Chapter 2

Growing Whole

The future is born of your wholeness.

Who do you want to be when you grow whole? This question is indeed fascinating. It evokes action and inspires a reach for further learning and development.

Yet some interpret the question to mean that there is something missing or wrong in their lives. They find it hard to imagine that a functional person would be anything but whole. They think to themselves, “I know someone who needs this,” but they rarely see themselves as someone who needs it too.

As you read this book, I invite you to suspend all thought of someone else in order to fully focus on your own journey to wholeness.

No matter how successful you are, you still have much to learn. Some of the things you will think about as you read this book will challenge you. They may even make you feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. These feelings will facilitate your ability to find greater meaning in the successes you already enjoy. You may even discover an expanded definition of success. All of this will be good for you. Please be willing to lean into the discomfort as you reach for greater understanding.

Success is a funny attribute. The more successful we become, the more delusional we become when we think about who we are. Because our accomplishments make us feel great, we begin to allow our successes and the resulting outcomes to define us. This makes it easy for many of us to sit on our success plateaus believing that we have somehow arrived at enlightenment ahead of schedule.

I want the dialogue in this book to be a conversation between you and me. What that means is that you will hear my voice through my writing and then I will ask you to pause frequently so that you can hear your own voice through your own thinking.

Thankfully, you and I will see many things differently. It is not my desire for you to accept all of my views. My hope is that my views will evoke in you a desire think about your own views. Additionally, I hope that as you examine your own views you will gain greater self-understanding, which, in turn, will lead you to profound personal growth.

Don’t rush through this book. It is purposefully brief. It is designed to evoke your vision of wholeness. I want you to actively engage in the thinking process—that is why I don’t want you to rush through it. An important part of learning is taking the time to discover how you can apply what you are learning to the life you are living.

The Quest for Perfection

The journey toward wholeness requires that each of us gain an understanding of who we are. We must be able to grasp the nature of our individual worth, divine potential, and personal identity.

The path to arriving at this understanding may be different for each of us. One of the wonders of enlightenment is that it can be approached from many different angles, indicating that all paths of truth ultimately merge into one. Upon convergence, we travel the final approach together until we arrive in the presence of the Divine Source.

The development of spiritual intelligence is an important part of growing whole. It is also one of the key ingredients for living a well-spent life.

Hopefully, along your personal journey, you were taught a framework of how to exercise and develop spiritual intelligence. I invite you to get in touch with that framework now. Please examine how you make sense of spiritual matters. Because it is growing more common for the development of spiritual intelligence to be ignored or neglected, it is important for you to hear your own voice. No one else can do this work for you. Please take a moment to consider the following questions:

What does spiritual intelligence mean to me?

What actions am I taking to develop spiritual intelligence?

To truly understand the whole meaning of spiritual intelligence, we must examine its parts. The word intelligent is derived from the Latin word intellegere, which means to perceive or understand; further back, it comes from inter- and legere, which means to choose, select, or gather. When we develop spiritual intelligence, we enjoy an increased ability to pick out the actions, experiences, beliefs, and values that create greater meaning and purpose in our lives. This power of discernment expands our ability to understand our eternal nature. As we come to know who we really are, the great questions of life come into focus and we find ourselves aligned with divine purpose and legacy.

My personal journey toward wholeness and my development of spiritual intelligence included a careful study of the New Testament. I was fascinated by a passage I read in one of Jesus’ most famous sermons. At the close of the fifth chapter of Matthew, Jesus invites his disciples to become perfect. The boldness of this invitation evoked in me a deep sense of awe and wonder.

I found myself pondering whether or not He really meant it. I spoke with many people who thought He did mean it, but they also thought that perfection is something that we cannot become in this life. They thought it was something to strive for, but not a reachable target. Many suggested that it would be something we could only become after this life.

I found that way of thinking to be rather uninspiring. Why would Jesus mock His followers with such an unreachable goal? Why not just say “Be good,” “Be great,” or “Be excellent”? The written record indicates that He used the word perfect, so I was certain that it was intended to be one of the more real and significant challenges of our lives.

As I carefully studied and pondered this text, I found that the word perfect was translated from the Greek word telios. The literal translation of the word suggests a process and not an end state. It does not mean unflawed or unblemished. Instead, it means to become whole, complete, fully developed, and even finished.

Understanding the Greek etymology helped me see that perfection is a process and a journey that all of us can and must pursue. In fact, all of us do pursue it with various levels of intensity at different points in our lives.

Here are some additional questions to consider:

What are my thoughts on perfection?

Does reaching for perfection inspire me or bring me down?

Why does perfection affect me that way?

Defining What It Means to Be Whole

Before we go on, please take a moment to define what it means to you to grow whole. Since it may mean something different to you than it does to me, I want you to clarify your thoughts before I share mine.

What does it mean to me to grow whole?

To me, growing whole means becoming the person that I was always meant to be. It means reaching for my personal potential. It invites greater levels of self-awareness. Growing become whole means that I am willing to examine every aspect of my life, and that I am willing to embrace being who I am over doing what I do. I means that I am always ready and willing to learn and grow.

Wholeness inspires a constant focus on reaching for the next level. Our eyes must always be looking to a promising and fulfilling future. When we stop reaching for the next level, we start feeling out of focus, disconnected, and even burnt out.

Once again, wholeness invites you and me to become who we were always meant to be. Living into that promise is living into perfection.

Current Level versus Potential

The very thought of constantly reaching for the next level and living into perfection scares many of us because it forces us to realize that we can never rest. There will always be a next level. The reach for wholeness is a reach for our potential.

Wherever you are right now, no matter how much success you enjoy, that success is nothing more than your current level. It may be higher or lower than anyone else you know, but it is still your current level.

Just above where you are right now is your potential. If you reach for it, you will attain it. The level above you, once attained, will then simply become your new current level. Potential is much like tomorrow: it seems very close, but it is always a day away.

There is good news. Compared to the empty feeling we get when we reach for the things of the world, the reach for our potential is actually quite energizing. This is because potential is the quality of being or becoming. As we reach for new levels, we become more like the person we were meant to be. Each step is a step toward becoming complete.

Each current level is a new starting line and each reach for potential is a new finish line. The experiences in between are there to polish and refine us. We feel our best when we reach for who we are meant to be. That reach will always be a series of reaches. Our finishing...