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Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and our Sense of Fulfilment

Money isn’t Everything – Or Is It?

by catherine | Nov 7, 2018 | Mindfulness

Is your Attitude to Money Screwed Up?

What Do You Really Think About Money?

When it comes to defining your attitude to money, it is often hugely problematical. Money is such a wide and varied topic that you will have taught hundreds of different subconscious beliefs around it!

The majority of people when asked the question “what is the one thing you want more of in your life”? The answer would be money.

Money is being the underlying root cause for building and destroying civilizations since time began. Money has been used to kill people probably one of the most significant examples of this in the 20th century was the Biafran war. North Nigeria starved the Biafran’s into submission.

Money is merely a currency like any other. It is not a plastic card or a plastic note with metallic strips, and it’s not diamonds or pearls or precious metals.

In its purest form money is freedom. Unfortunately, this is where the problems set in and why there is such a diverse range of attitudes around cash.

Freedom is different things to different people. For some people, it means having the time to spend quality time with their families and friends. For others, it means having enough money to travel and escape their families and friends.

Lack of money causes a lot of worry and stress in most people’s lives at some point. Some people worry about basic needs such as paying the rent and security.

Wealth means different things to different people. Wealth and what it means to you also change during stages of your life. For a teenager having enough money to take their date out to a nice restaurant might epitomize wealth. In your and 20s and 30s wealth may be the ability to purchase your own house. In later life, wealth may be having enough money to live out your life.

For a lot of people fear is at the root of their actions around money. They are frightened and overwhelmed by the idea of what it takes to make dreams reality.

Other people have all the money they need and will never experience wealth and abundance. They have money and resources and material possessions. What they lack is the benevolence and gratitude to appreciate their money and share it.

Before you can achieve wealth on your terms, you need to define what wealth means to you. The primary objective is to understand that wealth is a currency and a tool. All the money on the planet will not make you wealthy per se.

The real secret to achieving abundance is to experience gratitude. All of this like most things in life is a mindset. Every day we are all faced with challenges, but genuinely appreciating the life we have will change it.

The idea of you manifesting £1 million if that is all you want will never happen. I want £1 million, or $1 million is not enough. It is essential that you envisage what you will do with that money.

What is the purpose of the million pounds? What you intend to do with the million pounds. What would you do with £1 million if you have it?

Set your Intention

The universe love specifics. It doesn’t care what you asked for. It doesn’t judge your request it just sends you what you asked for. When you’re not clear about what you want to attract in your life, you will attract a lot of surprises. What you pay the most attention to is what you will attract into your life.

The gentle on yourself around the concept of money. It is straightforward to sabotage your vibration when you are working from fear and thinking about an uncertain financial future.

I’m not a fan of “fake it until you make it.” Except, when you are thinking about abundance and wealth and bring into your life. Cherish the money you already have. Tidy your wallet or your purse and clear out all the old receipts. Take out everything in your purse that you no longer need.

Feel as though the wealth you have manifested has already come into your life. When you’re worrying about the bills dropping through your letterbox, you are inviting more bills and more expenses. This is a difficult concept to get your head around. To change the mindset from fear and worry to abundance.

You have to trust that the universe will give you everything that you need. You need to trust that the universe has the power and everything you’re going through is perfect for now.

Every morning when I wake up and every evening before I go to sleep I open my heart for source to fill me with unconditional love. I feel that love in every cell of my body. I breathe out that love back into the universe. I can feel the fluid flow of energy coming in and going out.

It is the same principle with manifesting money you need to be able to feel security that money will come in and go out.

You may think that it’s impossible for you to get rid of those negative feelings. If you continue along the journey of negative emotions, then you will attract more of the same. The law of abundance will forever elude you.

So to recap, how will you go about manifesting money.

1. Make a Detailed List of What you Want the Money for.

Write down everything you will do with that money. This includes the amount of money you need to manifest to giveaway. It may be giving money to charity or creating a charity or sending your children to school.

2. Add up the Total of Money That you Need to Cover Everything That you Need.

It doesn’t really matter how extravagant this list is. The universe really is not going to judge you if you want £10 million.

3. Letting go of limiting beliefs.

Money is not in limited supply. The age-old saying is that money cannot be created or destroyed is nonsense. Money is energy and like all energy can be expanded or contracted.

Some of the limiting beliefs around money are

“Money is the root of all evil.”
“No one benefits from having money.”
“I don’t deserve money, and money is for people who deserve it.”
“Wealth will never come to me.”
“Money is a limited resource.”

