Wants vs Needs: Corruption of Love and Belonging Needs!
A book excerpt on how Skeletal Leap enables deep spirituality via energy healing, supported by science and psychology for mental health and self-improvement.
SKELETAL LEAP: THE MIND BODY EVOLUTION SERIES
Wants vs Needs: Corruption of Love and Belonging Needs: Introduction
In 31st episode of Skeletal Leap, I take you on a profound journey exploring the corruption rampant in the sociocultural institutions of marriage, organized sports, and nation states.
I begin by addressing the spiritual essence of love, emphasizing that it is not merely an emotion but a deep-seated sensation experienced through energy flow during interactions.
This fundamental understanding of love sets the stage for a critical examination of the institutions that shape our social fabric.
I further argue that the institution of marriage is teetering on the brink of extinction, with divorce rates soaring and families suffering the consequences.
I highlight that the traditional values of love and belonging have been overshadowed by the currencies of identity and loyalty, leading to a fragmented society.
This fragmentation not only affects personal relationships but also extends to organized sports, which have transformed from a celebration of skill and camaraderie into a battlefield of egos, where winning takes precedence over enjoyment.
The discussion continues further into the concept of patriotism, questioning its true meaning and the motives behind it.
I point out that patriotism, often glorified as love for one’s motherland, can lead to an adversarial mindset that fosters hatred toward others.
By examining historical examples, I illustrate how loyalty to political interests can distort our understanding of love for our homeland, suggesting that true love should extend beyond borders.
Throughout the episode, I invite you to reflect on your own relationships and societal structures, urging you to consider how your interactions are shaped by these broader socio-cultural forces.
I also emphasize the importance of deep, meaningful connections, asserting that true love can only flourish in an environment of openness and sensitivity.
As the episode concludes, I leave you with thought-provoking questions about the future of marriage, the role of fatherhood, and the necessity of compassion in our interactions.
I encourage you all including myself to engage in deeper conversations about love and belonging, reminding us that our understanding of these concepts is crucial for fostering a healthier society.
Tune in to this enlightening episode of Skeletal Leap and explore the profound connections between love, identity, and the institutions that govern our lives.
Don’t miss the opportunity to gain insight into the human experience and the complexities that define our love and belonging needs today.
🔑 Key Takeaways:
(00:00:01) - Corruption in Marriage, Sports and Nation State
(00:03:20) - What is Love and Its Definition?
(00:10:33) - The disintegration of traditional marriage
(00:11:55) - What is patriotism in sports?
(00:22:06) - Why is Patriotism celebrated in India?
🎙️ Listen to the Journey:
📽️ Watch the Masterclass:
Wants vs Needs: Corruption of Love and Belonging Needs: Transcript
“Love is actually sensed through a flow of energy in the body while interacting. That is what makes one spiritually healthy as well.”
My name is Laadi Ojas. Welcome to “Skeletal Leap: A Living Adventure”. Skeletal Leap transforms one’s life into a personal heaven.
Today’s episode will tell you about corruption in marriage, organized sport, and nation state.
The institutions of marriage, organized sport and nation state make up the sociocultural heart chakra that aims to fulfill the needs of love and belongingness in society. The currencies it uses are ‘identity’ and ‘loyalty’. Identification and attachment turned more important than fulfilling the needs of compassionate love and belonging in society. Corrupted by the currencies of ‘identity’ and ‘loyalty’, these needs gave rise to social institutions such as marriage, organized sport and nation state.
Today, the institution of marriage has come down to the verge of extinction, thanks to the ever-increasing rate of divorces.
Sporting spirit took a big hit the moment it got redesigned on the lines of mini warfare, thereby corrupting its whole foundation.
Loyalty and patriotism promoted love and belonging in society but in an extremely fragmented way, leading to nation states. It also promoted the “othering” and hatred against the so-called enemy societies. It never had a compassionate concern for the undivided humanity despite the numerous slogans it raised along the way. This gave rise to disparate ideologies that often ended up in arms against one another. That was what happened during the Cold War that lasted almost half a century.
Result – sociocultural heart chakra shut!
