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Seven Essential Needs

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Seven Essential Needs

The Seven Essential Needs are the seven needs the physical body and mind (i.e. Physical Unit) is required to meet in order to grow up healthy, whole, and Fully Realized.[1][2] The Seven Essential Needs are broken down into two general categories, Outer Needs and Inner Needs. The outer needs include the physiological, cognitive, environmental, emotional, and psychological needs of the body. The inner needs include the need for Alignment and the need for Connection. Failure to meet the seven essential needs leads to the 5Ds of Toxic Existence.

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Key Terms

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List of Essential Needs Categories

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Seven Essential Needs
Seven Essential Needs

Syncretic Terms

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Related LP Terms

Seven Essential Needs > 5Ds of Toxic Existence, Attachments, Basic Needs, Essential Needs Rule Set, Healing Space, Human Development Framework, Inner Needs, Needs Algorithm, Physical Unit, Planetary Healing, Realistic Empowerment, Sufficient Satisfaction, The Work, Toxic Socialization

Non-LP Related Terms

Seven Essential Needs > Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, D-Cognition, D-Realm, Deficiency Diseases, Essential Needs, Good Science, Good Specimen, Health, Hierarchy of Basic Needs, Hierarchy of Cognitive Needs, Human Development, Metaphysical Framework, Needs, Normative Biology, Polyvagal Theory, Psychological Framework, Seven Toxic Needs, Transhumanistic, Violence

Overview

The Seven Essential Needs are the foundations of human health and full Human Development. Failure to sufficiently meet essential needs leads to atrophy and eventual degradation of bodily systems.

Maslow "warned that the systematic frustration of basic needs for survival and higher needs for meaning and purpose would result in personal and collective neurosis" [3]

Maslow also spoke about the "horticulture" model of personality growth. "It means that we try to make a rose into a good rose, rather than seek to change roses into lilies."[4] Of course, we make a good rose by meeting its essential needs (water, nutrients, safety).

Meeting essential needs puts an individual body into Growth Mode. Failure to sufficiently satisfy essential needs leads the Physical Unit (the body and mind) to redirect bodily energy towards the satisfaction of unmet needs. A body whose energy is being redirected towards the satisfaction of unmet needs is a body operating in Deficit Mode (see also Defense Mode). Chronic neglect of essential needs leads to disconnection, diminishment, dysfunction, disease, and disconnection (the 5Ds of Toxic Existence).

The Seven Essential Needs are broken down into two general categories, basic needs and inner needs. See below. Each of these categories includes several related needs.

Basic needs are foundational needs. In order for an individual to grow healthy and connected, these needs must be sufficiently met else the body and mind atrophy. Basic needs include physiological needs (food, water), emotional needs (love and belonging, attachment, inclusion), cognitive needs (truth and understanding), psychological needs (positive self-regard, positive-esteem), and environmental (safe, aesthetically pleasing home environments. stable finances, etc.).

Basic needs include the Physiological Needs, Emotional Needs, Cognitive Needs, Psychological Needs, and Environmental Needs

Inner needs include our important and closely associated needs for Alignment and Connection.

Alignment

We all have a need to express[5] and unfold. Aristotle, Carl Rogers, and others capture these needs with the concept Eudaimonia which is the expression of human excellence and virtue (read Alignment),the doing of what is worth doing.[6]

Moving to the inner needs now, our alignment need is essentially our need to be “synced-up” with our spiritual ego, to be in alignment with our spiritual ego,. To express and actualize who we truly are deep inside. It can be a little challenging to wrap your head around this, and we talk about it in much greater detail later. For now, just imagine your Spiritual Ego for what it is, a very bright, powerful, kind, compassionate, loving, and aware spiritual being. To be in alignment means that your bodily ego thinks, acts, and feels with the same power, kindness, compassion, love, and awareness that characterizes your spiritual ego. If you are not acting like that, you are not acting in alignment with your spiritual ego.

If you want to know what alignment looks like, think Jesus Christ, the Buddha, and, for all his patriarchal and elitist imperfections, Ghandi or Mother Theresa. Though they may not have been perfect, these individuals strove to meet their need for alignment between the spiritual ego and bodily ego by expressing power, kindness, compassion, love, and awareness.

For your information, Maslow has some thoughts on this inner need for alignment in his article “How we Diminish Ourselves," and how this need to align with our "deepest nature" finds a way to push through even when we actively resist. <ref>Abraham H. Maslow, “How We Diminish Ourselves,” The Journal of Humanistic Education and Development 29, no. 3 (March 1, 1991): 117–20.</ref>

Alignment needs are your needs to be in alignment/agreement with your own ethics, values, and purpose.  In LP terms, this means being in alignment with your Spiritual Ego.

in Humanistic psychology, self-actualization.[7] Presuming the existence of a “soul,” or a spark of Consciousness that exists independent of the physical body, we need to align our bodily ego, our body’s self or Bodily Ego, with this higher level our Self, our Spiritual Ego.

Connection

Connection needs are your needs to be connected, to your family, to your friends, to your work place, to your own Spiritual Ego, and even to God.