To create financial abundance, you need to ditch these beliefs. I have to be fair it took me many years to overcome these beliefs. They are so deeply buried in your subconscious mind that they take some digging out. I started by having a soul blockage clearance and then by doing daily work on healing myself.

4. Believe that Money is a Positive Power for Good.

You may want to affirm the following money affirmations
“Everywhere I go I shower money and benevolence onto other people.”
“I can afford everything I want in life.”
“Every day I attract more wealth and prosperity into my life.”

6. Be grateful and appreciative for the money you do have.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you will know I love a gratitude journal. I write that I am appreciative of being able to have a warm and comfortable home. I appreciate a boiling hot shower in the morning. You may think I am always grateful for the money that allows me to have ………….. a gratitude journal is for you these are just some ideas for you to transform your attitude around money.

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Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and our Sense of Fulfilment

Change your Reality be Creative

by catherine | Nov 2, 2018 | Mindfulness

Where the Attention Goes the Energy Flows

The mind, your mind likes to keep everything compartmentalized and tidy. To do this, it labels everything. Change your Reality be Creative, ditch the labels.

During this labeling process things often become negative. If you wake up with a stiff neck in the morning, your mind tells you ” that’s bad. You’re getting older”.

Your mind tends to look at the negatives and the things that can go wrong. The mind is trying to protect yourself. It rejects what is going on in the minute, this minute in favor of bringing about a better future.

Because the mind can’t appreciate the now it makes is continuously busy. It is a state of mind the Buddhists call “monkey mind.” It is the mind’s constant striving to give you an endless list of things that need solving.

There are always things to improve about our finances, our health, our career, our diet, and even our spiritual health.

You may be thinking you need to live more in the present, or you need to stop judging people or be more compassionate or more intuitive et cetera.

The spiritual seekers are not looking for a better reality, or the authentic self or the truth they are merely looking for a to-do list!

We are co-creators of our , and everything is already perfect. Why would you want a list of steps to make you feel that way more often when that situation already exists.

Nothing lasts forever.

Let’s suppose you are feeling sad or reflective. Is that so bad? What’s wrong with that. Is sadness a problem at this moment, in the moment.

Usually, there is only an idea about a problem in the moment. By thinking about is this idea a problem now it reduces the stress what is happening now. This is the opposite of adding something to an endless to-do list. It reduces the sense of overwhelm and put things more into the perspective.

There is a significant side effect from this because when we come into the present and value the present, for now, we are connecting with a sense of wonder in the world. Not only is nothing wrong present in our lives in this present second but there is also an infinite depth of richness and love we can access.

Change your Reality be Creative

This type of thinking opens our heart center. This is a connection to peace joy and satisfaction in the now.

To go back to the example of the pain in the neck. Can you feel the pain in the neck? Is the neck tight? Are the muscles in the neck tight? Is there a tenseness around the pain? You are just exploring what is already here. There is no judgment attached to this questioning. It’s not going anywhere it’s just examining what is here now!

These questions aren’t to get you anywhere but to encourage you to savor where you are now. Quite often we look at life as being difficult, or challenging or sometimes just plain impossible.

Underneath all that suffering every moment offers sensations thoughts feelings and ideas. Sights, sounds, smells, desires and longings, touch and feelings constantly bombard us amongst other things.

Yet, is not these feelings or senses that is causing us to suffer. We only experience suffering when we start to look at these feelings and judge them and begin to work out how we can make them better. It is only when we resist all of this wonder in the world that we feel we are suffering or challenged.

Most people think suffering is the result of a bad experience; it isn’t. Pain comes about by allowing our attention to focus on something that doesn’t exist. We keep picking at the scab of fantasy, which are these ideas we think a reality.

At best, they are very insignificant truths. The suffering ends when we flow our attention towards what is actually happening. What is actually happening is true at the moment. Suffering is the gap between what we think is happening and what is actually happening. If the difference between the two a small the suffering will be tiny. The gap between the two is massive the suffering can be colossal.

Perceive Your Reality in a Different Way.

Even when something terrible is happening in your life, you may not feel any suffering. For instance, when my husband was in a hospice dying, I didn’t feel any pain. You would think to watch someone you love that it would be painful, but in reality, I could not watch him suffer anymore. The pain came later when I realized the loss of his presence.

