The Three Stations of Need

As Dr. Marc Gafni’s teaching goes:

"She comes in threes."

There are three stations in life, in our relationship to everything.

See, for example, here: She Comes in Threes: Reality's Plotlines Are the Three Stations of Eros: Trialectics Are the Structure of Cosmos (One Mountain Oral Essays): Gafni, Dr. Marc

And those three stations also apply to need and being needed.

Station 1. I need you/ I am needed

Station 2. I don’t need you/ I am not needed

Station 3. I need you/ I am needed

Station Three seems to be the same as Station One, and yet, post-Station-Two, it is so different.

In my life, these stations are very alive, right now, and getting out of the Station One/ Station Two fallacy (or pre-/trans-fallacy) is really important for me. So, I wrote a piece giving these different aspects of myself a voice.

In some sense, it is a love letter to these aspects of myself, which are always there. They are not going anywhere...

Station One: The Wounded Child

Feeling the pain of the world, early on in my life, which entered me especially through the pain of my mom, I took on the burden of making her happy, which at some point expanded into the burden of having to basically make everyone happy. And I wasn’t allowed to fail, because, in my worldview as a five-year-old child, failing would have meant her death, and then of course mine, because, as a young child, I needed her, I was dependent on her. And death was this scary black hole that needed to be avoided at basically every cost.

I had already lost my grandma to death. Seemingly, my love had failed. She didn’t stay for me. My love wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.

So, how can I make sure not to lose my mom as well?

How can I make her happy so she stays?

I can’t.

And yet, I have no choice.

I need to do this.

But I am not enough.

And yet, when I show up fully as who I really am, I am too much, too intense, too different… Nobody likes different. I don’t fit in. I don’t belong…

...

Fast forward to 2025 - to the time between worlds, time between stories we live in...

We are in a meta-crisis.

The whole world is falling apart.

How can I heal the world?

From this old worldview of the five-year-old, the weight of the world seems to rest on my shoulders.

I am not enough.

So, maybe, I need to sacrifice myself for the sake of the Whole?

That, however, led me right into burnout...

...

Enter... Station Two...

Station Two: I Am

I am me.

I am myself.

I can feel myself, my boundaries, my No, and my Yes.

I can feel my power... my autonomy.

I am enough.

I am just right.

There is nothing to do, nowhere to go.

Who put me in charge anyway?

I can just be.

And I can just play my small part and let God take care of the rest.

The world will keep turning, even when I fail.

What I do is not of cosmic significance.

And yet, I matter.

How I feel matters.

My fulfillment matters.

It is my life.

I am ultimately not needed.

And I don’t need anyone to complete me.

I can choose what to do and what not to do.

I can say no.

And I can say yes.

...

And yet... Enter Station Three...

Station Three: I Am Needed by All-That-Is

Is it really my life?

Did I create it?

Did I create myself?

Isn't my life part of something so much larger than me?

I know it is. So how do I hold the two together?

...

We pray in the lineage of CosmoErotic Humanism, which is grounded in the Wisdom of Solomon Lineage: Rabba Emuna-Techa - which means "Great is my trust in You," but also "Great is Your trust in me."

That implies that She/Goddess trusts me, and even that She needs me. Divine Need!

And yet, hearing that She needs me in an ultimate sense often made me shrink at first.

My wounded child heard it and responded. I was spontaneously age-regressing, falling back into Station One.

And yet, I know that there is another way to understand this, post-Station-Two. And that is becoming ever more alive in me.

It is not that I am needed to single-handedly save the world.

It is not that Mother will die when I don’t do what is expected of me.

It is not that I need to sacrifice my authentic self because otherwise I am not enough to save She, and then I am not loved, and I am all alone forever.

And yet, there is a sacrifice.

It is to sacrifice my false self (of being not enough or too much) on the altar of my unique, authentic expression of True Self - my Unique Self.

I sacrifice my separation on the altar of the One.

I sacrifice my shame of simultaneously being too much and not enough on the altar of Outrageous Love.

She wants me in my full radiance, which includes my power, my Eros, my awkwardness, my intensity, my realness, and even my unique fucked-up-ness. She wants me whole – the whole me – with nothing held back.

And as Marc always says, there is nothing more whole than a broken heart.

She needs me to liberate every broken shard in my own soul and bring it back to the Whole, which becomes ever more good, true, and beautiful. And She loves me in this whole messy process – nothing left out.

She needs me in all of my Love, my passion, my Outrageousness, all of my Beauty, and all of my messiness - all of it!

I am done with shame.

I am done with trying to be different.

I am done with being harsh to myself.

I love You, Goddess. You love me.

I need You. You need me.

And in our mutual need, we both become more Whole. We both come home.

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