Management of Measurement Constructs

Oh! The Energy of Needs

So much of our life —so very very much— is linked to having to do something in order to make progress with life. We have to follow the instructions of our parents. We have to do what our teacher tells us. We have to model ourselves to societal expectations of behavior. We have to get a job. Natural drives tell us we have to have children and raise them ?properly.? Religion sets up a grand spectrum of what we have to do to explain life and emerge through the state of death.

Whew! –Along the way, some of us do have time and volition to feel needs on a personal level, to say ?I really have to make the team if I?m to have any identity. I have to to get this job or I?ll lose everything! I have to be accepted. I have to look good. I have to prove myself by being right. I have to be numero uno.?

The ?power of positive thinking? was coined by famed New York minister/author Norman Vincent Peale: a clever and productive way to encourage resourcefulness to meet these need pressures ??positive? was what would ?work? in our interaction with society, thereby benefiting us individually. –The ?prosperity evangelists? today even preach and attest to God?s indulgence of all the materialist have-to?s! –We are pushed, pushed, pushed to be those who have rather than those who have-not.

And yet, indeed, so much of life can focus on frustrations, the tensions of these within these teachings: I didn?t make it; now what? ? Same old story: I didn?t make the grade; I?ve got to settle in where I belong ? I have to change course ? change relationship ? my job. ?We have to adopt a whole other level of societal prescriptions. ?I?m overweight; every commercial I see makes me feel inferior. I have to live with that or change it ? but I can?t.

Needs are natural to the human condition. Flowers reach for the sun. Needs make things happen [we know that the energy of the Sun in its Sign invigorates the Moon in its Sign, the symbol of the reigning need of our personality. ?Please see Synthesis & Counseling in Astrology, pages 65-102.] Needs and our activities to fulfill them define who we are and how we relate to society: for reward, frustration, or adjustment.

In relating to others, the relationship is productive when we help each other fulfill personal needs. ?Powerful corporate negotiation teachings (the Seminars you often see offered in advertisements) are based on one major premise: to get what you want, you decide what the other person wants and adjust things to fulfill that need; then you?re home free! Compromise comes to life.

But when we fulfill our needs ?one here or there— a major, major one, and some subsidiary ones some time later— is that fulfillment enough? What follows on the heels of transient fulfillment?

After a big meal, dogs and humans want to lie down! We don?t keep going. We?re sated. We?re safe. We?ve had enough. We don?t need to have more.

We finally get that big house with a pool. Now what? What?s next to fulfill more of what the house and pool fulfilled?

See how the motivations of lust become lost within familiarity. The unattainable is no longer the lure. We calm down?

What about these phrases in our language betraying the stagnating condition within the need fulfillment process? ?BOR-ing!:? ?Been there, DONE that!? ? ?So what else is new?? ? ?Same ol? story? ? ?I don?t care about that.? ? ?I?m not into that anymore.?

What happens is that too frequent frustration depresses us. The goals and steps toward personal ascendancy are lost to the reality pressure to personal compliance. Our dreams stop; our conversations about development stop. Underachievement gets a grip on us, and Level shifts.

Much of having is the need to have. ?How are our need-energies reinforced astrologically?

Barack Obama needs above all to be regarded as informed, communications-skilled, delightful by all his publics. He has the Moon in Gemini. He has to fulfill that reigning need using heroic, self-dramatizing energies (the Sun in Leo). That Moon is really intense, heavily fortified with Uranus and Pluto squaring it!

Benazir Bhutto drives her life to respond to her need for acceptance by the people, because of her informed, intelligent understandings of social ways. Her Moon in Libra thrives on the Sun?s energy in Gemini. The Neptune conjunction with the Moon introduces vision, a very powerful, compelling add-on.

Hillary Clinton needs above all to convince people that she has the intuition-guaranteed vision for what?s right, and that she can back that up concretely. Her Moon in Pisces, intensified by Uranus, rides buoyantly upon the Sun?s energy, peregrine in Scorpio! She?s been that way all her life, of course, controlling her life and others?; that?s why she?s where she is!

Former President of France, Jacques Chirac needs to make himself known (fulfilled) through the powerful impact of his opinions, rolling over everything in his way to get that need fulfilled (peregrine Moon in Sagittarius, with the Sun in Sagittarius as well). In recognition of his need-fulfillment energies, the public and press named him ?le bulldozer.?

And so it goes, the need profiles of the famous illuminate our point here.

But when the ?light doesn?t come on?? :: You meet with a client, and nothing happens in the conversation. The client uses extremely few words to respond to your discussion points. There is minimal facial expression. The body is lifeless. There are no projections forthcoming for the time ahead. ?And when you point out this listlessness, the client will agree with you!

This is not normal ?and I use that word advisedly; defying the press of needs is to defy life. How have need energies been squashed? Not been reinforced?

What can you do? In such an extreme case, the energies of needs seem to have gone their course or never come alive. A psychiatrist could easily label this as depression. Perhaps your client should have gone to the medical practitioner instead of to an astrologer.

This is a terribly tough road for the astrologer, knowing full well that a passage or two or three of planetary symbologies is not going to bring in the sunlight, not going to stoke the fires. Explaining this, we can only make a referral to a psychiatrist for protracted discussion and discovery within the client?s problem areas. ?Interestingly, presented in earnest, this referral usually meets with understanding and agreement by the client! Your contribution has been the referral. You feel better about the experience and you know your client will eventually.

So, in our consultations, we must take the pulse of need energies: have they been reinforced early on in life development? To what degree have they enjoyed fulfillment? How have the needs matured over time? Does vision, do dreams reinforce the need energies? –Remember: Obama, Bhutto, Clinton got to where they are through the process of working to fulfill their individual need complexes. They did things the way they needed to do them, and the environment seems to have rewarded them significantly.

A most important part of the astrological consultation must be devoted to delineating the reigning need complex ? and supporting it! –Think how this premise illuminates everything!