Abraham Maslow created a chart like this in order to track human behavior and study their needs.

Traditionally, it was known that people had to settle the needs at the bottom of the pyramid first before transcending to the ones on a higher level.

For example, if a person does not have their physiological needs met – lacking food, water, warmth and rest, they wouldn’t be thinking about their safety, belongingness, self esteem and anything up there.

Once the physiological needs are met, then people turn their attention to their security and safety before thinking about those higher up.

Most people think that once you ‘have it all’, but fulfilling all the physiological up to the esteem needs, that they can begin to embrace self-actualization and begin a spiritual journey.

But the truth is, more and more are awakening to their spiritual needs even before those at the bottom are fully met.

A spiritually empowered person might even find joy and satisfaction in the lower needs once they have ‘found themselves’ – giving new meaning to the lower needs what they would otherwise consider mundane.

There is no hard and fast rule for which needs are more important to someone – only what we place our attention on most of the time.

Here is a satire of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – showing how dependent we are on technology to the point we neglect our spiritual needs.