By the Spiritual Self, so far as it belongs to the Empirical Me, I mean a man's inner or subjective being, his psychic

faculties or dispositions, taken concretely; not the bare principle of personal Unity, or 'pure' Ego, which remains still to be
discussed. These psychic dispositions are the most enduring and intimate part of the self, that which we most verily seem
to be. We take a purer self-satisfaction when we think of our ability to argue and discriminate, of our moral sensibility and
conscience, of our indomitable will, than when we survey any of our other possessions. Only when these are altered is a
man said to be alienatus a se.
Now this spiritual self may be considered in various ways. We may divide it into faculties, as just instanced, isolating
them one from another, and identifying ourselves with either in turn. This is an  abstract way of dealing with
consciousness, in which, as it actually presents itself, a plurality of such faculties are always to be simultaneously found;
or we may insist on a concrete view, and then the spiritual self in us will be either the entire stream of our personal
consciousness, or the present 'segment' or 'section' of that stream, according as we take a broader or a narrower view -
both the stream and the section being concrete existences in time, and each being a unity after its own peculiar kind. But
whether we take it abstractly or concretely, our considering the spiritual self at all is a reflective process, is the result of
our abandoning the outward-looking point of view, and of our having become able to think of subjectivity as such, to
think ourselves as thinkers.
This attention to thought as such, and the identification of ourselves with it rather than with any of the objects which it
reveals, is a momentous and in some respects a rather mysterious operation, of which we need here only say that as a
matter of fact it exists; and that in everyone, at an early age, the distinction between thought as such, [p. 297] and what it
is 'of' or 'about,' has become familiar to the mind. The deeper grounds for this discrimination may possibly be hard to find;
but superficial grounds are plenty and near at hand. Almost anyone will tell us that thought is a different sort of existence
from things, because many sorts of thought are of no things - e.g., pleasures, pains, and emotions; others are of non-
existent things - errors and fictions; others again of existent things, but in a form that is symbolic and does not resemble
them - abstract ideas and concepts; whilst in the thoughts that do resemble the things they are 'of' (percepts, sensations),
we can feel, alongside of the thing known, the thought of it going on as an altogether separate act and operation in the
mind.
Now this subjective life of ours, distinguished as such so clearly from the objects known by its means, may, as aforesaid,
be taken by us in a concrete or in an abstract way. Of the concrete way I will say nothing just now, except that the actual
'section' of the stream will ere long, in our discussion of the nature of the principle of unity in consciousness, play a very
important part. The abstract way claims our attention first. If the stream as a whole is identified with the Self far more
than any outward thing, a certain portion of the stream abstracted from the rest is so identified in an altogether peculiar
degree, and is felt by all men as a sort of innermost centre within the circle, of sanctuary within the citadel, constituted by
the subjective life as a whole. Compared with this element of the stream, the other parts, even of the subjective life, seem
transient external possessions, of which each in turn can be disowned, whilst that which disowns them remains.
Now, what is this self of all the other selves?
Your Spiritual Self is you in your most beautiful and powerful form.  It is the authentic self, the unconditioned part, the
you without patterns.
This is personal for each of us, so no need to get caught up on the language.  Some may identify with Higher Self, The
Universe, God, Higher Power, your inner Buddha, your true being…  It’s the part of you that is connected to everything,
the part that is love.
If your Intellect gets in the way of accessing your Spiritual Self, simply recall a moment in time, when you were peaceful
and content.  This may be associated with nature, love, creativity, or anything else which induced a sense of serenity.   In
your mind’s eye, notice how you look; your facial expression, your posture, your eyes… and you can immediately
reconnect to yourself in your most beautiful form.
Over the past twenty years in particular, there has been an upsurge of interest in spirituality. More and more of us are
hungry for a greater spiritual reality in our lives and are searching for a deeper meaning and purpose, for an inner peace
that often eludes us and for new ways of nurturing ourselves spiritually.
Formulas that Affects how people with a sustained value see/understand Spirituality as something significant related to
their sense of self.
1. Understanding the Self
Integrated with the awareness of personal growth, evolution and connection with others and the world understood
to be part of the individual’s spirituality. Spirituality is related to the sense of self worth and awareness of one’s
own life within a larger context.
