Mark Vernon – Spiritual Intelligence

We continue our season on Belonging and Healing with a fascinating conversation between Gillian and Mark Vernon. Mark is a psychotherapist and writer, interested in spirituality and inner life. He has a PhD in ancient philosophy, as well as degrees in physics and in theology. 

Together they explore:

• Spiritual Intelligence in contrast to Artificial and Emotional Intelligence
• What difference Spiritual Intelligence makes to our lives
• Whether or not Spiritual Intelligence is an individual or communal pursuit
• What Spiritual Intelligence looks like in practice
• How Spiritual Intelligence can bring healing and wholeness

Links:
Full transcript for this episode can be found below.

Mark Vernon’s book Spiritual Intelligence in Seven Steps

Mark Vernon’s book Awake- William Blake and the power of the Imagination

Mark is teaching on a Foundation course with the Temenos Academy

GoHealth Spiritual Intelligence Course
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Gillian Straine: Welcome to the Go Health Podcast. I am Gillian Straine, Chief Exec of GoHealth, an organisation with a vision to enable churches and individual Christians to be a healing presence in the world. And the podcast is the space for those who want to hang out at the intersection of health, faith and science. And today we are in that space exploring new ideas about wise living for those interested in shaping a more interconnected and compassionate world.

And here we are joined by Mark Vernon, who is a psychotherapist, a writer and a former Anglican priest. Mark has a passion for exploring how ancient wisdom and modern insight meet. He’s author of lots of books, but one is called Spiritual Intelligence in Seven Steps. And it’s a book that offers a powerful lens for understanding how peoples and communities can grow and heal and flourish.

And I’m really excited to chat with him today about how spiritual intelligence, spiritual awareness can deepen our connection to ourselves, to one another, and to the sacred. And Mark also features in a new course on Spiritual Intelligence from GoHealth. So lots of reasons to chat. Mark, thank you so much for joining us. Tell me, what is spiritual intelligence?

Mark Vernon: So we’re going straight into the deep end!

Gillian: Straight it…absolutely.

Mark: So thanks very much so much for having me on, Gillian, lovely to talk. And I mean, the phrase Spiritual Intelligence clearly is in the same group that would talk about, perhaps artificial intelligence or emotional intelligence. And perhaps a contrast is one way of beginning to get into it. So I think of artificial intelligence, as unaware capacities to sort vast amounts of data. So the sorting is not done by comprehending but it’s done by statistical analysis, algorithmic searching and so on.

And we’re very familiar with that now, and it’s very powerful as well. But it is unaware and then emotional intelligence is a kind of intelligence that’s fundamentally based on awareness. And it’s a felt awareness. So someone who is exercising their emotional intelligence will enter a room, say, and will navigate what’s going on not by the reception of data, but by feeling their way into the room. You know, is it friendly? Is it intimidating? Is it strange? Is it familiar? And we do that all the time. We human beings in relationships, in places even within ourselves, a kind of inner space of emotional intelligence as well. And, you know, for some of the works as a psychotherapist that’s often what you first encounter with someone – is their emotional world.

And maybe that is part of the exchanges for a long, long time. So you could say that getting to know your emotional landscape is also helping to develop your emotional intelligence. But I think it doesn’t stop there because we human beings aren’t just a sort of bundle of feelings with a kind of will or a mind trying to keep some sort of relationship with that over the top. We also have a sense of our presence and the presence of others and of being itself. Sometimes it’s said that we’re not just aware, but we can be aware of being aware. And this is really fundamental because it makes you know about the presence of what, in traditional Christian circles of course will be called God, but is given different names in different contexts, sometimes more abstract – the ground of being, the wellspring, the source, the various names of God that are given in different traditions. And this takes us to the basic level of our being. It’s the ground from which might spring thoughts, might spring feelings. And the great advantage of having a developed sense of this through spiritual intelligence, as I’m calling it anyway, is that it provides a kind of anchor point in life and connects you with a source of your life that’s at once outside of yourself, but also is known as the deepest parts of yourself.

Gillian: So does everyone have spiritual, spiritual intelligence? Is that something we’re born with or something we can develop? 

Mark: I think that the capacity to be aware of this spiritual level is innate. Whether or not people have developed the capacity to relate to it, you might say, on a day by day basis, is another question. So that would be the developing the intelligence that enables the awareness of this spiritual level. So people might have glimpses of it routinely throughout life. I mean, maybe something quite fleeting, but nonetheless profound. You know, a beautiful scene, an encounter with someone you love that’s not just about the upwelling of emotion, but is that stiller sense of connection. But spiritual practices, I think, are designed at least in part, to enhance the intelligence that enables that spiritual level to be known better and maintain contact with, sort of aligned with.