Marriage
In the wake of the present human awareness, the institution of marriage seems to be moving toward disintegration. Divorces are at an all-time high creating a traumatic hell for the children whose lives are irreparably disrupted as and when a marriage breaks down.
It is too late to go back to the old community pattern of hunter-gatherers where fatherhood was inclusive. The reason is that, today, a father can very easily know who his offshoot is with a simple DNA test. Even an offshoot can do it later in life. All this can lead to many kinds of complexities in relationship patterns.
Let’s investigate Maslow’s deficiency need for love and belonging a little deeper. If we objectively look at it, neither psychology nor literature has yet been able to provide an authentic definition of the phenomenon called love. And the hard fact is that love occupies the most central stage in the human psyche as a drive. All our literature including poetry, drama, cinema and fiction thrives on love the most. Even religion vouches by it.
At times, philosophers did try to define the phenomenon, but there has not been any consensus among them yet. Humanity still understands love only in an intuitive sense. But this intuitive sense about love is the strongest among all other mental phenomena whether emotional, instinctual or moral. I think majority of humanity would vouch for it. And at least in the modern society, people marry only when they have fallen in love with someone.
So, how do we define love? It certainly has something to do with a sense of belonging. But that does not take us any closer to an objective definition of love. At best, it simply acts as a synonym.
Is love an emotion?
No. Love cannot be an emotion. Emotions have their abode in mind alone, not in the mind-body system as an organic part of it. Love is actually a mind-body state.
Is love a moral value?
Not even that! Morals are all foreign concepts nailed into mind alone while we grow up. They, too, are not there in the mind-body system as an organic part of it.
Is love an instinct?
Exactly! We are born with it in our body even when our mind has not yet started developing. The newborn immediately starts feeling a sense of belonging to their mother. Later in life, we sense it via interacting with anyone or anything through our senses. The deeper the interaction, the stronger is the sensation of love!
Thus love is a sensation. The more we have it through our interactions in-depth, the more it makes us sensitive. The deeper we sense, the stronger we love. This deep sensitivity enables us to feel the other inside out.
Why don’t we feel this sensation, then, while interacting with others all day, everyday?
Simply because we lose our sensitivity considerably as we grow up in an unhealthy environment. Here comes the debilitating role of the heart chakra sticking the chest ‘in’ instead of protruding it ‘out’ via abducting shoulder joints posturing them away from the torso as the first nature of the body.
They rather drop down via adducting shoulder joints posturing them stuck to the torso as an unhealthy habit. This unhealthy habit is responsible for closing heart chakra as it generates a defensive muscular armor (by habitually keeping the muscles named pectoralis major and pectoralis minor rigidly contracted) seriously limiting the openness of chest and arms ready to embrace anyone and everyone around.
It mentally results in keeping our ‘self’ protected from an imaginary threat of an attack on it. On the other hand, the openness of chest and arms ready to embrace anyone and everyone around plays a key role in dissolving one’s ‘self’ with an open heart chakra in combination with rest of the 6 chakras opened. This results in feeling the sensation of love while interacting with others through the day everyday. A healthy mind-body system is an acutely sensitive system. The more it is sensitive physically as well as mentally, the deeper it interacts and the more it loves.
Love is actually sensed through a flow of energy in the body while interacting. That is what makes one spiritually healthy as well.
And when a healthy mind-body system interacts in-depth with another mind-body system of opposite gender in adulthood, the two interacting personalities not only sense love but may also feel like making love between the two of them. That is how two personalities may get attracted to and fall in love with each other.
How do sociocultural systems for love and belonging needs get affected when their currencies, namely ‘identity’ and ‘loyalty’, become more important than the real need itself? They close the sociocultural heart chakra of our society en bulk. It is just like ‘identity’ and ‘loyalty’ work in closing the biological heart chakra via keeping our ‘self’ protected from an imaginary threat of an attack on it. These two limiting currencies become the central theme of the need for love and belonging. Once it happens, these currencies make boundaries around the ‘self’. This keeps people isolated and alienated from other people around them in the name of an imaginary safety and security to keep their ‘identity’ and ‘loyalty’ intact.
