Manipulation : differentiating needs, wants and requirements

The following is a profound excerpt from Michael Brown’s book The Presence Process that I wanted to share after reading it again this morning. Reading it triggered a bit of shame attack for me, as I realised the times my own hidden need ‘sucked’ on others in relationship.  As an adult it was up to me to meet those needs but I had not done my inner child work at that point.  I have also been pulled upon but perhaps when this happens we can meet others in compassion?

Manipulation

A boy is born.  The first thing that happens is that his mother’s nipple is thrust into his face.  He sucks on it and through the experience receives all his nutrition. Then, after a relatively short period, the nipple is removed and forever hidden from him.

Poor litle fellow!  Without  consciouusly realising it he spends the rest of his life trying to seek the nipple and suck on it again.  Every woman he meets becomes a potential candidate for this desperately sought reunion.  Because of this dilemma, he’s constantly hungry and restless.

One day he meets a wise woman who says to him “I’m not your mother.  No woman is.  Leave my breasts alone.  Source is your mother.  Go find source’s nipple and don’t come back until you know what I am. Only then will I lie naked in your arms.”

This messes everything up for him.  Up until this moment, he has lived his whole life assuming he knows what love is, and why he does what he does in the world.   It’s a shocking revelation ” man-nipple-nation – manipulation!

With this revelation he percieves clearly why he treats woman in this way – why he treats anyone or anything in this way – he’s nothing more than an insatiable sucker!’

Until we integrate our unconscious definitions of love  we can’t differentiate between a need, a want and a requirement.  Without realising it, we therefore consciously and unconsciously manipulate every experience in an attempt to recreate the resonance of the emotional charge we mistakenly associate with our unconditional definition of love.

A need is that which is absolutely necessary to continue dwelling within the human experience – like food, water, oxygen and so on.

A want is that which we seek to make us feel better about the uncomfortable condition of our imprinting.  The intent of wanting is to diminish our awareness of the discomfort that arises from our charged emotion by sedating or controlling it.  Because the causal point of this behaviour is discomfort, the insatiable outcome is also discomfort.

A requirement is identifiable in that it’s what happens.  Requirements are given, whether we want them or not.  They are all the aspects of our experience brought into play by Presence and intended to facilitate personal evolution.  A requirement is seldom an experience we want, but when we respond to it, the consequence is personal growth.

When we are driven by our unconscious definition of love, we are only interested in wants.  Because of this, we manipulate everything to get what it is we assume we want.  But no matter how many of the objects of our wants we acquire, they are never enough.   Our unconscious definition of love, since it’s by nature conditional, can never bring about the unconditional experience we seek – and therefore it deprives us of ever feeling “we are enough.”  Only the resonance of “being unconditional” is able to initiate the experience of “enough.”

As long as we are manipulating our experience, it’s challenging for us to respond maturely to our needs, and it’s almost impossible for us to gratefully receive what’s required.  What’s required appears to continually interfere with us getting what we want.

By integrating our unconscious definition of love, we are able to discern between our needs, wants, and requirements – and to respond accordingly  Only when we are able to identifty our “needs” as the primary nutrition for our body, and “requirements ” as the primary nutrition for our soul development,”  are we able to cease maniuplating our experience.

It’s only then that we recognise manipulation as attempting to turn what’s already happening into something else.  The intent to “be with what is without conditons” integrates manipulative behaviour by revealing the imprinted charge that drives it.

….

When we feel lack in any area of our experience, it’s because somewhere or somehow we are attempting to get what we want by taking from others whatever we perceive to be lacking in ourselves.

Here is an important realisation to digest: Our wanting, which is driven by our unintegrated emotional charge, leads us to believe that what we seek in order to feel satisfied is something solid and tangible … But it isn’t.  It’s never the “thing” that we are really after, but the resonance associated with possessing the thing.

Releasing ourselves from lack and entering into unlimited abundance commences when we give unconditionally to ourselves that which we have been seeking from others: unconditional attention.

Love is everything.  That is why integrating our unconscious definition of love is the key to unlocking both the awareness and the expeieince of what unlimited abundance truly is.

Our experience exactly as it is unfolding – no matter how it may appear to us – is required.  If it’s happening, it’s because it is required.  Our task is to respond to what’s happening to us as if it’s valid, instead of reacting to it. Through unconditonal response, we integrate.  Through conditioned reaction, we disintegrate…. We therefore feel it without placing conditions on it

Loving ourselves unconditionally at a causal level is embracing the felt aspect of our experience in each given moment, recognising that it’s both valid and reuired, without judging what’s happening through us and to us.  Only when we are able to be this way with the felt asepct of our expereince are we able to be this way with others and the experiences they are required to go through.

There is no love to ‘get’ in this world.  The world is as neutral as mirror.  We perceive in it what we place before it.  When we attempt to get love from this world by taking it, we steer our experience deeper and deeper into lack.

When we integrate, there’s nothing to get in this world.  Rather, we have come here to place unconditional love in our experience of the world  By doing so, we cross a bridge into an experience in which we consistently receive all we need and require.