{"id":33,"date":"2007-07-07T13:15:05","date_gmt":"2007-07-07T19:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/33\/abraham-maslow-did-yoga\/"},"modified":"2007-07-07T13:16:08","modified_gmt":"2007-07-07T19:16:08","slug":"abraham-maslow-did-yoga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/33\/abraham-maslow-did-yoga\/","title":{"rendered":"Abraham Maslow did yoga?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know what it is about breakfast, but when I’m making eggs is when I get hit with a lot of interesting ideas.<\/p>\n

This morning’s was, “Abraham Maslow is upside-down! Stand his ideas on their heads and it’s more accurate.”<\/p>\n

Any questions?<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Okay, let me elaborate.<\/p>\n

Maslow is famous for his Hierarchy of Needs<\/a> (which became practically synonymous with the personal development movement).
\nOne of his ideas is that until you get your “lower needs” met — physiological (water, air, food, etc.), safety, love & belonging, and so on — you don’t have enough energy available to use for getting your “higher needs” met (esteem and self-actualization).<\/p>\n

Another way to think of it is that our natural way of being is HIGHER, unless we have to spend energy on the basic survival issues.<\/p>\n

What I noticed as I was chopping up peppers and garlic shoots for my Mexican scramble is that all<\/strong> the “needs” are really manifestations of the same idea. That is, it’s as if we have this fundamental urge\/movement toward keeping “I” alive.<\/p>\n

Well, once we have that taken care of at the basic level and we have something to eat (did I mention the chipotle salsa I use?) and somewhere to sleep and someone to sleep and eat with, that same urge\/idea\/thought\/movement<\/u> is still active and just looks for something else to do.<\/p>\n

So, it looks for another way to do the same thing — gets a job, protects the family, builds a McMansion.<\/p>\n

Once that’s basically taken care of, that same fundamental thing just looks for another activity — maintains a personal identity, supports that identity, tries to get others to like that identity.<\/p>\n

And so on, and so, on and so on.<\/p>\n

There’s no hierarchy. There’s no evolving or growing. There’s just the same urge\/idea\/thought\/movement going on with us acting on it in different ways. In fact, when I look at it this way, it seems quite un-evolved and non-growing. Without recognizing that we’re still just reacting to the same fundamental concept, no matter where on the ladder we think<\/u> we are, it can look<\/strong> like growth. But seeing that it’s all just the same urge playing out, then the “top” of the hierarchy — self-transcendence — is really no different than the “bottom.”<\/p>\n

Really, we’re not doing anything different than any other living thing on the planet. It just seems more complicated.<\/p>\n

To mis-quote John Merrick, the “Elephant Man,” “I am<\/strong> an animal!”<\/p>\n

(Oh, when I went on to having a banana and some cherries from the tree in our backyard, I had some fun thoughts about “free will.” But I’m saving those for later… or they’ll just happen when they do, without conscious intervention on my part \ud83d\ude09 )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know what it is about breakfast, but when I’m making eggs is when I get hit with a lot of interesting ideas. This morning’s was, “Abraham Maslow is upside-down! Stand his ideas on their heads and it’s more accurate.” Any questions? \ud83d\ude09 Okay, let me elaborate. Maslow is famous for his Hierarchy of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evolutionary-psychology","category-self-improvement","category-spiritual-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}