Understanding

a facet of your

Spiritual

Intelligence
 Spiritual Intelligence Quiz:
Understanding

Your score on the Spiritual Intelligence Quiz shows that

the strongest facet of your spiritual intelligence is your
ability to give and receive the quality of Understanding.

Understanding is one of six elemental virtues that form

spiritual intelligence. It is a quality of compassionate
witnessing of the heart of a person. You are especially
tuned in to this dynamic, which means you are sensitive
to the need that all people have to understand and to
be understood. And you are sensitive when understand-
ing isn’t present.

Your score reflects a strong capacity to bring the power

of understanding to other people. It also reflects the
ability to assist people to know that, at their core, there
is nothing wrong with them, and they are worthy of
being understood. Your score indicates that you have
the ability to help people understand themselves. This
virtue gives you the gift of creating cohesion and to-
getherness in a family or community. It gives you the
opportunity to create an environment in which people
can understand themselves and others.

People who are strong in the virtue of Understanding

might feel vulnerable if they perceive that others don’t
share the value they place on compassionately and
non-judgmentally witnessing other people. And with the
value they place on understanding others and feeling
understood themselves, they may fail to appreciate the
significance of the other elements that comprise the full
experience of spiritual intelligence.

This virtue of Understanding is crucial to relationship.

2 © 2020 David Karchere, All Rights Reserved, www.davidkarchere.com

Without it, suspicion, judgment, and dis-
trust take over. And people’s actions arise
out of their most negative opinions of oth-
ers and even themselves. The virtue of
Understanding is a suspension of judgment
long enough to see the truth of another
person and the truth of oneself. It includes
the openness to allow your own truth to be
seen.

There are many facets to the experience of spiritual

intelligence. Here are all six of the elemental virtues
included in the Spiritual Intelligence Quiz:

Blessing
Understanding
Taking Action
Fulfilling Mission
Enlightened Thinking
Courage

Ideally, a person has a balance of all six virtues, even though they have a particular strength in
one or more of them. A person who isn’t yet fully initiated into one or more of these virtues is
like the engine of a six-cylinder car with one or more cylinders not functioning fully. They might
find that in meeting life’s challenges they do not have the internal power to meet those chal-
lenges successfully.

A human life calls upon a person to activate the full spectrum of spiritual intelligence. And ev-
ery circumstance invites a different mix of the six essential virtues. If a person isn’t fully initiated
into one or more of them, they might be unequipped to meet all circumstances in a creative,
joyful way. So you may want to consider the other virtues that are available for you to explore
and develop.

While real spiritual intelligence can, potentially, be taught through a religious or spiritual teach-
ing, it transcends any belief or spiritual path. Real spiritual intelligence is the ability stay intuitive-
ly connected to the source of wisdom and power within oneself, and to the pattern of creation
all around. It is a sense of oneness with other people and all things that brings an understand-
ing of them, and an understanding of yourself in relationship to them. It is the way we access
our innate wisdom and knowing related to the most important questions in a
human life.

© 2020 David Karchere, All Rights Reserved, www.davidkarchere.com 3

When Howard Gardner originally published I wish you well on your path
his theory of multiple intelligences in 1983, to embracing your own
he described seven different kinds of intel- spiritual intelligence.
ligence in human beings. Later, he began to
consider the possibility of existential intel-
ligence, which he defined this way:

A concern with ultimate life issues… The

capacity to locate oneself with respect to
the furthest reaches of the cosmos—the
infinite and the infinitesimal—and the
related capacity to locate oneself with
respect to such existential features of the
human condition as the significance of life,
the meaning of death, the ultimate fate of
the physical and the psychological worlds,
and such profound experiences as love
of another person or total immersion in a
work of art.

Gardner was careful not to let what he de-

fined as existential intelligence become
associated with any particular spiritual or
religious path. And still, I believe he was
speaking about spiritual intelligence.

My life’s work is devoted to an understand-

ing of spiritual intelligence, and to teaching,
writing and speaking about it. Subscribing to
my mailing list, you will receive my ongoing
series of short articles on the subject.

My first book, Becoming a Sun: Emotional

and Spiritual Intelligence for a Happy and
Fulfilling Life contains essays and poetry. I
think you will find deep insights into your
own experience, and sign posts for the path
ahead of you.

4 © 2020 David Karchere, All Rights Reserved, www.davidkarchere.com

 About the Author
knowing of Universal Being within themselves
and other people, and within all Creation.
It is spirituality before any religious belief or
spiritual practice, and it is the original teach-
ing of all true spiritual teachers before the
interpretations of people who follow them
and come after them.

David has recently published his first book,

Becoming a Sun. The book is a guide to the
human journey, individually and collectively.
David believes that humanity is evolving to
become a conscious expression of the cre-
ative power within us and that we have the
power to radiate this to our world.

D AVID KARCHERE is an author, speaker, David’s home is Sunrise Ranch in Loveland,

poet, workshop leader and preeminent Colorado, U.S.A., a teaching and demonstra-
thought leader on Primal Spirituality tion site for Primal Spirituality.
worldwide. David has created and led
unique workshops for spiritual awakening To follow David on Facebook, go to:
and personal transformation for thousands facebook.com/david.karchere
of people. He has also developed The
Creative Field Project, a global network of To find out about events and workshops
small groups that meet to further the work David is leading, go to:
of Primal Spirituality. www.davidkarchere.com/calendar

David describes Primal Spirituality as the To contact David, go to:

spirituality that human beings experience at www.davidkarchere.com/contact
birth which, ideally, blossoms and grows as
a person matures. It is a person’s innate

© 2020 David Karchere, All Rights Reserved, www.davidkarchere.com 5