Gillian: So does being spiritually intelligent depend on your belief in another to relate to? 

Mark: Yes. Or maybe not belief. I mean, the belief might follow the sense that there is another to relate to and whether that is based on a kind of practice of faith or whether it’s some sort of event in life. I mean, very often when people suffer, there’s the sense that there’s more going on in life than just the suffering. When we’re sort of shaken and the assumptions that we’ve been working with or that our culture feeds us are falling apart even, then this awareness of something deeper can come in. 

Gillian: I just want to understand it a bit deeper because the word intelligence, not everyone loves that word because some people were told the school that they’re not intelligent. So, you know, it’s a bit triggery isn’t it – intelligence, but it does make you think of your brain and your rational process right? So if one is spiritually intelligent, how are you sensing this information that you somehow need to tune into this spiritual level of life? 

Mark: Yeah, you’re right about the word intelligence. It’s got very narrowed. It’s not I don’t think primarily about cognitive capacities at all, actually. It’s much more about a capacity to resonate or harmonise with the wider world. This is actually the the common use of the word intelligence until about 500 days ago when it started to shift and become this much narrower, meaning, you know, with words like, in fact, like information and data and so on, becoming more closely associated with it following the scientific revolution. But before you know, your intelligence, my intelligence, the intelligence of other animals, the intelligence of plants, the intelligence of the planets and the skies. Meaning just the way that they are in the world, the patterns that they follow, the capacity to be what they are, who they are. This was the much broader sense of intelligence, and it was felt to all be a reflection of the divine intelligence, as many manifestations of the beauty, the love, and even for we human beings as a small subset section of that, the capacity to use language and therefore to articulate that intelligence, not just live it, you know, the tree just lives its capacity to thrive as a tree. We may or may not live our capacity to thrive as human beings, but we can certainly talk about it as well. So, yeah, this is a it’s a much more it’s a felt kind of awareness that has nuance and a kind of wisdom within it rather than, you know, you can do mathematics or not. 

Gillian: Okay, good. So it sounds more open. Everyone’s got the potential to develop it as part of who we are. But what difference does it make in your life to be spiritually intelligent? How have you found it help your life, just knowing something and maybe even practicing something as spiritual intelligence? What difference does it make? Why do we need this? 

Mark: There’s two facets to that, for me personally. I mean, one is, I’m you know, I’ve always been interested, drawn, but also, you know, yearned, wanted to know about this aspect of reality that people call God. And like anyone there’s a kind of history with that, my ups and downs with that. But it wasn’t really until I was taught actually initially the kind of practices, particularly based on meditation or contemplation, that I felt I could hope for a kind of steady awareness of the divine and that I could call, you know, a sort of realisation that I could practice my spiritual intelligence. So that’s one side. 

But then the other side is, I work as a psychotherapist, and I increasingly feel that whilst lots of different kinds of psychological interventions, psychiatric to can help people with the emotional level of their being, you know, effectively helping people to calm it down when it’s getting out of control, that’s that that’s the normal state of affairs. But that’s not enough. That we human beings aren’t just our bundles of emotions that we have this sense of identity that actually isn’t just based on what’s happening, but is the holding of all that’s happening. And I think that it’s when you focus on what you can call spiritual intelligence, then that capacity can be developed as well. 

Gillian: But to do what? Like what difference does it actually make? An awareness of the divine, you know, great. But what is it actually, you know, how does it actually impact and help in day-to-day living?

 

Mark: It provides a still point in an ever changing world. It provides a sense that there’s a peace in spite of all the turbulence that might be going on around you, it helps you to know that you’re not a solitary individual amidst other solitary individuals. But part of a great sea of being, so completely reorientate your awareness of things and helps you to kind of let go of that which makes us feel we’ve got to protect ourselves, to possess ourselves, to hold back fear, not to be, you know, pestered by anxiety. It’s it’s the sense that our identity doesn’t just rest within myself as a solitary individual, but actually rests in the divine presence that spiritual intelligence enables you to know.

Gillian: So that sounds a bit like faith. That sounds like everything we want to do within the spiritual life, right? Is this just a fancy way, a new, beautiful, very complex, very interesting, but ultimately a new labelling of old stuff? Why do we need this new label? How does it help us deepen our wisdom in the world? 

