self-transcendence.

Is divinity a human need? (🩵Turquoise Needs - Part 9/9)

awe | detachment | suffering | simplicity | divinity

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Ah, we’ve reached the final color in our analysis of the spiral of human needs.

Turquoise is often considered the deepest and most mysterious of the Spiral layers. It is associated with mystical experience, self-forgetful oneness, deep inner peace, and a spiritual life which is detached from the things of this world.

The classic Turquoise person is the “guru” or the “monk…” off in the mountains with the Divine or cloistered away from society in a community which fosters simple, spiritual living. 💛Yellow tries to understand all the categories and integrate them together, but 🩵Turquoise breaks all the categories and transcends them.

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Turquoise SELF-TRANSCENDENCE needs are the most difficult to put into language. (As 🤎Beige precedes language & labels, 🩵Turquoise transcends language & labels.) But we could say Turquoise needs are addressed in encounters with the sacred which are experienced in awe and lead to deep contentment.

There’s a way in which Turquoise smashes the other needs to pieces, fulfilling them in an unexpected way. The needs of ❤️happiness, 💜home, 🧡esteem, etc. can be experienced as “met” though a 🩵Turquoise lens, which says radical things like…

“Suffering itself becomes the greatest of joys when one seeks it as the most precious of treasures.” (Therese)

“I no longer want the comforts of a home, but choose to be like the son of man who had no place to lay his head.”

“Then I understood what real glory was… true wisdom consists in ‘desiring to be unknown and counted as nothing.’” (Therese)

As John of the Cross says…

“In order to arrive at having pleasure in everything, desire to have pleasure in nothing.
In order to arrive at possessing everything, desire to possess nothing.
In order to arrive at being everything, desire to be nothing.
In order to arrive at knowing everything, desire to know nothing.”
-Ascent of Mount Carmel, Chapter XIII

You cannot meet your own 🩵Turquoise needs. You can only receive what is given. Yet those who seek, will find, and these seekers tend to cultivate a receptive posture through prayer and meditation, practicing non-attachment, a lifestyle of poverty and simplicity, and pursuing the depths of their religion.

We can talk of Turquoise needs as our need to be in greatest contact with Reality — our need for God. The fullest meeting of our needs is no less than divinization. Theosis. To be one with God.

Every person — and every being — has an inborn need for 🩵transcendence into love, blossoming from their very 🤎embodied existence. It’s a movement of both reception and expression of the Love at the Heart of Being. It’s the call you hear from deep within your spirit, rising up from bowels of mother earth, and echoing from the glories of heaven. A call from God — o logos theou.

Turquoise Check-Up Questions

You may want to give a 1-10 score for each of these.

1. Are you detached from the things of this world, and hold your expectations loosely?

2. Do you spend time in reverence, awe, and wonder?

3. Do you live an uncluttered life of simplicity?

4. Do you enjoy spending time alone, not busying yourself, and time in silence, not seeking noise?

5. Do you have a strong meditation practice?

6. Are you content in the midst of suffering, able to sit with it without trying to fix or escape it?

7. Do you happily receive humiliation and failure?

8. Do you have a sustained peace within yourself, from which you can reflect on your other emotions?

9. Are you present to God and becoming like God?