# A New Vision Of Money - 1. Why do we have needs?  As alluded to in the introduction, we must be crystal-clear on the topic of needs before we can safely dive into the topic of money. After all, we use money mostly to satisfy certain needs or wants. So, what has A Course in Miracles to say about the needs we have? The first thing to understand about needs is the picture the Course paints about our reality in Heaven. The Course describes Heaven not as a place but as a state of mind in which there is a complete absence of needs. We find this idea, for example, in Chapter 13: > Your Father knoweth that you have need of nothing. In Heaven this is so, for > what could you need in eternity? ([CE T-13.VIII.1:1-2](https://acimce.app/:T-13.VIII.1:1-2)) I'm not going to spend much time explaining why in Heaven we have no needs. We are just taking Jesus at his word that this is so. Simply, God willed for us to live with no needs whatsoever. In Heaven, we had no need for anything. However, upon coming to this world, we placed ourselves in a situation where needs became a thing: > In your world you _do_ need things, because it is a world of scarcity, in > which you find yourself _because_ you are lacking. ([CE T-13.VIII.1:3](https://acimce.app/:T-13.VIII.1:3)) How did this happen? How did we become this needy beings that spend their lives in want? What is truly behind each of our needs? Well, if we examine the concept of need, we discover that every need involves, by definition, a lack. A lack can be understood as a void of something. That void must be filled by that very thing which is missing. So, needing “something” is the same as wanting to fill the void of that very thing. > A need implies lack by definition. It involves the recognition (...) that you > would be better off in a state which is somehow different from the one you are > in. ([CE T-1.48.20:1-2](https://acimce.app/:T-1.48.20:1-2)) So, Heaven, which is a state where we had no needs, was by definition a place with no lack. Since we had no lack, we did not have any notion of a possibility of being better off. How did that change? > Until the separation (...), nothing was lacking. This meant that you had no > needs at all. If you had not deprived yourself, you would never have > experienced them. ([CE T-1.48.20:3-5](https://acimce.app/:T-1.48.20:3-5)) At some point, we decided to separate from God. This was more of a desire than an actual thing. After all, God is part of everything there is, so it must be impossible to separate from him. What we did, instead, was to imagine that we did. To take a part of ourselves out, so we could be apart from everything else. We imagined that we took God out from the core of our being. For the first time, we had the experience of being deprived of something we used to have. By separating from God and coming to this world, we discovered what it meant to be without God. The separation led us to experience our first lack—the lack of God Himself. As we said before, having needs involves recognizing that you could be in a better state than you are now. That is, every need is simply a motivation. A need represents the motivation to fulfill a specific lack. The void of God at the core of our being not only became our first experience of lack, it also caused the idea of behavior. Without needs, there would not be a need for behavior at all: > After the separation, needs became the most powerful source of motivation for > human action. All behavior is essentially motivated by needs, but behavior > itself is not a divine attribute. ([CE T-1.48.20-21](https://acimce.app/:T-1.48.20-21)) Again, in Heaven, where there is no lack, behavior was unnecessary because there was no motivation for change. In this world, however, any behavior we exhibit or see in others is motivated by certain specific needs. Heaven is also a place where only spirit exists. Unlike this world, it is a place without forms or physical things, as the Course explains. It is a place that exists within the Mind of God. In a place without needs, there was no need for anything to express our behaviour with, as behavior is just motivation to fulfill our needs. Once we separated, we were also in need of a thing with which we could express any behavior. Something tangible and could take us from one place to another and witch wich we could experience the effect of change itself. That thing is the body. The body is the mechanism through wich we express our behavior: > The body is the mechanism for behavior. Nobody would bother even to get up and > go from one place to another if he did not think he would somehow be better > off. ([CE T-1.48.21:3-4](https://acimce.app/:T-1.48.21:3-4)) However, as we explained above, the body originally arose as a product of our the desire to separate from God. This desire required a symbol to keep us separate from our Creator. Therefore, the body is also the symbol of the separation from God. You can think of the body as some sort of protective barrier that keeps us separated from the rest of the world. This protective barrier is what proves to us every day that "I am me" and that I cannot be anything else. Like any symbol, the body can change its purpose and be used for something positive. When the body is used to separate, it seems that the body has its own needs. When we use the body to keep ourselves separated from God, we become slaves to those needs and will spend our lives satisfying them. On the other hand, if we made God our only need, then our behavior, expressed through the body, would reflect that motivation too. Believing that we can be better off is, therefore, a good thing. It is what ultimately motivates us to satisfy the need for God, our only real need. So, the fact that behavior is not a divine attribute does not mean that behavior, or the body, is something bad in themselves. Now that we have invented the concept of behariour, then it becomes the best mechanism we have at our disposal to act on our desire to heal our lack: > Believing that you _could_ be “better off” is the reason why you have the > mechanism for behavior at your disposal. That is why the Bible says, “By their > _deeds_ ye shall know them.” ([CE T-1.48.21:5-6](https://acimce.app/:T-1.48.21:5-6)) Behavior must be expressed through the body, so we need to use it as a way to be "better off". But, since behavior is just a reflection of some internal motivation or need, then the body must reflect that internal motivation too in its actions. In other words, given the needs of any person, then their behavior will follow, for all behavior is a way to satisfy some need. And given their motivation, their deeds will follow. This is why "By their _deeds_ ye shall know them." A person whose motivation is to reach God will exhibit a behavior that is in accordance with this desire. Yet, the majority of us here use or bodies and behavior not to seek God, but to keep the separation going. As we do that, it seems like like there are hundreds of different needs to satisfy, each one more important than the other. There are so many and some seem so important and unavoidable, that it seems naïve to think that we can seek God with our behaviour before fulfilling those other needs before.  Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs is a great example of this idea. The chart above is commonly understood to say that we must first satisfy our physiological and safety needs before satisfying the need for relationships and spiritual fulfillment. However, Jesus tells us that this understanding is completely wrong: > You act according to the particular hierarchy of needs you establish for > yourself. Your hierarchy, in turn, depends on your perception of what you are; > that is, what you _lack_. This establishes your own rules for what you need to > know. Separation from God is the only lack you really need to correct. But > your separation would never have occurred if you had not distorted your > perception of truth, and thus perceived yourself as lacking. The concept of > any sort of need _hierarchy_ arose because, having made this fundamental > error, you had already fragmented yourself into levels with _different_ needs. ([CE T-1.48.22:1-6](https://acimce.app/:T-1.48.22:1-6)) In other words, every need is a distortion of our only true lack: the lack of God. As a result of the separation, we internally disintegrated as if we repeated the process of separating from God over and over within our own being. At each step, we would be taken out another part of ourselves and render us more deficient. With each new lack, we also invented a new need. We became needy beings wanting for eveything at the same time. That is also why it seems we have internal voices asking for too many things, some of which seem to contradict other needs. There is no solution to this dilemma of wanting multiple, and sometimes conflicting things. We had to comprimise. If we wanted to satisfy the needs that our internal voices demanded, we had to prioritize some and set others aside. One voice may say it wants to eat right now, but another says you want to keep looking at your phone while lying on the couch. Another voice tells you that you would like to go out to eat, but there is also a part of you that reminds you not to waste money and that it is better to stay home. The idea of a hierarchy of needs seems like the most sensible thing in the world. Without this hierarchy, we would go crazy trying to satisfy all the internal voices asking for contradictory things. However, Jesus questions this concept and reminds us that our only need is God. He tells us that we have simply distorted our perception of truth when we saw ourselves as lacking God. It is impossible to lack something that is everywhere and is everything. Each of us is part of that everything. The belief that it is possible to create a barrier to keep God away led us to the logical conclusion that everyone has different needs and that certain needs are more important than others. Instead, we must invert the pyramid. If we could put God as our first and only need, our behavior would unify in a way that would allow God to provide for us. Rather than trying to satisfy all the different voices inside of us, we make them one. A single voice. A single calling. A single need. As we will see throught this book, this unified focus on a single thing has the power to free us from all other wanting and also provide us with any means we need to stay in this world for as long as it is sensible: > Unified need produces unified action, because it produces lack of ambivalence. ([CE T-1.48.23:2](https://acimce.app/:T-1.48.23:2)) Money, then, would become for you as a secondary thing in yout life. A thing provided for you when needed, in order to sustain your unified goal of reaching back to God. ## Practice If we want to gain a new vision of money and needs, we must abandon the old way of seeing. This begins with recognizing that our current perspective is learned, not a natural way of viewing things. Today, we will use the technique of responding to temptation. It has two parts: 1. **Throughout the day, observe your mind and identify thoughts of need.** For each thought of lack or need, respond slowly but without delay with the following phrase: > "Right now, I believe I need ----------, but my Self is truly asking for God." For example, if you feel hunger, boredom, a need for a hug, or tiredness, respond immediately with: > "Right now, I believe I need -- to eat, to watch TV, a hug, to sleep --, but > my Self is truly asking for God." Do this with your eyes closed and spend at least half a minute slowly repeating the phrase. Connect with the meaning of the phrase and how it makes you feel. Continue repeating it, slowly and mindfully, until you sense an internal shift, no matter how small. If you feel strong resistance, that is the moment to stop. This practice does not mean you should refrain from doing anything. For instance, it does not expect you to ignore hunger and not eat. The purpose is to train your mind to recognize that it is not the body that asks for things, but a deeper desire to return to your natural state. 2. **Throughout the day, observe your mind and identify thoughts of need.** Use your phone's timer to set an alarm every 20 minutes. Each time the alarm goes off, remind yourself of this truth: > "God created me perfect and without lack. Let my mind be one again so I can > return home." Write this phrase somewhere visible so you do not forget. If repeating it every 20 minutes is too challenging, set the alarm for every 30 minutes or 1 hour. Do not decide in advance if it is too frequent—just try it. It is okay if you occasionally forget to repeat the phrase. As mentioned in the previous step, it is important that you repeat the phrase with awareness of its meaning. Do it slowly, allowing the meaning to enter your mind. The goal is not to turn this into a mantra; we are aiming to keep the idea's content in your mind throughout the day, not just the words themselves.