What Is A Soul?

KATHLEEN: Today, I have Cory Rosenke with us and he is an author, pastor communicator and a tenacious pursuer of truth. Cory Rosenke is both the concept pioneer and the foremost authority on the cravings of the soul through session, song workshop and manuscript.

KATHLEEN: He is dedicated to the pivotal work of connecting hungry souls to the joy of their maker in a world where truth and reality have been become shrouded in deceptive ambiguity. Cory Rosenke specializes in reasserting the clarity of divine definition and design. Welcome Cory.

CORY: I am delighted to be here. I am on a lot of shows very often, but I have been specifically looking forward to being on here with you today.

KATHLEEN: Well, thank you so much for that, Cory. I appreciate that. Why don't you tell our guests a little bit about your journey in becoming an awakening spirit?

CORY: Yeah. Well, my journey started in poverty in the mountains of British Columbia. As a boy wandering the forest asking the question why? I think I think a lot of kids actually, I'd say that's probably one of the first questions a child ever asks is the question of why.

CORY: But for myself, being in poverty, being in remote poverty, I would even say, I didn't have the opportunity to be distracted by people or games or events or sports. I asked the question of why and that why led me into philosophy for years. My journey began in philosophy, specifically the great philosophers or what I would consider the great philosophers of Plato and Aristotle and on and on.

CORY: You know what, I didn't find my why in philosophy, I found a lot more questions of why, which I think is ultimately what philosophy is meant to do. It's meant to make us think and wonder and marvel. Philosophy often asks more why's than it answers.

CORY: I journeyed into psychology and specifically, I fell in love with Freud at a young age and just his whole theories on the development of personality and the id and the ego and the super ego and all those, all those words that we very much associate with Freud.

CORY: I have to say, I didn't find my answer in psychology either. The next thing I went to was neuroscience and neuroscience for your listeners. I'm sure many of them have wondered about this. They've heard a lot about it. It's a fascinating science. It's a fascinating study. It's an evolving study.

CORY: Just the neuroplasticity of the brain. Kathleen, the way that we realize that whether it's trauma or self-discipline, our brains can literally change shape over time and rather quickly and the effects of brain chemicals, serotonin dopamine. It's an absolutely fascinating thing.

CORY: Yet I've learned at this stage that I'm at now that journey from philosophy to psychology through neuroscience. That was the study of mechanism. It was the study of an engineering. You think of two pistons firing back and forth. It's not the study of why.

CORY: That ultimately led me to look deeper not just in the body, not just in the brain but in the soul. Ultimately, I believe if we are gonna answer the biggest whys circling in the world today, the biggest why that is kind of erupting in your listeners hearts. The answer is gonna be found in the soul.

KATHLEEN: I believe that. What is your definition of a soul since that is the topic of our conversation today?

CORY: Well, I think a way to describe it that made it feel best for most of your listeners would be I say the soul is our nonbiological selves. We are three part beings, body, mind and soul. Two part biological, one part nonbiological and it just so happens that soul is the core of who we are. I think that's the confusion in the world today because I can't see your soul, Kathleen.

CORY: I can see your biology, right? I mistakenly interpret you as simply a biological creature when you are so much more. In fact, the core of who you are. The seat of your personality, the seat of your vibrance. To be honest, on the negative side, the seat of our desperation and our frustration is not biological. It's non-biological, it's the soul.

KATHLEEN: It makes perfect sense. They say that you can see your soul through your eyes. I can't tell you how many times people have told me what they saw in my eyes. I may not have felt that way, but what they saw.

KATHLEEN: I knew that was the true essence of me because I remember in 2008, when I said I wanted to be a better person because here was my outside self, here's my inside self and they were so far from apart. Now as I've spent since 2008, I've really worked on bridging both of them together because who I was on the inside, I was not operating that way from the outside.

KATHLEEN: I don't think I looked at it the way that you're talking about it. I knew that was the essence of me, but I never put the word soul on it. But it makes sense that would have been my soul.

KATHLEEN: That's who we are, that's who we are aspiring to become when we want to be better versions of ourselves. I think that's what we're going into is that godlike self. What transpired for you when you started to go down this road and stared studying this more because you have a, I love your take on it because I think that's accurate.

