The Big Difference between Needs and Wants

Needs come from the reality of this life, whilst wishes come from mental illusions. Needs are natural, and therefore they don’t foster addictions or imbalances of all sorts. Wishes are not natural, and therefore give birth to addictions, diseases, unhappiness, emptiness, disillusionment, and more.

On the surface, running after wishes seems to do no harm; it looks like one is simply trying to achieve some sort of happiness or comfort. Yet by running after wishes a person is investing in the illusion by reacting to mental pictures considered to hold some sort of value.

That’s actually dangerous, despite the fact that almost everyone does it. It’s dangerous because it makes it even harder to wake up from the illusion that this world is. How can you understand that this world is a mere dream, when you cover it up with more and more dreams?

When you do so, this world indeed seems solid and real, and the suggestion that it’s just a thought-form surely seems crazy. That’s the reason many spiritual paths require spiritual aspirants to focus on the now, or to meditate – so that they stop creating further illusions that prevent them from waking up.

Wishes don’t have an inherent value

This constant investment in illusions creates dis-illusion-ment, since illusions are devoid of any intelligence and are empty. So all the hopes of getting some sort of lasting value from an achieved desire cannot come true.

This also applies to the wishes that are to do with people, because wishes as such always involve a human form (body) and therefore are illusory as well. What’s more, when one fantasizes of being in a relationship and finally it happens, usually she gets into the relationship with her idea about a person, and not the person himself. This must create misery and loneliness. Actually, many couples don’t really see each other as they are – they see their ideas about each other.

Needs are totally different from wants

According to Brothers in Omananda Puri’s writings, you should never indulge in ‘wants’, but only in ‘needs’, if you want all suffering to end. You need to eat, sleep, buy food, prepare meals, make money, clean home. There’s also a heart’s need to help others, share love, share your talents and be free. When your clothes are torn, a natural need arises to replace them with new ones, and when you wake up, there’s a natural need to take a shower.

These are normal needs and therefore they don’t lead to further illusions eventually causing disillusionment. They aren’t formed in your mind and then acted on; instead, they come as a result of some new event or state (like hunger, a torn piece of clothing, the state of tiredness) which asks you to take a particular action.

It’s easy to fool yourself about whether you’re going after needs, or mere wishes. Unless you really want to understand the truth and be rooted in reality, you may be tempted to distort the border separating needs and wants. There’s nothing that can be done about such lying to oneself – when one truly wants to be permanently happy, all such truth distortions will cease.

Searching for happiness in wishes

I’ve noticed that in the Western world people invest in wishes more than people from developing countries. Since their needs are covered, they think of further ways to introduce variation and interest in their lives. But that’s a wrong way to go about it, since any such investment shows the belief that happiness lies outside, and so it must create misery.

The belief that fulfilling certain wishes will make one happy keeps almost everyone slaves to this illusion. Most people just can’t wake up to realize that since no previously achieved wishes made them permanently happy, that won’t happen with fulfilling current wishes either. This is such an obvious lesson that to find happiness one mustn’t look outside, as real happiness can only be found within!

Investing in wishes strongly affirms your focus on the external, and shows that you don’t know the riches that you hold within. And those riches will surely remain unknown if you believe that something outside of you has some sort of value, and you take action to get it. Inner riches gradually show their heavenly beauty and luxuriance only to those who realize that running after wishes can’t bring happiness, and in despair or inspiration turn within.

Wishes keep you focused on the future, and thus uproot you from the only moment that exists – now. They make you lost in mental fantasies and disconnect you from reality. This with time gives birth to the feeling of emptiness and isolation, and though some may consider themselves special because of all the wishes that they achieved, loneliness and the feeling that something’s missing will always remain.

Wishes make your life unnecessarily complex, because they always give birth to more wishes and make you falsely believe that the fulfillment of that one future wish will surely make you happy at last. When such fulfilled wishes yet again fail to permanently satisfy, this leads to frustration and unhappiness. So this crazy wheel of illusion keeps spinning, profiting the economy but limiting human freedom, with only a few becoming awake enough to leave such a crazy race to nowhere.

Reversed hierarchy of needs and wishes

In Western society I see some people who ignore needs, but indulge in wishes. These are the people, for example, who deny nutrition to their bodies and instead eat junk which excites their palate; or people who slave for some company in order to maintain the lifestyle based on wishes (TV, new car, etc.) but ignore the heart’s need to be free and to find the purpose of life.

The media has surely played a major part in turning this hierarchy of needs and wishes upside down. The reason people think that running after fancies is normal and actually important, is because they see shiny trinkets and unnecessary experiences advertised on TV and shown in movies, and it’s a well-knownpsychology fact that if you’re continually exposed to something, you’ll eventually begin to accept it.

The media created an alternative reality for us, an illusion within an illusion, which is basically about slaving to earn money to buy stuff we don’t need. How long will we buy into it? When do we wake up to reclaim our freedom?

Lastly…

Let’s go back to only paying attention to our needs. Wishes only take us further into illusion. They will never permanently fulfill, no matter how showy the outer garb of a particular wish is. For a healthy mind and body, only needs should be satisfied, and nothing more.

Such a simple life will allow us to behold our forgotten Divine nature, because no fake coverings of glittery wishes will obscure it from us. Then we will no longer try prove our worth by getting new stuff to impress others with; we will simply let the Divine express itself through us, showing to the world that this is the true happiness and abundance which has nothing in common with the showy trinkets of the world.

Resource: simonarich.com