There are these moments where a person is introduced to a great clarity that the world they have been looking in, in order to find themselves through, is incapable of revealing the worth they are looking for.

This first shock (have you had it, by-the-way?) is when a person realizes, "Uh oh. This is a dead-end. Oh no." And when a person has enough of these moments, there is just needfulness, really unreconciled need: "I can't make myself happy. I can't! I went there... I did this... I got these things... People said I was..." Every person has had their moment in the sun. And, as sure as the sun sets, that glamor disappears, and a person is left there trying to find (again) something they can fill this need within them to find their worth.

I want to break down this unreconcilable need for you because I find it so interesting (I hope you do too). "Need" and "fulness" -- is a kind of oxymoron, isn't it? I'm full of need. Needfulness. It speaks of a perfect emptiness, because I can't fill this need, and yet I'm so full of not being able to fill myself.

There is needfulness in my heart. But in my soul, something says, "There is something priceless. There is something pure. There is something that is incorruptible. There is something that is free, and you've been selling yourself for this in all of these different ways."

Gradually, after this first shock, this first awakening, the person goes, "All right. Gosh. I have a certain kind of needfulness, and it's born out of being empty of my solutions. My solutions don't work anymore. What am I to do?" So, here I am, and I've got this needfulness. Are any of you needy? You know what that means. Listen to what it really heralds.

First, the moment of this needfulness is the beginning of a shift in the order of things, because formerly my mind (by itself) turned to the world, to the things that I could identify with to make me feel and find my worth. But now I can't look there with the same ease that I did, and something is saying that world has to become second and something else has to be first. But part of the needfulness is, "I don't know what it is that has to be first. I just know that the old order doesn't work. The old order is what I sold myself for and wound up a slave of the thing that was supposed to liberate me."

And so, this pivotal change in a person's life comes about as they start to realize, "I need a completely different kind of knowledge. I need a new understanding -- not about how to win, because I realize that the whole model of trying to win belongs to a world that comes with the woe of now having to protect what I've got or be fearful I'll lose it. I need to understand something about the nature that wants to win and believes the only place to find it is in the world outside of itself."

The mind suddenly realizes that all that has come before, can't serve it. This extraordinary condition is that I have a need I can't answer, but I know that there must be answers... because just as I reach this point by fulfilling the need that led me up to it, so must this need have a solution as well. But the solution to this need doesn't belong in the world that I have given myself to in exchange for what I think I'm worth. The needfulness has initiated the slow but beautiful discovery that leads me to a new kind of self-knowledge.