KATHLEEN: I really do. But what made you come through that? Yes, I've done all the studying, like you said, I was fascinated with the philosophers and Aristotle and I got into a little bit of the neuroscience. It's like, ok, you're walking my path a little bit.

KATHLEEN: But I never really stopped long enough on the soul than I just assumed what it was.

CORY: Well, I often think of it this way. I think what really kind of set me down the path of wanting to really talk about the soul specifically, like I said, or if you prefer the phrase our nonbiological selves that works too is we live in a world today that I have become convinced we have forgotten what it means to be human.

CORY: Again, I think that just comes back to the simple fact that we are somewhat deceived or fooled by the biological shapes with which we interact every day and we forget that we are so much more. I often think of it this way if you picture a car, imagine that we were just seeing a car for the first time.

CORY: We had never seen one before. It just popped in front of us. I picture the, the hood, in the curve of the door, that's philosophy, right, the shape of the head lights and just the aerodynamics of it, that's philosophy.

CORY: Then we move into psychology and we start looking at the connecting points, the tie rod ends, right, the wheels that turn the steering wheel that moves this whole drive train.

CORY: Then neuroscience, it's kind of the looking at the electrical system, and the oils, that are pumping back and forth and as wonderful as it is to look at that car, we have to realize this car does nothing but sit there and rust without the driver. The true wonder and marvel of the car is the driver in the seat, who's the only one that can make it move forward and back.

CORY: Who's the one that determines whether we turn left or right or drive slow or speed? We have gotten stuck in this world today looking at the car and forgetting the wonder of the driver because that's the core of it all. That's the core of who we are.

CORY: For me, that's really what took me down this road is to look at this and, and think of this. I had a conversation with my son last night actually, how I talked about how, I was giving him one of my old man speeches and I was telling him how, when I was a kid, Christmas was so magical because things happened at Christmas that never happened at any other time of the year.

CORY: I remember the Mandarin oranges came out only at Christmas and they were wrapped in green paper. You knew when the Mandarin oranges were in the store, it was Christmas time and you got excited and the nuts, the table would have bowls of nuts, never any other time of year like that.

CORY: Then of course, the idea of gifts, we didn't get a lot of gifts. We didn't have a lot of things. Those gifts at Christmas it was just a magical time. I said, now think of it today.

CORY: One of the reasons why I think Christmas has become less and less magical for so many people is because to a certain degree, we now live in Christmas every day. We have everything all the time. We wonder more than ever. We wonder what to give people who have everything that we can think of.

CORY: I remember my son said to me last year, I asked him what he wanted for Christmas. And he said, dad, I have everything I want. It was just like, wow, but here's the thing. My son is not happier as a boy than I was as a boy. He's on his own journey.

CORY: I think of it this way, let's think of the fact that we live in a world today that has more possessions, more things, more access to wealth, opportunities to education, comfort, leisure, world travel. The list goes on. We have more than any generation in the history of the world. Yet virtually every study shows us to be more unhappy than ever.

CORY: We're depressed despite we have access to more education than ever. Virtually every study shows we're more confused than ever. We're more divided than ever. I would say under the surface of our culture, there is even this rage, there's this sense that oh man, anything could happen at any moment.

CORY: All of that, despite the fact that we have more than any generation in the history of the world. Clearly, we're missing something and I believe what we're missing is the soul. We've forgotten what it means to be human. We've forgotten that the core of who we are is spiritual.

CORY: It is not biological and we just keep piling on and consuming biological things and we pursue biological things and we marry people for their biology and we use people for their biology and we've forgotten what it means to be human and that I believe is the root of our unhappiness.

KATHLEEN: We have Cory Rosenke in the room with us today and we are talking about the soul.

KATHLEEN: Cory as you were talking about Christmas and I totally identify with you on that Christmas thing because it was magical and it still is magical to me today and it's not about gift giving, it's about creating or expanding or, and what's the word I'm looking for?

KATHLEEN: I can't think of the word but it's about community more or less because I have friends that come over for Christmas and I like baking. I give them little care packages of cookies and apple butter. Because to me that's what Christmas is about. It's not about how much money did you spend?