How much do we interact with our neighbors in the modern apartment buildings we live in these days? And how readily do we unconditionally interact with people across the boundaries of our ‘identity’ and ‘loyalty’, be those the boundaries of nationality, religion, caste, class, faith, belief-system, ideology, gender, possessive attachment, emotional attachment, moral attachment, generation, and orthodox political affiliation?
These are the tags of ‘identity’ and ‘loyalty’ that keep us away from loving people through unconditionally interacting with them in-depth.
True love never happens without deep interaction. Also, love never happens without an acute sensitivity to feel the other while interacting.
No doubt, then, that in the wake of the present human awareness, the institution of marriage seems to be moving toward disintegration. Divorces are at an all-time high creating a traumatic hell for the children whose lives are irreparably disrupted as and when a marriage breaks down.
How important is a father for a child? And how important is fatherhood for a sensitive father in today’s life?
If we look at it from this angle, traditional marriage seems to be the best solution. Even a divorce has no place in it since it traumatizes children’s life irreparably.
But divorces cannot be stopped from taking place. In fact, they are well on their way to becoming the rule rather than exception.
Even if divorces didn’t exist, marriages turn from fond to dull relationships between spouses within no time. When this happens, sex turns from a romantic and passionate affair into a mechanical rut sooner than later.
It is a catch-22 situation.
Organized Sport
Sports Vs Sportsman Spirit:
Sports and sportsman spirit have come to be in conflict with each other in today’s society. It is simply owing to the way sports have been designed and organized all over the world.
Why do we play sport?
I think a rational answer should be ‘to enjoy skilled physical activity’.
We enjoy the sporting skill that is required in order to make strong and specific moves demanded by any given sport. We also enjoy corresponding moves by opponent players or teams. This makes it an awe-inspiring scene not only for the players but for the spectators as well.
Win Or Lose:
It would be good enough if it were celebrated like a festival to inspire awe in the players and spectators. But their designers went a step ahead and tagged the same moves and counter-moves with victory and defeat. This introduced the element of ego in their fabric.
Who wants to get defeated? No one!
Who wants to win? Everyone!
Thus, winning turned out to be the prime motto of playing sport. The beauty of the skilled moves got pushed to the margin. The result became more important than the enjoyment springing out of the aesthetic of the awe-inspiring moves themselves.
We humans have a very crude habit of quantizing quality which tends to kill its subtleness.
Being an instinct, love as a need for belonging is always a subtle one. But when it gets replaced with its currencies named ‘identity’ and ‘loyalty’, we start assessing it in these terms. Our intention behind this is always to strengthen our own limited ‘identity’ and ‘loyalty’. Assessment is only possible between quantities or numbers that we start assigning to this quality.
No wonder, then, that we invent ways to assign those quantities to the quality displayed in a sporting event ending up with victory for one and defeat for another. It is again a very clear case of our sociocultural system of sport getting afflicted with a closed sociocultural heart chakra. Combined with the rest of other closed sociocultural chakras, it ultimately ends up getting afflicted with practices like match-fixing, betting, violence in sports and many more ills.
Brute Force to Win:
Then brute force becomes the rule of the game.
Let’s ask the same question again…
Why do we play sport?
This time the answer is going to be ‘in order to win’!
Where is the existence of sportsman spirit lost?
It is only left in the sloganeering aimed at glamorizing sports for the very thing they are no longer about!
Can you see how the motive to play changed diametrically opposite to the spirit of the sports this time?
And this is what inspires us to play sports in the present day scenario to win them at any cost.
Sports have been designed on the model of war.
Nation State
Patriotism
Patriotism is a highly revered value all over the world. It means love for one’s motherland.
Ironically the word patriotism has originated from the Greek word patēr, which means father. Yet, it has been used to express the love for a land that has been associated not with father but with mother.
Logically, it should have been ‘matriotism’ if it was to express our love for our motherland.
It simply shows our male gender bias. ‘Father’ crept in even in the formulation of a word that is touted as the embodiment of something related to ‘mother’.
But it is not simply a slip of gender that crept into the naming of something wrong. It is much more than that.
The Male-oriented Mindset:
The two mindsets were different…
The mindset that formulated the concept of patriotism.