Mark: The hope is that the phrase spiritual intelligence connects us with an aspect of this knowing God, that I feel can get lost with the word faith. For me, when people talk about faith, it can feel like they’re trying to squeeze in a bit of something extra in their otherwise secular experience of life. You know, it may be that inevitably happens in some measure when we live broadly in a culture that is secular, that doesn’t really have a place for faith.

And I think also that faith can also conjure up quite heady cognitive, almost like lists of things that you have faith in, but others that you don’t. And then, you know, very quickly in Christian circles, certainly it’s like, do you have the right kind of faith? And so it becomes almost like a test. What spiritual intelligence is designed to point to is that this can be a felt awareness that runs through all things.

And, you know, around above and underneath all things. And so it’s trying to shift the basis of our awareness of God to a living presence that’s known in all things rather than just a kind of check, you know, I have faith in God, you don’t. Now look, spiritual  intelligence may or may not be the phrase that does that for people. In a way it doesn’t really matter. Some people say artificial intelligence doesn’t work for them. They much prefer machine learning. But nonetheless, the important thing is to try and point back to a lived sense of the divine rather than sort of bolting on an optional extra that you confess to on a Sunday morning. 

Gillian: So can you measure spiritual intelligence? Can you know, you need a bit of training? And how would you know if you did some practices? How would you know it’s having an impact? How do we know we are spiritually intelligent? 

Mark: This is a big area in any kind of inner life and trying to assess what’s going on in our inner lives, because mostly the measures depend upon what’s known as self-reporting.

So, you know, you’re you’re asked a questionnaire and you try and track change and so on. And there’s some value in this. But I must say, as someone who worked in a psychiatric hospital for a while, it’s so obvious that how people respond to questionnaires is so massively determined by their character. You know, do they even like questionnaires or not? So it’s a bit…it’s not an absolute measure, but I think relatively speaking, it can provide some indicators. There’s some effort to measure these things using bio indicators as well. You know, distress hormones go up and down. And so the measuring is problematic. But, you know, it’s a bit of a concession to the world in which we live that people don’t really believe it unless there’s a figure. So, you know, it’s worth undertaking, I think. But what it is also in terms of the course, trying to persuade people, is that this notion does make a difference. And, you know, a bit like sticking a brain scan at the head of a newspaper article makes everyone feel that it’s a real thing. I don’t quite understand that myself, but it’s true. It works like that. So we produce measures to try and persuade that it’s a real thing. And then the point is they’ll discover it’s a real thing. They’ll know it in themselves. So how they got there doesn’t really matter to me at the end of the day.

Gillian: Exactly. And I think we’re very into in GoHealth, we measure facts and figures and all the rest of it. But what we’re really interested in is story, because that’s where the real evidence is. So. Mark, do you have a story of something that’s happened in your life and because you know a bit about…you said to yourself, that’s because I know about spiritual intelligence. I feel a deeper sense of something because of this. Or have you…do you ever meet anyone and go, You’re really spiritually stupid? Like… you’re not like…because that would be the opposite of intelligence.

Mark: Here’s one experience that people might have had, which is when you meet someone who is clearly themselves, you know, they’re very much an actual individuated… to use the fancy psychotherapeutic words person. I mean you, you they have a certain way of talking, maybe a way of laughing, holding themselves, their faces and so on, show that they’re completely themselves as an individual.

And yet this is not a narrow kind of individuality in front of you, that you feel that this is someone who’s channeling a whole lot more. It’s like their person has become a kind of threshold for life itself. And, you know, famous people are obvious examples of this. You know, you can pick your famous spiritual, personal choice, if you like, but many might go to someone like the Dalai Lama or they might go to someone like Desmond Tutu and there’s this sense you have with them that there’s a richness to being human. That richness often coexists with an awareness that this person has suffered very greatly, you know, as the Dalai Lama has and as Desmond Tutu had as well. But that is…it’s not quite a story. But you might have a story about encountering such and such a person. 

Gillian: I tell you what, Mark, when I know I’ve met somebody that might be called spiritually intelligent, I’ve got my two fingers up to do quote marks, just somebody that we’re describing is deeply interconnected, and I make assumptions about their spiritual life and all, but you meet somebody like that, it makes me feel better about me.

I feel more myself, more alive, encountering someone. I’ve got people on my mind as well. wise people that have, as you say, suffered something come along seem to have the joy of God. They make me feel better about the world. Is that an indicator of a spiritually intelligent person, if they can make others feel like that? 

