MyLifeYoga

Most of us spend all our energy trying to fulfill our wants. Should we instead focus on our needs? What’s the difference between wants and needs? How do you go from wants to needs? Here are five insights:

1. Needs are physical.
We all need air to breathe and live. Similarly we have very basic needs for food and shelter for our survival. Needs are basic and minimum, and are related to our physical survival.

2. Wants come from ego.
The ego takes our physical needs and converts them to wants. The simple need to protect our feet while walking outside turns into a want for owning 24 pairs of shoes. The need to nourish our bodies with good food turns into the want to go to the finest restaurant and eat an expensive five-course meal.

3. Be wary of the trap of wants.
Once our basic needs our fulfilled we have a choice. We can stop here and commence our spiritual journey. This allows us to go from the level of the physical body to the level of the soul and meet the needs of the soul. Instead most of us commence on a journey that is egged on by the ego. We begin wandering in the wilderness of wants. Without realizing it we begin to express our wants as needs. We say to ourselves, “I need my 24 pairs of shoes!”, “I need a wardrobe full of clothes.”, “I need a huge house and an expensive vacation.” There is no end to wants. Needs are limited, but wants are not. Once you fulfill a want another one arises and takes its place. Without knowing it we get on a treadmill of wants that sucks all our energy just to remain at the same spot. In the bargain the very real needs of our soul are ignored and we continue to remain trapped at the level of the physical and the level of the ego. Continue reading →

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Poverty is the worst form of violence”. While there is nothing noble and dignifying about poverty itself, the people who suffer from poverty have hopes and dreams like us. One face of poverty is Jane. She used to live in the Mathare Valley slum of Kenya. Growing up as a small child she had two dreams: One was to be a doctor and the second was to marry and have a good husband. Soon she realized that given the poverty of her family there was no hope that she could pursue her first dream. So she went after the second one. By eighteen she was married and very soon she had a baby. By 20 her husband had left her for another woman and she was pregnant with another child. Her mother soon passed away and she had no support from anybody else. Left to fend for herself and her family she took to prostitution and soon she became HIV positive.

Luckily the story of Jane does not end here. Jane today says that though her dreams did not directly translate into the form that she had thought, she has nevertheless achieved what she wanted. Though she is not a doctor she is serving and helping others, and though she does not have a husband she has family and love in her life. In many ways Jane represents the rising tide of humanity that is being helped by innovations like Micro credit. Jane’s story is inspiring at many levels. At one level it shows us that the problem of global poverty is on the mend. At another more personal level her story inspires us that no matter how dire the situation gets, things can turn around, if we do not give up hope.

Related:
Bono: The good news on poverty (TED talk)
Jamii Bora Bank: Formed with 50 destitute families now has assets more than $60 Million
How you can help? Go to Kiva.org and loan as little as $25

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen,
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

Related: When Everything Else Goes You Discover Real Love

Credits: This is written by Khalil Gibran (1883 -1931). You can find this and other poems here. Painting is also by Khalil Gibran.