KATHLEEN: They have everything I have everything. It's about sharing like how Christmas used to be back in the old days because it was about that sense of friendship and love and celebration because you are celebrating each other. Then when you went down about how the kids today they're not happy and we do live in a very unhappy world.

KATHLEEN: It's a raging world. It's angry. It's frustrated because we are going after the material and we're not going after the true essence of us. It's like we put God on the back burner. And even though our soul is a piece of God, we don't even have to say it's God.

KATHLEEN: It's just that we put that on the back burner and we're letting all this material stuff run our lives and nobody, and I mean, nobody that I have brought on my show so far has said that all the money that they've made has made them happy, not one. I've had millionaires on the show and they're, I was unfulfilled and, and of course, we live in a society that I'm sure a lot of these people that are striving for the almighty dollar are going.

KATHLEEN: What do you mean? It's not making you happy but it doesn't make you happy. It makes your life easier. It makes it convenient. That's all it does. It's not about buying things and there's only so much you can do and money affords a lot of things where you can help other people but it's always, that's why I brought the show.

KATHLEEN: I mean, that's why I call this the journey of an awakening spirit. Even though I didn't put the word soul on it, that's what I'm striving to be. Who is the best version of me that I can be.

KATHLEEN: This is a school as far as I'm concerned, we are here in a school and just because we know academia that's not getting me where I feel happy and joyful and pleased and yes, the darkness that comes from being in the soul when that's up there. I've been down that road too.

KATHLEEN: It's a hard place to be but the way you bring this together and this marriage of how you brought in philosophy and neuroscience and psychology and then the car putting it into the car, it's like, oh my God, you are so right on the money with this.

KATHLEEN: Tell us more because I know there's so much more about the soul that I know. But it's more of a personal intuitive side and you seem to have really grasped more of what the words are for people to really embrace this in such a way because people always said I'm woo woo. Ok. Well, that's fine, but that doesn't mean anything.

KATHLEEN: I'm working and I've spent a lifetime grounding this in, but you've mastered it. Let's hear some more about how you interpret the whole issue of the soul, how you think we can bring it out, how it help you to bring yourself closer into your oneness. Share with the audience a little bit more about that in your journey.

CORY: Well, as you mentioned at the beginning, I believe that definition is important and we're in a world that is increasingly moving toward the ambiguous and losing definition. I think when we lose definition, we lose understanding and when we lose understanding, we really lose confidence, we lose our anchor.

CORY: As far as the word goes, I would say to simplify things a little bit, the word soul, the word spirit, even the word heart, they're synonymous. We're speaking of our nonbiological selves. We're gonna hear that coming up in 2024 at the Paris Olympics. We're gonna hear all about the triumph of the human spirit.

CORY: There's gonna be all that sorts of language, right? We're talking about their soul, we're talking about our non biological selves and the beauty of it I think is that when we realize that our deepest why is answered in the soul, it's answered in the spiritual, it means that I don't have to get a new car to be happy.

CORY: In fact, as you just pointed out, you'll get a new car and guess what? You won't be happy. No, I don't have to get a new job or a new spouse. Or a new income bracket to be happy.

CORY: Happiness is right in front of us if we would remember what we are and what we are looking for. Ultimately, I think that, when I talk about the soul, I specifically often reference five core cravings that I believe, ultimately give us a picture, a visual to a certain degree, something concrete to grasp onto about our soul.

CORY: Because if our soul, I can say that our soul is the seat of our ambition, the seat of our desire. But unless we were able to unpack that a little bit more, it's once again, ambiguous, right? Which doesn't help. My journey has been taking me to trying to help people understand first off you have a soul.

CORY: I'll have people who just want to spend the whole conversation right there because they're not convinced, right? I have to unpack what I believe is ultimately a verified, even scientifically verified fact that we have souls. But once we can establish the fact that OK, I have a soul, then we have to say, OK, what is the soul doing? Right?

CORY: Like what is it, what is it looking for? If I say think of our biological bodies, we're blessed with hunger because hunger reminds us to go consume nourishment so that this body keeps working, right? We have the craving of thirst. Imagine if we didn't have that craving, if we did not experience thirst, I would forget to drink water. I probably get about what I'm doing and forget to drink water.

