Note: In my books and articles, I use this pause button icon 
to show a place where I suggest that you pause and consider or meditate on what has just been expressed. If you breeze through this article without stopping, you will not get maximum benefit from it. You might choose to pause for 10 seconds or for an hour, whatever feels right.
Need is a strange and largely useless word. Yes, it is powerfully used when it is said that we need to feed more hungry people since over 30,000 people starve to death every day. Even that usage of the word can be a pointless provocation of collective guilt rather than an impetus to dig into our pockets to help feed.
Unfortunately, the word “need” is used much more extensively, inaccurately and unproductively. Such use sucks the energy from any intent of having higher levels of spiritual empowerment.
Our words and thoughts are powerful. It is important that we respect this if we intend to spiritually and emotionally mature, to unfold.
Our use of the word “need” is so important, I believe, that I made it one of the four “Things that Matter” in my first book, All That Matters:
Ask for what you intend to have, but choose not to need anything.
Our minds are quite creative, but can be rather stupid. At a deep level, the mind does not understand negative terms: Mental stress is created when you say, “I need to find a loving relationship.” The Universe responds: “OK, he is a person who has defined himself as needing a relationship. That will be what he continues to be.”
Similarly, you create anxiety for yourself if you say, “I want to stop smoking” rather than “I choose to be a free breather”. So expressing or thinking that you do not want something tends to bring that thing to you. So it’s quite counter-productive to say or think that you need more money, sex or love. Doing that is a way of ignorantly defining yourself. It exacerbates anxiety, stress, fatigue and muscle tension.
When you say, “I need” something, the Universe accepts that as a definition: You are a person who needs whatever it is. This does not become a cue to the Universe to give that to you, but it is a clear signal to the Universe that since you have defined yourself that way, then needy is what you are and will remain until you change your mind
I have great respect for the modern day mystic Darryl Anka who receives channeled wisdom from a being in another dimension, Bashar. Most of what I hear from him is just so darn wise, that in this rare case, I believe in this channeling. In this time of mass freak out about money, Anka gets this from Bashar about abundance: He defines it as “the ability to do what you need to do when you need to do it.”
He’s on the right track with this new twist on abundance, yet that little four letter word gets used twice and that takes the guts out of it. When one says or thinks that they need something and they do not immediately have it, then the mind tends to take that and twist it into something harsh, judgmental and quite crazy-making.
Here is how I would express the Bashar quotation: Abundance is the ability to do what you are faced with doing when you are faced with it.
What we are faced with at all times is to respond to all of life in a loving way.
When you say that you need something that you do not possess, the mind tends to generate one or more of the following thoughts:
- I am not good enough since I don’t have it
- I am not smart enough
- I am bad
- I am a disappointment
- I am not OK as I am
- I am not worthy (the most ridiculous religious doctrine of all time)
- Since I haven’t had any in a long time, I probably never will
The fact is that in any given moment, you have zero needs that are not fulfilled.
That’s right, nada. In any present moment, you do not need air. In any present moment, you do not need food. You do not need anything. As you label something as an unfulfilled need, you denigrate yourself. The Universe gives you an earth to be on and gravity to keep you from flying off into the clouds. If you can be present, you realize that, right now, you have no needs whatsoever.
Right now, your mind may be objecting, finding apparent but baseless exceptions. What does that do for you?
Letting go of the phrase, “I need” is a great step to a more loving way of living and becoming what we all came here to be.
Please consider taking a step in your own spiritual empowerment by clicking on your internal pause button now, and feeling how it feels to be needless.
