What is wisdom?

 Belief in personal control over circumstances that in reality lie beyond our control represents a second category of positive illusions. Locus of control is a well-known construct in psychology that refers to the more generic belief in how much personal control we have over life events, whether or not that belief is accurate.

Pierre MD, Joe. False: How Mistrust, Disinformation, and Motivated Reasoning Make Us Believe Things that Aren't True (pp. 18-19). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition. 

The second of the three lies we tell ourselves according to Joe Pierre in his book, False, is “I am master of my own fate.” People want to maintain control over their own life that’s why incarceration is a major form of punishment in just about all societies.

However, we learn in twelve step programs that the first step is “We admitted we were powerless over _____________- that our lives had become unmanageable.”

One of my favorite jokes is “If you want to hear God laugh, tell God your plans.”

When did you have to admit that your life was unmanageable and you couldn’t control things?

Wisdom is knowing what you can control and what you can’t. The concept is well known in twelve step meetings as the Serenity Prayer.

Annual spiritual wellness check-up indicator two: wisdom

The second indicator on the annual spiritual wellness check-up is wisdom. Wisdom is knowing what you can change and what you can’t.

This idea first showed up in the philosophy of Epictetus who was the teacher of Marcus Aurelius who writes about it in his Meditations. It is known today as the Serenity Prayer.

God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

To what extent do I exercise the wisdom to change what I can and accept the things I can’t and strive to tell the difference?

Put a hash mark on your level of wisdom.

0__________________________________________________________________10

Who will you discuss your score with and how you can grow in this spiritual skill?

Annual spiritual awareness check-up indicator one: self awareness

There are 16 indicators of spiritual health that can be assessed on an annual spiritual health check -up.

Spirituality is defined as a relationship with a higher power whatever that higher power is conceived to be. There is a difference between spiritual and religious. Some people are spiritual but not religious and some people are religious and not spiritual. Some people are both spiritual and religious. The annual spiritual wellness check-up indicators are focused on indicators of a person’s relationship with their higher power which is shared by most religions and none.

The annual spiritual wellness check up indicators can be rated by the individual on a scale of 0 - 10 with 0 being the total absence of the indicator and 10 it being present 100% of the time and 5 meaning that the indicator is present in the person’s life 50% of the time. The check up is to be administered by the individual with themself and discussed with a trusted and respected other person.

Self awareness - To what extent do you know what makes you tick? Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living. To what extent do you review your experience of your life and attempt to learn from it: hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, annually, only when in pain? People are like onions and we have layers of privacy and secrecy. We know some things about ourselves and other things we are not aware of and lie in our unconscious, sometimes called the shadow or our “blind spots.” Many people when asked what makes them tick have no idea and unfortunately don’t even have a frame of reference within which to consider the question. Another way of asking the question of “what makes you tick” is what are your beliefs, opinions, values, and practices and where did they come from? Why do you think what you think, feel what you feel, and do what you do?

Put a hash mark on your level of self awareness.

0_______________________________________________________________________10

Who will you discuss your score with and how you can grow in this spiritual skill?

Annual spiritual wellness check-up

An acquaintance on Wednesday told me that his multiple physicians didn’t seem to want to spend much time with him because there is nothing more they can do for him.  He said he had his annual Medicare physical and all the physician did was review his medications and his labs and then ended the visit. I said, “Well they call it an annual Medicare physical but it isn’t really a physical, it is an annual wellness check to review meds., labs, and appropriateness of current treatment plan.”

I continued on “As humans we are composed of body and soul. The physician is only interested in your body. If there isn’t any more to be done to fix physical problems they move on to other patients. However, I am a psychotherapist, and psyche means soul, so maybe we should also do an annual spiritual wellness check. So what’s your spirit like these days?”

He looked at me a little perplexed and then seemed to soften and said, “Well, they tell me I am grumpy.”

So I have been thinking what indicators should be covered on an “annual spiritual wellness check?” 

