WHEN WE ARE BORN we don't even know ourselves; it is our mothers who knows us better that we do, reacting to our babbles, joys, wails, grimaces, and accidents. With time and experience we get to know who we are, our likes and dislikes, and with measured curiosity and opportunity, a determination to discover a spectrum of desire unique to each of us contributing to our own human constitution.Each of us knows of things and activities that we enjoy and those we despise. Usually these preferences are determined through actual experience or predicted through a series of reasonings somehow based on experience (synthesized from our own or someone else's). Not everything must be experienced in reality to know if it is desirable, and I'm sure you can think of things that have not yet happened to you, but you would find either pleasurable or revolting.
The full panoply of human desire cannot be fully known to one human being, because we have less than 120 years to live and only one mind through which to experience that life (not withstanding personal revelation, prophecy, and a priori knowledge independent of experience—but these are very rare). Each person is fully isolated from all other persons with a perfect opacity so that we cannot directly know or experience other people’s thoughts. Obviously this separation is required if we are to maintain the privacy of our own thoughts (just think of how fast society would break down if we were allowed to impinge the core of another's mind, and God forbid, rape the experiences from it).
Now that we are individual persons with perfect privacy from others’ prying minds, it is up to us to fill our own minds with experiences and consequently bring into bloom our own desire spectrum, developing our own human constitution. Or perhaps it is not we who decide…
How wide our spectrum of desire extends can also be limited by our life situation, such as the kind of society we live in, our circumstances, our intelligence, our motivation, our influence on others, amicability, wealth, health, courage, curiosity, and encouragement, etc.
On the other hand, someone who decides (freedom?) to restrict the number of potential experiences might reduce the number of things desired. Consider the monk who by choice lives within an enclosed religious order, and has for example, decided not to develop the full knowledge of his sexual capacity as a husband to a woman. If he were to succeed in his vows would never tap into that range of desire (no matter how full and fertile his experiential desire potential might be).
Ultimately we will accumulate (receive?) a repository of experience that will embellish and encourage our spectrum of desire—however complete or incomplete it might be—nonetheless good enough to call us human and alive instead of human but comatose.
After we have lived our lives and there are no more experiences left to accumulate from the Earth, then our earthly desires might not apply—these are fulfilled and no longer spur us on within the realm of a demanding physical body and a curious and experience-seeking mind.
Each of us as flesh beings share common physical needs (a.k.a., core constitutional requirements) that must be satisfied promptly or we perish, such as breathing oxygen, averting dehydration, averting starvation, averting physical trauma, averting decompression, avoiding death, etc. These can inspire feelings of desires and provoke tremendous waves satisfaction when sated after prolonged denial. I take another breath in order to avoid a burning chest and diaphragmic spasm in addition to preserving my life—breathing satisfies the desire to avoid pain and to keep living. However, these desires are critical to life, so I don’t consider them to have any moral value.
When all contingent requirements are provided to the flesh being, a new being is discovered: human being. This opens the door to experiential desire (based on the maturity and fullness of one’s own spectrum of desire). Experiential desire is that which we derive pleasure from, yet is not critical to life. These bring meaning and satisfaction in other ways, such as feeling love, acceptance, joy, purpose, intimacy, etc. Once the core needs are satisfied these experiential desires tend to steer our behaviors. But can we guide them on our own or are they on rails?
What do I mean? Well, to each of these experiential desires is tied a gift for achieving their successful completion (a great and satisfying feeling). For noble desires, perhaps exultant transcendent moments with God (those rare glimpses of personal revelation), and similar exultant moments with spouse; general feelings of peace with God and one’s self, feeling love for one’s self, the satisfaction of realizing one’s vocation, feeling loved by your children, feelings of contentment with one’s job, feelings of joy and happiness from loved ones, feelings of acceptance from new friends, feeling appreciation from others, feeling a sense of purpose in life, loving others, helping others in need, satisfaction from understanding a challenging area of study, and the list goes on. These are higher desires that require God’s grace, our own commitment, time, effort, and honest striving to achieve.