Sometimes you suffer because you are frightened of change. Once you understand this fear, the change which is happening is not so terrifying. Your happiness doesn’t depend on what is happening. All our hopes and fears and worries are tiny truths when we let them go we release the suffering.

All those hopes and fears and desires don’t nourish us. What we desire isn’t in our presence or our present. If it were, we wouldn’t be thinking about it, wishing it to happen and wanting it.

Equally our fears are not in the present we are not frightened of something that is actually happening now. We are frightened about something that may well occur or not in the future.

Rejection and desire are two mechanisms we used to increase our sufferings. We tend to see-saw between the two.

Imagine this scenario

You are at a party when you are feeling lonely and bored because the friends you came with speaking to other people. You think if only I were thinner/more interesting/ funnier et cetera, I would be more interesting.

Then you daydream about fulfilling that desire. Whether or not you achieve what you are thinking about is irrelevant because even if you do become thinner/more interesting/funnier, then you still reject what is going on in the present. You will always judge the present not to be great so you will dream up something to make things better.

In reality, you are clutching your small self, me, the ego. You are correctly not even aware this is making you feel small incomplete and unsatisfied. You can only trust what you feel when your heart center is genuinely open. When you give your attention to the reality fantasies and desires and rejections, the suffering dissolves. We become curious about the process of rejection, but it no longer hurts us because we’re not judging it if we are indeed present in the moment.

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Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and our Sense of Fulfilment

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and our Sense of Fulfilment

by catherine | Oct 31, 2018 | Mindfulness

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow was an early 20th century psychologist. He was important because unusually in a psychologist he looked at what drove the positive qualities in people. He was the father of what became known as “humanist psychology.”

What is self-actualisation

Maslow developed a pyramid of six layers. The highest layer being “self-actualisation.” Self actualisation is living life to your full potential.

He agreed with Dr. David Hawkins that you have to meet your initial needs for food clothes and shelter before you can look at any form of self-development.

If you like, it’s a bit like the cynics guide to the law of attraction. It doesn’t work for everyone, and the reason it doesn’t work is that some people have to spend most of their time just simply providing security. They have no time or energy left over to develop themselves.

When we are full of shame or guilt, Our energy density is so low they cannot put any energy into raising their energy.

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Psychological Needs

These are at the bottom, and they are the most basic requirements for all living beings. They are the necessities of life. Water, air, and food. Every living creature will die if we are of these for long periods.

It also includes basic needs of temperature control or honest artists in human beings. The ability to excrete toxins. Sleep and rest and even sex. If you think about this, it’s all of the things we need to survive.

One-eighth of the world’s population do not have clean water in their homes or sufficient food to feed their families.

These psychological needs are sometimes not met when there is no lack. Some parents use food deprivation as a punishment. Later in life, you may be driven to seek food even when your body isn’t hungry.

The modern research studied the effects of the potato famines in Ireland in the 19th century. They have concluded that a significant reason why people are obese in Ireland as a result of this famine. People are literally born with an innate drive to eat. It’s as if once exposed to famine we can never forget its effects!

Safety Needs

Safety basically means shelter. It involves some form of shelter from the elements. It means clothes and a sense of the familiar.

According to Maslow if you do not have money to be able to pay for the most basic of shelter, then your safety needs are not being met. You also need the necessary clothing which has to be warm enough for the climate you live in. This does not mean clothes that you buy by choice but the clothes that you need to have by necessity. You also need to have sufficient money to be able to provide the mechanisms to get food. That means access to shops or markets to pay for the food and pay for the transport there and back.

Many adults have a sense of psychological insecurity. They have a dread that something catastrophic is going to happen.

Also when things change in life, you feel unsafe and insecure. Major traumatic events such as divorce, or widowhood can have this effect. It can also be caused by losing your job.

Meeting your safety needs implies that you have a level of control over the events in your life. For instance, if you lose your job, you have some money behind you to pay the bills until you find another one.

Love and Belonging

A sense of belonging initially starts in a family environment. As you grow older and go to school, then it expands to friends, to your church, social groups, and any activities in a group setting.

In an ideal world as a child, you will be surrounded by unconditional love. You will have felt loved and cherished by multitudes of people. This acceptance will have nurtured you and allowed you to become a mentally stable adult.

When you have had this, you were able to give this on conditional love to other youngsters who are in need of guidance. You do not need to be bolstered by other people.

In the real world, your parents probably did their best. They may have been too young, too pressurized by lack of money or too immature to have given you that unconditional love. On the other hand, they may have been deprived of that unconditional love themselves and not know how to show it to other people list of all the children.

