Fast and furious come the demands. They want time, attention, energy. People feel empty and turn your way. "They'll steal your soul if you let them....don't you let them," goes the contemporary folk song.
Problem is that there is often a psychic hole in us that permits people to make their incessant demands without us setting limits. We need to be needed. It's a dark abyss of a most nontransfomational sort to require the neediness of others in order to manufacture an ostensible wholeness in ourselves.
We can't be whole by incessantly meeting the needs of others. People and their needs running our lives signals that we take stock, turn within, hear what we may be missing out on. A vital core of the self can be impaired. We can be too needy. From this is birthed the need to be needed.
Dream symbols of energy directed inward help to reorient us. Orientation to soul calls us inside to realms away from excessive outer demands. Dream symbols of the desert hermit, a snake coiling in on itself, a yogi in his cave meditating, conjugal bliss surge forth during times of energy directed toward the self.
Reorientation toward self, life proceeding from the inside out, is the antidote to allowing people, with all of their demands to run our life. An inner life, cultivated and tended, engages us with others optimally without excessive demands imposed from either side. Living from the inside out helps to prohibit our lives being run by others and instead nourishes soulfulness that keeps body, mind, and soul intact and growing.