CORY: I'd be dead in four days. That craving for thirst that we take so much for granted helps keep us biologically alive every day. It says, go drink keep this body operating. Our souls are the same. Our souls have their own cravings. That is the seed of our ambition, that is the seed of our personality.

CORY: Oftentimes, I identify five core cravings. I call them our five core humanities because ultimately, I believe they define all human existence. They explain why everybody is doing what they're doing, whether they are in Asia or in Europe or North America, whether they're alive now or whether they were alive in 300 BC, we all have souls. We're all pursuing the same five things.

CORY: If you're ok with that, I'll lay these five out for you. But I believe this will really help your listeners. The first one is security. Every human being who has ever lived and who is living now is craving security. I often break security down into two components, physical security, which we would call our survival instinct.

CORY: Also relational security. That is to say our hearts, we need to know that our hearts are safe in the hands of those who hold them. That's true of everybody. It was true of Mother Teresa and it was true of Al Capone.

CORY: We need to know that our hearts are safe and we cannot experience peace and happiness if we don't have either of those things. Security is not just a psychological craving, it is deeper, it is at the very root of our soul. Second is identity. Every human being on earth needs to answer. I always say identity asks for symbiotic questions.

CORY: Who am I? Why am I? Do I have value, do I have purpose? It is amazing how you can have all the security in the world, all the love in the world. But if you don't know who you are, you won't have peace, you won't be able to experience happiness for any length of time.

CORY: Thirdly is independence. We all crave independence of some kind. I again break independence into two parts. There's the freedom aspect of independence that we all crave some sort of autonomy. If someone is trying to control us and confine us, we are not at peace. There is an agitation, there is a desire to revolt.

CORY: We have this craving for some sense of autonomy. That's why prison is a punishment in and of itself, right? Because it confines us. That's why even the attacks against free speech, feel so offensive because it's a removal of our freedoms.

CORY: We have the freedom aspect of independence and then we have the individual aspect. We all need to know that we are individuals. I need you to know that I am individual, that I am distinct. In that way that I am unique. I've even found this over the years, it's true of everybody, including those identical twins.

CORY: You come across sometimes who they seem to love having the same haircuts and they love wearing the same sweater. But every single one of at some point, there will come a day where they need to have something that is distinct about them or they won't be at peace. If we don't know that we are distinct, we will feel redundant.

CORY: We will feel unseen, we will feel useless. Maybe you're the athletic twin or the academic twin or the twin who likes Star Trek, whatever it is, we have to have something that makes us distinct. So, security, identity, independence, fourthly significance. We all need to know that we're not only separate and we're individual, but we're also special.

CORY: We're not just set apart, we're set above and again, we pursue all these things in different ways, right? For somebody like Usain Bolt, he needs to be the fastest man in the world. When the day comes, when someone breaks his 100 meter record, he's gonna struggle with significance.

CORY: Ok. Where do I find my significance now? Right. Hopefully he's working on that right now because that'd be a bad place to keep it for someone else. They need to feel like they make the best apple pie, they make the neatest bed, whatever it is, we have to have something that makes us feel special.

CORY: It is a huge craving within us. And fifth innocence, we all need to know that we are good boys and girls and again, innocence, it's not enough to be declared, not guilty. We want to be declared righteous in some sense that we are good. These are the five cravings that I believe.

CORY: Through looking through this lens, we can understand all human movement, all human history, everything that's unfolding in front of us right now. The reason why certain people really want to get divorced. I mean, so I should say let me start with marriage.

CORY: The reason they want to get married is because they're looking for a place for security, a place where they can identify that doesn't infringe too much on their independence where they feel significant and they feel innocent, they feel righteous. The reason they want to get divorced is because they didn't find it. Perhaps they were made to feel guilty or they were made to feel small. Right?

CORY: Or, something happened that they did not want to identify with. These five cravings push us into marriage and they push us into divorce. They're the reasons why we think, if I could just become an attorney I would be at peace for the rest of my life. That's all.

CORY: That's my great ambition and then we go do the hard work, we do the schooling, we get our practice up and running and we start to think. Wow, what I was hoping I would find here, I didn't find here. You know, maybe I should become another kind of attorney. Maybe I should get on the Supreme Court. Maybe that will do it right. We're propelled through life and time by these five cravings of the soul.

