Soul Kadee

I’m not a religious person. Born and raised Catholic, I was lucky to have a Dad who encouraged me to think for myself. I always found myself unable to relate to the dogma preached by the padres. So I left the tribe when I turned sixteen.

Since that time, I found I related well with Buddhist philosophy and practices, and instinctively gravitated towards the Eightfold Path. In my quest to understand myself and the world around me, I came across what I thought was a contradiction between psychology (cognitive science) and Buddhist philosophy.

While cognitive science or psychology stresses a healthy sense of self (something I’ve been writing about a lot lately), Buddhist philosophy tells us that the self is an illusion, that our ultimate aim is to transcend our narrow definitions of self.

It wasn’t until I started reading a beautiful book, How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving by David Richo, that I realised there was no contradiction. As he notes in his book,

Western psychology places major importance on building a sense of self or ego. Buddhism, in contrast, places major importance on letting go of the illusion of a freestanding, fixed, solid self. These views seem contradictory until we realize that Buddhism presupposes a healthy sense of self. Indeed, first we have to establish a self before we can let go of one.

It all makes complete sense when you consider Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and his contention that self-transcendence (letting go of the self) is the highest on the hierarchy of needs.

Maslow’s modified hierarchy of needs can be further broken down into eight levels.

1. Biological and Physiological needs - air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep, etc.
2. Safety needs - protection from elements, security, order, law, limits, stability, etc.
3. Belongingness and Love needs - work group, family, affection, relationships, etc.
4. Esteem needs - self-esteem, achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, managerial responsibility, etc.
5. Cognitive needs - knowledge, meaning, etc.
6. Aesthetic needs - appreciation and search for beauty, balance, form, etc.
7. Self-Actualization needs - realising personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.
8. Transcendence needs - helping others to achieve self-actualization.

Self-transcendence actually means going beyond a prior form or state of oneself. Mystical experience is thought of as a particularly advanced state of self-transcendence, in which the sense of a separate self is abandoned.

But self-transcendence is not just for mystics. It has some very real-world benefits, according to the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) tests:

Self-Transcendence quantifies the extent to which individuals conceive themselves as integral parts of the universe as a whole. Self-transcendent individuals are spiritual, unpretentious, humble, and fulfilled.

These traits are adaptively advantageous when people are confronted with suffering, illness, or death, which is inevitable with advancing age. They are disadvantageous in most modern societies where idealism, modesty, and meditative search for meaning might interfere with the acquisition of wealth and power.

People who are low in Self-Transcendence are described as practical, self-conscious, materialistic, and controlling. Such individuals are expected to be well adapted in most Western societies because of their rational objectivity and materialistic success.

However, they consistently have difficulty accepting suffering, loss of control, personal and material losses, and death, which lead to adjustment problems particularly with advancing age.

Just as you can’t expect a starving man to care about global warming and the environment, you can’t build your higher self on a shaky foundation of low self-esteem. Before you can achieve self-transcendence, you must first meet your basic needs - for self-esteem and self-actualization.

It is not possible to love another person unconditionally, without first learning to love YOURSELF unconditionally. Many so-called spiritual people or mystics simply fail to get this. I’ve seen many of them trying to achieve self-transcendence without establishing a healthy sense of self.

I believe that many so-called mystics are actually gentle, but troubled souls, who use meditation and mysticism as a way to bliss out rather than face reality. In doing this, they’re using meditation as an addiction and just deluding themselves that they’re going to reach a higher plane of existence.

Only when their world comes crashing down do they realise that mysticism and spirituality (or religion) can never substitute for healthy self-love and self-esteem.

Recommended Reading:

How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving by David Richo

Drawing on the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, How to Be an Adult in Relationships explores five hallmarks of mindful loving and how they play a key role in our relationships throughout life:

• Attention to the present moment; observing, listening, and noticing all the feelings at play in our relationships.
• Acceptance of ourselves and others just as we are.
• Appreciation of all our gifts, our limits, our longings, and our poignant human predicament.
• Affection shown through holding and touching in respectful ways.
• Allowing life and love to be just as they are, with all their ecstasy and ache, without trying to take control.

When deeply understood and applied, these five simple concepts€what Richo calls the five A’s€form the basis of mature love. They help us to move away from judgment, fear, and blame to a position of openness, compassion, and realism about life and relationships. By giving and receiving these five A’s, relationships become deeper and more meaningful, and they become a ground for personal transformation.

Ten Steps to Self-Respect by Dr. Wayne Dyer

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…and do your best for a better world.

Here’s why.

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Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

The war against terror cannot be won on the oilfields of Iraq or the ravines of Afghanistan. The battleground is, in fact, much closer to home.