  1. Our biological programmed Need for Connection with family, Spirit, Highest Self, place (land), the ancestors,[8] Pachamama,[9]and God.
    • It is not enough to actualize our highest self, we need to go beyond and actually make a strong connection with this inner Self.
    • This is a common desideratum of human spiritual systems. In Transpersonal Psychology, transcendence; in Christianity, Islamic, salvation; in Buddhism, enlightenment; etc.) In Transpersonal Psychology, this is known as transcendence; in Christianity and Islamic traditions, this is known as salvation, “Entering the Kingdom,” etc. in Buddhism and Easter traditions, enlightenment). In Sociology, this notion is expressed in a Christian form in Troelstech’s conception of mysticism as the “perfection of the spiritual life” and “unity with the divine” (Steeman, 1975). Evelyn Underhill points directly to this need when she says that we have an “innate tendency...towards complete harmony with the transcendental order, whatever the theological formula under which that order is understood” (Underhill, 2002). Jung referred to this as the experience of the numinosum (Jung, 1938, p. 6).
    • The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of an "intimate and vital bond of man [sic] to God" and says that the "desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for."[10] "Man is made to live in communion with God in whom he finds happiness: When I am completely united to you, there will be no more sorrow or trials; entirely full of you, my life will be complete."[11]

In Vedanta, this is the highest need, the most " outstanding urge in people is the search after the abiding spirit or God. There is an inherent desire in every man to experience the abiding spirit, and until he reaches that goal there is no hope for real peace of mind."[12] Satisfaction of one's essential needs leads to wellbeing, physical, mental, and emotional health, creativity, and Eudaimonia.[13]

Ibn Khaldun describes Asabiyya as group feeling, group cohesion (i.e., group connection).

As always, this essential need for connection is biologically programmed by evolutionary processes for several reasons, most important of which, as outlined in Lightning Rod on the Positive Outcomes of Connection, is that being connected makes you smarter, more capable, healthier, happier, and more adaptable than you would be without connection, thereby increasing your chances of surviving and living a happy and fulfilling life. Basically, the spiritual ego is a better, more powerful, more capable version of your body ego. If you want the most out of life, you definitely want to connect the two.

Quotes

IN a letter Einstein wrote to a 19 year old student having an existential crises, Einstein noted the complexity of the question and then said that the thing we should "condut our lives...[towards] the satisfaction of the desires and needs of all...and achievement of harmony and beauty in the human relationships." [14]

George Simmel speaks of " religiousness as an inner state or need of man..."[15]

Underhill says "Broadly speaking, I understand it to be the expression of the innate tendency of the human spirit towards complete harmony with the transcendental order; whatever be the theological formula under which that order is understood."[16]

Einstein says... "There is a mystical drive in man to learn about his own existence...the dignity of man depends not on his membership in a church, but on his scrutinizing mind, his confidence in his intellect, his figuring things out for himself, and above all his respect for the laws of creation" (Hermanns, 1983: np)

Grof says "spiritual search [i.e., search for connection] appears to be an understandable and legitimate human activity." [17] Further, "The deepest motivating force in the human psyche on all the levels of our development is the craving to return to the experience of our divinity"[18]

The satisfaction of the seventh essential need - connection. "Only the experience of one's divinity in a non-ordinary state of consciousness can ever fulfill our deepest needs"[19]

Grof also notes that "Full satisfaction comes ultimately from the experience of...our own divinity, not the pursuit of material goals of any scope or kind [20].

"It is now becoming increasingly evident that a craving for transcendence and a need for inner development are basic and normal aspects of human nature." (alignment and connection) [21]

Huxley (PP) notes that Totalitarian regimes exploit humanity's need for "unity" (read Connection) by "by means of a philosophy of political monism, according to which the state is God on earth, unification under the heel of the divine state is salvation, and all means to such unification, however intrinsically wicked, are right and may be used without scruple."

St. Teresa of Avila notes speaks of a need for actualization and connection suggesting that is "quenches thirst." "Oh, my Lord, if only one could be plunged so deeply into this living water that one’s life would end! Can that be? Yes: 34 this love and desire for God35 can increase so much that human nature is unable to bear it, and so there have been persons who have died of it."[22]

Sri Swami Sivananda notes that religion (I would say Authentic Religion) a "deep inward craving" (i.e., a need for connection)[23]

Swami Vivekananda speaks of the critical importance of meeting people's needs. Though he did not use that name, intimations of a hierarchy of needs was first proposed by Swami Vivekananda in "The Secret Work" in his book Karma Yoga. [24]

Essential needs are equivalent to "basic needs" in that they represent "an energizing state that, if satisfied, conduces toward health and well-being but, if not satisfied, contributes to pathology and ill-being." [25]

General Consequences

Easier to manipulate. Individuals with unmet needs may be easier to manipulate because of their lifelong craving and desperate seeking of satisfaction. [26] This craving, which is often completely unconscious, can be exploited by disreputable or mentally ill actors. See for example Layton who cites Jim Jones attention and manipulative praise as psychological reasons for her toxic attachment to the Jonestown cult. [27] Note, this applies to all needs. Insufficient satisfaction leads to "craving" which makes actors susceptible to manipulators who offers, or even just promise, the satisfaction of one or more of the seven essential needs.

