Being Needy

In the early stages of life, we are utterly dependent, both physically and psychologically. If we are fortunate enough to have loving parents, sensitive to our needs, we can thrive. Infants wield a certain magic: the magic of pure need. This touches us deeply. Yet the magic goes beyond need, as if the presence of the infant were closing a circuit of love. Indeed, because infants have not differentiated themselves from the rest of us, they live in oneness, in non-separateness, and thus wield the magic of pure love.

In the current state of humanity, that level of love soon gets hidden away as the infant grows, separates, and becomes us. Yet the neediness tends to stick. We look outside ourselves for validation, for confirmation that we exist and that we matter. Although we may believe we are free and independent, everything catches us, everything attracts or repulses us, everything punches our buttons and elicits a predictable, predetermined response.

We chase acknowledgment and use material things and distractions in a futile attempt to fill or escape from our apparent emptiness. Although we are loathe to admit it to ourselves, we feel this inner emptiness and turn away from it. Yet that emptiness is only how our depth appears to us in relation to the concrete materiality of the external world. The true and ultimate nature of that depth is oneness, the arena of unconditional love. What it is empty of is separateness. But we stand apart from that depth and from each other, preferring the fleeting comfort and apparent solidity of being separate.

This separateness plunges us into the world of dependence, where we live enmeshed in automatic patterns of stimulus and response, where all the initiative comes from outside us. In this world we are neither free nor independent.

Yet that very dependence relates us to the world, to people, things, and events. Relatedness is, in its own sometimes muddled or even twisted way, a material world manifestation of love. It can run the gamut from the simple need we all have for human contact to aberrations of that need in the form of abusive, harmful relationships. In the latter, love has turned into its opposite, even into evil acts. In some, the corruption is so deep that even pale reflections of love can find no opening. But for most of us, there is still hope. We may live on autopilot, but we are not given over to harmful actions to assuage our emptiness.

To climb the proverbial ladder of the spirit, we start where we are. It would be great if we could say that where we are is in our body, if only that were true. More likely we are lost in a churning soup of thoughts and emotions, stimulated and driven by our immediate environment. This has been our situation for so long that it seems normal to us, and we hardly notice it for what it is. Yet as long as we are lost in that automatic world, our capacity for love is severely limited. The version of love we experience in that world is grasping and needy, self-serving and possessive, transactional and controlling, more about being loved than giving love, and ready to turn into anger, hatred, jealousy, or self-criticism if thwarted.

The way to heal all this is to raise ourselves out of the world of dependence. Episodic spiritual practice can help us do that temporarily. But for a permanent transformation we need an ongoing dedication to inner work that will ultimately heal what was broken and enable us to live in a deeper way. Sitting meditation helps enormously but may leave us floundering in the world of dependence the rest of the day. We also need an effective method of inner work that we can return to throughout the day.

One such method is sensing, which begins with putting and holding our attention on parts of our body. Try this: place your attention in your right hand for a few minutes. When your attention wanders, simply bring it back to the hand. Gradually the sensitive energy begins to accumulate in your right hand. Your perception of the hand grows more alive, more vivid, more vibrant, more there.

Now compare your perceptions of your right hand and your left hand. You may notice that your contact with your right hand is much more vivid. This is due to the sensitive energy in the hand. We call this sensing the right hand, in contrast to our ordinary awareness of the left. Placing your attention in part of your body awakens the sensitive energy there, and with persistence creates more of that energy. This practice can be extended to hands and feet, arms and legs, and to the whole body, although we do not attempt to sense particular inner organs, so as not to interfere with their instinctive functioning.

A robust sensation of our whole body is qualitatively different than sensing a hand or a leg. Contact with the whole body gives us wholeness: psychological, spiritual wholeness. That helps raise us out of the world of dependence and into the world of contact, at least while we are sensing. We can work at sensing while in seated meditation and as we go about our day, though not during safety critical situations that require our full attention, like driving or chopping vegetables. We can re-engage with sensing our body whenever we have a spare moment during the day and then carry that with us from there.

For this week, please notice whether you hold yourself separate, whether you consider yourself separate. Notice the extent to which you are emotionally, psychologically dependent. Notice whether sensing has any effect on that situation.

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