People are mirrors, reflecting back to us the fear and hatred that arises in our own mind.

We hate others when we see in them something we dislike in ourselves. We judge them because we judge ourselves.

We get angry with them because we are angry with ourselves. We treat them as inferior because we see ourselves as unworthy.

The most important relationship in your life is not the one you have with your parents, your mate, or your children. It’s the relationship you have with YOURSELF.

If we treated ourselves half as well as we treat the people we love, we’d never allow the seeds of fear, hate, anger or judgment to take root in our minds and hearts.

When you can look at yourself with love and compassion, and accept yourself without judgement, there will be no room for negativity in your mind.

In a world where everyone loved themselves unconditionally, there would be no place for terror, war, racism or bigotry.

The LOC is in your own thoughts €œ and only you can decide whether you want to control it or let it control you.

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I write a lot of stuff on this blog, mostly from personal experience, and my own interpretation of reality as I see it.

I’ve realised that sharing my feelings, however painful, can sometimes help people look beyond their own limitations. And that alone makes it worth the effort.

But I urge you not to believe anything I write here. Only believe what you experience to be true for you. I’m not so conceited to have you believe that what I write is the truth.

There is no truth. There is no right or wrong. Everything we believe to be true is only an interpretation. And everyone’s interpretation is different.

But there’s another reason what I write is not carved in stone - even for myself.

I’m not a rigid person. I’m open to learning new ways of thinking, and more than willing to change beliefs that do not serve me.

I’m learning to see life as an observer, aware that my reaction, my experience, my reality, is not ME.

I know that I need to disidentify with my beliefs, my identities, my personas, and find my center to learn who I truly am.

Like you, I’m still learning, growing, and adapting to the various situations life puts me in.

So, if you’re left wondering how what I believe one day can change completely the next, just know that it’s exactly the way I want it to be.

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A lot of women (and men), myself included, have a very hard time letting go of a relationship that’s not meant to be.

We hold on to the illusion that this person is the One for us, and that if we don’t have him or her, we’ll never find somebody new.

Holding on to disappointment, hurt, blame, anger, resentment, and bitterness, we convince ourselves that all men are jerks or all women are bitches.

If you’ve just got out of a relationship and are harbouring a lot of resentment against your partner or against the opposite sex, now is NOT the time to start dating again.

Anger and bitterness will poison even the most loving relationship. When we hang on to baggage from past relationships, we end up projecting our pain on to others in our lives €œ our families, children and, eventually, our new partners.

Our emotional baggage is usually rooted in our relationships with our own parents, or in bad relationships we’ve had in the past. We have to lighten our load and heal our pain before we can love again.

Some of the practices you need to cultivate in order to heal yourself are:

· Radical Personal Responsibility: Take responsibility for the role you played in your relationship, either by taking inappropriate action, not acting altogether or expecting too much. Stop blaming your partner. Own your feelings, so you can change them.

· Self-Awareness: Are there patterns that keep repeating in your relationships? Do you have a tendency to get into relationships with abusive people, or become abusive yourself? Become mindful of your reactions to people and situations. Learn to identify your patterns, and the unhealthy beliefs that are causing them.

· Acceptance: Accept yourself and your partner the way you are. Accept the fact that the relationship was not meant to be, that it didn’t work because it was not your highest and best.

· Forgiveness: Learn to forgive yourself for all the damage that your anger and pain may have caused, and forgive others for being human and acting out their own anger and pain.

· Gratitude: Be grateful that you’re out of a bad relationship, so you can be with someone better suited to your needs. Be grateful for all the lessons you’ve learned from your partner.

· Compassion: Learn to look at all people as human beings dealing with their own pain. Spend some time seeing the world through their eyes and you’ll become less judgmental.

· Detachment: Learn to let go of unhealthy attachments to people, things and situations.

· Independence: Stop expecting other people to give you the love and acceptance you should be giving yourself. Learn to meet your own needs, let go of expectations, and enter a healthy, inter-dependent relationship.

· Optimism: Optimism is not essential, but it makes life so much easier. It was my optimistic outlook, positive attitude and belief that everything happens for the best, that helped me bounce back from tragedy. Have faith that the best is yet to come.

It’s been over a year since my husband passed away and I’ve spent the better part of the last year dealing with my own pain and grief. I realised that until I took responsibility for my own feelings, I was never going to be able to have a healthy partnership with a man.

It took a lot of tears, hard work, introspection, and spiritual practice to break the chains of the past. What made it harder was that I chose to do it on my own, instead of taking help.

But it was worth every moment! And the feeling of freedom and contentment that I experienced was just awesome.

Getting rid of my anger and hurt helped me stop blaming others for my pain, and allowed me to see men as they really are €œ wonderful, sensitive human beings who have the capacity to love, to care, and to hurt just as deeply as women.