CORY: The beauty about this, about understanding the soul in this way is because I can look at you, Kathleen and you have a whole story. I know nothing about you have a childhood that I don't know anything about. You have dreams and aspirations that I know nothing about. But I can look at you and I can say as much as there are things about Kathleen.

CORY: I don't know. I know that at her core she's looking for the same thing I am. Security, identity, independence and civic significance and innocence. If I want to be your friend, right? If I want to be good to you, I'm gonna be a person that tries to aid you in your pursuit of these cravings.

CORY: If the time ever comes where there's friction between us, Kathleen, it's gonna be because one of us triggered the other in security, identity, independence, significance and innocence. When we understand this about ourselves and we understand this about one another, it grants us the ability to connect to a firm to encourage, to love even in ways we never could before because I now finally see you and you see me now, you know what I'm all about at my core is these five cravings and that is true of every gender, every generation, every nationality.

CORY: It is the great unifier amongst us. All biology divides us. But when we talk about the soul, it unites us.

KATHLEEN: I have Cory Rosenke in the room with us today and we are talking about soul cravings.

KATHLEEN: During the break, Cory and I were chatting a little bit and I've watched my whole life unfold before me and this is like the five basic needs that we have to have on a physical level. Then you got the Pablo thing. I mean, it's on the spiritual level.

KATHLEEN: This is it because this is what has always driven me in my life. My independence has been very important significance is like, I'm just working through the significance now that I do matter. Then I think about all these war torn countries and what the United States is doing.

KATHLEEN: If we go over there or England goes over or whoever goes over there and we decide that we're going to go blow them up just because we want their oil or we want whatever it is that they want.

KATHLEEN: I had a gentleman on my show who was several years, like 20-30 years, at least 11 in Afghanistan. He talked about that the war torn countries and what it does and they're going in and arresting somebody because somebody said he was a bad guy and mom's crying, the kids are crying because they're coming in in the middle of the night.

KATHLEEN: He said, after a while that gets to you, he said, well, how could it not get to you because it doesn't matter what our color is, what our skin color is or our body, male, female, what religion we practice.

KATHLEEN: We all want to take care of ourselves and we want to take care of our families. That's the bottom line. Those are basic instincts that we all have. You brought this down in such a way. That makes perfect sense because I didn't have security as a little kid.

KATHLEEN: I came from a very abusive family so I didn't feel secure. I lost my identity. I didn't know how to speak. They told me I wasn't allowed to speak because nobody wanted to hear what I had to say. Well, that obviously didn't last very long. Now did it?

KATHLEEN: I have a lot to say and then independence. Oh my God. I mean, I remember when I was younger, I was so co dependent on people because I didn't know how to handle anything. I thought if you were codependent that would fill whatever that little gap was that was missing inside until I found out what true independence was.

KATHLEEN: Big difference. I always thought I was worthless and unworthy. So yeah, significance. That was big. Then innocence. Well, that one I don't think I ever lost because people are like, I can't believe you don't know that I'm like, and I'm like this little kid sometimes.

KATHLEEN: What do I know? I think that innocence is so vital on many levels because that keeps that childlike wonder in us.

CORY: Well, think of this, Kathleen, virtually every argument you've ever had. Like, this is amazing when you think about virtually every argument you've ever had or any offense you've ever taken happened because you perceived that somebody was accusing you of wrongdoing or wrong. Yeah.

CORY: Our natural response because we can't have that, we need to feel innocence. We tend to do two things. We either run away because we can't be around someone who makes us feel guilty all the time or we fight and we enter into what I call the righteousness wars, right? Someone will say you do that, you left your socks on the floor, right?

CORY: Rather than saying, oh, you're right. I left my socks on the floor. I shouldn't have done that. What do we say? Yeah. Well, you left the bathroom in a mess, right? Then we enter these wars because we don't need to feel totally innocent. We just need to feel like we are more innocent than the other person.

CORY: When I think of cancer culture today, boy, that is all around the innocence craving, right? When we think you mentioned war, right? Why did one country attack the other country? Well, I'll tell you what had something to do with security or identity, wanting to go back and recapture the glory of the old country.

