Need and Obligation

"Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, "You owe me." Look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the whole sky." -- from The Gift by Hafiz of Shiraz

"God is but Love, and therefore so am I." -- A Course in Miracles

I've been thinking a lot about the appearance of needs and obligations in my own life and in the lives of my clients. What needs or obligations does Love know? What needs or obligations does the sun have, as it shines on everyone and everything? As Jeshua ben Joseph said, God makes His sun shine on the evil and the good alike. God, Divine Love, is no respecter of persons or of anything else. Omnipresent, unconditional, omnipotent, unopposed Love. What is all-encompassing can have no opposite and can know no limits.

Our human identities, our fictional selves, do almost everything out of need and obligation. Whether the imagined needs are bodily, emotional, financial, or even spiritual, they are the antithesis of Love and therefore are not real. Where can needs even occur in the Allness of Divine Love? What could be missing that is needed? What could be too much, or too little? How could one sunbeam be obliged to another? Each has its trajectory, all within the radiance that is shed by the sun. How could one reflection of God, of Divine Love, be obligated to another? When every reflection reflects in unique fashion only the Allness of God, Good, Divine Love... what could be missing? What could be needed? What conditions could ever limit the Allness of Love?

Intimidated by the Allness of Being, of having everything, literally... we manufacture limits and make stipulations. I remember years ago, reading in the I-Ching, "The crossing of the great water is made simple without stipulations." It was like a light bulb went off. Ah... everything is simple without stipulation. It's the stipulated needs and requirements, the obligatory limits we set on everyone and everything in our lives, that make it all so difficult. In other words, it's our fictional stories about what's happening, or what did happen, or what should happen, or what will happen. The variations are endless. And the good news is that none of it is true, none of it is needed, no obligations are real! We are as eternally free as we are whole and complete. "Beloved, I am with you always, and ALL that I have is yours."

Needs and obligations are habitual postures, the nightmares we frighten ourselves with, to stay true to the stories we have been taught. As A Course in Miracles puts it, we have been poorly taught. Time to look again, and to tell the truth. Think of all the things and conditions that you thought you needed. When you got them, did it fill the imagined void? Perhaps temporarily you fooled yourself, believing the lie. But eventually, every idol falls. The void is not there. Only God is revealed when idols fall and illusions fall away. Only the Real and Eternal remains.

So when you find yourself caught in the need to be right, the need to fulfill a commitment or other obligation, the need to be good, the need to be bad, the need to be liked, the need to be independent, the need to be loved, the need to find a mate, the need to feel special and appreciated, the need to prove something, the need to have a purpose, the need to feel needed and important... the list goes on and on. Stop for a moment. Who says you need these things? Is it true? Can it be true that you who are a Divine reflection of Love ItSelf could need anything at all or be obliged to be other than God created you just to fill these imagined needs?

There is no peace in needs and obligations. They are smokescreens, designed solely to keep the egoic search going and going and going. Never will we find what we seek through this culture of sacrifice and guilt that shows itself most plainly in needs and obligations. For the Divine Love that lives us needs nothing but to shine, to BE reflected through each of our lives. Shining naturally and effortlessly like the sun, this is the one need that is always met, our only true need, and the only one that is eternally free of obligation.

"God is everywhere, and nothing apart from Him is present or has power." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 473, Lines 8-10