The Beauty of Need…

I found myself blindsided by the responses to my words on Relational Hope.

It was a theme I did not expect to have such resonance. The resonance is a gift to me, yet also carries a certain grief (that this loss of hope strikes so deep a chord with so many). Yet this also brings a welcome responsibility to explore and forge pathways of transformation. My wish is that, together we learn to transcend this patterning, and restore the beauty of need, cultivating the healthy capacity to lean and to rely...

I want to touch on what I will call the beauty of need.

I choose these words carefully. Need is beautiful. It is the glue of our inter-wovenness as humans (and other creatures’ also). But for many of us, need has become tarnished, arising as a source of tension, apology or shame; a toxic thing we try to hide, minimize, eradicate.

"God created the child, that is, your wanting, so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don’t be stolid and silent with your pain.

Lament! And let the milk of loving flow into you..."

Rumi insists on its naturalness and beauty: encouraging us to make our hunger known. His is a beautiful invitation, but not easy for many of us. Those of us who carry hurt and fear about our needs do not trust that any 'milk of loving' will arise to meet them. Our lack of faith has a history - somewhere along the way needing felt toxic, unwise, destined for failure. All of which stops us exposing our needs to healthy others in hopeful and life-giving ways.

How we feel and convey our Need...

I want to look at one element of this: how we do express need, and what we tend to evoke in others.

There is a huge discrepancy between how some of us experience need and want as natural, ordianary things, while for others they are so fraught with fear, and distress. For some of us, the world seems eager to rise in response; for others, it seems neglectful, disinterested or harsh.

My sense of this is that each of us, in every meaningful expression of our need or want, conveys, not just a request, but an energetic history: for some of us, this is a happy history of seamless collaboration with a responsive world; for others it is a history of frustration, defeat, hopelessness or despair.

Those of us who voice needs lightly, easily, know how to pitch, charmingly for what we want - for the most part, the world says ‘yes’ to us, and so our world’s seem to warm and thrive, deepening in flow and trust.

But for many others - those of us low in relational hope - this process is very different. We reluctantly surrender to the inner pressure of our needs only under acute distress. Our expressions of need carry a fraught and troubled signature: they vibrate with qualities of anxiety, self-rejection, shame, fear, rage, desperation, hunger or hopelessness...

This signature - and the energy it contains has a big effect: others often feel these hidden qualities, intuit our distress and hopelessness, and find themselves unable to respond to us in harmonious or easy ways. In picking up our tension and distress, something in their own contraction is triggered and they often withdraw from us. Unwittingly, we often re-enact failure together, leaving both people hurt, frustrated, gloomier than before...

softening our signature

I want to suggest two movements that help us retrieve the original beauty of need - its relational warmth, its collaborative instinct.

The first is making this signature of distress conscious; the second is learning to love our own needs. Both are important steps in restoring relational hope.

Can we be with the wounds that have informed our own history of need? Can we love them? Can we melt and soften the shame and fear we feel at needing at all?

The more we ourselves can feel the beauty and naturalness of our need, the warmer and less conflicted our signature becomes. And in this warmer signature, the world hears our cry differently; then, it is important to be discerning and loving about who we share our need with. As Rumi writes "give your weakness to one who helps..."

Over to Rumi:

"And don’t just ask for one mercy.

Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.

Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton

of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.

Push the hair out of your eyes.

Blow the phlegm from your nose,

and from your brain.

Let the wind breeze through.

Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.

Take the cure for impotence,

that your manhood may shoot forth,

and a hundred new beings come of your coming.

Tear the binding from around the foot

of your soul, and let it race around the track

in front of the crowd.

Loosen the knot of greed

so tight on your neck.

Accept your new good luck.

Give your weakness to one who helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.

A nursing mother, all she does

is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning-whimper,

and she’s there..."