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Footnotes

  1. ↑ Sosteric, Mike & Ratkovic, Gina. “It Takes a Village: Advancing Attachment Theory and Recovering the Roots of Human Health with the Seven Essential Needs.” Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work, 2022. https://www.academia.edu/61410417
  2. ↑ Sosteric, Mike & Ratkovic, Gina. Eupsychian Theory: Reclaiming Maslow and Rejecting The Pyramid The Seven Essential Needs.” PsyArXiv Preprints, 2020. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/fswk9
  3. ↑ Briskin, Alan. “Eupsychian Management: Spirit of the Good in Humanity and Society.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63, no. 4 (July 1, 2023): 495–501. p. 448. doi:10.1177/00221678211002757.
  4. ↑ Hoffman, Edward, ed. Future Visions. Sage Publications, 1996. p. 27.
  5. ↑ Expression is identified as an emotional need in Akhilananda, Swami. Hindu Psychology: Its Meaning in the West. Routledge, 1948.
  6. ↑ Ryan, Richard M, and Edward L Deci. Self-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development, and Wellness. New York: The Guilford Press, 2017
  7. ↑ The term self-actualization, originally coined by Kurt Goldstein, was picked up by Abraham Maslow. For Maslow, the need for self-actualization is the need to be creative, to express one’s essence and desire, and to do what one is “fitted for.” As he says, “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man [sic] can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization” (Maslow, 1943, pp. 382). This is all true, but in LP psychology we would understand self-actualization as actualization/expression of Self, with a capital "S".
  8. ↑ Lucana, Sonia, and John Elfers. “Sacred Medicine: Indigenous Healing and Mental Health.” The Qualitative Report 25, no. 12 (December 1, 2020): 4482
  9. ↑ Lucana, Sonia, and John Elfers. “Sacred Medicine: Indigenous Healing and Mental Health.” The Qualitative Report 25, no. 12 (December 1, 2020): 4482.
  10. ↑ Vatican. The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Vatican City: Vatican, 1992.https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P9.HTM
  11. ↑ Vatican. The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Vatican City: Vatican, 1992.https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PD.HTM
  12. ↑ Akhilananda, Swami. Hindu Psychology: Its Meaning in the West. Routledge, 1948. p. 51-2.
  13. ↑ Ryan, Richard M., and Edward L. Deci. “The Darker and Brighter Sides of Human Existence: Basic Psychological Needs as a Unifying Concept.” Psychological Inquiry 11, no. 4 (October 1, 2000): 319–38. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_03
  14. ↑ Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Albert Einstein: The Human Side (Princeton University Press, 1989). p. 27.
  15. ↑ Simmel, George. Essays on Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. p. 3.
  16. ↑ Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness. New York: Dover Publications, 2002. https://amzn.to/2C91xNY.
  17. ↑ Grof, Stanislav. Technologies of the Sacred Part Two.” The International Journal of Humanities and Peace 15, no. 1 (1999): 93–96. p. 93.
  18. ↑ Grof, S. (1999). Technologies of the Sacred—Part Two. The International Journal of Humanities and Peace, 15(1), 93–96. p.96 https://www.lightningpath.org/readings/Technologies_of_the_sacred_II.pdf
  19. ↑ Laszlo, Ervin, Stanislav Grof, and Peter Russell. The Consciousness Revolution. Las Vegas: Elf Rock Productions, 1999. https://amzn.to/2TlOCmC. p. 67.
  20. ↑ Laszlo, Ervin, Stanislav Grof, and Peter Russell. The Consciousness Revolution. Las Vegas: Elf Rock Productions, 1999. https://amzn.to/2TlOCmC. p. 8.
  21. ↑ Grof, Christina, and Stanislav Grof. The Stormy Search for the Self: A Guide to Personal Growth Through Transformational Crises. Penguin, 1990. https://amzn.to/2UtkgP1. p. 31.
  22. ↑ St. Teresa of Avila. The Way of Perfection. New York: Dover Publications, 2012. https://amzn.to/2Id75es.
  23. ↑ Sivananda, Sri Swami. All About Hinduism. Uttar Predesh, Humalayas, India: Divine Life Trust, 1999. https://www.academia.edu/32682910
  24. ↑ Vivekananda, Swami. "The Secret of Work." Collected Works of Swami Vivekananda. Vol. 5. 9 vols. Advaita Ashrama, 2016. https://www.holybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/SWAMI-VIVEKANANDA-COMPLETE-WORKS-Vol-1.pdf
  25. ↑ Ryan, R. M., and E. L. Deci. “Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being.” American Psychologist, 2000. p. 74.
  26. ↑ Grof, Stanislav. When the Impossible Happens. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2006.
  27. ↑ Layton, Deborah. Seductive Poison. New York: Anchor Books, 2010. https://amzn.to/2wxOse4.





















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