“Greetings, I am Nicodemus! In your consumer society, a lot is said about needs. Mostly, it is about satisfying tangible wishes and needs. That’s okay, but they are not the only needs you should pay attention to. Equally important – if not even more important – are your emotional needs. After all, every one of you has a desire for closeness and affection, for love and sympathy. Because those needs are frequently neglected or even suppressed by you; you try to find a surrogate level for them in order to vent them in another way.

In other words, that means that you do not talk about your needs for affection, approval, attention or appreciation, but rather try to compensate for them by means of (frequently even unconscious or unacknowledged) power games, an exaggerated self-display, a dog-eat-dog mentality or similar patterns of behaviour.

Yet it would be so easy to talk about your needs by saying for example: ‘I need closeness’ or ‘Please, help me’ or ‘I need more distance’ or ‘I am out of my depth here’. No, you try to do it in a roundabout way. Hoping that the others will understand your meaning, you make signs instead of laying your feelings on the line for them. But those signals are often misunderstood, overlooked or misinterpreted. Then you feel not taken seriously, unaccepted or disrespected. And as a result you go round in circles.

Some of you consider it weakness to talk about their needs. They are afraid of asking others for something or admitting that they are not feeling well. Some on the other hand adopt the wrong tone when they talk about their needs – and then their words are understood as orders or encroachments.

Modesty of one’s needs has been talked up as a virtue for many centuries, if not longer; frugality has been cherished. This is a false type of modesty that does not benefit anyone, but only frustrates or makes unhappy. Humans did not come into this world in order to live in poverty – only if they definitely have chosen it as learning experience for this life –, but to experience contentment and equilibrium. Wealth and affluence are an advanced form of this, which of course may be enjoyed to the full. But that’s another story.

It is my duty to help you learn to voice your needs and stand by them, even if this might be unusual or inconvenient at first. I am by your side! Be greeted!”

© transmitted by Ingrid Auer