Needs and the Self

 

Needs and the Self

On being born and as we grow up, we start our life by serving our own needs. Everything we do is for satisfying our basic needs first and then as we grow academically and financially, we start following the Maslow’s theory of needs. It is a kind of human psychological requirement to have more and more needs satisfied in the growth phase of life and as we stabilise ourselves in all respects by the time we reach middle age, we start focusing on satisfying the needs of others.

We start thinking of helping others either financially or materially in some manner, we may start our own NGOs or support those whose cause we believe in. We actually start giving back to society what we have received during our initial growth phase. Over time, our journey progresses to serving the needs of all mankind. How does this happen you may well ask! Some time during this phase we meet our spiritual Master and he guides us and motivates us on to the path of meditation. A spiritual Master is like an empty pipe who harnesses universal energy and distributes to millions of his followers. He is the aggregator of the collective energy of his followers. So, when we start meditating and spreading the message of meditation to our friends, relatives and even to perfect strangers we are now servicing the needs of the whole. We start from the micro level and reach the macro level.

This journey takes us from serving our own needs first, then serving the needs of others and finally serving the needs of the whole. That is when our journey is complete. With the satisfaction of all these needs, we turn to meditation for satisfying our spiritual needs, our journey now moves from looking at life outside to searching for the self within. This change of focus is brought about the spiritual Master, the Guru and we start meditating and find inner peace right within us. We begin to lose our body consciousness and with that our soul consciousness increases. The material needs are no longer important as we are now in the self-actualisation phase of our life. The Master bestows us with self-realisation and we embark on the journey of watering the seed planted within us and growing it into a sapling and then ultimately into a large tree.

Once you become a strong and stable tree, you will find people are attracted towards the shade that you give beneath your branches and foliage. Your energy is now filled with love and compassion which automatically starts attracting people who enter your energy field. They feel nice in your company and say so too…..with this the circle gets completed as you are now satisfying the needs of the whole through your own energy field!