Spiritual Intelligence Competition – Soaring with the Wings of Wisdom

Every child born in the world is a new thought of God, an ever fresh and radiant possibility. The sole purpose of education is to provide the child a conducive environment to glow fully. At Atmiya Vidya Mandir, a child gets ample opportunity to think intensively using his intelligence to shape the character full of values and virtues. For that, various house wise multiple intelligence competitions are planned throughout the year. In this series, a never before seen event, the Spiritual Intelligence Competition was held on 30th August, 2014, in four different groups.

Group A: (Std. I to III)

• Spiritual Intelligence is necessary for discernment, in making choices that contribute to psychological well-being and value driven society. By keeping that in mind, the theme ‘My Choice’ was selected for grades I to III under the proficient guidance of respected Ashish Sir and Binu Ma’am.
• For grades I, II and III, one student from each house was selected, thus total 12 students participated in this competition.
• For grade I, participants were given few pictures of “Do’s” and “Don’ts” of good habits. Students segregated and pasted the pictures of good habits in the given diya shaped chart paper.
• For grade II, participants were given different things to arrange according to their choice and priority. They were also given a board game of ‘Virtues and Vices’, in which they pasted tags of virtue at the place of ladder and tags of vice at the mouth of snake. It represented that in order to win and achieve success; virtue plays a major role like a ladder while vice brings them down like the bite of a snake. The outcome of this event was very inspirational for all the grownups too!
• For grade III, participants ticked the correct option for given situation. They recited ‘Gunatitanand Swami ni Vato’, shares their friends’ virtues and wrote - how they would offer help to their friends in times of need. They also wrote their pledges on bouquet to please P.P. Swamishree, their parents and teachers.

Group B: (Std. IV to VI)

• Spiritual intelligence calls for multiple ways of knowing and for the integration of the inner life of mind and spirit with the outer life of work in the world. It can be cultivated through questing, inquiry and practice. To fulfil the same idea, respected Saumya Ma’am and Shreejichintan Ma’am organized a quiz in the school auditorium.
• There were four groups namely Manan, Chintan, Nididhyas and Sakshatkar consisting of five participants from each house.
• The first round was ‘Ever positive never negative’, in which participants shared their positive perception from the given thing and the person. The second round was named as ‘Atmkhoj’ in which reflective questions were asked to the participants based on life values presented through the creative assemblies, scriptures and daily prayers. ‘Sanskar Suvas’ was the third round in which participants were asked to talk about some sanskars such as vinay sanskar, yatra sanskar, nitya pooja sanskar and sanskar at home.
• Students sang prayer in the fourth round. Then participants shared their views and messages from the video shown to them. The viewers and judges were amazed to witness the spectacular insights possessed by the young scholars. Their performance was the evidence, how rightly their body, mind and soul have been nurtured at the right age.

Group C: (Std. VII & VIII)

• Spiritual Intelligence experiences wisdom, compassion, integrity, joy, love, creativity and peace which are necessary for individual and collective transformation. It also refers to various skills and abilities that empower one to live in harmony with the highest values and move unswerving towards the life goals. To fulfil the same, Prabhumagna Sir and Mrugesh Sir arranged the competition for this group.
• For grade VII and VIII, two participants from each house, thus total 16 students participated enthusiastically.
• Students were shown a video of a creative assembly ‘Kadhi dudhpak mein na fasao, accha jivan dhyey banao’. Then they were provided the sheet of application based questions in which they wrote their opinions, views, reactions and responses for the given situations. Indeed the competition was interesting.

Group D: (Std. IX & X)
Lord Swaminarayan mentioned in Vachnamrut Gadhada Pratham 16 that a wise person is one who identifies the flaws within himself and thoughtfully eradicates them. In order to put it into practice, the students of grade IX and X were given an introspective activity, wherein they identified and pondered the current challenges on the way to their progress and tried to find the probable solutions from the lives of enlightened souls under the competent guidance of Priyavadan Sir and Chirag Sir.
For grade IX and X, two participants from each house, thus total 16 students participated in this competition. They were given four prasangs. As a team of two students they finalized four main challenges and applied their understanding from the given prasangs and wrote their reflections. Through this competition, they identified their problems and found ways to deal with the same that further helped them to become more optimistic in life. So we can say that spirituality is about being able to see what’s wrong with ourselves, accepting the idea that we can change, and then showing willingness for actual transformation in our lives.

The competition results' summary is as per below:

Throughout the entire competition, all the participants attested that ‘Knowing oneself is the beginning of all wisdom.’