A Spiritual Course for Tiger Woods

In a recent interview regarding his infidelity, Tiger Woods cited one of the reasons for his evident fall from grace was the fact that he strayed from the Buddhist principles he previously adhered to and respected.

He may well be right. Meditation would be the best spiritual course he could take and here's why...

One of the key factors that leads to infidelity – particularly of a serial nature, as is alleged to have been the case with Tiger Woods – is a form of detachment. Physical pleasure becomes isolated from the emotional self and so its satisfaction becomes almost a biological pursuit. Over the millions of years in which we have evolved, however, we have learned increasingly to integrate our emotional side with our physical pleasure circuits.

In cases of serial infidelity, though, this integration is lost to some degree. As a result, emotional need and sexual need become almost separate. The easy satisfaction of the sexual appetite then starts to become a form of stress relief – a quick high – like taking alcohol or a fix of chocolate or a drug. This leads to a viscous cycle in which the stress reliever then fuels more stress, through guilt etc., which leads, in turn, to more indulgence leading to more guilt and so on.

What is needed to break this cycle is an alternative way to deal with stress and a means to integrate the disparate aspects of the self more closely. Meditation is an ideal spiritual course to achieve both these things. Sitting quietly and just being with yourself is a powerful route to tap into the stressors within the body and the very act of feeling them in silence helps dissipate them and even channel them into a source of energy. Also, by becoming more familiar with yourself over time – the various, often contradictory, aspects of your inner world – you start to feel the bigger picture above and beyond your individual components more and that’s when a feeling of wholeness starts to return.