The mindset that perceived the land of one’s birth as the land belonging to one’s mother.
Our So-called Motherlands:
Our political bosses condition us to be adversarial in nature. They make our soldiers kill and get killed without knowing the real reasons why.
They brainwash us into believing that they are doing so to defend their motherland from ‘our’ enemies, simply because they love it. The same is expected from soldiers as far as their emotional and moral obligations go.
How do we define our motherland?
It may be the village I was born in or the city or the district or the state or else the country! Why can’t it be the planet we were born on?
It all depends on how narrow or wide our field of vision and extent of sensitivity are.
Why are our sensitivities limited to a political expanse of land and its people? Why not beyond it as well?
An Example from Nazi Germany:
By that token, if a German spoke against Hitler in the late 1930s or early 1940s, s/he would be tagged as a traitor or a seditionist.
But there were many Germans who did exactly that. Today, they are not at all tagged as traitors, only because Hitler lost the war. Had Hitler come out victorious in World War II (WWII), they would certainly have been dragged out on the streets and hanged publicly.
Did these Germans not love their land then? Did they not love their country while Hitler ruled?
They certainly did! But they were simply not patriots in the narrow sense of its meaning. That aggressive patriotism would have asked for their loyalty to any official stand their country took against the world.
Power Rules The World:
So were they villains?
As said earlier, they would certainly have been tagged as villains if Hitler had been victorious in WWII.
Were they traitors or seditionists?
Again, they would certainly have been tagged as traitors and seditionists if Hitler had been victorious.
So, patriotism has to do nothing with the love for one’s motherland.
It simply deals with the loyalty to the interests of those who control one’s motherland. It is irrelevant how unjustified or immoral those interests may be.
It all depends on who is ruling one’s motherland at present.
The interests are not in favor of the motherland but of those who are ruling it at any given point in time.
Sedition means conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch.
A Political Conspiracy:
Isn’t it simply because our political bosses have an unwritten, secret conspiracy hatched between themselves? A conspiracy that propagandizes the love for one’s so-called motherland as one of the most sacred forms of love on earth?
Doesn’t this fanatic love for one’s so-called motherland automatically create a fertile ground for hatred toward other lands and their peoples? Especially whenever they get conveniently tagged as enemy lands by the respective political bosses of these chunks of land as and when it suits their narrative?
Rules Are Made by Rulers, Not by Ethics:
Patriotism and sedition are concepts that are defined and held up only by the rulers of the land. They have their vested interests in people being patriots and never seditionists.
Patriotism can very easily and effectively be exploited to sow the seeds of hatred for the people of other lands. It especially applies to the rulers of those lands that are in conflict with the interests of rulers of their own land. All these rules are defined and decided by the rulers of the land.
Why should an Israeli hate a Palestinian or vice versa if the two countries are at war with each other?
But man, the concept of patriotism does make them do so!
Another Example from An Epic:
In the Hindu epic Ramayana, the character of Vibhishana has been portrayed as fleeing his motherland. He requests Rama, a staunch enemy at war with his country, to give him shelter. He even reveals the most classified secrets of his own country to Rama in return.
But no one including the author ever criticizes him for what he has been portrayed as doing.
Why? Isn’t his character, the way it is portrayed, that of a seditionist or a traitor?
Vibhishana’s character is not looked down upon for what he did. It is simply because the epic was written by the author who sided with the character of Rama, the eventual victor in the story!
History is definitely written by the victors. As it turns out, so also is mythology!
Patriotism as a concept originated not out of love for our land. It rather came out of our loyalty to the interests of those who controlled our land, come what may.
It happens through falling prey to the narratives that are generated using ambiguous words and phrases acting as emotional slogans addressing the fallible psyche of the common masses. These narratives hold their superficial interests high on a pedestal arising from the already unfortunate cognitive assessment of their love and belonging needs. In the process, their mere currencies, namely ‘identity’ and ‘loyalty’, take over. Another case of sociocultural heart chakra getting closed!
Thanks for listening to this episode of Skeletal Leap: A Living Adventure! In the next episode, I will tell you about corruption in charitable organizations.
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