The Triangle of Spiritual Intelligence, Metacognition and Consciousness

Abstract

In the most challenging era in human history, the scientific community recognizes spirituality as a fundamental factor of human intelligence. Researchers from different fields such as Psychology, Medicine, Educational sciences, Economy and Business embrace the notion of Spiritual Intelligence. Nevertheless, it is considered as one of the most controversial and highly debated notions. The first section of this study gives a brief overview of the essential theoretical framework including definitions and theories related to Spiritual Intelligence. In the second section, we present a layered approach of Spiritual Intelligence based on the corresponding layered models of Knowledge-Intelligence-Consciousness. The results of this study showed that Spiritual Intelligence constitutes the backbone of every subsystem of human intelligence as it integrates, matures and transforms every physical, intellectual, and emotional ability and leads to the highest forms of self-awareness, self-knowledge and consciousness. The realization of our true Self, of our hidden and highest potentialities is tied inseparably with the hierarchical organization of knowledge through metacognition and executive functions. Specifically, higher order forms of self-observation, self-regulation through attentional, emotional and impulse control, problem solving, mental flexibility and adaptation could reveal our true and eternal identity. Spiritual intelligence is essential to be incorporated mainly into the dialogue of business ethics, leadership, mental health and psychotherapy, education especially in the case of learning disabilities and gifted education

A Metacognition Based 8 Pillars Mindfulness Model and Training Strategies

“…Amongst others, neurotransmitters influence brain areas such as the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, the hippocampus and many other areas crucial for metacognition, intelligence and consciousness [13][14][15]. The hippocampus, for instance, is orchestrated with the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala and the hypothalamus to generate attention, memory and imagery as well as emotional processing that permit one to recognize, discriminate, understand and channel one's negative emotions to enhance the positive ones [16][17][18].…”

8 Pillars X 8 Layers Model of Metacognition: Educational Strategies, Exercises &Trainings

“…The learner, according to our approach, is treated as a combination of physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual needs which gradually advance. Education in the 21 st century is called upon to both encourage individuals' gifts and self-actualizing needs and prepare students to enter in a high-consciousness society [76].…”

Theoretical Models of Consciousness: A Scoping Review

“…Finally, we found 11 articles that obtained a score of 4 or 5 for the association between consciousness and other cognitive functions. As in the NCC dimension, we found interesting perspectives that ranged from the complete overlap of consciousness with other functions (e.g., memory and attention in the learning process) [ 22 , 23 ] to the definition of consciousness as a sort of metacognition in layered models (see [ 58 ]), which is debated in some articles that considered metacognition equivalent to consciousness (published after the time range of this review) [ 188 , 189 ].…”

“…Therefore, the limitation on the medical dataset and time range deployed in the search strategy determined that several articles that we knew to be important for a debate on consciousness models were not included in our analysis. There is an increasing amount of literature in computer science on the relationships between intelligence and consciousness (e.g., Drigas et al presented a new layered model of consciousness that combines the dominant theories of intelligence adapted to recognized models of telecommunications and computer science [ 188 , 189 ]), affirming that cognitive processes contribute to the representation of knowledge. Some important metacognitive components are transformed into superior levels of consciousness (see [ 193 ]).…”