Shamanism for the Age of Science: Awakening the Energy Body - Kenneth Smith 2018
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Expanding the Boundaries
As another model of psychological development, Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs provides useful references. His schematic is usually presented in pyramid form to represent steps of personal growth. The more we are able to fulfill what Maslow labels our “deficit” needs (shown in the bottom four steps of the diagram), the more likely we are to be able to fulfill our “growth” needs (shown in the top step). A self-actualized person can suspend the innate drive to satiate the deficit needs, for example. This person does not need social acceptance in order to complete a task. Conversely, a person may shun social acceptance due to psychopathology rather than for creative purposes.
The stages in this hierarchy are not mutually exclusive. A person can be reveling in creativity, yet when access to his or her studio is threatened, may drop levels and respond in terms of a basic need for security. As with other learning, the measure for whether a person has stabilized self-actualization is found in behavior. When someone lashes out at another, for instance, it is because of feeling threatened. A self-actualized person will recognize the threat but responds more in line with it as a solvable problem, perhaps to enter into negotiation rather than use violence.
According to Maslow, other key aspects of a self-actualized person are having stronger character, being more open to experience, having a sense of autonomy, demonstrating increased objectivity, being able to love, and recovering creativity (which indicates it was at some point lost during maturation). He also says that these healthy persons have a superior perception of reality, an appreciation of emotional reaction, and an increased acceptance of self and others.4
Developmental models such as Maslow’s or the stages of awakening help us to orient, assess, and direct behavior of all kinds. These levels of ontological development also have the inherent value of providing stepping-stones toward self-actualization. Each stage brings to bear how much potential you can access, which is in direct proportion to your degree of individuation. These stages therefore contain both an intellectual and energetic logic. Talking about them facilitates entrainment as you are reinforcing these channel markers of growth in your mental, emotional, and physical behaviors. You are also deriving guidance from them, which is an effect of entrainment. This builds cohesion, which entrains perception to new emanations and vice versa. This is the foundation of human perception, as participating with new emanations results in making the energy body more conscious.5
Figure 5.3. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs