21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview
Download the book in PDF, ePub, Kindle for a complete version.
T W E N T Y - O N E L E V E L S
11. Desire Leads Us
‘Now and then its good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.’
Guillaume Apollinaire
Here, and throughout this work, I have made a distinction between genuine desire and substitute desires. I use genuine desire in the sense of something very basic and fundamental to our consciousness. It is genuine desire or ecstasy that is said to be lost and denied early in childhood and results in the sub-conscious and in substitute desires. Desires are simply pleasures that stand in — usually unconsciously — as compensations for the genuine desire that has been suppressed and denied. Therefore a distinction needs to be made between pleasures that are compensatory and are pursued as individualistic sensations and those pleasures that are grounded in relationship with others, with the wildness of nature and ultimately with mystery. There is a danger that desire leads us into having an abstract goal that then instigates an unending pursuit for the unobtainable. I will talk mainly of pleasure henceforth.
95