2. Way to Live
The way in which they understand day to day interactions, choices and the way they carry themselves throughout
life is colored and shaped by spirituality. How I think, how I do, what I put in my body, what I eat, the food
choices I make, any product that I may buy, spiritually where is this coming from? Food that I eat -- who's
touched it? What energy do they have or spiritual essence that they are putting on the food that I'm putting in my
body? Almost absolutely everything is impacted by my spirituality.” His stance to life is pro-active with
spirituality as the first consideration in daily decision making. Part of the here-and-now focus for life includes
doing good for others. The totality of it is all integrated and not compartmentalized. It's corporate worship, how I
live my life, pastoral care, relationships with family and friends. In order to have a balanced life and a balanced
spirituality, you have to be able to integrate all those things all together. It's not compartmentalized. It’s important
to note that both of these participants saw spirituality and relationship as an essential part of inner life balance or
alignment but also part of healthy living.
3. Relationships and Connections with Others
Spirituality played a critical role in understanding relations, both intimate relationships as well as a larger sense of
a connection with people as members of a community. A key aspect of this theme was doing things for and with
other people. This included providing care, creating positive options for others, as well as a moral dimension of
being a positive force in the lives of others. While this has been a part of the previous themes discussed, the
connections the participants experience with others takes on a significant role
For that reason, relationships and connections with others was identified as a separate theme. Like the theme, way
to live, there is an altruistic and ethical dimension to the relationships and connection with others. But positively
impacting the lives of others takes on a certain kind of priority.
4. Personal Transformation
For that reason, relationships and connections with others was identified as a separate theme. Like the theme, way
to live, there is an altruistic and ethical dimension to the relationships and connection with others. But positively
impacting the lives of others takes on a certain kind of priority. Learning to forgive, to be calm, or view self as
lovable reflect an integration of spirituality with self-awareness and becoming a better person on one’s own terms.
The transformation was unique to each participant but the theme was clear to identify.
5. Meaning and Purpose
Participants reported that spirituality provides an understanding of self-related to a sense of meaning or purpose in
life. The sense of meaning or purpose is individual and 706 The Qualitative Report 2015 idiosyncratic rather than
universal. It’s something of an answer to the question, “Why am I here?” on an intuitive level. The participants all
stated spirituality provided a context for understanding that they had a reason to live. Life became meaningful and
purposeful because of the spiritual dimension of self. Struggles earlier in life took on a valuable context while
ordinary responsibilities had intrinsic worth.
6. Joy and Happiness
it’s not “the sense of jumping up and down.” Perhaps it could be described as a kind of contentment or positive
sense in one’s life. Participant Six was clear that this was not an emotional state that passes easily but a quality of
living. “I want to use the word joy but I don't want to use the word joy in the sense of jumping up and down.
Spirituality gives joy and meaning to my life.” This was explained in a simple was by Participant Two: “I'll be
whatever I'm going to be, and seek to experience life joyfully.”
Raising the question from a psychological perspective, the investigation employed Rogers’s concept of self as an
individual’s understanding of her or his identity. To answer this research question, data was collected from six participants
using a semi-structured interview process and analyzed inductively based on the Thomas (2006) model for analysis. The
analysis demonstrated that individuals who hold a value for spirituality understand their sense of self as integrated with
spirituality. Consistent in the data, participants described an internalized and holistic understanding of spirituality that
both gave shape to self-understanding and was reflected in their thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. While there was
variety in the metaphors used to express this integration based on beliefs and spiritual practices, no matter what metaphors
were used, a similar sense of self in the world was expressed. In other words, it did not matter if the participant was
Christian, Buddhist, a yogi, or followed a very individualized approach to spiritual practice, spirituality was intertwined
with self-understanding in a foundational way. Spirituality was not limited to the participant’s self-understanding but was
also integrated with the way in which the participants lived and the relationships they formed with others. There was a
direct sense of continuity between the spiritual dimension of self and day to day life including things like the choices of
food, caring for others, using abilities and talents to enhance the world or the lives of others, in work settings, and in
intimate settings including choosing a mate. Spirituality was not only internalized by each of the participants and
integrated with the core self but it was also globalized and became part of the expression of self in relationships, activities,
and even a less tangible sense of life purpose. Personal growth and transformation was also rooted in the spiritual
understanding of self. While this may have been expected from the participant involved in a twelve-step program, it was
found among all the participants who discussed how spirituality was important during challenging life experiences as well
as in more subtle ways, like learning to forgive others or to understand oneself as capable of change. As an extension of
the other themes, spirituality was identified as the source of a sense of meaning and purpose in the lives of the
participants. In each case, meaning and purpose was not based on some external source but was derived from the
participants’ engagements with others or through work of some type. Both the engagements with others and the specific
work or activity mentioned were described as related to spirituality. Also, engaging in life from a spiritual perspective led
to the additional awareness of meaning and purpose in life.
