Desire
What is desire? How does it work? How can we master our desires?
Desire is at the core of all living things. It is what drives us. We breathe because of desire, we eat because of desire, we love because of desire, and we sin because of desire. But how does desire actually work? Is it possible to master our desires?
Take a little adventure with me, and I’ll teach you everything you need to know about desire.
Contents.
The Trinity of the Body.
Before we can understand desire, we must first understand the body of a living thing.
A living thing has three primary parts: (1) its mind, (2) its heart, and (3) its spirit. These three parts function independently, yet all three depend on each other and collectively are as one. A living thing cannot exist without all three, and each individual part is nothing without the other two. If even one of the three is separated from the other two, the whole living thing perishes. In this manner, a living thing is as God, being made in the image of God, possessing its own Trinity. The mind is made in the image of the Father and is the governor of the whole body. The heart is made in the image of the Son and manifests the whole body according to the will of the mind. The spirit is made in the image of the Holy Ghost and is the mediator between the mind and the heart, and all motion and animation arises through this mediation.
Whenever the body encounters anything (via its senses), a stimulus is formed. A stimulus can be thought of as a data package that informs the body of what was encountered — a signature, of sorts. A stimulus is delivered first to the mind, by the power of the spirit, where there is seated a Counselor for each sense that deliver recommendations to the mind. I’ll get into the technical mechanism of this shortly. The mind weighs those recommendations against its own understanding and chooses whether or not to pursue the thing encountered. If the mind approves, the stimulus is transmitted to the heart. This generates a desire, and the heart kindles the faculties of the body to move in pursuit of the desire. If the mind rejects the stimulus, a command is delivered to the heart to kindle its faculties to get the body away from the undesirable thing. The spirit sits in the middle and is the power that actually delivers the desire from the mind to the heart, and is the power that actually drives the body’s motion to obtain or retreat from that desire.
The Counselors of the Senses.
There are five Counselors of the Senses. In order of power, they are: (1) the Counselor of Sight, (2) the Counselor of Sound, (3) the Counselor of Touch, (4) the Counselor of Smell, and (5) the Counselor of Taste.
I will explain the function of the counselors by illustrating an example with vision. When a living thing sees something in its vision, the object in its vision is converted by the mechanisms of its eye into visual data that is transmitted or delivered to its mind. The body’s spirit is the messenger that receives and delivers this data, like the mailman of the body. This data is like a photocopy of the object’s spirit, like a unique signature that is transmitted to the mind. Upon entering the mind, each of the five counselors draws upon its own memories to provide a recommendation to the mind on whether the thing is associated with positive or negative feelings. Positive feelings are like perfect harmonies that instill joy in a sense, while negative feelings are like nails on a chalkboard that cause the sense to cringe.
The Counselor of Sight provides a recommendation on whether the thing is visually appealing or not, including whether the thing is associated with or leads to something visually appealing or not. Something might be hideous on the outside but beautiful on the inside, for example. And so the recommendation may not be just a simple “yes” or “no,” but can be complex. This complexity applies to every counselor.
The Counselor of Sound doesn’t provide a recommendation based on the visual data but accesses its memories to give a recommendation on whether consumption of the thing is associated with pleasing sounds or not. For example, if the eye sees an apple, the Counselor of Sound would (presuming the body had eaten an apple before) provide a recommendation based on the sounds associated with eating an apple. If the Counselor enjoys the sound of the soft crunch, then a positive recommendation is delivered. But if the Counselor hates such a sound, it delivers a negative recommendation. It should be noted that each person develops their own likes and dislikes based on their experiences.
The Counselor of Touch provides a recommendation in like manner, drawing upon its memories to let the mind know if consumption of the thing is associated with positive or negative feelings. Is the apple firm? Smooth? Squishy?…
The Counselor of Smell is the same, as is the Counselor of Taste. They all draw from their memories to provide recommendations to the mind.
The default recommendation is always negative. If the body has never experienced or consumed a thing before, the counselors always reject the thing. For this reason, a living thing will never desire something its never encountered in some form, and will therefore have no drive to obtain such a thing. For example, a person might desire the fruit on a tree but would have no desire to consume the trunk or the branches. However, through means of divine and evil inspirations, mankind has collectively come to desire all things in one way or another.
Though the example I provided was with vision, it applies to all senses. If a person smells something, the Counselor of Sight delivers a list of potential visual items to the mind based on its associative memory of the smell, and so forth.
