Existential Intelligence

Why It Might Be Foundational to Our Well-Being—and

Crucial to the Optimal Success of Our Heart Powered Ventures

By Saniel Bonder

(Note: This article was originally posted in early 2021 on the blog of a now-defunct business network called "Heart Powered Ventures" — thus that phrase in the subtitle.

Around that time I also posted the piece here on LinkedIn and have done some edits since, including in early 2022 and little touches now, early 2023. "Heart Powered Ventures" in this context refers to all our compassionate, service-centered forms of contribution, in businesses, organizations, and all the other venues through which we express our gifts and make the differences we're here to make. ~ SB)

The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change.

That’s the subtitle of Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff’s autobiographical book, Trailblazer.?

What rings my chimes is the immense release of potential change when high-impact, values-driven business leaders become as embodied in spirit or consciousness as they are skillful in commerce.

However, most serious business people are uninterested, ambivalent, or closeted about spiritual awakening.

In his books Benioff is frank and open about his mindfulness discipleship to the late Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn and his other spiritual adventures, values, and commitments.

But for everyone like him, thousands of business professionals find all that?“woo-woo,” otherworldly, unreal. Or at most, it's a secret, private part of their lives that they don't dare bring into their business connections and activities.

I spent my first two adult decades as a dedicated, some who knew me would say obsessed, spiritual seeker.

Upon finding the awakening I was looking for, in late 1992, I dedicated my life to democratizing it and the potential, often much needed character refinements which living on that foundation makes possible.

For the last 30+ years, that calling wakes me up every morning and never sleeps.

Along with my wife and full partner Linda Groves-Bonder through our Human Sun Institute and Human Sun Media, and dozens of other now-independent colleagues, I’ve helped many hundreds find similar permanent awakenings. Thousands have benefited from our Waking Down in Mutuality? offerings.

Few of us would call what we’re living “spiritual" in a conventional or traditional sense. This awakeness is not an otherworldly, altered state. It’s about getting here, embodied, in a profoundly new immediacy with material life on Earth.

It’s a dynamic, paradoxical disposition and worldview, a nirvanic immanence, with an unshakable wellness in one’s core “feeling of being.” It opens our hearts to unprecedented empathy and our minds to refined discernment.

Recently I’ve begun to speak of this developmental disposition and capacity as “Existential Intelligence.”

Harvard education professor Howard Gardner coined that phrase in 1995. His groundbreaking book, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, appeared twelve years earlier.

To Gardner, existential intelligence is a cognitive capacity for asking and pondering the big “existential questions.” Forms of existential intelligence, not exactly named as such, can be found through most spiritual traditions and many practices of contemporary origin.

Not merely cognitive, it’s also not exclusively religious, spiritual, or sacred.

Our model of existential intelligence is Heart-based and activated.

Writing “Heart“ with a capital "H" points to the one great Heart we all share. In our view, that Heart is coming alive and awake in, as, and through every body. It opens a most intimate access to that ultimate nature in the center of our bodily life. This access is both material and spiritual, divine and human, unbounded and local, liberating yet in touch with all ordinary joys and sorrows. It helps us end our inner wars and keeps us working to clarify, live, and speak our ever-evolving truths. Linda's and my core message is, “The Sun in your Heart is rising!”

That message is not merely or only metaphorical. And none of this is merely or only a matter of mental belief. Existential intelligence is a whole-being disposition that can come alive as we deepen in any form of benign, tolerant religious faith or self-developmental practice, spiritual or secular.

As we mature in existential intelligence, our souls, minds, and every cell of our bodies become infused with Mystery from our Heart of hearts. We can then tacitly attune to the interconnected “I AM” of every “me,” the God-ness literally pumping every body's blood, giving us life and awareness, pervading our world.

In his paradigm-shifting 1995 book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman proposed that emotional intelligence, “EI,” “can matter more than IQ.”

We suggest that existential intelligence, or “Ex I,” may reveal itself to be foundational to our whole life-experience—and thus to IQ, EI, and all our other intelligences.

What does existential intelligence offer us for our heart powered ventures, work, or service?

• In October 2020 the renowned consultancy McKinsey reported that, mid-pandemic, top CEOs were learning how to “elevate ‘to be’ to the same level as ‘to do.’” They were having to become ministerial stewards and empathic coaches, not just commanding captains; and to be more vulnerable, personal, relatable, and supportive of their teams. Even with social distancing, the resulting metrics were indisputable—for instance, productivity rises when teams see videos of their boss walking his/her dog. But making these unprecedented changes requires a deeper “inside job” of changing ourselves than many of those CEOs had ever attempted.
• Around the same time, Inc. magazine relayed the results of 174 studies finding that the single most important trait in all close relationships—including in business—is “psychological flexibility.” A major UK psychological society identified six attitudes and skills in psychologically flexible people:

1. Openness to and acceptance of both good and bad experiences
2. An orientation to present-moment mindful awareness
3. Freedom from ruminating on the negative
4. An orientation to the bigger picture
5. Perseverance despite setbacks
6. And staying in touch with “deeper values” no matter how stressful things get.

All these attitudes, skills, and self-reinventions, which have a lot of resonances with each other, can be cultivated. It’s work and it's never easy. Most often, it’s a hero’s journey.?

And, the stronger and more confident we are in our personal existential intelligence, the more effective our cultivation becomes of these traits and capacities, as well as others pertaining to EI and other intelligences.

In our times, these qualities and skills are critical. For some, nowadays, it’s all we can do to keep our families fed, roofs over our heads, kids getting educated, rent or mortgages, staff, vendors, and creditors paid, and everybody we love healthy.

For addicted super-doers, there’s what Einstein spoke of, the frustrating dilemma of trying to solve problems—both in how we are “being” and how we are “doing”—from the same mindset that created them.

The “mindset” of existential intelligence, well accessed, is deeper than ego, thinking and perceiving mind, even soul. It grounds us in our very being or existence and, simultaneously, to use Thich Nhat Hahn's term, our "interbeing" with all others and the whole world.

Finding a “more ‘being,’ less ‘doing’” way of cultivating that "being-set" can be a key that unlocks all those positive potentials I cited above. Once stabilized, its anchor underneath the restless currents and crashing waves of daily experience can supercharge our growth and radiate calm, love, lightheartedness and joy to those around us.

Infusing our inner lives and outer relationships, existential intelligence can help us turn our heart powered ventures into our own “greatest platforms for change.”?

That’s the proven potential of Linda’s and my Human Sun HEART Work for realizing this wondrous depth and bringing its practical gifts to bear in every aspect of your life and work. We always customize the application of those resources for every client we coach; as Linda likes to say, this is not a cookie-cutter process! We welcome you to contact us and find out more. Email us at [email protected] or text me, +1 415.847.5514 here in the U.S.

Wherever your journey may lead, please do cultivate whatever form of existential intelligence sings most to your heart. You won’t regret it! ~ Saniel

(c) Saniel Bonder 2021-2023. All rights reserved.