CORY: You know, independence significance sometimes it's just flat out that sometimes a country has a leader that has a massive ego. So they have to take what you have in order to feel significant, right? Then sometimes, of course you will justly go to war in order to protect someone's innocence.

CORY: But it's all kind of evolves around these five cravings both at the toddler level. When you watch the toddlers playing over toys, to that world leader level, when we see, oftentimes the mess that is being made.

KATHLEEN: Is there a way to overcome some of that? When you talked about the innocent status? Oh, I do that. I try not to do that but I still do it. It's like the kid getting caught in the cookie jar.

KATHLEEN: I didn't do that as you're catching him in the cookie jar and they're, no, no, no, I didn't do it, that kind of thing. As an adult and in a civilized society, how do we evolve beyond that? There is an innate response that we have. How do we evolve from that other than being conscious?

CORY: Yeah. Well, I think the key to this Kathleen and it's gonna be obvious to you when you hear it, these are non biological cravings so they cannot be satisfied in the biological way.

CORY: The answer is gonna be found in the soul. It's going to be found in the spiritual. That's why you, I saw an interview with Elon Musk a number of weeks ago, the richest man who ever lived so far as we know. The interviewer asked him, are you happy?

CORY: Elon paused for a moment and he looked at the interviewer and he said, I don't think many people would want to be me.

CORY: You think here's a man who can have anything the world has to offer and it's not enough, the biological cannot satisfy that non biological craving within him, Jim Carrey. I heard a quote from him again a little while ago, the Canadian comedian, he said, I wish everybody would have the opportunity to experience riches and fame so that they would realize that's not the answer.

CORY: Again, we have a man rich and famous and the biological things, the biological praise isn't enough. That is not the exception. That is the rule. I often say, I remember when I made $12 an hour and I very clearly remember this making $12 an hour or if I could just make 15, I would be able to live a happy life.

CORY: Then I made 15 then it's like, oh, if I could just make 20 everything would change. Right. I made 20. Nothing changed. I just need 30. Right. And it keeps going.

CORY: It's never enough because I keep trying to fill my biological craving with our non biological craving with biological things and it will not work. You have to look inside, you have to look towards the spiritual. That's the only place that these cravings could be satisfied.

KATHLEEN: Basically, I guess what I'm thinking is when you focus in on the inside of you, your own personal growth and development because I can still do a lot of that, you left your socks on when you did this. I do that. I'm so guilty of that.

KATHLEEN: We laugh, that's a fun part. At least we laugh about it because we know it's ridiculous and it's our little kids coming out for whatever strange reason. But I think the one thing is the more I go inside and grow and evolve and bring out that magnificent spiritual being of myself is when I realize I don't need all the money in the world.

KATHLEEN: I don't want all the money in the world. I want enough to be happy to be content to pay my bills, to pay emergencies if emergencies come up kind of thing. That's where I'm at. I was talking to my business partner this morning and he made a comment to me.

KATHLEEN: I said, now, you understand why I step away from spirituality sometimes. Because he's really diving in diving and diving in. But then this biological side of him. He's forgetting things. He's getting upset with the mundane. He's tripping over things, he's not seeing something because he's kind of like in a higher vibration.

KATHLEEN: I said, there's a balance. We have to find a balance because we are still having a human experience. But our spirituality our spirit side needs to evolve and grow. So you have to find that balance because I said that's why I walked away years ago because I was too high.

KATHLEEN: I was having too many problems and I wasn't grounded and I was losing touch with reality, so to speak. Now I feel very grounded in what I'm doing because of this. Would that be your take is to really develop more and find your own happiness, your own peace, what makes you happy live, find your dream? Is that what you would recommend?

CORY: I would say as long as your dream isn't biological, you have a chance because I want.

KATHLEEN: To be the best I can be. To me, that's not a biological thing. That's the best version of me.

CORY: Yeah. I would say that here's the challenge. Let me add some confusion into the clarity, which is not what we want to do. But we have to talk about this if we're going to actually make progress moving forward. We have these five cravings of the soul and how they're neither good nor evil.

CORY: It's how we direct them that at the end of the day defines good or evil. As an example in the development of human morality, we consider people, good people who give and preserve the security, identity, independence, significance and innocence of others and bad people are people who threaten or steal or molest the security, identity, independence, significance of others.