Mark: It is. And you know, I remember an older lady I used to go and visit. She was, you know, approaching dying. And yet she seemed translucent with life. And that was a very powerful kind of experience for me. And part of the reason why she’s come to mind, I think, is that it’s not just about sort of feeling uplifted. There’s value in that. But, you know, sometimes people make you feel so jolly or happy or there’s a kind of buzz, and it’s not quite that actually. It’s something more profound, which is why I think the fact that people who have this have often suffer very greatly is important. It’s like they’re, the sense of who they know themselves to be has shifted completely to another ground.

It’s not just that they they’re nice to be with although you know don’t want to be sniffy about that, hurrah for that when it happens. So one of things which for me spiritual intelligence is about trying to move away from is the reliance on emotion and feeling, which I think a lot of say church going is about – you know singing uplifting hymns or feeling the buzz of the community. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s transient. It’s passing. And for me, the pursuit of God is about something that’s not transient, it’s not passing. It’s something that’s utterly always reliable, even in the darkness.

Gillian: But in the apophatic tradition that this spiritual darkness, you know, even in these places, quite often the great mystics will say they have no experience of God, and that is God. So how is that spiritual intelligence? 

Mark: So, you know, we’re diving into this whole tradition now, which would say that the way you discover this presence that’s utterly reliable is by having removed from you, even it can feel like everything that you have previously relied upon. And that can be very tough. It can feel even brutal. And yet in what seem like an emptiness or darkness is discovered, the all, is discovered a fullness, is discovered it’s sometimes called the light of lights and dark night of the soul is the famous expression of John of the Cross. And I feel intrepid talking about this because it’s a bit of a case of be careful what you pray for. But at the end of the day, that is the way that I want to know God more than any other.

And so that’s why this valuing of what’s called the apophatic tradition for me really, really matters. And it’s one of the great strengths of this phrase spiritual intelligence, as opposed to, say, emotional intelligence. 

Gillian: Yeah and thank you for making that distinction really clear. It’s not about how you feel. We are…what we’re talking about here is connecting into the divine, however you might define that. I know spiritual intelligence is something that transcends faith boundaries. This is a human experience that gets us into the ground of our being stuff. So let’s talk about practices, because what I love about spiritual intelligence, why I was absolutely committed to getting this good science, this good stuff to folk on the ground is that this is about interconnection with the divine.

It’s about everything life’s about. But the practices are all quite familiar, aren’t they Mark? Tell us about the practices that can help. 

Mark: Yes, I mean, an obvious one is meditation or contemplation, silent prayer. And there’s various forms of that. But even in Christianity now, it’s getting better known. I mean, personally, I really felt I learned about this in a Buddhist context because particularly westerners that have brought Buddhism into Europe and America, have sort of worked out how to teach it. And it is a bit like riding a bike. You can’t there’s a kind of certain balance with inner stillness that you can learn, but there’s, there’s plenty of embodied practices as well. I mean, the one that probably works the best for me is going on pilgrimage, possibly with an intention that you’re holding on the way and then when you say get to the shrine or get to the church, you will, you know, touch something holy, you will bow, you’ll use your body. And that is also, I think, a way of connecting to the presence of the place, taking it in and acknowledging it’s being open and vulnerable towards it. So pilgrimage would be another one. And I think there’s also a certain kind of Lectio Divina, as it’s sometimes called, that is about this. And it’s not just about learning about, say, what happens in the gospels, you know, because you’re trying to fill out your sense of the surety that say Jesus died and rose again, or what it might mean to use the Bible to inform you in a moral way.

There’s something else going on in Lectio Divina which is about how the text opens up something in you more intuitively. It’s the, it’s the, it’s the felt deep sense of presence that inspired texts can, can instil in you. It’s not so much what it’s saying, but it’s the manner in which it’s saying it. And so a kind of contemplative reading I think is really valuable as well.

Gillian: So it sounds like there is a range of things. There is sitting in silent meditation, contemplation, silent prayer. So turning stuff off, it may be our thoughts. There is doing stuff with your body, taking yourself for a walk, that becomes a pilgrimage if you do a search of intention and so on. And also perhaps cognitive, what we might call cognitive processes, prayers, you know, reading the Bible, but in a certain way.

So it sounds very much, very embodied the self like old stuff, but done in sort of reimagining the old or practices or maybe that’s just that’s a bit too dismissive. It’s, it’s relearning what they really should have been about in the first place, huh?

