Hey #220: You’re not above your needs
It's impossible by design
For my whole life, I operated with the fear of abandonment.
In clear and not so clear ways. In plain sight. In hiding behind logic. In denial. In acceptance. In awareness. In lack of awareness.
The fear of abandonment which as a tiny devil always sat on my shoulder and kept whispering, “They’ll abandon you sooner or later. Just watch. Then you’ll be left alone forever.”
All my actions, behaviors, words, thoughts, reactions, ideas, perceptions were contaminated with this fear.
And I didn’t even know the majority of it.
Until two months ago, I saw the fear of abandonment in its entirety for the FIRST time.
I had no plans to have such an encounter. It just happened to be so after a heartbreak.
Instead of sifting through the pain all alone, I took the help of my coach. With her guidance, I used the pain to see whatever the heck had been going on. She helped me a GREAT deal. The whole picture since my birth became crystal clear. The kind of clarity which glares so sharp that looking at it gives a blinding effect.
The blinding effect showed itself as grief.
Staying with that grief, and surrendering to it took me on a deeply uncomfortable dive into my inner world.
Parallely, a few meditation techniques which I was practicing — showed me how everyone in this world does everything to fulfill some need of THEIRS. What you say/think/do has nothing to do with me. What I say/think/do has nothing to do with you — despite however it appears on the surface. And this whole mechanism is so layered with unconscious biases that only some people are aware of it, experientially and unequivocally.
The same meditation techniques led me to another realization — Each one of us was, is, and will always be alone. At the fundamental level, alone-ness is all there is. Alone-ness is our very being.
With this realization, my fear of abandonment evaporated because the concept of abandonment became redundant on the fundamental level.
I furthermore realized — I’ve not known real love, compassion, empathy, care… All that I’ve been addressing with these labels has been my unconscious needs. It has not been about others. It has been about me and me only. And the same goes for others.
This one realization gave me major existential crises.
It became clearer than ever that…
To survive, self-preservation is the ONLY priority. That’s by design. Bypassing it only leads to suffering. Thus, every single thing we do or say stems from the objective of keeping “self” alive. Whether we’re aware of it or not — is a different topic altogether.
In fact, even the fear of abandonment was stemming from the same goal of self-preservation, until it got exposed.
As the different layers of this big-yet-simple truth dissolved into my being, I lost my blueprint to function in day-to-day life.
It became impossible for me to participate in any interaction and not see the universal “selfishness” operating with the objective of self-preservation.
Initially, many judgments came up for the whole of humanity. Like no matter how much holier than thou we (like to) believe ourselves to be, in the end we’re the puppets of our design, our unconscious needs, and their resultant wishes and desires.
As the integration deepened, I understood how there’s nothing to retaliate against or comply with, but to accept the matter-of-factness of life’s design. The judgments started getting replaced with acceptance. The emotional charge of helplessness, embarrassment and disappointment dissolved into emotional chargelessness.
I realized it is what it is.
I believed this is where the inner work was done for now.
But nope. I had ended up stumbling into the pit of denial on the way.
I had started operating with the notion: Becoming aware of the universal unconscious mechanism of self-preservation, and the resultant needs, wants and desires — dissolves and transcends them. That is, since I could see through the game, I can now stop playing it.
This denial, rather suppression, led to a different shade of suffering. Believing I was now above self-preservation, I had stopped tending to my needs altogether. I later saw, this disengagement was itself just another unconscious way to escape the pain that comes with needs and desires — both when they’re met and when they’re not.
It took me a few more days of suffering to realize how I had ended up bypassing the very design of being a human 🤦♀️
The ultimate realization settled in with time:
Awareness of the design doesn’t make the design disappear.
My needs and wants inevitably exist.
I still get hungry. I still want connection. I still desire meaning.
The mechanism of self-preservation becomes visible, but the mechanism keeps running.
Surprisingly, that’s when the unprecedented choices open up.
Now I can choose how to participate in this mechanism, instead of resigning from it. Because resignation inherently implies resistance. And resistance is the marker of escaping truth, not meeting it — which anyways leads to unending suffering.
Conclusively, I’ve now been sitting with the truth…
I’m not above self-preservation, no matter the awareness.
I’m not above my needs. No-one is.
The real question is:
How do I deliberately participate in my needs, wants, and desires which I can no longer pretend to be above?
It essentially comes down to conscious participation.
Conscious participation means choosing how, not whether.
I don’t get to opt out of having needs. But I get enormous say in how they get met, how I participate in self-preservation — with integrity or without it, with self-awareness or without it, in ways to flow with life or against it.
That’s where the actual freedom lives.
Neither in bypassing, nor in indulgence…
but in the quality of engagement.
Since this realization, I’ve been learning to be conscious of this quality. The more I become conscious, the more I see blindspots where suppression and self-abandonment have been hiding. In turn, the more conscious I become.
In this process, I’ve been meeting estranged and strange parts of me.
It’s been a VERY different experience. Most of the time I’m utterly clueless, sitting with myself in the anguish of the unknown 🥲
At the same time, it feels like I’m standing on the precipice of a vast boundless playground.
One which has no playbook…now or ever.
Yet I’m grounded. I don’t feel scared.
I just am.
Not knowing how the play will turn out.
Not knowing what will happen to me.
Not knowing anything.
Regardless, I’m ready to play…
CONSCIOUSLY.
Your Transformation Coach,