“Our Needs, the Inner Child, and the Meaning of Life”

Dr Aydin Areta
Edited by Samira Ghobadi

All of us continually feel needs within ourselves: if only I had a better car or a better home; if only my employer were different; if only I had another spouse, and so on.

It is true that these needs connect us to the external world and are part of the process of living. What matters, however, is the message they bring us from the depths of our being, which we experience and understand as a need for changes outside ourselves.

All of us were once children, and each of us has a child within. We have an understanding of the child archetype and of its characteristics.
The child is the part of us that wants to grow: a wholeness that contains all of nature and is rooted in the deepest and most distant reaches of our unconscious mind. It is an archetype that represents renewal, salvation, potential, wonder, excitement, zest for life, spontaneity, uncomplicated joy, profound delight, and, most valuably of all, the capacity to be fully present.

Our external and objective needs connect us with our inner child, because it is the inner child that wants to grow and that, as Jung says, is continually becoming and taking shape, never complete and always in need of attention, care, and continuing education.

These needs are not necessarily what they appear to be. The need of our inner child is far greater and deeper than our surface needs, and neither any thing nor any person will satisfy it. It is our outcome-oriented way of thinking that continually searches for a definite and secure answer to our needs.

To understand the depth of a need, we must remain with it and attend to it until it reveals and expresses itself to us. We should not quickly fill the emptiness we have felt with something else. We should ask ourselves why we feel this need and allow our mind to follow where it leads. The longer we remain with the need, the more we learn about ourselves, because these needs come from a depth that can guide us toward our own Self even when they appear material and superficial.

The voice of our inner needs is a doorway to the inner child, and our inner child is an open door to the miracle of creativity. By listening to our inner needs, we can open a path toward our individuation and the meaning of our life—a path that begins within us and is realized in the outer world. For every apparently material human need is, at its depth, connected with the true need of the divine child, beyond what it initially appears to be: a path toward our own Self and the meaning of life.

Dr Aydin Areta