Should people have an annual spiritual wellness check-up on their soul just as they do for their body?

Role models of SQ

SQ21: The Twenty-one Skills Of Spiritual Intelligence is a guide to your own hero’s journey. As role models we can look to the noblest human beings we an think of, people like Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Socrates, and Mother Teresa. What sets them apart is more that intellectual smarts (IQ) or great interpersonal skills (EQ). It is their spiritual intelligence (SQ).

John Mackey, Forward, SQ21, p.vii

Don McClean sang in his classic song, American Pie, that the three people he admired most are the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

In Paul Simon’s great song, You Can Call Me Al, he sings “Who will be my role model when my role models are gone?”

Having been raised as a Catholic, I was encourage to read about the lives of the saints and to celebrate their feast days when a mass was dedicated to them in their honor.

Who is the most spiritually intelligent person you know? Do you aspire to emulate their SQ? How do you do this?

The Interior Spiritual Life

Most people have heard of IQ, the intelligence quotient. Some people have heard of EQ , emotional intelligence, and fewer people have heard of SQ, spiritual intelligence. What is spiritual intelligence? Spiritual intelligence is the awareness and relationship that a person has with their Transcendent Source which provides them with wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, and peace.

The Transcendence Source is the non dual Oneness from which we were separated when we were incarnated into a physical body and to which we will return when the physical body dies.

Hopefully, over the course of a lifetime a person’s interior spiritual life grows and deepens and the person’s potential flowering is actualized.

People increasingly in our contemporary times, when polled, say they are not religious, but consider themselves spiritual. If you ask them what they mean by this, they start by saying that they don’t go to church and aren’t a member of any religion but they believe in “God or something bigger than myself.”

Almost everyone has some sort of interior spiritual life whether they are consciously aware of it or not. All human beings reflect on the three main existential questions: why was I born, what is the purpose of my life, what happens when I die? The answers to these questions are the foundational building blocks of the interior spiritual life.

If you are interested in learning more about what comprises an interior spiritual life and how to intentionally further develop it, subscribe to Nurturing One’s Interior Spiritual Life, to obtain some ideas about how to understand it, and expand it.

The four Hindu life stages: Where are you?

From Spiritual Seniors on 09/07/25

The Four Ashramas: Life in Stages

In classical Hindu thought, life is a journey divided into four ashramas, or stages. The first is brahmacharya, the period of the student, when the young learn discipline, faith, and knowledge. The second is grihastha, the householder, devoted to marriage, family, work, and social responsibility. The third, vanaprastha, arrives when one has fulfilled those duties and begins to step back from worldly obligations. The fourth, sannyasa, is the life of renunciation, when a person seeks union with the eternal.

What distinguishes vanaprastha is its transitional nature. The forest dweller is not yet a renunciate. They may still live with their family, continue to advise children, and still play a role in society. But the center of gravity shifts. The inward call of wisdom balances the outward call of responsibility. A person is no longer defined by striving, but by seeking. No longer measured by conquest, but by clarity.

I am a Psychiatric Social Worker and have been practicing for 56 years and continue to practice individual, couple, and family therapy in my private office three days per week at age 79. 

The major life transitions of the second half of adulthood are the empty nest and retirement. Many of my client seeking help with depression, anxiety and somatic preoccupation are not managing these life transitions well. They are confused, lost, see no path forward and our culture and its institutions don't help them much.

The Hindu teaching of the life stages is a very helpful map that provides some guidance to what eldering might look like and the developmental challenges that people face as they grow older. Schacter-Shalomi and Miller call this process "Age-ing to Sage-ing" in their book by the same title. Becoming a sage is not just growing older but growing up which means actualizing one's potential.

One of the purposes of this blog, Nurturing One's Interior Spiritual Life, is to facilitate the development of a map for growing up. Further articles on this topic of ageing to sageing will be forthcoming.