Reaching for the Top

Ambitious types like me and many of you are often reaching for the top, the new understanding, the breakthrough.  We are often operating at the top of our capacities, working with our newest insights or awareness.  This is fun, great, but if this is our focus all of the time, we are constantly neophytes.  We are awkward using skills and abilities that are not fully developed.In the levels of development I teach, we recognize that as we grow the base of our personal pyramid, we can spend more time at higher levels, but many of us are ambitious drivers and keep pushing for these higher levels.  I have said many times that the breadth of the base of our pyramid is also what creates the ability to experience the higher levels.As many times as I have emphasized working with the base I hadn’t realized the depth and practicality of what I was saying.  It hit me recently, out of the blue, that when I look at the pyramid of my life, most of it is lived in the base layers. In striving for the upper reaches I was missing a lot of life, perhaps most of it.As Maslow taught, we need our basic needs met first.  Taking it further, I realized that the quality, awareness, and attention that we give to our basic needs at the bottom of the pyramid directly impacts and informs the quality of the height and the peaks we can experience.  Whereas the breadth of our base affects the height to which we can build, so does the quality of the base we build affect the quality with which we build the rest.An Indian teacher with whom I study suggested that 50% of awakening is in our diet.  Wow.The attention we give to our basic needs is the most important attention we can give to our life experience. Self-actualization is just the icing on the top.  Perhaps the real nourishment of our existence is in the low hanging fruit.If we use Maslow to look at what are the basic needs, we start with air, water, food, and shelter. (He also adds sex, but lets save that for another article.)  Air alone is potent. In my yoga practice, all the teachers keep saying that it is all about the breath, and instead we all focus on stretching and poses. Air is the most basic of our needs, it makes sense that if we want a quality life that the quality of our air is a critical ingredient, so lets all learn to breath really well!From this same perspective, how is your water?  Your food?  Your shelter?  Couldn’t these be, shouldn’t these be, of the highest excellence to experience a great quality life?  If these aspects of our lives are not stable, how do we expect the rest to be?The next level up is security.  How is your security?  Do you have savings?  Have you created a secure income?  Have you planned for the future?  Insurance?  The quality of your security and how you develop this is more important than and critical to your self-actualization.The next level is belonging.  How are your friendships?  Your relationships?  How are you with yourself?  Do you support, accept, and value yourself?  Not much more self-actualization can happen until you do.  But remember you are limited on what you can do at this level by the amount you have developed the previous two levels.What I realized, what I want to share with you, is the critical nature, importance and deep spiritual implications of how we meet our basic needs.  How you breathe and eat may be the most important spiritual quests you can make.  How you sleep and the environment you live in will affect the way you grow and develop spiritually, emotionally, and mentally.  In our quest to grow and become actualized persons, we can overlook these most basic and hugely important factors.What can you do to upgrade the quality of your air today? Your food?  Your security?  Your belonging?  Do an experiment.  Work with one of these things today, and see how it affects your awareness, your happiness, your contribution, your experience of life.Here are 3 basic breathing techniques to try: http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART00521/three-breathing-exercises.htmlFor a great understanding of food, read this:http://www.amazon.com/In-Defense-Food-Eaters-Manifesto/dp/0143114964/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356016430&sr=8-1&keywords=in+defense+of+food