Jasmin Lee Cori, M.S. - Author, Mind, Body & Spirit

Reflecting on the subject of spiritual maturity one day, I was thinking about how we get wowed by psychic stunts and people who come in the right package (right credentials, garb, right spiritual name) and end up getting taken for a ride. I decided we could use a more objective way of assessing things.

I thought about emotional development and also intelligence. In both cases, there are specific capacities that can be culled out and also a way to look at an overall level of development. This seemed like a good basic framework.

If, for instance, we are talking about emotional maturity and assessing a person who looks “together” in many ways but repeatedly has temper tantrums and fits of jealous rage, we would likely conclude that person isn’t so mature after all. At best their development is “uneven.”

Same with intelligence. If we look at the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, we see that people can score very high in specific capacities, but if they are really low in others, it limits their overall IQ.

Maybe we should do the same with spiritual maturity, I fancied. We could create a Spiritual Maturity Quotient. Now if I were into pop books, this could be hot stuff. Imagine: people could take a paper-pencil test, find out their SMQ, and then go around feeling either better about themselves or worse, depending on the score. But then just taking a test and being into comparison would knock your score down, so maybe the concept is all wrong.

More seriously, my point is that spiritual maturity should not be measured by the extent of one’s most developed capacity but rather by looking at a whole range of capacities, along with some measure of their integration. Here are some of those capacities as I see them.

1. The capacity to still the chatter of the mind, to drop into silence and to know and experience in more direct ways.
   
   
2. The capacity to let go, to surrender, to not hold onto things—be they grudges, praise, self-importance, material goods, roles, relationships, or anything else.
   
   
3. The capacity to be open, to not know, to not be in control, to tolerate emptiness and the deconstruction of your small self.
   
   
4. A capacity for discernment, for being able to see what is true and what is false, what is so and what is fantasy or projection. The person with this skill has a capacity for what Zen teacher Toni Packer calls “seeing.” I like this word because it feels sort of like x-ray vision. It is seeing through appearances and recognizing truth.

1. The capacity to stop avoiding and to be with what is painful without drowning in it. If we can’t let go of our defenses, we’re stuck in our shell and can’t feel the true radiance of our being.
2. The capacity for compassion and kindness and generosity. The development of the “heart qualities.” For sure, the capacity to love.
3. The capacity to be ever-more inclusive, to accept what is different from you and recognize truth wherever it is found.
4. The capacity to allow yourself to be invisible at times and to put yourself at the service of others.
5. The capacity to take yourself lightly, to laugh at your own shenanigans, to make mistakes and not get all upset about it. The capacity to accept your imperfection.
6. The capacity to live what you know, to walk your talk.

I could go on, but you get the point. Spiritual maturity, like these other areas of development, can be assessed more accurately if we include constituent parts.

We also need a measure of wholeness. Is there an integrated whole or only a set of capacities with a lot of holes in between? So there would have to be some way to measure that.

Wouldn’t it would be great if I could quantify all this and put the test on the market? I could create a system of levels, ranging from “dull” (haven’t ‘woken up’ yet) to “full beam” (avatar). The levels in between might correlate with a system for rating light bulbs: low bright, medium bright, high bright. It would give us another way to talk about ourselves. Instead of playing the alphabet game (“I’m an INFP. I bet you’re an ESTJ.”) or asking “What’s your fix?” (enneagram, not drugs), we could ask what level they are on the SMQ.

Oh, I suppose to really sell, I’d have to change my list to conform to how people more often talk about these things. The items would be more like these: How many teachers have you had, and at what levels were they? How many retreats have you gone to? How many conversations have you had with God?

At that point I started to lose interest, but then I got a really hot idea. Not only could I measure these capacities and meta-factors, but I could take points off for certain things—just like in the game of life when you lose points for major boo-boos. What would I take points off for?

1. Hypocrisy. That’s a biggie. You know, the guru who requires celibacy but can’t keep his pants on. Or the evangelical preacher railing against infidelity or homosexuality while secretly living a double life.
2. Encouraging false images, hiding parts of yourself so that you look like you are more together than you are.
3. Self-deception/self-delusion. Thinking you are far beyond where you are.
4. Changing your name too many times (more than two). Teachers get double penalties.
5. Reciting too many spiritual aphorisms in one conversation.
6. Having nothing on your bookshelves besides “spiritual books.” Take two steps back. You’re a junkie.
7. Not having any friends outside your spiritual community. This borders on cult.
8. Not being able to cut vegetables without slicing your finger because you’re not in your body.
9. Kicking your dog or humiliating your partner or child or parent. Acting out your anger. (Note: Anger itself doesn’t knock you down—just the unconscious or uncontrolled expression of it.)
10. Needing someone else to take care of material life because you can’t come out of Samadhi long enough to make a phone call or pay a bill.

I was going strong. It was especially easy to see what spiritual maturity was not.

Then my balloon burst. I saw that we don’t need a test. Life is a test. It constantly mirrors back to us how we are doing, although sometimes we get on the wrong track by scoring the wrong things.

And then of course there’s death. That’s the acid test. What happens when you drop all of your costumes, when your life as this recognized entity is over and your soul has gone home? When you stand next to the incomparable light and look at your life, what will you see? Maybe like all those books about near-death experiences suggest, it will come down to just one question: How well have you loved?