Spiritual Leaders

Spiritual leaders are spiritual pathfinders who aspire to achieve the highest measure of what it means to be human, and use their spirituality in the service of others. Spiritual leaders demonstrate behaviors and beliefs that Dorothy Sisk and E. Paul Torrance in Spiritual Intelligence: Developing Higher Consciousness proposed as spiritual intelligence. These individuals speak and act in accordance with perceptions and values that reflect a larger perspective, and their words and actions awaken in others the recognition of universal truths. They demonstrate the power of one person being able to reinvigorate a community or a nation to restore hope and raise expectations. Through lives of service, spiritual leaders transform biological reality into a transformation of the spirit. They transform the conditioning forces of ethnicity, gender, socialization, or political that constrain them. One major characteristic of spiritual leaders is their sense of purpose and other-worldliness, being in the world, but not of it.

Spiritual leadership is manifested in the wisdom of the ages, and their lives leave footprints on the sands of time. Spiritual leadership is imbedded in spirituality, but there is a distinction between spirituality and religion. The Dalai Lama in Ethics for the New Millennium offered this clear distinction:

A number of spiritual leaders manifested spirituality at an early age, and many were in hopeless situations; yet, they were able to find ways to make a difference. The spiritual leaders presented in this entry represent people of integrity who inspired others with their ideals. They made things happen that others thought were impossible and created new ways for society to be.