This is one of the reasons why as adults many of us fear to be alone. We feel accepted in social groups.

Esteem

We achieve the fourth level when we can begin to reflect on, acknowledge and be proud of what we have accomplished. It is the level when people start not only to accept us but to praise us and recognize our competences. It implies a level of achievement and a level of status. Once we have reached this level, we have begun to arrive!

Levels of Self-Esteem Control Our Behaviours

The level of self esteem that we have in our lives influences all of our public behaviors. These are the behaviors that are witnessed by others. Most adults need to seek the approval of others. We need to justify and validate our behaviors. Quite often this is a result of feeling slighted in childhood. This is a feeling all of us of experience to lesser and greater degrees.

The majority of people who use Facebook or Instagram or any other form of social media on a daily basis are actually begging for this self esteem. What they are asking people who follow them is “look at how great I am” and “acknowledge how great I am.”

This is because we are our own harshest self critics. Many of us judge ourselves exceptionally harshly. We display behavior towards ourselves which just would not be acceptable if we were to behave that way to others.

We lack self-compassion. To some extent, this comes from the accumulation of all the judgments during our growing up years. Our parents, grandparents, friends, peers and virtually everyone we’ve ever met has judged us.

At some point, all of these judgments are lacking, and they have made the mark on our subconscious.

What Do These First Four Levels Mean?

These first four levels are known as deficit needs. We are motivated and driven if we do not at least get these first four levels balanced in our lives.

Maslow himself stated that you needed certain freedoms to accomplish these levels. They include freedom of speech. The ability to express ourselves openly and be heard. Another important aspect is the ability and freedom to access new information.

However, these freedoms are external freedoms we need to look inside at internal freedoms to create change.

Tomorrow we will discuss the top needs in the Maslow hierarchy.

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Identifying Personal Core Values

by catherine | Oct 29, 2018 | Mindfulness

Identifying Personal Core Values

What Are Your Core Values?

Your core values are principles or a belief that is of critical importance to your life. You need to identify them because when you acknowledge them they can guide you. Adhering to these core values will dictate the way you behave in every aspect of your life. Not defining them will in the long term have an adverse effect on your life. Defining them in this way is defining the positive aspects of core values

Examples of core values are things such as

Calmness
Loyalty
Peace
Trustworthiness

Of course, some core values can be detrimental. When you define your negative core values, you can change them. Examples of negative core values are only the strong will survive. You may believe that you are powerless to change your circumstances. Because of your upbringing, you may think that you don’t deserve good things in life. You may believe that people are grasping or untrustworthy. You may even think that your life is worthless.

Negative belief systems are no more permanent than positive belief systems. By becoming aware of the ideas in your head that become thoughts, you can change the way you think.

In conclusion, our core values highlight what is important to us and what we stand for. It is essential that we isolate and stand by these principles. When we don’t, we find ourselves overwhelmed in many different ways. Some people will display neurotic or compulsive behaviors. They are driven to do things all the time whether it be work or play. They are addicted to many things, food, drink, social media, their cell phone etcetera

Many people fear that if they stop they will have to think about and examine where they are in their lives. When you don’t identify your core beliefs, you coast through life and flounder rather than flourish. A diminished self worth is not uncommon.

Are Core Values Different From Society’s Values?

Yes, they are very different. Society’s values are defined by what is beneficial to your culture rather than helpful to you as an individual person. For instance, cultural values may include power, money or success.

While these things may be necessary to you, they don’t define who you really are. Chasing external power will prevent you from growing as an individual. Your individual core values will allow you to improve and achieve anything that you want.

Power in society’s terms comes from external forces such as being a local councilor, being a judge or any other paid or unpaid position that theoretically gives you status.

You cannot find your core values in anything that society teaches you. Neither St George nor the Dragon holds the key. The answer is within yourself. Only you can find it!

By the time you have defined your core values, you will not have reached the end of your journey. Hopefully, the process will have changed you. You will enter uncharted territory. It will, however, be your territory. This is your story and no one else’s.

How to Define Your Core Values

Look at the list of core values below. They are under headings. The more deeply you think about what these words mean to you, the better it will be. This exercise aims to isolate the three values that you want to live by.

