[singlepic id=11 w=320 h=240 float=left]Artist: Jeanette Sellwood
Title: Guardian of the Island
Medium: Pastels
Contact: www.freespiritartist.com.au
FEATURE ARTICLE
You Think You Have Needs…Didn’t You?
For those who know their truth, surrender is commonplace; for those who don’t yet know their truth, surrender is the only direction toward it because paradoxically, surrender isn’t about losing battles, it’s about dissolving the illusion that a battle exists! On the surface, ‘surrender’ may look like a ‘fluffy lovey-dovey’ concept, but the mindset around the practical mechanics of ‘surrendering’ is core to the ultimate evolutionary challenge your personality is faced with these days.
It doesn’t require any ‘hardening up’, it requires ‘wisening up’ – to the structures, patterns and assumptions you use effortlessly every minute that demonstrate how you work from the inside-out: that life happens through you (not to you). It’s all your own power working automatically without you having to blink an eyelid. It’s working when you feel great; it’s working when you feel like crap. Because right under your own nose, you’re already contributing powerfully to your problems, holding yourself back, walling yourself up and causing everything in your experience that drives you to feel needy, controlling, dependent, devalued, withdrawn, unloved and (paradoxically) powerless!
I often say to my clients, “The toughest thing you’ll come up against in life is only ever always you!” because nothing you observe is separate from your definition of it. Your ego/personality for example, is mostly just a collection of events filtered through beliefs that often create certain ‘needs’ that enslave you into thinking (and feeling) they ‘must be met’. Right now the world is full of people trying almost anything to get their needs met. While your physical body needs air, water, sleep, food, exercise, sex etc., the ‘needs’ of your personality are not so obvious; or real. They are however, great examples of how powerful you are in creating your own reality. They are illusions, but get me right; they sure feel real in every way!
Almost any struggle you have will have roots to these ideas (human needs theory was developed around 1961 by Dr. Abraham Maslow).
Typically we label these needs as a need to feel:
• Loved/connected • Certain/safe •Significant/valued • Different/variety.
Western men generally appear less conscious of their need to be loved than women, and more conditional on themselves; that is, they want to feel they are significant in some way, so they feel worthy of being loved. Yet because they are more conditional, they are more vulnerable to failing (depending how attainable their goal), and subsequently get angry at themselves (and others) more often, because the more they fail (to be significant), the less likely they feel they will meet their need of being loved. So lots of men spend heaps of time needing to feel significant, feel loved when they are, and get angry when they’re not. Women who take this structure will respond the same way, however most western women naturally go straight for being loved (as do some men). If this is not met, they are more likely to feel sad than angry. Unlike most men, a woman’s need to feel valued often comes second to her needing to feel loved. So women often spend a lot of time needing to feel loved, feel valued when they are, and get sad when they’re not. Regardless of gender, if your highest need is for certainty, chances are you really want to be certain… that you’re loved. So you’ll seek evidence, security and proof, and may become controlling, untrusting, manipulative or insanely desperate in how you get people to meet your needs of love or significance – that’s when things can get nasty. Fear and anger become the standard emotional reactions.
But making others responsible for filling your needs is no act of loving them without conditions! Especially since any battle to fill these needs springs from old (unconscious) programs where you learnt that you are NOT already what you seek – I’m not loved, not valued, not successful, not good enough etc. This therefore creates the need. One of the most interesting things I notice in the mindset breakthrough work I do is that you become more of who you truly are the more you let go of who you believe you’re NOT.
Here’s how it works: Having the belief gives you a constant drive to DO something to meet your need – so you can be at peace, but you’ll never truly be at peace because you’ll never truly own what you need, while you seek it outside you. Then you realise that it’s just the belief that ‘what you need is NOT already contained within you’ that actually creates the need! So – you let it go, everyone is freed from the conditions you used to project onto them, and you finally connect with your true core being and KNOW in every cell that you are totally loved etc.
So paradoxically, Surrender isn’t about losing a battle, it’s about dissolving the illusion that one exists! It’s letting go of what doesn’t work and realising that life (and all those having one) actually works perfectly, both individually and as a dynamic, cohesive system of synchronistic interaction.
Follow your passions, find your flow and paddle downstream with the courage to face your imprinted programming. Realise that your primary relationship (the one with yourself) involves the two minds at work through you – one is a collection of learned programs, the other is a collection of potentials – always offering you the chance to let go of old programs that no longer serve you by making them obvious to you through your problems, and giving you your (real) self in return. Let go of all that you think you’re supposed to be, and start choosing to be who you are.
To get to where you want to go, first you need to go through what is – don’t waste your life getting caught up in what isn’t!
Be MindWyse® Peter Tarca, BA (Psych). Mindset Breakthrough Consultant, NLP Master Practitioner. Townsville. Phone 0415 340 828
REGULAR FEATURE
Siddha Stories – The Meatballs’ Leader
Once upon a time, there was a dish of meatballs, sizzling in the oven.
“Oh, oh, oh, who will save us from this terrible scorching heat?” cried the meatballs.
“I will save you,” said a large meatball in the middle of the tin. “Think of me as your leader, and I can promise you beds of fine white rice upon which to lie, and a cooling sauce to cover your sizzling sides.”
So all the meatballs with one voice agreed to follow the large meatball in word and deed, and unanimously they chose him as their leader. No sooner had the vote been taken, than the Cook opened the oven door and laid the meatballs upon large plates of gleaming white rice.
“Oh Excellent Meatball Leader,” they cried, as the Cook poured a rich, red tomato sauce upon them, “you have indeed led us out of danger, into this cool, refreshing place of rice and sauce.”
But at that moment, several of the meatballs were forked onto plates, and felt themselves being swallowed by humans.
“Perfidious Meatball,” cried the remainder, “you have led us into acute danger. How can you explain this horror and degradation that now faces us? You have deluded and deceived us, who gave you all our loyalty and devotion!”
“I knew that the next step in all our lives was from the oven onto cooling beds of rice,” said the large meatball, “and look, even as I speak I go the way of all meatballs, for is it not our ultimate destiny to be eaten?” And he slipped down a human throat as easily as a meatball that has been chewed usually does.
Universal Storyteller