Vital and non-vital needs

 

Bhujapidasana

The real (vital) needs in life are numbered: breathing, eating, drinking, sleeping and a few more. So, anything that becomes “necessary”, essential, and indispensable, without being a vital need can turn into mania and addiction.
 
Vital needs come from the body, our hardware, and can be repressed, or rather suspended, by the mind. You can stop breathing for a while, but you can’t do it for good. Conversely, all other needs, those created by the mind, originated in the mind, our software, can definitely be suppressed for good. But the “problem” here is that the mind, which created that need, has to convince itself that a particular need is not necessary anymore. Neural networks and paths need to be changed for that. And that’s a long process.
 
On the other hand, neural paths are extremely important when practicing. Besides training the body, you need to train the mind – to generate in it all paths that are needed to perform that activity and to advance.
 
Developing those paths is vital to improve, as well as blocking other paths is vital to prevent that the practice turns into an addiction. Red light and green light🚦– like when you’re driving.