Acceptance
Accomplishment
Accountability
Accuracy
Achievement
Adaptability
Altruism
Ambition
Assertiveness
Attentive
Awareness

Balance
Beauty
Boldness
Bravery
Brilliance

Calmness
Candor
Capable
Careful
Celebration
Certainty
Challenge
Charity
Cleanliness
Cleverness
Comfort
Commitment
Common sense
Community
Compassion
Competence
Concentration
Confidence
Connection
Consciousness
Consistency
Contentment
Contribution
Control
Conviction
Cooperation
Courage
Courtesy
Creation
Creativity
Credibility
Curiosity

Decisiveness
Dedication
Delight
Dependability
Determination
Development
Devotion
Dignity
Discipline
Discovery
Drive

Efficiency
Empathy
Emotion
Emotional Intelligence
Empowerment
Endurance
Enjoyment
Enthusiasm
Equality
Ethical
Excellence
Excitement
Experience
Expressive

Fairness
Family
Fearless
Feelings
Ferocious
Fidelity
Focus
Foresight
Fortitude
Freedom
Friendship
Fun

Generosity
Genuineness
Giving
Grace
Gratitude
Greatness
Growth

Happiness
Hard work
Harmony
Health
Honesty
Honor
Hope
Humility

Imagination
Improvement
Independence
Individuality
Innovation
Inquisitive
Insightful
Inspiring
Integrity
Intelligence
Intensity
Intuitive

Joy
Jubilance
Justice

Kindness
Knowledge

Lawfulness
Leadership
Learning
Liberty
Logic
Love
Loyalty

Maturity
Meaning
Moderation
Money
Motivation

Notoriety

Open Mindedness
Optimism
Order
Organization
Originality

Passion
Patience
Peace
Peacefulness
Performance
Persistence
Playfulness
Poise
Potential
Power
Productivity
Professionalism
Prosperity
Purpose

Realism
Realistic
Reason
Recognition
Reflective
Reliability
Respect
Responsibility
Restraint
Reverence
Rigor
Risk
Risk Taking

Satisfaction
Security
Self-reliance
Selflessness
Sensitivity
Serendipity
Serenity
Service
Sharing
Significance
Silence
Simplicity
Sincerity
Skillfulness
Smartness
Solitude
Spirit
Spirituality
Spontaneous
Stability
Status
Stewardship
Strength
Structure
Success
Support
Surprise
Sustainability

Talent
Teamwork
Temperance
Thankfulness
Thoroughness
Thoughtfulness
Timelessness
Timeliness
Tolerance
Toughness
Traditional
Tranquility
Transparency
Trust
Trustworthy
Truth

Understanding
Uniqueness
Unity

Valor
Victory
Vigor
Vitality

Wealth
Welcoming
Winning
Wisdom
Wonder

Zealousness

These are not values that you would like to live by, and they are values that are fundamental to your very existence. It is crucial that you choose the correct values because these are the values you will live by. You will struggle and find it difficult if they really are not your beliefs.

The first step to defining personal core values. It goes without saying that these words are merely a guideline. You are entirely at liberty to reduce them or add to them or change them. Don’t forget they are your personal core values and they must resonate with you, not with anyone else.

Write down a minimum of 10 of these words and a maximum of 20. Next, to it write down how important they are to you. Write it down on a scale of 1 to 10. The number one is the least important and the number 10 is the most important.

In the third column write down how difficult you will find it to live by these words. Again writing a one will mean it will be relatively easy, but 10 means living by this value could be difficult.

In the fourth column write down how much you practice this trait every day as a matter of course.

Tomorrow we will talk about refining this list down to a shorter list of five and then to a core list of three.

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Understanding Ourseves Is Vital For Human Growth

by catherine | Oct 20, 2018 | Letting Go, Mindfulness

Understanding Ourseves.

All permanent growth, personal growth, in my opinion, comes from knowing and understanding ourselves. I believe that if we don’t truly understand ourselves that we can’t really understand external events and physical things. We are always drawn into negative actions and get attached to things. If we don’t understand ourselves then we can’t possibly understand others.

Drawing back this curtain of self-deception is undoubtedly not an easy thing to do especially when you first start. Not only is it difficult, but it is also painful because we have to expose ourselves to the misconceptions we have about ourselves. In fact, many people may well ask why would anyone bother to do it– surely we are better staying in our comfort zones.

I would say that understanding our true natures means giving up destructive emotions and also eventually giving up the pain. Pain is not a necessary emotion we have to feel to experience life to the full. However, to get past the feeling of pain, we do have to come out of our comfort zone!

