Chapter 7

We Need Spiritual Nourishment

The false belief we’ve been taught is clear. It tells us we need other people, both individually and collectively, to tell us who we are, how lovable we are, and how secure or insecure we are. We are taught this by rote through repetition each time we believe anyone who gives us an appraisal of ourselves. Whether those appraisals are solicited or not, whether they are positive or negative, they are always offered without proper authority. The judges are not qualified to make the judgments. Yet we believe them along with judgments of our own about ourselves that we’re not qualified to make, either.

We live our lives in accordance with this false belief. We tend to establish the identity of ourselves and others with respect to what we and they do for a living, by their appearance, and by their comportment. We tend to judge the worth of ourselves and others by virtue of our conformity to social values, frequently institutionalizing or discriminating against those who can’t or won’t conform. We tend to defer to power, fame, and wealth. We sometimes allow organizational structures which primarily benefit only those at the top, even though the conduct of the organization may be detrimental to countless others. We don’t want to make waves for fear of rejection or bad appraisals. We want to be liked.

To the extent that we maintain this false belief about our need for other peoples’ appraisals, and to the extent that we believe the judgments of the people around us concerning ourselves, we are taught not to have our spiritual needs met.

Let’s talk about wants and needs. Or, how about wants versus needs?

We need water. We like other beverages. We need shelter from the elements. We like houses. We need nourishment. We like steak.

Needs are those things that we require not only for survival, but for healthy survival. Wants are those things that might make our survival more convenient or enjoyable. While it would be prudent to satisfy our needs first, we don’t always do that. Sometimes we’re ignorant of our physical or emotional needs. Sometimes we’re simply preoccupied and don’t satisfy needs we know about. At other times, we choose to ignore our needs or deny them.

If someone wanted to list all human needs, it probably would help to view the human being in its various components. We could more readily list our physical needs, for example, if we thought of ourselves momentarily as purely physical creatures. After completing that list, we could then go on to list our emotional needs as we temporarily thought of ourselves as purely emotional creatures.

How about intellectual needs? Since our minds are primarily used as computers that both store and calculate data, it’s to our advantage to know enough to respond to our various needs.

While we still have the being figuratively dissected, let’s look at how well any one of the components can satisfy the needs of another. The physical component needs to eat. It knows that, of course, because it’s hungry. If it doesn’t respond to the hunger, it develops pain. If it doesn’t respond to the pain eventually, it will die. But, for whatever reason, let’s assume the physical component is unable to eat for itself and asks the emotional component to consume food for it, since they’re both parts of the same human. The body will obviously starve if it depends on the emotional component to satisfy the need for physical nourishment.

Let’s say the emotional component, still independent of the others, feels sad. So it says to the intellectual component that is, of course, wiser than the rest, “Make me feel happy.” The intellectual component, drawing on its resources of personal history and experiences, recalls all kinds of reasons to be happy. It concludes that the emotional component should be happy and tells it so. But the emotional being responds, “You don’t understand. Don’t tell me I should be happy. Make me feel happy.” The intellect, again obviously, is unable to satisfy the emotional need.

By now, I think the point is pretty clear. Though each of us is a single entity, each of us is also a composite of the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. But no one of those pieces can satisfy the needs of another.

If axiom number one is that no component can satisfy the needs of another, then axiom number two must be that no component can legitimately deny the needs of another.

Say, for example, that a person smokes. We have more than enough generally accepted evidence to establish that smoking could be harmful to the person’s health. But the person doesn’t believe the evidence. The intellectual component refuses to accept the truth as it applies to the physical component. Does that mean smoking won’t hurt this person? Of course not. It merely means the physical truth will bear itself out in spite of the intellectual denial. The physical component may very well develop lung cancer even as the intellectual component denies the possibility. The intellect is simply not equipped to change physical truths. Nor is it equipped to change spiritual truths or legitimately to deny them.

Let’s get back to needs and wants for a moment. It’s apparent when dealing with the issues of physical and emotional health that we frequently and for various reasons don’t get our needs met. Beyond that, like the person who smokes, we even do things that are detrimental to our health. At times we deprive ourselves— or are deprived by others—of things we need to maintain health. The same holds true when dealing with spiritual needs.

When determining physical and emotional needs, we tend to quantify and qualify them. We test them, chart them, and draw responsible conclusions about what they are. We justify them intellectually and scientifically and apply them in our lives. Our satisfaction with our conclusions is no guarantee they’re correct, however. Various well-intended but harmful medical practices have been employed over the years in the belief that they could cure the patient. It was not until later that we realized that the damaging effects were causing people to die. The “fact” that the earth is flat was known by the peers of Columbus, but the physical truth that wouldn’t be denied never changed. Only our awareness of it did. By placing our singular and collective intellects in the position of being the sole arbiters of truth—no matter what the nature of that truth—we tend to deny those needs that we are incapable of understanding intellectually. That denial, however, in no way diminishes the legitimacy of the need. It simply jeopardizes our chances of responding to it properly. This most frequently happens with our spiritual needs.

If we don’t respond to physical needs, there is a consequence. We get sick or injured. If we get sick enough or injured severely enough, we die. If we don’t respond to emotional needs, we get sick in another way. If we don’t respond to our spiritual needs we get sick in still another way. Just as the lack of physical nourishment causes us pain, so does the lack of spiritual nourishment.

Hunger is an indication that we need physical nourishment. Questioning our sense of identity, worth, or security is an indication that we need spiritual nourishment. Despair is equivalent to spiritual starvation. When we need physical nourishment, we must take action to get it. It requires an element of control. When we need spiritual nourishment, we need but to accept it. It requires the surrender of control. What control? The control we exercise in not acknowledging our spiritual needs.