The Judgment Bar.
Once all of the counselors have provided their recommendation, the mind then draws upon its own memories and weighs the recommendations in the balance. Each sense is weighed differently. The most influential of all senses is Sight, followed by Sound, then Touch, Smell, and least of all, Taste. The more positive recommendations that are delivered, the harder it is for the mind to resist.
Once all recommendations have been delivered, the mind judges the thing and decides whether it wants to consume, or attempt to consume, the thing being judged. One way or another, the mind delivers an instruction to the heart: either “thou shalt” or “thou shalt not” consume the thing that was judged. This judgment is inscribed or written into the heart and becomes a law in the body. The heart then kindles the faculties of the body to either attempt to seize upon and consume or get away from the thing judged.
Desire & Hunger.
A thing positively judged becomes a desire. If the body cannot obtain its desire, a hunger is generated. Each time the body fails at obtaining a desire, the hunger for that desire grows greater. The greater the hunger, the more desperate the body will behave to try to satisfy its hunger. But a hunger can only become as powerful as the desire. The more a desire is fed, the greater it becomes.
Question. Can a desire be starved to death?
Answer. No, once a desire is inscribed in the heart, becoming a part of the manifested body, it remains until the death of the body. This is why it is important to never consume something bad, even once. As is the nature of Adam and the Fall. But just because a bad desire is consumed doesn’t mean all hope is lost, for all desires are twofold: its sin to its virtue — the sin leading to misery and death, while the virtue leads to light and life. In order to suppress a sinful desire, its complimentary virtue must be consumed to outweigh its counterpart. While there are many and diverse ways to sin, theologians have categorized all sins into seven primary categories: (1) pride, (2) greed, (3) lust, (4) anger, (5) gluttony, (6) envy, and (7) sloth. Pride’s counterpart is humility, greed’s is charity, lust’s is chastity, anger’s is patience, gluttony’s is temperance, envy’s is kindness, and sloth’s is diligence. So to overcome desires for pride, one must exercise his desires for humility. Only by outweighing his pride can one become humble and vice versa.
Each time a desire is fed, it grows stronger. The stronger a desire becomes, the stronger its compliment must become if one wishes to overpower their nature and become as a new person.
Addiction.
A person becomes addicted to a desire based on two primary factors: (1) the strength of the desire, and (2) the difficulty in obtaining the desire. A desire can be the strongest in the world, but if there is no way of obtaining it a person cannot possibly be addicted to it. Similarly, if a desire is all around and easy to obtain, but if a person has never consumed it he cannot possibly be addicted to it. Beyond these two factors are many others, and each desire has its own additional factors to consider.
Consider pornography. Pornography is so addicting and so hard to get away from because of many factors. A man who has been consumed by pornography would receive positive recommendations from Sight, Sound, and Touch. I’d imagine the self-gratification part would also have a recommendation from Smell (whether positive or negative). The only more powerful experience would be actual physical sexual intercourse, which would certainly have a recommendation from Smell and also from Taste, causing sex to be the most powerful of all sensations, being a full-body harmonizing experience.
The ease-of-access factor is significant with pornography. Because it’s so easy to find and consume (with mankind having phones in their pockets, able to be accessed from almost anywhere they might go), very little effort is required for the body to kindle its faculties to feed its hunger. The body naturally seeks to consume that which requires the smallest effort.
Another factor is due to the nature of the man to the woman. Opposites attract, as is evidenced with magnetism. Thus the most attractive thing to a man is a woman (not a fruit, or an animal, etc.). That’s not to say it’s impossible to drive a body contrary to its desires, as is often seen in today’s world, but resisting the forces of nature requires discipline (from within) or careful manipulation (from without). Because opposites attract, and because the woman was made from the man, the two are naturally drawn toward each other. And so the Counselor of Sight naturally provides a positive recommendation when seeing a person of the opposite gender, even if there has never been any sexual experiences in the past. It is only through careful manipulation from the outside that a person can be led to find a person of the opposite gender repulsive, and unfortunately we live in a world with thousands of years of that very manipulation.
Conclusion.
Desire is what drives all living things. Understanding how desire works is the key to mastering it. If a bad desire has been consumed, it cannot simply be willed away. Such attempts create a void — a hunger — and if there is nothing else to fill that void, the person will fall back into his same behaviors. Only by overpowering a desire with its compliment can it be overcome.
What desires have you allowed to become a part of your being?
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