I need to start with questions so we can begin with an agreement of terms. This is necessary to have a fruitful talk of this sort on desire and intention. So to start with, what is desire?
Being drawn to something.
Something you feel that you want or need.
And what is intention?
A goal that guides your actions.
Hmm, my applied focus.
What is fear?
Extreme aversion.
The feeling that harm may come to you or someone you love.
What is the difference between fear and desire?
Fear is repulsive, desire is attractive, like poles on a magnet.
They both pull off balance.
Less difference then most think.
I will offer a definition of intention. Intention is the subject of an action. What the action was about. Why you did it. Do we have to intellectually deduce a reason for our fear of something? In order to fear it to begin with?
No.
Many people feel fear and other emotions, without knowing its cause.
Yet we do build an elaborate reason after the fact to explain why we were afraid of whatever it was.
To justify ourselves.
I’m not certain it is justification. It’s more like elaboration. Clarification… Perhaps to learn from our ability to generalize something after we have explained it to ourselves, we have a fear reaction to one thing, and then extrapolate from that in order to create other fears for ourselves. Is this fair to say?
True.
Do we have to learn to desire things? Come up with an intellectual reason to want anything?
No, though we can learn to like things we don’t initially like.
It seems to be two things. Fear and desire precede any form of conscious thought, do they not?
Yes. In fact, I feel certain artists that are ‘classically trained’ sometimes focus too much on the intellectual perfection of their art and miss the visceral mark.
Habituation can create the illusion of any number of states of being. In order to have intention, we have to have a purpose for doing something. In order to have fear or desire, do we have to have a reason? Are desire and intention the same thing? Do you have to want something in order to mean it? Do you have to mean something in order to want it?
No, the desire is the reason itself. If desire is a reason it is a reason without thought, mindless, at least in the commonly understood meaning of the word. Is this not so?
Well, it certainly helps if you have both… It can be much harder to accomplish something if you have intention, but no desire.
What if you have desire but no intention?
Then you find yourself wasting time on something instead of doing what you intended which happens to me way too often.
It may not go as far as it could.
How do we know when we have wasted time?
I have no intention to measure it by?
You meant to get work done, but get stuck watching TV instead.
Desire without intention means you didn’t mean to do anything. It would seem intention is perhaps the disposable part of the equation, in a sense. What do you think?
My intention is to work out, but my desire is to sit and eat pizza.
It’s disposed of often by people.
So yes, desire and intention, do they often match up?
Not often enough.
Since they are different things, do they connect very well or very often?
It doesn’t connect very often so we feel unmotivated or unaccomplished.
Does it depend on what it is you desire and how easily you can get it? In a sense it does, yes. Arguably, fear and desire both are dictated by a combination of your personal condition and your circumstances. This being true, is your intention governed by these things? Does it even account for these things?
Intention is often at odds to desire and fear like game contestants that have to overcome their fears to finish the challenge. They can indeed overcome those fears, and today we glorify ignoring our fears, whether it’s wise or not.
Intention is also often ignorant of the present moment and your present condition, is it not?
Well, it’s essential for soldiers. It takes much training to overcome natural instincts for survival…but leaves them with PTSD afterwards. Yes, defeats the purpose because they later must be reintroduced into the population they were “defending” only to become a threat to that same population. Create an enemy to remove an enemy? How is that supposed to work?
So why does our intention seem so weak, yet so persistent at the same time?
We measure our intentions by external societal expectation vs our own?
How do we understand the subject of our actions at all? How do we know what anything is for? How do we understand the concept of purpose? Thoughts?
Our goals or values?
Unfortunately, this physical realm we live in requires us to have certain things to survive…food, shelter, clothing…but we rarely have the desire necessary to acquire these things , and often have to overcome fears to do so.
I personally think that although that is a common view, it is all backwards. We learn the purpose of anything from our systematized world through so called education, enculturation, conditioning and habituation. Is there any other way we could have? Do we really choose our own values based on our personal desires?
Yes… hunting can be fun, making clothing can be fun… but going to work to make money to buy food and clothing is often not fun.
I’ve read a bit about ‘extreme early retirement’ and there are people who have broken away from the conventional wisdom.
Many people checking out of society now, rejecting social norms. It’s quite possible the garden of Eden, hunter and gatherer lifestyle, was much more fulfilling than our modern lives.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~