Two needs and one goal

Two fundamental needs and one goal

What do I need? and What is my main goal? These two questions are excellent tools to help us explore the depths of our being, not only as an abstract exercise, but more importantly for providing greater clarity on our motivations and how to direct them in useful and meaningful ways. As we contemplate our own, heartfelt answers to these questions we can also identify specific ways of putting them into practice as well as to how to recognize the ways in which we veer away from our goal.

Let’s begin with the first question, what do I need? Thousands of words have been written and spoken in trying to answer this simple question. I would argue that most of what we create as humans is directed at fulfilling what we perceive as our needs. Almost twenty years ago I had the fortune of having a session with an independent yoga teacher in Haridwar, India. During our session he asked me if I knew why there were more people interested in yoga in the US than in India. His hypothesis was that, in India many people were still trying to fulfill their most basic needs, like shelter, food, clothing, and reliable income. Hence, they could not dedicate much time or energy to pursuits beyond this basic level of survival. He argued that in the US, because there were more people beyond that basic level of survival, they could allocate time, energy, and resources to finding out who they were and what their life was about, through yoga, as well as through many other avenues. Although seemingly simple, his perspective makes sense, and it also seems to correlate with models suggested by some academics in various fields. I imagine that if you are reading or listening to this, your basic needs are met and that you can afford to invest some time and energy into exploring the depths of your inner life.

What do you need?

Our first fundamental need

In the Returning to your nature exercise, we connected to a simple sentence: “I am supported. I am protected, I am nourished, I am joyful.” The first three statements in this instrument of mind (mantra) are directed at recognizing that our material needs are met while also hinting at the fundamental needs we have of feeling emotionally safe and fulfilled. I am inviting you to consider the fourth statement in the mantra, I am joyful, as the natural unfolding of the first three statements. In other words, when our basic needs are met, and we feel supported, protected, and nourished, it is more likely that we feel that we can fulfill our first fundamental need, expressing our uniqueness. In my conversations with many women who have children I have learned that every mother knows how her child has her own personality almost from birth, perhaps even during gestation.

You know that there is nobody else like you. Indeed, it is impossible for anybody else to know exactly the experience of being you, including what you sense, how you perceive, what you think and how emotions express internally in you. Similarly, no matter how close I may be to somebody, or how well I think I know them, I will never be able to know exactly what their life experience is like. Each one of us is unique. And our first fundamental need is to feel that uniqueness and to express it. Returning to the mantra, the fourth statement, “I am joyful” is the desire for and result of expressing our uniqueness in meaningful ways.

Our second fundamental need

Has it ever happened to you that you have a profound experience when something you witness creates a deep wave of emotion in you? Have you noticed how one of our first impulses in the afterglow of such an event is to share that experience with somebody else? For instance, in moments of hardship, like when you are going through a challenging journey or experience, you feel that a strong bond emerges between you and the people that are going through that experience with you. It is similar in moments when you see a magnificent sunset or a murmuration, when hundreds or thousands of birds fly together in an ever-changing graceful dance, and you feel compelled to share that experience with somebody else. We are social beings.

We are naturally wired to connect to others. But it is not only that our physiology enables us to be social, it is important to us to feel connected to others in meaningful ways. In fact, even when our basic needs are met, it is challenging to feel joyful when we feel isolated. This is our second fundamental need: We need to connect with other people in a meaningful way. Think about this for a moment. Every single time that something important happens to you, regardless of it being good or bad, you want to share your experience with somebody else that is important in your life. For instance, when you accomplish something, you want your loved ones to share that happiness with you, and if nobody is available at the time, it may even feel like something is diminished.

One goal

It truly is amazing that there are so many possibilities for living our lives! It seems that the array of options continues expanding all the time. For example, many of the occupations in the world now may not have been necessary, or even possible a few decades ago. And some of the jobs that existed in the past may not be jobs anymore. Many current jobs may not exist only a few years from now. When you pay close attention, it may become obvious that the options that are changing in front of our eyes, are the options about what to do. However, it may be evident that the chances of how to be in the world may not be different at all. At least from the perspective of yoga, the most important goal is to be present by embodying awareness wherever we are. This does not change.

Throughout our lives our relationship to our own awareness may fluctuate, sometimes we are present, while other times we get entangled in the web of our thoughts, beliefs and preferences and confuse all of our inner fictions with our true nature. We may even ask ourselves, why embody awareness?

When we modulate our ways of being, we notice the subtleties of awareness. For instance, we notice that awareness is always ongoing and nonjudgmental. In fact, it is the direct experience of our unclouded awareness that enables us to recognize our own natural tendencies. Beneath the tendencies that we develop in our lives there are some essential tendencies in awareness, like our constant (conscious and unconscious) orientation toward feeling at peace, at ease, and complete. There is also our natural tendency toward moving away from pain and suffering. Some traditions see these tendencies as caring and compassion. As we harness our natural tendencies, we notice that they can guide us to be an authentic expression of our own singularity, which satisfies our first fundamental need of expressing our uniqueness. In addition, our natural tendencies direct us to relate to others with care and compassion to fulfill our second fundamental need, social connection. The goal of yoga, which I would argue aligns perfectly with our main goal in life, is to use our awareness for enhancing the quality of our participation in our lives by expressing our uniqueness with kindness and compassion toward ourselves, towards the people around us and toward everything in existence. Each one of us can find many possibilities for honoring our uniqueness and relating to others, no matter who we think we are, no matter where we are, no matter what we think our job is.

This week I invite you to reflect on these ideas:

What do you think are your basic needs?
What are your fundamental needs?
Is it possible that the two fundamental needs we talked about in this episode coincide with your fundamental needs?
How do your thoughts, intentions, and actions reflect these needs?
What are the relationships between your personal goals and your basic needs?
How do your personal goals relate to your fundamental needs?
If you had to choose only one goal for your life, what would you choose?

In the following episodes we will expand on these ideas.

If you prefer, you may listen to the podcast:

This is an excerpt from the book Unravel the thread: Applying the ancient wisdom of yoga to live a happy life

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