And finally the Security Strategy: this is the Nourisher/Depleter. This is very, very different. One of the things that happen to 2/4s is that they have parents who shout, “Get a job!” And they say, “Leave me alone! I’m busy – leave me alone.” Again, “Get a job – I’m not gonna look after you any more.”
So, the nourisher/depleter phase of the 2/4 – and this is one of the things that finally get the 2/4 out of the door – they have to get to the point where they have enough resources so that they can nourish being left alone.
This is the ‘Howard Hughes’ mentality: if you make enough money you don’t even have to touch the world. You can be so alone that it’s perfect. So they finally get to the point where they’re going to have to be the Nourisher.
Remember, I have fun with the 2/4s because it’s an amusing profile to me, but at the same time I know how much impact they have in the world. I mean they have this tremendous impact and they can be deeply nourishing forces because they are the ones who have been there. “My name is John, and I’m an alcoholic”.
They have been there, they go through that whole story with you, they have been there, they have done it, they jump out, and they are the ones that can really nourish others and say, “Look, I did it. And I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to be left alone, I didn’t want to come out here, and I didn’t want to be this. But I am here for you and I can nourish you now.” And they make a good living doing that.
That’s the moment that in nourishing they don’t deplete any more. They become the nourishers, they bring in the resources, they feel much better about themselves but they can be tremendous depleters in that sense. They are the ones that because they don’t want to become involved with anything they deplete in the sense that they can use up other people’s resources.
You’ve got three children and one is a 2/4 – the other two kids do all the chores. The 2/4 just says, “I’m involved now – I’m busy. Don’t bother me.”
At the unconscious level we have the Benefactor/Dependant. This could be a very nourishing benefactor or it can be a depleting dependant. And, of course, that’s why all 2/4s get this heavy motivation throughout their whole development. Again, your aura does the talking: you have a 2/4 baby, and the first thing you say is, “This one is gonna cost me a fortune. This one is gonna stay home until they are 60.”
You know, we have to get them out the door and get them busy, and let’s see where we can figure out what they are going to be good at, so we can get them doing that soon, so that we don’t have to support that. These are 50 years old children who are still calling home for money. I mean they can be.
So one of those things to understand about the 2/4 is that they need to have that call in their life in order to really be full and not end up being dependent. What happens is that you end up being a sadhu where everybody else has to fill your rice bowl so that you can be into your own thing and abdicate from the world.
Well yes, there are some people who like to fill the rice bowl of sadhus, but in the West we don’t have a lot of that. So, we want our 2/4s to be involved. We want them to be out there fulfilling their potential and their expectation – our expectation of them – and everything is fine until they try to convert us to their new religion. Then we have our difficulties with them.
However, you can see that there is a real transition between moving from the 1st line personality, which really wants to get to the bottom of everything and understand things, and this 2nd line that is there to take the right path in life. After all, they can be very, very successful at being hermits, and remember that they have this deep harmony through aloneness. If it weren’t everybody pointing their finger, they would really feel terrific by themselves and doing their thing and not feeling that they have an obligation to serve society in a greater way.
However, everybody has got to be involved. So we drag them out into the world to make sure that we don’t have to support them. The whole thing about that is that if you have a 2/4 child you really have to make sure that you find what turns them on and you encourage them. And then they can be very powerful forces in this life.”
~Ra Uru Hu