Desire is the most beautiful of Spirit gifts, bestowing vitality upon the Soul and serving as a guide towards fulfillment and pleasure. Yet it is also the most misunderstood of feelings, its complexity unknown and true message usually unexamined by the mind, leading the eager and blind Soul into failure and lack instead.
Is our craving for chocolate in truth a desire for intimacy with a partner? Do we desire new shoes and clothes, or a healthy self-worth? Can our striving for titles, positions and power merely be a way to receive love, to be appreciated? Do we yearn to travel, or are we actually seeking purpose and meaning in life?
The implication of such common desire substitutes is staggering, for while the mind is easily sated by ego and body pleasures such as chocolate, status, stuff and experiences, Spirit runs empty, deprived of fulfillment. True fulfillment only occurs at the level of Spirit, i.e. love, self-worth, potential and purpose; failing to ensure such connection and nourish Spirit, the Soul runs the risk of starving Spirit to death.
It is the mind’s responsibility to both discern the true desire beneath apparent feelings and needs, and enable its fulfillment. Yet when the mind is weak, it finds itself unable or unwilling to curb its cravings or fears and instead pushes for easy substitutes, choosing security and pleasure over Spirit desire in an effort to feed its need. As this path is deprived of fulfillment, the mind will never cease to desire, continuing its consumption of substitutes and anaesthetising its senses until the law of diminishing returns devours the last extractable drop of pleasure, rendering the substitute worn out and jaded. There is only that much chocolate we can eat or shoes we can buy before the damage to our body, self-worth and matter becomes unsustainable.
In its love for the Soul, Spirit spends this time of Soul’s obtuseness by supplementing its lack in any way feasible, accepting conditions that the Soul enforces upon it and that are way below its nobility level, such as demeaning employments, pretense friendships, or artificially enhanced flavours. Yet once the Soul pushes Spirit beyond its ability to further sustain the connection, it will disconnect and cease to supply it with feelings of fulfillment all together. Upon depleting body, matter and an array of substitutes the mind will find itself dead, completely devoid of desire, energy and vitality. Spiritless and impotent, it will just sit in a room and observe a dot on the wall, for sheer lack of desire for anything, due to sheer lack of fulfillment from everything. Life will have lost all meaning.
All this because the feeble mind chooses easy vs. right and follows false desires instead of true ones, lacking wisdom to discern one from the other, or lacking nobility to care for such abstract notions as Spirit and Truth. As Spirit is the source of Soul’s power as well as the fountain of its desire, it is by not honouring its connection to Spirit that the Soul’s descent into hell begins. The way the Soul keeps its connection is by protecting, appreciating, seeking Truth and loving Spirit in all its decisions.
The mind protects Spirit when it does not succumb to fear and need that leads it to sell out Spirit to substitute desires, or forces it to accept demeaning conditions. It appreciates Spirit when it seeks to unearth the true desire hidden within feelings and urges, and trusts that the guidance it is receiving is valuable, giving it high priority in pursuit.
The mind is truthful when it admits that the force it exerts over desire in fear or need is a weakness, a shortcoming that needs to be looked at and worked on, rather than ignored or worse arrogantly esteemed as the right way. And it loves Spirit when it takes responsibility for this shortcoming and corrects it.