Allow me to tell you a story about needs.
It begins when I am taken out of body by one of my non physical guides
named Stuart Wilde.
He smells of menthol snuff.
He has a smile that says"
"I am plotting something that's gonna turn things upside down."
I've learned to follow that smile
with a curious hesitation, as it so often leads to
a collapse of the current reality.
We end up walking down a street in Hackney, East London.
People are rushing about.
I can tell from the clothing that it is the 70's.
A time when Stuart was alive.
We have returned to a memory of his.
We walk into a food market
and we watch a boy with sandy colored hair and freckles,
steal a can of food off of the shelf
and hide it under his coat.
Stewart says nothing.
But he extends his hand to the right and fasts forwards
to later that same hour in the very same store.
I am watching a woman in a black poodle cloth coat.
She is wealthy.
She haphazardly throws a collection of whatever items
catch her fancy, on the counter
and pays for them out of a purse that is covered with silver rhinestones.
Stewart turns to me and says:
"They both need food."
"But which one needs food?"
I thought about it and he repeated the question.
"They both need food but which one NEEDS food?"
I knew where he was headed but didn't speak up.
he then said:
"The rich person and the poor person both need to eat."
"They cannot simply wake up one day and decide not to need to eat."
"But only one of them feels the need."
"Because they don't know they can get food"
He continued;
"A need doesn't feel like a need and doesn't make you feel powerless,
when you know you can get it."
In front of me both scenes played out,
side by side simultanously,
as if I were in a learning hologram.
The wealthy woman buying and the poor teenager stealing.
And then we zoomed out
until we were hovering over African Savanna.
Stewart said: " Welcome to my playground"
We were watching a pack of 5 lions
nap beside a herd of zebra.
Neither group seemed bothered by the other.
Stewart said:
"Tell me why the animal kingdom does not suffer like man does."
I observed the animals and replied:
"Because man is the only one
with a socialization structure that teaches it to resists its own needs."
"The zebra that needs grass goes to find grass,
and the lion that needs the zebra goes to find zebra."
"Yess" he said
"The zebra doesn't waste his bloody time worrying about
there not being grass."
"And it doesn't try to convince itself to learn how to grow grass itself,
or become grass and eat itself or to not need the grass."
So the zebra is not disempowered
by its own need like the man is."
So as to ingrain the concept further
Stewart then brought me to a watering hole in the savanna.
It was dried up completely.
The suggestion that water was once there was the only thing left.
An imprint in the dried and cracked mud.
We stood in silence looking at the absence of water.
He asked me no questions this time.
Instead he said to me:
"People keep waiting for the watering hole to fill up with water.
When that doesn't work they keep trying to figure out
how to get the water in the hole to produce more water.
When that doesn't work, they keep trying to become water
so they can drink themselves.
And when that doesn't work they decide that they are not meant to have water.
And so for them water is a need.
Only instead of water their real need
is the intimate connection of companionship.
And not once have they ever considered
to leave the watering hole that has no water,
in search of one that does."
Stewart took my hands and he said:
"You have seen that it is empowering to learn that you are not powerless
to other people, either meeting or not meeting your needs,
by meeting your own needs.
But now it's time to see that there are needs
that people cannot meet on their own."
"Like the need for connection."
"But this need is only a need for those who think they cant get connection."
"And if this is a need of yours,
and you cannot meet the need yourself,
the empowerment is in either manifesting someone
who wants to meet the need for you,
or by doing as the zebra does and going to find grass."
Stewart smiled at me and laughed his deep chesty laugh, and said:
"Do yourself a favour,
and go to a new goddamn watering hole"
When he went to leave the perceived movement of him
pulled me out of the learning construct, into space.
I was hovering in the blackness of it.
Staring at the earth below.
It was nighttime on one side of the globe
and daytime on the other.
I realized by looking at the world, there is a reason
that some needs cannot met by ourselves and ourselves alone.