It also allowed me to love life again, to see the beauty in every experience, to be non-judgmental and open to new relationships. I’m in no hurry to start dating again, but I know that I have the maturity to separate my own issues from those that arise in a relationship between two people.

I’ve also learned that if something is not working, it’s probably not meant to be. You can’t force someone to love you, just as you can’t force commitment or marriage. These are stages that should happen naturally, when it feels right for both people.

Contrary to popular opinion (and the myths propagated by sad love songs) love is not meant to hurt. If you’re in pain, what you’re experiencing is not love, but attachment or codependence. Too often we fall in love, not with our partner, but with the IDEA of being in love.

It’s best to let go of a relationship that’s causing too much pain. Instead of wallowing in the past and writing your own sad love song, do your inner work, get rid of the anger and disappointment and get on with your life. Let go of your partner with love, so you can move past your hurt and learn to love again.

Here’s a list of some books that helped me in my own quest to let go of the past.

Recommended Reading:

Mars and Venus Starting Over: A Practical Guide for Finding Love Again After a Painful Breakup, Divorce, or the Loss of a Loved One
This book by relationship expert, John Gray, probably helped me more than any other book I read in the last year. It has practical exercises for working out your anger, pain and resentment. I credit these exercises with helping me clear my old baggage and get free.

Inner Bonding: Becoming a Loving Adult to Your Inner Child
This amazing book by Margaret Paul helped me identify my own patterns of codependence and learn to meet my emotional needs without turning to another person. Get it if you have emotional dependence issues.

It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken: The Smart Girl’s Break-Up Buddy
Extremely funny and enjoyable, this book is a hilarious look at break-ups and shows you how to deal with your break-up in a healthy and dignified (read, non-psychotic) manner.

He’s Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys
If you’re in denial about whether the man in your life is really the One, you gotta read this funny take on the sorry excuses men make to avoid telling you the truth €œ that they’d much rather be somewhere else than with you.

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God, I never thought I would actually shed tears at the passing of Steve Irwin, the crazy Australian crocodile hunter and conservationist!

I mean, I never really cared for the way he seemed to terrorise those poor animals into submission.

And as a mother, I was completely horrified when he put his one-month old baby in danger, even though, he claimed, the only way he would have dropped him was “if the ground shook.”

Along with millions of other people around the world, I thought he’d really gone off the deep end that time.

I actually prefer Jeff Corwin - he’s dishier, and nicer to the animals. But as an environmentalist, I had more than a grudging admiration and respect for Steve’s passion, his willingness to risk life and limb for his work, his true love for the animals he protected, and his radical, if somewhat lunatic methods.

I’m comforted knowing that he died while following his passion and doing something he loved. To use a phrase from the movie, Legends of the Fall, “It was a good death.”

I salute the divine in you, Steve Irwin. Goodbye from a fan in India. You will always be a hero to me.

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Some of my men friends have told me about women who use sex to extract something they want from their men. The rewards are usually in the form of jewellery, luxuries, attention, affection, or a wedding ring.

The men I spoke to described these women in less than complimentary terms. As a woman, I think that using sex to manipulate a man is a very bad idea. I mean, why use sex?

If you want to administer cruel and unusual punishment, just hide the remote control when the World Cup is on, and watch him squirm. That could even be considered torture under the Geneva Convention.

As a woman, I enjoy sex too much to ever think of using it to manipulate someone. I still choose, in this age of instant gratification, to believe that sex is sacred. That its sole purpose should be mutual pleasure and enjoyment. And, of course, making babies.

While I don’t claim to comprehend the reasons why women use sex as a weapon, I suspect it has something to do with power.

Even as little kids, boys always had the upper hand in terms of physical power. In societies like India, where girls are valued less than boys, men also have the upper hand psychologically.

For women who grew up in families where they had no power, the only way they could command respect from a man was by depriving him of the one thing he craved most.

You might call it Nature’s way of correcting the imbalance. Yes, it’s not fair. But who said life was fair?

Of course, if you’re the kind of woman who doesn’t play fair, you must also be prepared for the consequences. That means losing your power and being dumped as soon as your man finds a way to get his needs met elsewhere.

No self-respecting male would tolerate a woman who manipulates and controls him for something that is so cheaply available on any dating website.

When you use your sexual power to manipulate a man, be prepared to have it backfire sooner or later.

Men Are At Fault Too

You men (yeah, you there with the big grin) don’t deserve to be let off the hook so lightly. Not all women use sex as a weapon, y’know?

Women love sex just as much, if not more, than men. But there’s a significant difference in the way men and women experience intimacy.