Despite the body of research in psychology related to spirituality, there remains a fundamental divergence in the way
psychology has operationalized the construct of spirituality as opposed to the ways in which religious and spiritual
traditions use the term “spirituality.” This divergence may be related to psychology’s attempt to approach spirituality from
a scientific perspective. As noted, Robertson (2007) posited that the solution for a scientific approach to the investigation
of spirituality in psychology was to begin with the concept of the self.
Religious and spiritual traditions commonly describe spirituality in ways different from the operational definitions used in
psychological research, which often focus on spiritual practices or other measurable behavior and attitudes (Kapuscinski
& Masters, 2010). Spiritual traditions use terms that imply a spiritual dimension is a constituent part of the person. Among
those terms implying this connection are embodied spirit (Aquinas, 1981), soul and soulful as found in the Abrahamic
religions as well as Jainism and Hinduism, and statements asserting that humans are spiritual beings having a human
experience (see Teilhard de Chardin, 1955).
Spirituality is a dimension of human experience whereby individuals fundamentally integrate spirituality with their sense
of self. Further, the spiritual dimension enables individuals to create, discover, or encounter meaning, purpose, and value
in other dimensions of life including the cultural, the embodied, or the social and psychological (Kavar, 2012).
that spirituality is a dimension of self that is primarily experienced in individuals as meaning and purpose found in other
dimensions of life, including but not limited to relationships, career, hobbies, or culture.
He and other participants experience something all encompassing about spirituality in that it is an active part of cognition
and behavior. Spirituality also plays a role in relationships as well as draws a person to something that’s self transcendent
the overcoming of the limits of the individual self and its desires in spiritual contemplation and realization. elf-
transcendence, by focusing on some higher goal outside ourselves. Examples include altruism, or spiritual awakening or
liberation from egocentricity.
My life is a gift from God to be used wisely to build the kingdom of God…I have to remember always is that my life is
not really mine. It's God's life.” In these statements, the language of religious traditions has been adopted to describe the
understanding of self that is rooted in spirituality.
While there’s a primary inward dimension of the understanding of self related to or rooted in spirituality, it is also in
context within the context of a larger, outward worldview. That was reflected in the statement above from Participant
One, but takes on a particular nuance with Participant Six. Reflecting on a variety of struggles in life, she noted, “
Spirituality allows me to see myself as a person of value in a society that has in many cases tried to dehumanize me….
The spirituality I have enables me to see myself as a person of worth no matter what others might say to me, no matter
what circumstances might be. I know because of my faith, who I am and my relationship with God, that I am someone of
worth and that's really important to me.” The understanding of self as rooted in spirituality expressed by participants was
not something that occurred in just a moment or a singular spiritual experience. Instead, in looking over the course of their
lives, the participants saw this understanding of self as having developed over time. As Participant Three described it, “I
was always on a spiritual quest to find out more about who I was, to find out more about what life is all about, to find out
more about what I can do to deepen the connectedness that we all have together, the depth at which we're all connected as
one.”