Mark: Yeah, I mean, the fact that we’re having to talk about this, I think is the product of a kind of rupture, particularly in the Christian tradition, that I think there’s a history, too, is it goes back to the Reformation. You know, the Protestant reformers had very good reasons for their reforms, but they were also deeply suspicious of inner life. Total depravity was John Calvin’s way of putting it. And Martin Luther, too, was deeply wary of what he felt to be his utterly flawed interiority. And so they reached for other ways of feeling sure in their faith. And essentially they were kind of attempts to prove the faith in quasi-scientific ways. You know, the Reformation is happening at the same time as the beginnings of early modern science and the two kind of come together. And there’s value in that, but it’s not satisfying for we human beings. And I think that in a way, over the last four or five hundred years, there’s been a kind of catch up to what would have been known throughout the medieval period in the early Christian period and even before in other traditions.

I think actually psychotherapy itself is an attempt to recover a kind of wisdom about inner life that got rather lost when, say, in the UK all the monasteries were shut down in a period of about ten years. And the point about this is a living encounter. It’s not just something that you can read about in a book. There’s a, there’s a kind of adaptability, a flexibility that’s really important, which is why, you know, practices are so important. It’s not just about, oh yeah, I believe in meditation. And then all the effects of meditation follow. Of course it doesn’t work like that. 

Gillian: I want to ask about healing. And you bring a particular perspective to this. As somebody who knows something about spiritual intelligence, the healing that might bring, but also as a psychotherapist, right? How can being spiritually intelligent, how can the practices, everyday, sounds like, practices taken seriously of finding your way to interconnect with the divine? How can they help with the fracturing that happens when some when we face suffering, when we know we need healing, when something’s gone wrong? How can spiritual intelligence help?

Mark: The word healing itself is so kind of loaded and it gets even more loaded when someone really is suffering and they’re yearning for, if it’s a disease, to go, they want to return to life as they knew it before. And you know who wouldn’t? But I think the spiritual healing, this kind of level that we’re talking about now is, is about something else. I mean, I partly say this because, of course, you know, sometimes people are healed physically, but very often they’re not. And, you know, you don’t have to have lived that long to start to realise that good people become ill and they die too young, for example. And this becomes a great challenge for people who feel that the bottom line of life is, say, love or abundance or life itself. So spiritual intelligence, it’s not a quick answer. So you’re going to have to forgive me for putting it too quickly now, because at the end of the day, it’s I think it’s something that is lived into and may be you only finally know it when you’re actually on your deathbed. But it’s the sense that there is a connection with life itself that is never removed. But strangely enough, when all the proxies for that connection that you might have go, that’s when there’s fullest sense of connection shows up. And so there’s a sort of relationship between this deeper healing and suffering becomes much more complicated in one way. But again, perhaps, you know, pointing to experiences makes it clearer. You know, this is the experience you might have had of going to a hospice where people are dying and whilst there’ll be many people who are dying in very troubled ways in such a place, there will also be people who are dying and you feel it’s the most powerful or beautiful thing that you’ve seen. And I think that’s an intimation of this much deeper kind of healing, which is really, I suppose, and again, this is putting it too quickly but is a falling onto that which was always there but perhaps got occluded, if not completely lost because of, you know, the business of life and hopes from life and the good things that happen in life otherwise as well. 

Gillian: Mark, I really do appreciate us dipping our toes into the big question of suffering and where spiritual intelligence lies and all of this and your description there of the hospice of people dying at peace, fully connected into the love that has never left them their whole life. And for me, no, this is not about my thoughts but, you know, spiritual intelligence helps us connect with that love. What happens with somebody who suffered in their life, suffered trauma, who some people describe as a fracturing of the soul, deep level identity, harm done by others. Tell us a little, just touch on it please, as a psychotherapist and a spiritual intelligence expert, how can this orientation towards God help with those who have suffered trauma?

Mark: Though maybe it be…it’s more authentic for me to say how this is deeply challenging. I’ve worked in a psychiatric hospital and I worked for a unit with older adults and particularly older adults who had a diagnosis of what’s called a personality disorder. And so these were people in their late sixties, seventies who had suffered their whole life.

And very often it was because of abuse in their early life and they were going to suffer for the rest of their life. There was only so much that we could offer. You know, it’s quite brutal, but maybe it would prevent some suicide. That was, you know, the kind of hope. But of course, people can be living and suffering terribly and it’s deeply challenging. What you did offer people was a kind of reliability. You in a way were saying, ‘you might feel that our meeting is completely useless and yet I will be there for you, you know, in the time we arrange and moreover, I will ask you to come even if you feel it’s completely useless, because there might be something in facing that sense of uselessness that actually is the beginnings of a different possibility.’ But it’s tough. You know, this kind of work is tough. 

