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Appetite vs. need becomes more complicated when there is a sense of entitlement, as there often is. Americans realize they overeat, but we will complain about restaurants where we do not receive what we euphemistically call “good portions.” This can produce a “pendulum-swing”  kind of behavior, where then we starve ourselves, or eat only lettuce for a week, swinging back and forth between overindulging our hunger and denying it.

Upon turning twenty-one years old, we are legally permitted to drink alcohol. The sense of “I am allowed to do drink” frequently turns, in college students, into “I am allowed to drink whenever I want, as much as I want.” Perhaps, yes: but not if you’re going to drive (we have rules against drunk driving) and not if you’re going to go out in public (we have rules against public drunkenness.) Many people who explore the “because I’m permitted to do this, I’m going to do as much of it as I want” dynamic will sometimes swing back to the other side (“I’m not going to drink at all, at least this week.”)

The sense of entitlement and pendulum swing can extend to sexual behavior. Sometimes when people become sexually active, the sense of “I am allowed to have sex with anyone I want” (true) turns into “I’m allowed to do this as much as I want to” (also true.) (I think you can even legally do it while driving!!) However, many people soon discover that sex can be one of the great displaced appetities. Sometimes we look for sex when we’re bored, isolated, lonely and seeking a deep connection, insecure, or for many other reasons, and casual sex often won’t satisfy any of those needs any better than drinking will. We get an appetite for one thing but the actual need is for something else.

So sometimes people get caught up in the appetite for sex to an extraordinary and remarkable degree, with dozens or hundreds of sexual partners. Not everyone feels satisfied by this behavior on an “appetite vs. need” analysis. And so we sometimes swing all the way to the other side of the pendulum (“I’m giving up on dating” or the “men are pigs” response) because, really, we couldn’t find a way to align appetite with need.

This line of inquiry follows out of my past two blogs, because somehow, somewhere in my 20’s, I realized that my voracious appetite for dumping my feelings, particularly my negative feelings, my hurts, onto other people, was not what I actually needed. It’s what I craved, but the actual need was for something else. I’m not certain, but if I had to make a guess, I would guess that the appetite was for the esteem of others and the actual need was for self-esteem, although that’s probably oversimplifying things. On some level I knew I was running around hoping other people would give me something that, ultimately, I have to be able to do for myself, at least for starters.

There are some very fascinating ways of working with appetite and need, and some of them are rather drastic, radical techniques, that can have very dramatic effects. Not every technique is right for everyone, but the technique of abstinence is fascinating, and worth looking at.

Sometimes serious meditators will undertake “silent retreat.” A silent retreat can be done individually but is very frequently done in groups, so an entire group of people will go away to a retreat center for a weekend or a week and have very strict rules about not speaking to each other, at all, except under very specific and limited circumstances. We are still in community–we still eat together, for example–but there’s no dialogue. No conversation. No constant yacking. No expressing, asking for, sharing, connecting, using words. We are in community but each of us is left to his or her own interior world, a world simultaneously delightful and horrifying.

So the appetite for “I really need to talk to someone” is completely shut down for the weekend, or at least the outlet for it is. And, some fascinating things can result. One result is that people run screaming from the room, telling their friends back home, “Silent retreats are for shit. Don’t do it. It’s horrible.”

But another response can be a deep, deep coming into contact with ourselves, both our loved and unloved selves, a sense of self-reliance, of self-acceptance and acceptance of others, that is positively transcendent, life-changing. And when we do come back into the speaking world, as we always do, our use of speaking has changed. We speak more consciously. We speak when necessary, not as an effort to escape something inside.

Fasting, or juice fasting, is a type of “silent retreat” around food, an assault on the appetites. We put drastic restrictions around how we are going to engage food, and for many people, when we come back from a fast, we eat more consciously, with greater awareness. For at least a day or two.

Abstinence, the sense of shutting something down or putting it in a jar with a tight fitting lid, can be a tool we use to explore moderation. (The Buddhist description of abstinence, “to refrain from,” is more gentle and loving than mine. I work both ways, but sometimes, I just have to shut the damn thing down and lock it up for a week or two. There’s no gentle with me.)

I would define moderation as “that place where the appetite and the need come into alignment.” A person who eats or drinks or speaks or works out “in moderation” is not at either end of the pendulum swing, but has a balanced engagement with need. We perceive hunger, and we take in just as much food as is necessary to address the hunger. For me, the ability to share my inner emotional world with others while taking good care of my own emotional needs myself is a form of moderation.

And this sense of entitlement that emerges with our appetites (the thing we observe around college students and drinking, or sexually-liberated people and sex) can manifest in spiritual communities around emotional needs and wounding. “Because I am now finally able to talk about what I’m feeling, I’m going to do it continuously, in all situations, to anyone who will listen.” “Because I’m now finally able to ask for help from others, I’m going to do it all the time.”

Maybe, perhaps. I’m not challenging anyone’s right to do that. You’re allowed. What I’m asking, instead, is “what is appetite, and what is need?” I’m also asking, is there displaced need here–are we craving food when what we need is a big glass of water? Are we craving the company of someone else when the need is to go deep into the well, to go inside, and to explore the source of our own need? (One can do both, of course; we can enjoy the comfort of spiritual community without using it as an ‘alcohol’ that numbs our own exploration of what’s inside us, and our connection to All That Is.)

This week’s exploration for me is to pay attention to what I crave from others in the area of emotional need, and what I actually need. What’s my appetite, where’s my need, and are the two in alignment? Where am I pendulum-swinging, and where am I finding moderation? If this exploration appeals to you, feel free to join in! Have a great week.

Have thoughts you’d like to share?

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