Men need to be sexually intimate before they can open up to emotional intimacy with a woman. Most women, on the other hand, require emotional intimacy before they can fully open themselves up to sexual intimacy.

Don Juan understood this fact - and he was never short of willing partners.

There are many reasons why your woman might lose her desire for you, or just refuse to have sex with you altogether.

Usually it has to do with the way you’ve been treating her. In other words, if you ain’t makin’ nice, she ain’t puttin’ out.

Yeah, we all know how charming you can be when you’re trying to get lucky. But it’s how you behave AFTER the deed that really gives you away.

THE SUREST WAYS TO KILL A GOOD WOMAN’S DESIRE FOR YOU:

• Be mean, hurtful, rude, insulting, abusive, neglectful, disrespectful or critical
• Don’t be willing to meet her emotional needs
• Don’t be being a sensitive, caring lover
• Don’t ever show her that you value her as a person
• Don’t ever let her know that she’s special to you
• Don’t bother spending time with her outside the bedroom
• Totally destroy her trust in you
• ‘Take’ too much in the relationship
• Make her compete with other women for your time and affection

No self-respecting woman would give herself to a man who doesn’t treat her well. It’s only the codependent, manipulative types, and those with low self-esteem, who will have sex with you to please you, or to get something they want from you.

So if all you want is to get laid, go ahead. But don’t complain that you feel used, or that good women want nothing to do with you.

If you insist on travelling light, be willing to settle for less. In love, as in life, you only get back what you’re willing to put into it.

If men need to understand that they have to treat their woman well to enjoy their favourite sport, women also need to understand that sex is one way to get close to the men they love (and a very enjoyable way, at that).

So stop using it as a weapon, girls. The only perversions in sex are its use for purposes other than for pleasure and intimacy, wrote George Weinberg, Ph.D, in his book, Why Men Won’t Commit. And that, ladies, is the honest truth!

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I want to reproduce a beautiful article on spirituality by Jane Roder today.

Spirituality - The Inward Journey Of The Self

• It’s self-love and feeding your inner flame, your deepest desires.
• It’s making conscious choices that are in direct alignment with your deepest desires.
• It’s being open to the joy that life has to offer.
• It’s honouring yourself, setting personal boundaries, and being prepared to say no sometimes.
• It’s not worrying about what other people think of you because you feel secure within yourself.
• It’s becoming a more authentic person and taking off your personality mask.
• It involves taking responsibility for developing an individual code of morals & values and living by these values.
• It’s taking responsibility for the results you are getting and creating in your life
• It’s personal honesty at any cost and getting real
• It’s seeing adverse and painful situations as an opportunity for personal growth.
• It’s coming to terms with death and seeing it as natural as birth.
• It’s knowing that life is always changing that we cannot control anything €œ that nothing is guaranteed or certain.
• It’s knowing what drives you.
• It’s recognizing what pain from the past is still affecting your life today and what needs to be healed within you.
• It’s knowing who you truly love, and what you are truly passionate about.
• It’s knowing who and what you would die for.
• It’s knowing what you would give up the Porsche and the big house for.
• It’s about truly feeling the universal energy at work and feeling the oneness and connection to all people and all living things.
• It’s an appreciation of the healing properties of nature.
• It is about love for all people, honesty, integrity, trust, creativity, compassion, commitment, fun, forgiveness, joy, self-love, and all the higher ideals in life that give us a sense of meaning and purpose.
• It’s becoming more enlightened on a heart and soul level.
• It’s getting out of the head space (of musts, shoulds and have to’s).
• It’s being able to sit still with yourself in complete silence for a period of time to find the wise answers within.
• It’s getting the damaged adult part of yourself out of the way, and returning to the unconditional love and joy of the child state, so you can make a difference to your own life and other people’s lives.
• It’s about the protection and development of the soul, and the lessons we need to learn in this lifetime for us to evolve to a higher level of consciousness - to become more compassionate, loving and forgiving (to get in touch with our spiritual self).
• It is being aware that all the great spiritual masters taught the same messages€œ these being love of self and others, honesty, forgiveness, joy, lack of judgment, sharing, faith, gratitude etc.
• It’s is being constantly conscious that our words and actions affect every individual we interact with, in a positive or negative way €œ that these individuals then go out and affect others who also affect others.

Knowing this truth we realize we have an individual responsibility to the universe. With this awareness we realize we have the capacity to change the world when we continually empower others in our day to day lives.

Jesus said … The kingdom of god lies within

Buddha said … The greatest battle in life is the one with ourselves

We need to experience quiet and clear space in the mind to tap into our spiritual nature. Meditation, self-help books, courses, and being alone with nature are very powerful for this purpose.

We do not necessarily need to belong to a church or a religious group to access the power of spirituality. The power is within us.

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