Gillian: That’s you talking as a psychotherapist. So within the psychotherapeutic relationship, finding healing. Tell me again, what would you, what would be your response as, as a practitioner, I guess, of spiritual intelligence practices, the contemplative side, how might that help with somebody facing a trauma and deep soul wounding that happens with life?

Mark: Well, I suppose that the analog between, or the parallel, between the psychotherapeutic practice and the spiritual hope that within spiritual intelligence, the presence of God, is that if the therapist says I’ll be there once a week or however many times are meeting someone, God is saying I’m there the whole time and sometimes it’s by learning a kind of reliability in some, in another person that you start to feel there might be a reliability in the divine presence as well.

Gillian: Thank you. Is spiritual intelligence just a solo activity? All about me, my relationship with God? If that’s my language, or is it something that can help our church communities? Our groups of God seekers that gather maybe just once a week or once a month? Who knows? But how much of this can help at the community level? Because, Mark, our communities are aching for the love of God, a bit of healing, a bit of stability right now with what’s going on. So tell us about that. Is it just solo or can groups engage and what might that look like? 

Mark: I sense that what we’re calling spiritual intelligence has been sort of returning to church communities. You know, whenever I go into a cathedral or maybe another church and there’s a place to light a candle, for me, that’s a sign that something which we’re calling spiritual intelligence is returning, this kind of embodied act that acknowledging presence.

I think also that churches that are experimenting with silence and this isn’t just a sort of momentary pause after you receive communion, but it’s something a bit more extended, maybe 10 minutes or even more. For me, that’s a sign of a shared collective yearning within the community to know something at this kind of level as well. And, you know, personally, I feel that this is a good moment for it, certainly in the UK.

I mean, it feels to me that what many people who maybe don’t even know anything about Christianity any more because it’s so fallen off the cultural radar, at least there’s some people who are yearning for a sense of mystery or presence. They don’t want it spelt out for them, you know, like a sort of scientific theory about the way that the cosmos is.

And they want to be able to dwell in something that’s much more than a scientific theory. There’s plenty of that in our culture. And so a shared space, whether that’s a gathering of people or it’s a building, you know, where people have gathered with this awareness, you know, I would hope that they become increasingly valuable and that perhaps churches that aren’t used to silence or aren’t used to these actions that, that acknowledge the presence is already there, rather than sort of trying to stir up the presence from within their midst by using music or in other means, that they’ve got a confidence that that that that is both wanted and well, even more basically that is there in fact.

Gillian: Absolutely, I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree more. This is why we’re excited about this course. I live in a Cathedral close and every now and then we have a big…we had something on Angels the other day and thousands of people streamed in. I can, you know, and no judgment, these were not the Sunday morning folk, but thousands of people came and they stayed and they dwelt, that word you just used there, and they left the most moving…there was a Post-it note thing…you know, tell us your experience of angels. People, hundreds of people had experiences of angels and told us about them in good times and bad, it was extraordinary. So I can’t agree with you more, Mark. Talking of angels, we brought angels in right at the end. You’ve got a new book out on William Blake. He was into Angels, wasn’t he? Was he a spiritually intelligent bloke? 

Mark: He certainly was, although, of course, he was accused of being insane. That’s often what happens. But yeah, it’s very, it’s funny mentioning angels, because if you read a theologian on the nature of angels, they will talk about intelligence. The angels is…an angel, is a living presence of divine intelligence.

Gillian: Well, Mark, let us end with the angels. I hope they’re gathering around us as we’re speaking. And thank you so much for joining us. 

And if today’s episode has stirred something in you, you’re not alone. We’ll be continuing this exploration over in the GoHealth Community. And if you’re looking to take this further, you’ve been intrigued, curious about spiritual intelligence, and you want to explore it in your own context. We’re really excited to be offering this brand new free course. It’s launching in autumn. Just popped onto our website, GoHealth.org.uk and you can register your interest in the course and find out more. 

As ever, huge thanks to our producer, Rosie Dawson, and to Wendy Lloyd from the GoHealth Team for all their work behind the scenes to bring this podcast to life.

And listen. Finally, thank you for listening, thank you for tuning in to the GoHealth podcast. I hope that this episode has been an encouragement to you in our life together to find a bit of wholeness and healing in the everyday, with or without the Angels, spiritual intelligence invites us to grow in the kind of wisdom that nourishes well-being, restores hope, and helps our community to flourish in body, mind and spirit.

Thank you for listening.