In three weeks time, it will be 100 years to the minute on the 11th of the 11th 2018 since the first world war ended. I grew up in the 50s with the description that this was a war to end all wars. Yet it seems to me 60 years later that we are no nearer to peace than we were then.

When I was a child, it was a very different world I understand that not everyone had a television nor a car. Yet it seems to me we lived in a world where we felt safe. I grew with children who didn’t fear! Today when I watched children I believe that they have a deep-seated sense of fear. I am not sure they even know what their concern is about but that sense of dread in itself is worrying for the future of humanity.

We Can’t Live With Fear and Be Happy

It strikes me that happiness itself has mental and physical aspects. It is a combination of inner peace, security, economic viability, and world peace. Establishing these ideals should be a collective responsibility. Wherever we live, where ever we come from, wherever we were born, whatever religion we practice or don’t practice, we all want to be happy. We all want the same thing. We don’t wish to suffer for ourselves or our loved ones.

We shouldn’t settle to watch suffering on any level. Not every one of us can be born a human. It is a choice that we make. An opportunity to live and experience the world with bodies. Everyone on the planet faces the same collective problems, and we should be looking to secure peace collectively.

The First Step Is Forgiveness

My most significant achievement so far in my own personal growth is to open up my heart and forgive. I have forgiven anyone who has ever harmed myself or my family. Forgiveness itself is cathartic. I have found; personally, it has opened up my heart, and I am much more compassionate towards every living thing.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean that I’ve accepted other people’s actions as being okay. I can’t change those actions. Indeed, forgiveness doesn’t mean I’m saying that I condone their actions. It just means I have let go of the right to judge those actions. If we can’t forgive other people, then the resulting hatred and bitterness and anger consume us all.

I was honestly making myself ill by judging others. It doesn’t mean I even have to see the people I have forgiven. The very act of forgiveness brings a feeling of peace in itself. I am not wasting any negative energy or in fact any energy deciding how I think about it. Letting go of the emotion is enough. I can live in harmony with the people I forgave without having to see them. In fact there is no reason why our lives should ever have to cross again.

That means in this life and in future lives. Hopefully, it says I have literally learned my lesson. When we see things wrong in other people, or we see things that irritate us, we are looking at mirror images of ourselves. We are each other! I am the same is my brothers and sisters we are all one.

Those that know me to know that I am not a religious person I do not believe in a God. Nonetheless, I do have tremendous sympathy with the Buddhist philosophy that all our troubles stem from an attachment to things we think are permanent.

In the pursuit of our own happiness, we can be aggressive and competitive with our fellow human beings. We think that just because we have the money to pay for human resources such as water, fresh air, and any material thing that we want that it is okay to have them.

Although there are a lot of people think about their human footprint on this earth there are many many more that don’t. People who think they can have anything that they want and squander resources are ignorant of life as it really is. The relentless pursuit of individual materialism is inhuman.

The humane antidote is unconditional love. You may well think that you love your close family unconditionally. Often you don’t, and the love is based on attachment rather than altruism. We need to foster a sense of natural and unlimited love and compassion towards everyone, including those who have done you harm or even great harm.

All of us can realize that at the beginning of life when we are young, we are dependent on the love and compassion of others. We need our mothers to breastfeed us, or someone to feed us. Many of us as we age will require kindness and compassion from other people to survive. That may be our families, and that may be other people who simply care. In my world, it is inconceivable that if we can see that we need people at the beginning and end of our lives that we can ignore people in our middle years.

We are all born compassionate and altruistic it is an innate human characteristic. That means that we are born with that ability. Of course, it is very pragmatic in the days when we had smaller tribal families it was a matter of survival. We helped other people to survive because even if our descendants didn’t survive our brothers and sisters descendants might do so.

In other words, the family will go on. Because we are born with that sense of compassion, it is one of the reasons why compassionate acts rarely hit the headlines. We see every night acts of violence on the television or read about them in the newspaper. That is because these acts are truly shocking to our very nature.

When we can separate ourselves from the judgment of all things and lose our sense of attachment we can look at life with a clear mind. When we cloud our minds with hatred, anger, jealousy and any other negative emotion we’ve already lost. We lost control of ourselves and also of our judgments. In those irrational moments, anything can happen including war and murder. Which is why we must strip back our nature so we can understand ourselves and every other human being on this planet. Very shortly in the future, our very survival as humans may well depend

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Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and our Sense of Fulfilment