Fortunately many of life's core needs have also been turned into pearls of pleasure and have been integrated seamlessly into daily routine. Consider a cool example, literally. After a hot sunny summer Sunday afternoon of gardening, taking hold of an ice-cold mug of beer frosting in the afternoon sun soothing your burning dry hands on contact, continuing the tradition upon meeting your lips with ice-cold glorious, gold, glistening beer tipping effortlessly on to your tongue, with dancing bubbles of bliss reaching the apex of satisfaction potential, the golden delight pools with anticipation at the back of your throat and chamber a splash of delight that rhythmically spasm to the center of your thirst covering it with waves of cool satisfaction with every swallow—I suppose this works if you like beer. Without having to describe each desire in this way (there are just too many God has gifted us with, and some delights are not appropriate to describe at length on this blog) you see clearly that quenching a strong thirst can be a pleasure in itself even if ignoring it could result serious illness leading to death. So why not give the human being some fun while allowing him to live—thank God!
I’ll try my best to express how I see the spectrum of desire by using an analogy. God has planted a farm, and each person is a different farm containing different planting rows invisible to neighboring farms and even to himself.
Each planting row in the field represents a desire; the ones closest to the farmhouse are easiest to reach and most critical to life, while others more peripheral to life are spread further out. The number of rows defines the breadth of our desire; the more rows we have the more desires we have discovered. While the more spartan the rows the less desires we have.
The length of each row determines the intensity or establishment of the desire; desires that extend deep into the field could result from deeply etched experiences in our lives. Obstacles like creeks and gullies might interfere with reaching these desires due to life circumstances and challenges; the desire might continue further, but these cannot easily be realized (without help). Or, the fog of depression might temporarily (or permanently) obscure or blur one’s desires where they had once been active now they no longer get the sunlight needed to drive and sustain them and so they wither. Some rows cannot be seen because they are covered by dense foliage, so one does not know that greater desires even exist in our own human constitution—permanently cut off from those potential experiences. Others might have seeds growing within the wrong planter and confuse one’s desires mixing them where they should not be mixed.
The question is, are we the ones discovering our own spectrum of desire? Are we this farmer who is planting, cultivating, nourishing, and maintaining these planting rows? Or is He the Farmer who acts on our behalf to survey the site of our plantation, determining the extent of its acreage, setting the sand/soil/clay consistency, and most importantly does he water and fertilize those planting rows that produce in us our most delicious cravings and desires?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not accusing God of leading us into temptation, because it is we who must decide whether to pick and eat of the fruit of desire. All I’m speculating is that some farms are more fertile—for whatever reason, and contain lower-hanging fruit that are ripe for picking.
How wide our spectrum of desire extends can also be limited by our life situation, such as the kind of society we live in, our circumstances, our intelligence, our motivation, our influence on others, amicability, wealth, health, courage, curiosity, and encouragement, etc.
On the other hand, someone who decides (freedom?) to restrict the number of potential experiences might reduce the number of things desired. Consider the monk who by choice lives within an enclosed religious order, and has for example, decided not to develop the full knowledge of his sexual capacity as a husband to a woman. If he were to succeed in his vows would never tap into that range of desire (no matter how full and fertile his experiential desire potential might be).
Ultimately we will accumulate (receive?) a repository of experience that will embellish and encourage our spectrum of desire—however complete or incomplete it might be—nonetheless good enough to call us human and alive instead of human but comatose.
After we have lived our lives and there are no more experiences left to accumulate from the Earth, then our earthly desires might not apply—these are fulfilled and no longer spur us on within the realm of a demanding physical body and a curious and experience-seeking mind.
Each of us as flesh beings share common physical needs (a.k.a., core constitutional requirements) that must be satisfied promptly or we perish, such as breathing oxygen, averting dehydration, averting starvation, averting physical trauma, averting decompression, avoiding death, etc. These can inspire feelings of desires and provoke tremendous waves satisfaction when sated after prolonged denial. I take another breath in order to avoid a burning chest and diaphragmic spasm in addition to preserving my life—breathing satisfies the desire to avoid pain and to keep living. However, these desires are critical to life, so I don’t consider them to have any moral value.
