RE: What Shapes Our Lives - My Response to TribeSteemup's Bi-weekly Question...
As I was reading your post, to each point you made I just kept nodding my head in agreement... until I came to the part about self actualization. It's not that I disagree with it, but I guess I just don't understand it properly.
Your description sound like nirvana, in a way. Shedding desires, transcending the mundane, reaching enlightenment, and just being. Without needs and wants, without happiness or sadness, just being. Now, as peaceful as it may sound, to me this seems awfully close to being dead. Not in a bad way, (or a good one, for that matter), just absent from whatever else we have going in here, in the ups and downs of life.
Please don't get me wrong, this isn't the first time this question came up for me, but so far I haven't been able to get my head around it. So I brought it up, because from your article it seems like you have.
Actually I did want to mention the ultimate goal of Nirvana (Sanskrit: nirvāṇa; Pali: nibbana) - the ending of clinging and suffering. For it is that clinging which gives rise to suffering which, in turn, gives rise to further clinging. It's kind of a self-perpetuating process that continues on and on and is the “fuel” for rebirth. So the ultimate goal is to break out of that cycle. I didn't mention it in my post for I thought people would think I was just spewing a bunch of religious jargon but my understanding is growing where I can see the Four Noble Truths (as the Buddha puts it)