The truth is that as the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged, survival for what? Even more people
today has the means to live but no meaning to live for. These are the words of Victor Frankl a 21 st century Viennese
psychiatrist. Most famous for his book, Man’s Search for meaning. In the book, Fankl detailed his time spent as a Nazi
Concentration Camp prisoner and reflects on how one can find meaning in life, even in the harshest of conditions. Frankl
whose interest in the topic of life’s meaning began as a teenager, came to the realization that while ever more people in
western nations were living lives of material comfort al too many lived in a detrimental psychological state he called the
“existential vacuum”. As he explained, the existential vacuum is a widespread phenomenon of the 20 th century. This is
understandable; it may be due to a twofold loss which man has had to undergo since he became a truly human being. At
the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal’s behavior is embedded
and by which it is secured… In addition to his, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development
inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to
do and no tradition tells him what he ought to do. Sometimes, he does not even know what he wishes to do, instead, he
either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (Totalitarianism). The
preponderance of people living lives absent of meaning led to the emergence of what Frankl called the “mass neurotic
triad”. This was a term he coined to describe the three most common symptoms associated with a life lived in an
existential vacuum, namely: depression, aggression and addiction. To help counter the dire effects that accompany a life
without meaning Frankl founded the school of psychiatry called the Logotherapy which in Frankl’s words, considers man
as a being whose main concern consists of fulfilling a meaning and in actualizing values, rather than in the mere
gratification and satisfaction of drives and instinct. Insights Frankl believed could greatly assist one in living a more
fulfilling life. A key tenet of Logotherapy is the Pursuit of Meaning, or what Frankl sometimes referred to as the will to
meaning is the primary motivational factor in humans this can be contrasted to other schools of Psychiatry which maintain
that the pursuit of pleasure of the will to power are the primary factor. According to Frankl, it is when individuals fail to
find meaning in life that they turn to dogged pursuit of pleasure of power in the false belief that so doing will fill the void
that an absence of meaning has left in them. For those who decide to pursue a more meaningful existence Frankl
emphasized doing so did not searching for the ultimate meaning of life. As he put it, “This ultimate meaning necessarily
exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man… What is demanded of man is not, as some existential
philosophers teach to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional
meaningfulness in rational terms.” While the ultimate meaning of life is unknowable, Frankl held that each person had the
opportunity to realize their meaning in life at a personal level and so doing would greatly improve the quality of their life.
It should be noted that Frankl did not believe that individuals created such meaning, rather he believed it was discovered
and was present in every living moment whether one was aware of it or not as he put it, “I am convinced that in the final
analysis there is no situation that does not contain within it the seed of a meaning in order to discover and realize these
personal seeds of meaning Frankl suggested that for most people a change of attitude is required. We need to stop asking
about the meaning of life and instead to think of ourselves as those who are being questioned by life daily and hourly. Our
answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct. Life ultimately means the
responsibility to find the right answers towards problems to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for
each individual. Frankl stressed that as unique indivduals meaning will present iitself in different ways to each person.
Each of us faced diffrernt situation in our lives some of which are more in some of which are less under our control and
influence. Frankl’s belief was that no matter what fate brought, if ne took appropriate action and adopted the right attitude
to the situation, a meaningful life could be realized in a passage in man’s search for meaning, Frankl nicely distinguished
how actualizing personal meaning differs from the search for abstract answers to life’s meaning. TO out the question of
meaning of life in general terms, would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: “Tell me master, what
is the best move in the world?” There is simply no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular
situation in a game and the particular personality of one’s opponent. The same hold for human existence, one should not
search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete
assignment which demands fulfillment.
As Frankl notes often the best way to live a life rich with meaning is to find one’s unique vocation. Nothing contributes
more to the feeling of a meaningless existence than boredom and nothing counters feeling of boredom better than having a
specific mission to carry out in one’s life. In this respect, Frankl was fond of quoting Nietzsche’s famous passage that he
who has a “why” to live for can bear almost any how, finding one’s why was according to Frankl, the best way to live a
meaningful and therefore fulfilling life. However, for some adopting a vocation and striving to achieve the goals
associated with it is beyond their reach, instead some people face situation which they have little control over. Situation
which cause immense suffering such as being diagnosed with a terminal illness or in Frankl’s case being imprisoned in a
concentration camp. But even in such situations as Frankl discovered firsthand, one has the opportunity to find meaning
and will conclude this with a passage which reflects this important belief of Frankl’s “We must never forget that we may
also find meaning in life even when confronted with the hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For
what then matters to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into
a triumph, to turn one’s predicament in to a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation…we
are challenged to change ourselves.
After his experience in the camps, he developed a theory that it is through a search for meaning and purpose in life that
individuals can endure hardship and suffering.
"Logos" is the Greek word for meaning, and logotherapy involves helping a patient find personal meaning in life. Frankl
provided a brief overview of the theory in "Man's Search for Meaning."
3. Use defiant power of the human spirit and stand up against adversity.