Why am I so needy?

      In life it seems like we are always stumbling from one crisis to the next.  Even if there is nothing really "wrong" or threatening, somehow there is always a negative that we can choose to obsess over.  As I meditate and do more yoga, body and mind awareness becomes second nature.  What this means expressed in the life I'm living, is that I've begun to notice I seem to be needy all the time.
      Now, I'm sure it's not a new pattern, but I've been pretty self-critical about it.  I mean, really, isn't this something one gets over?  The good news is, according to Abraham Maslow in The Maslow Business Reader , no, I'll never get over it.  Needing is the human condition.
       Somehow when I learned all of this in leadership classes, I missed the part that said to exist is to desire more and better (or more likely, I just applied this to others, not myself).  Maslow states "...when a need is fairly well satisfied, the next prepotent ("higher") need emerges in turn to dominate the conscious life and to serve as the center of organization of behavior, since gratified needs are not active motivators  Thus, man is a perpetually wanting animal."  To restate simply, there is always going to be the next need. Those are the words of divine freedom.
   Even the yogic practice of vairagya or non-attachment (learning to let go of the many attachments, aversions, fears, and false identities that are clouding the true Self) is in pursuit of our need for self-actualization.  I guess it's not just me after all.