CORY: It's a very simple metric but into this mix is another part in religion, they call it sin in philosophy, we call it the fatal fantastic element.

CORY: It is that part of us that is undeniable that seeks to give us something beautiful, you give something beautiful to humanity, we will wreck it like it's just a rule that has, that has been observed since the beginning of time. We have within us this other thing that seeks to disrupt and wreck and bring chaos to.

CORY: We have these five cravings and let's as an example, if I'm gonna pursue significance in what we would call a good and ethical and moral way, I'm gonna pursue significance by working hard, by getting up early by trying to strive to make something beautiful to do what no one else is doing so I can make something that everybody can enjoy.

CORY: That's a beautiful way to pursue significance. But what do a lot of people do rather than like working hard to create something beautiful. I would suppress you, Kathleen. I push you down and in so doing, I can make myself think I'm above you. It's a fraudulent significance, right?

CORY: Yet, that is the choice given to us if you want to be sig significant in the eyes of others, however, whatever metric of specific culture has made, I'm going to pursue beauty and goodness and love and hard work or I'm gonna suppress and I'm going to malign and I'm gonna push down and one of those is a good way to pursue significance.

CORY: The other way is really bad. The same thing is true with innocence. If innocence is a beautiful and connective force designed to propel me into living with my maker and my neighbor and my family members. But when it's distorted by that fatal fantastic element, right?

CORY: Then I find my innocence by slandering you trying to make you feel guilty and you feel ashamed. That's how I somehow get this false metric that I am somehow righteous by declaring you unrighteous. That is like I said, I believe that's the root of cancer culture today. A large part of it, probably a melding of the cravings.

CORY: So, ultimately, if you're going to pursue these, if you're gonna find fulfillment, if you're going to satisfy these cravings of your soul right now, that you know what you're looking for, you're gonna have to experiment, you're gonna have to search around and try to find out where it works and where it doesn't.

CORY: But at the end of the day now that you know what you're looking for, you at least have a chance of finding it. If you will add to that, the awareness that there is something within you that seeks to undo the good that you are trying to do. Right? Then again, you can name the adversary, you can name the goal and you have a chance of victory.

KATHLEEN: Ok. Well, we have two minutes, 2.5 minutes left. Why don't we take this opportunity of how can we get a hold of you?

CORY: Yeah. The best place to get a hold of me is at Coryrosenke.com. It is my website. It's the center you can learn more about me. You can find out where the book is or at least a few places it's everywhere.

CORY: If you just wanted to find the book, The Magnetic Heart of God, Understanding the five cravings of your soul, that would be the place to get a hold of me. But rather than promoting myself, can I just say one quick thing? I want to tell your listeners more than a brain or a body? You are a soul. You are not the reflection in the mirror.

CORY: You are not the number on the weigh scale. You're not the diploma on your wall. You aren't the balance in your bank account. You are so much more. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. Now that you know what you're looking for, I really hope you can go find it.

KATHLEEN: Wow, that's powerful. That is right on the money. I say that all the time. I still get guilty of some of that. But on a whole when I remember who I really am, it's not important. It's how am I showing up in the world? How am I treating people around me? How am I treating animals? That's what matters.

KATHLEEN: That's what makes me feel good and that's what makes all of the world better and that's how we're going to change the world is when we become better with ourselves. We start expressing it out there in the world, then our world can change overnight. I want to thank you so much, Cory for being on the show.

KATHLEEN: This was such a great topic and I'd love to have you come back and continue because there's so much more that we can talk about and share on just this topic alone and because we don't think that way and now that there are some basic tools out there that we can start looking at. I'd love to elaborate on that a little bit more down the road. So thank you again.

CORY: I would be delighted. Thank you.

KATHLEEN: Perfect. So, thank you so much again.

KATHLEEN: I have one more question for you. What would be one piece of advice you would offer the audience to help them move in a different direction to achieve their dreams?

CORY: Don't believe the lie, don't believe that lie that says you are just a biological creature. Don't believe that commercial, that promise from that politician who is simply trying to promise you some sort of biological advancement or biological benefit.

CORY: You are so much more. When you finally authentically grasp that fact, it'll revolutionize your priorities, it'll revolutionize your hopes and ambitions and it will truly change your life, I believe.