show warmth and love that could break through a grey mist of life without meaning. Christ taught us to be moved by the pain of others, to see through the matrix into the spiritual world behind the physical and to be sensitive to that always. This is something the scholar Bergson later also found in his own research into intuition and sympathy (cf. Bergson, The Creative Mind). Christ also taught us not to selfishly take for the sake of our own survival, but to give for the sake of others. We can only do so, says Paul, if we constantly focus our own thoughts on the things that are from “above”: We should live and realize our identity – we are agents of the light, not guerrillas in the muddy mist.  

Leadership is defined by some like Maxwell as being “a position of influence”. The implication is that all people are in some way influencing others and for that reason also leaders. From this presupposition we can deduce that it is necessary for us all to develop our spiritual intelligence and not only our cognitive and emotional intelligence, as Dana Zohar and Ian Marshall maintain. Spiritual intelligence deals with the way we define meaning and values and the vision we construct and the way in which we make decisions. It also deals with the way we relate to others and our environment. Spiritual intelligence is a form of intelligence in which we discern a level of consciousness for the greater good and for the sake of transformative relationships with others. It is the kind of leadership that sees the matrix for what it is, but with the passion and wisdom to transform it based on motives that transcend the individual ego needs. Zohar (2000:5) maintains that SQ is the kind of intelligence that: “wrestle with questions of good and evil and to envision unrealized possibilities – to dream, to aspire, to raise ourselves out of the mud…” This kind of leadership is concerned with finding (transformative) meaning in life. However, one cannot give meaning to others before you have found meaning and compassion in your own life. For that reason, leaders need to take brave journey of discovery first before they can lead others on the way.

Victor Frankl once remarked wisely that one cannot invent meaning in life – it is only possible to discover it by searching passionately for it with (spiritual) eyes that look for love, beauty, goodness, unity, trust and higher meaning. There is a major difference between striving for self-actualization and striving for self-transcendence. 

Jacobus (Kobus) Kok is head of department of New Testament Studies at the Evangelische Theologische Faculteit in Leuven.

This blog is part of a blog series on Leadership & Social Ethics, published by the Institute of Leadership and Ethics. For more information, please visit their website.