Need

Need is a great starting point - if we’re able not only to identify our need as „need“ but detect what exactly it is we think we need. Then we can put that aspect or quality into the focus of our practice, finding the right method to work with these emotions.
The teachings say that in the end, if we practice in the right way, we’ll find that there is no need - we already have everything we need within us. All we have to do is rediscover our full potential, looking inside instead of outside.

Our teacher was reading a text to us the other day, about feeling inadequate and „lesser than“ - and how that state is a very bad foundation for worship meditations.

True devotion - bhakti - has to come from a place of fullness, wholeness, feeling one with whatever quality (in the form of a deity) we decide to make the center of our worship that day, thus strengthening our awareness of that very quality within ourselves - while on days when we do not feel complete - at odds with ourselves - we better choose a different meditation form, focusing on the aspect/quality we seem to lack that day and want to improve within us. Once we’re there, we can go back to devotion and worship work.

Worshipping a quality that we cannot feel within ourselves, or feel we lack in our lives, will always lead to estrangement rather than unity.