Spiritual Intelligence (Paths to Awakening)

From the number one New York Times bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence comes a profound reckoning with what he has learned over  five decades as a seeker of higher planes of consciousness

We’re all familiar with the concept of mindfulness, and most of us know that it is a harvest from Eastern thought, translated into an American psychological idiom. Mindfulness practice has been of benefit to countless people.

But mindfulness is only really the surface level of contact with states of mind that are much deeper and more genuinely transcendent. In all the many schools and lineages of Buddhist thought, there is a common sense of an upward path to a pinnacle of raised consciousness, widely known as awakening. 

This is not a subject that can be come at straight. Goleman is not claiming to be awakened, and to say that you are is to demonstrate that you’re not. There’s a lot of spiritual snake oil out there. But for over five decades he has made an investigation of the path to this ideal place, and of the very special people in the world who bear the marks of having made this remarkable kind of inner ascent. We meet some of the most remarkable of them here.

Spiritual Intelligence is a beautiful and subtle blend of a personal account of this seeker’s journey and a reflection on the crux of what Goleman has come to believe about the stages on the path to awakening — what they may be and what they aren’t. The road is neither straight nor certain. It means foregoing the idea of somehow stripping the moral dimension of the practice away and extracting an instrumental germ. What the extraordinary humans, stories, and ideas of this book make clear is that it is only when self interest falls away and an ethical orientation toward kindness, curiosity, and selflessness is embraced that the path before you truly opens. Though the outcome is not guaranteed, the commitment itself makes all the difference.