Discourse on Necessity

 on retreat 01/09/13

There has been a lot of talk in this circle about needyness.

Bu what about needed-ness? Is that not more important? To know that we are needed? 

Perhaps when we reflect upon this a question arises inside us: Do I really need to be needed or do I just think I do? Perhaps I shouldn’t have to feel like I am needed and that is just my insecurity talking or my ego trying to make itself important. 

Perhaps you do not even feel the need to be needed and think me projecting the fruit of my own self-examination onto you.

Needed perhaps comes from the same root as necessary. We love to know that we are needed, because we are. And since we are, better then, that it is necessary for us to be. That we serve some purpose.

The universe, in its perfection, wastes nothing - recycles everything, thus by its very nature all that exists must serve some purpose. To know that we are is in to know that it is necessary for us to be. Should we cease to be necessary then we are surrendered to the oneness of all things, just as leaves become the soil, which becomes the fruit, which becomes the pray, which becomes the predator, and so forth.

A conscious surrender, in eastern traditions, is known as liberation, escape from samsara, or the path to enlightenment.

Should we choose this surrender to a life in service of the whole then even death is welcomed as a gift. We have already surrendered our life and so nothing remains to be taken from us. We are all going to die, and so it is better we learn to welcome it. 

An unconscious surrender is known as samsara, some believe this leads us to be born and reborn again in our habits into the material world of cause and effect, but it can be understood by the skeptic as a lack of willingness to change which leads us to have several similar unpleasant experiences occur and reoccur ad infinatum until we examine ourselves to find the root of the problem.

The practice of self-knowledge reveals to us our qualities, our qualities reveal to us our purpose, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the purposes from which we can choose to serve. Knowing our purpose shows us our value, which satisfies our need to be needed.