When all contingent requirements are provided to the flesh being, a new being is discovered: human being. This opens the door to experiential desire (based on the maturity and fullness of one’s own spectrum of desire). Experiential desire is that which we derive pleasure from, yet is not critical to life. These bring meaning and satisfaction in other ways, such as feeling love, acceptance, joy, purpose, intimacy, etc. Once the core needs are satisfied these experiential desires tend to steer our behaviors. But can we guide them on our own or are they on rails?
What do I mean? Well, to each of these experiential desires is tied a gift for achieving their successful completion (a great and satisfying feeling). For noble desires, perhaps exultant transcendent moments with God (those rare glimpses of personal revelation), and similar exultant moments with spouse; general feelings of peace with God and one’s self, feeling love for one’s self, the satisfaction of realizing one’s vocation, feeling loved by your children, feelings of contentment with one’s job, feelings of joy and happiness from loved ones, feelings of acceptance from new friends, feeling appreciation from others, feeling a sense of purpose in life, loving others, helping others in need, satisfaction from understanding a challenging area of study, and the list goes on. These are higher desires that require God’s grace, our own commitment, time, effort, and honest striving to achieve.
Fortunately many of life's core needs have also been turned into pearls of pleasure and have been integrated seamlessly into daily routine. Consider a cool example, literally. After a hot sunny summer Sunday afternoon of gardening, taking hold of an ice-cold mug of beer frosting in the afternoon sun soothing your burning dry hands on contact, continuing the tradition upon meeting your lips with ice-cold glorious, gold, glistening beer tipping effortlessly on to your tongue, with dancing bubbles of bliss reaching the apex of satisfaction potential, the golden delight pools with anticipation at the back of your throat and chamber a splash of delight that rhythmically spasm to the center of your thirst covering it with waves of cool satisfaction with every swallow—I suppose this works if you like beer. Without having to describe each desire in this way (there are just too many God has gifted us with, and some delights are not appropriate to describe at length on this blog) you see clearly that quenching a strong thirst can be a pleasure in itself even if ignoring it could result serious illness leading to death. So why not give the human being some fun while allowing him to live—thank God!
I’ll try my best to express how I see the spectrum of desire by using an analogy. God has planted a farm, and each person is a different farm containing different planting rows invisible to neighboring farms and even to himself.
Each planting row in the field represents a desire; the ones closest to the farmhouse are easiest to reach and most critical to life, while others more peripheral to life are spread further out. The number of rows defines the breadth of our desire; the more rows we have the more desires we have discovered. While the more spartan the rows the less desires we have.
The length of each row determines the intensity or establishment of the desire; desires that extend deep into the field could result from deeply etched experiences in our lives. Obstacles like creeks and gullies might interfere with reaching these desires due to life circumstances and challenges; the desire might continue further, but these cannot easily be realized (without help). Or, the fog of depression might temporarily (or permanently) obscure or blur one’s desires where they had once been active now they no longer get the sunlight needed to drive and sustain them and so they wither. Some rows cannot be seen because they are covered by dense foliage, so one does not know that greater desires even exist in our own human constitution—permanently cut off from those potential experiences. Others might have seeds growing within the wrong planter and confuse one’s desires mixing them where they should not be mixed.
The question is, are we the ones discovering our own spectrum of desire? Are we this farmer who is planting, cultivating, nourishing, and maintaining these planting rows? Or is He the Farmer who acts on our behalf to survey the site of our plantation, determining the extent of its acreage, setting the sand/soil/clay consistency, and most importantly does he water and fertilize those planting rows that produce in us our most delicious cravings and desires?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not accusing God of leading us into temptation, because it is we who must decide whether to pick and eat of the fruit of desire. All I’m speculating is that some farms are more fertile—for whatever reason, and contain lower-hanging fruit that are ripe for picking.
