Just a Stranger in a Strange Land: Part 1 – Lines of Development

Do you ever feel the world is place filled with strangers?  You spend your days and nights hanging out or working with people that are supposed to be your friends and colleagues, but often you feel like they have no idea who you really are.

They might be living with you.  They might be your spouse or lover.  They might be your parents or your kids. 

Then once in awhile you find someone, and you just seem to resonate with them right away.  You feel like they understand you, and you understand them.  Wow! 

Story of my life. 

It took me a long time to realize that we are not all alike.  We vary as individuals in many aspects.  I will outline out what I found.  It has been so very helpful for me to better understand:  Who I am, and, why do I so often feel like a “stranger in a strange land.”

We will discuss multiple intelligences, lines and levels of development, and 2 methods of considering personality types (in 4 separate blog postings!). 

Howard Gardner listed the following multiple intelligences: 

Logical-mathematical

Spatial

Linguistic

Bodily-kinesthetic

Musical

Interpersonal

Intrapersonal

Naturalistic

Existential

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences

We will translate “existential intelligence” as spiritual intelligence.  We can argue at length for merging many of the above, or splitting them off.    Others have expanded these lines even further:

http://mannymolecular.com/mind-emotion/25-multiple-intelligences-and-lines-of-development

Ken Wilber calls these multiple intelligences “lines of development.”  I like both terms.  The term lines of development has some greater use when combined with tomorrow’s topic, levels of development. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber. 

What is most important to consider is that each individual will be stronger in some intelligences, or lines of development, and weaker in others. 

For instance, you can have a great spiritual leader, with whom many people resonate and feel an increased level of spirituality in their presence.  But, that leader’s interpersonal intelligence, which we can also label as moral or emotional intelligence, is so low that they abuse their students sexually. 

Although these are simplistic examples, because individuals are more complex than this, you can imagine that the combination of high cognitive, or science-logical, intelligence with low interpersonal intelligence leads to the socially awkward individual often labeled as “nerdy.”  The high body-kinesthetic intelligence along with low interpersonal intelligence we might label as the “jerk jock.” 

Women in general seem to have higher emotional intelligence than men.  But, this is not a strict rule.  Women do on average seem to be more relational with others. 

Next Levels of Development