Why does a thief steal? Physical Needs – food, home, medical needs, rent, loan, kids’ fees, buying comforts or, nonphysical needs – psychological, thrill, ego, feeling wanted, finding meaning, escape. Whatever the individual reasons are, the motivations can be boiled down to these two types of needs. If a thief is a controversial figure for you, take a common man, working day on day, making a living. Why does he work – to fulfil his needs, physical or nonphysical. Whichever way we board the train of our need-based actions, we all work towards certain motivations with certain hopeful (not promised) outcomes or destinations.
Let us look at some examples,
We feel hunger, we need nourishment, we need money to buy the nourishment, we earn money, we provide ourselves nourishment. Basically, we work towards getting resources to fulfil our bodily need of nourishment. The second house of astrology represents resources – money, food, family, they are all resources to nourish the 1st house – the body and soul. In traditional text, the second house from any house is the sustenance house. In the above example, we worked towards the 2nd house to sustain the 1st house. Do we only earn to nourish our first house? No. we want to nourish our family, our friends, our pet, we feed the needy at time, we might also nourish strangers. In one way or the other we nourish their 1st house. So, a 1st house is not necessarily only dependent on the 2nd house, it could be resources coming from someone else’s 2nd house too. But the fact remains, a second house nourishes the first house.
But how do we nourish? The act itself requires the expense of the resource. To buy a loaf of bread, I need to spend money. I must release my resources. The 12th house automatically comes into picture as it is the house of expenditure. The house of let go of resources. So, I earn from my 2nd house, I sustain the 1st house (mine or others), I use the 12th house to make that effect. But this is true for a loaf of bread. What about our Mr Thief, who just steals a diamond in a one-man heist. A part of this stealing still is connected to the resources needed to sustain his 1st house. But the nonphysical part is where it gets interesting. Why does he steal? To get thrill, to feel better, to feel needed or “wanted” (pun intended), to escape his reality.
Let us bring this nonphysical part of the discussion into my life. Why do I work 70 hours a week? One part of it still connects to core needs I have, but the focus here is to bring out the nonphysical aspects of my life. Is watching a movie a core need, maybe not. Can I live without watching a movie, yes, I could. But I still go watch a movie, spending hard earned resources for a 2-hour sojourn, where I spend resources on expensive popcorn and a Pepsi by the weight of gold. Why – An escape, fun, thrill, a break from boredom, a change for a few hours. Do I need it in life? Well, we are discussing the base of Maslow’s pyramid in this article, so No, I do not need it, but I still go for it. What do I really get out of it? I satisfy my non-physical needs of the 1st house, by spending resources from my 2nd house, using my 12th house as the vehicle. But how watching a movie, satisfies some of the nonphysical needs of my 1st house?
Storytelling has been part of the human gene since a very long time. Watching a movie or enjoying an engaging story, is all about experiences, human connections, feelings, empathy, reflection, joy, sadness, anger, release. It resonates with our core instincts, our soul. The nonphysical is not just associated to the 12th house of escape, but also to the 1st house of soul – nourishment of the soul. This is the purpose of the soul to be born in this life: to get nourished by worldly experiences and eventually go back as a better improved version.
Do I only use my 12th House as a vehicle here? When I am sitting for three hours trying to help get Simran, am I not Shahrukh Khan. Somewhere deep in our hearts, when we watch a movie, we are someone. We are not ourselves; we escape the reality of our own lives and get attached to a different character, with different motivations. Very much akin to dreaming. When I dream, I drift out of my reality a bit and become some one or something else. So, escape becomes the motivation here. Change becomes the motivation here. Release becomes the motivation here. In a small-time frame, for a tiny bit, I exchange my life with someone else to get a glimpse of escape. A mini death and rebirth, again like a dream. Dreams are involuntary. I do not control episodes of my dream, but I can control which movie I go to, and become who I want to for a few hours. That satisfies my innate need as a soul to escape – 12th house. The 12th house is not only the vehicle to expense resources; it is also my eventual home. I try to gaze into the unreal to probably get a peek at my home.
Let us take this to a different but very important part of our lives – Travel. Why do we travel? We are focusing on holidays, vacations, pilgrimages right now – all voluntary travel with a happy purpose, as travel could also be involuntary too, where we must go abroad to get a heart bypass. We will come to that. But for now, lets feel happy for some moments. We travel to get new experiences, to get joy, to see new places (change), to get a break from the routine, to escape. Some travel to search for meaning, some travel to give new meaning. It is expensive to travel nowadays, takes a lot of money, time, and effort. In totality, a lot of resources (2nd house), entails spending them (12th house) to get physical (1st house) and nonphysical (12th & 1st house) outcomes.
To tie it all, our lives, waking or sleeping, is about three houses of astrology. The Trifecta (2-1-12) – Second, First, Twelfth. All other houses become part of the cast, like an ensemble in a movie, working towards the fulfilment of these three. Even our body wants us to live our lives in the same order, we earn, we eat, we burn. If we do not, the body considers it as fat, which again comes back to bite the 1st house. Then we get into the vicious cycle of spending (12th) and giving money (2nd) to hospitals (12th) to fix the body (1st). You see what I did there – a little tap dance of how the Trifecta works. The involuntary travels we make like a trip to the hospital, a travel to attend a funeral in a different city, in my case a forced trip to attend a corporate event (feels like death) still follow the same rules. Here too, we end up juggling with the Trifecta in same way shape or form.
I read a news article today, where a thief in a train was beaten up by the passengers, hung himself to the handle bars of the door to escape and finally jumped from a running train to save himself. Ethical reasoning aside of who was wrong, but this article begs a moment of thought as an astrologer.
Why did he do what he did? Why do we all? Is it The Trifecta?