Separation is the opposite of our true nature.
We can have the illusion of separateness
but illusion is all it is.
To become completely independent
is to become entirely ego.
The way we find our way to the awareness of oneness again
is through this interconnectivity and interdependence,
that is the inevitable part of living.
Because we are indivisible.
Everything ultimately is us.
So we can never be separated enough
to meet all our needs ourself.
And yet if someone else is helping us,
that is us,
in a different form helping ourselves.
And that is the personal empowerment we do have
to manifest other aspects of ourselves that wish to meet the needs
that we in our separate form cannot meet.
We have this collective belief
especially in the western world,
that it is not ok to need other people.
And that it is wrong to get our needs met by others,
because it makes us weak,
powerless,
vulnerable to manipulation,
selfish,
entitled,
dependent,
less spiritually developed,
immature,
a burden,
embarrassing,
incapable,
and the list goes on.
And the reality is we all need other people
and we all have needs that must be met by someone other than ourselves.
And so we live in hell, trying to deny those needs.
Or we try to get those needs met by people
who do not want to meet those needs.
When Buddha wrote: The desire is the root of suffering
the word he used was Tanha
but Tanha does not mean desire,
it doesn't even mean need.
Tanha means thirst.
In essence, it means starvation.
It is the state of lack.
The state of wanting something you think you cannot have or
needing something that is not there.
I find over and over again
that the practice of spirituality
involves an intent examination of the meaning behind words.
Most spiritual disagreement in fact, boils down to pure semantics.
We cannot have a good understanding of love
when love is one word
that represents so many different feeling states.
We cannot have a good understanding of need
when need is a word that represents a state of starvation.
But also, the basic idea
that something is required in order to thrive.
We all require something in order to thrive.
So we all need.
What causes suffering
is the degree to which we believe we can or can't meet
that need or get it met.
This is the only thing that needs to be remedied.
Ego tries to rescue us, by telling us
to become our own island,
and meet all of our own needs ourselves.
So we never have to feel the lack again.
The Ego calls this empowerment,
but it is in fact just fear.
I can assure you that if you are adhering to the spiritual belief
that you can and must meet all of your own needs in and of yourself,
your Ego has hijacked your spiritual practice.
The question we most need to ask ourselves is;
Why is it not okay to need other people
or to get our needs met by other people?
Baby elephants... are often tied to tree trunks
that are too heavy for them to move and so they stay.
When they grow older,
old enough to move the tree trunks,
they still believe they cannot and so the adult elephant is inhibited
by the tiny tree trunk,
that in truth has no power over it anymore.
As people we are no different.
As children when our needs are not met by our caregivers,
we had no way to meet those needs.
We were in a prison of sorts.
When we grow up we can meet them
and find ways to get them met,
but we still believe there is no way to meet them.
Our beliefs instead of our circumstances
have become our prison bars.
We must consider the rather obvious truth,
that if you have an empty cup and you fill it, it is now full.
Whereas many spiritual traditions would have you believe
that if you have an empty cup and you fill it
you will now be addicted to the water
and be dependent on the water and never feel full again.
There is a little thing in human psychology called:
The Paradox Effect.
The closer you become to someone the more secure your relationship is.
And the more available they are to you,
the more confidently autonomous you become.
You can observe this effect between babies and mothers.
Personal empowerment has more to do with
the security of our connection with other people
than it ever had to do with independence.
I find it a beautiful notion
that if we all met each others needs
and let other people meet our needs,
we would never feel a lack for anything.
We would never feel the need,
because we would never feel the lack in the first place.
The notion that we could not have what we need
would not be there,
and so we would never actually be disempowered.
And so I concur with the lesson given to me by Stuart Wilde;
If your watering hole has no water in it,
find a new watering hole.
And by doing so empower yourself
by being brave enough to let your needs be met.
Subtitles by: Nicole Reiter & Tanya Duarte