The Folly Of Desire

The thing that most differentiates human awareness from Divine awareness is desire. There is no such faculty as desire in Divine awareness because Divine awareness is a fully perfected whole, whereas, human awareness is an incomplete separateness. The former is fulfilled and the latter is lacking, which makes desire an essential element of human awareness for the function of mitigating this lack.
From God’s point-of-view, human lack could be solved in one fell swoop, by humanity turning from their individual self-awareness to Divine awareness. In other words, if humanity could come to understand existence from the Divine perspective, rather than their own egocentric one, their perception of lack would evaporate in an instant. But you see, from a human’s point-of-view, having to live with lack is a small price to pay for the privilege of being able to determine and manage our own destiny, along with all the accoutrements that go along with it, such as personal choice, independence, self-importance, etc. To us, the ups-and-downs of lack engagement, actually induces a sense of heightened self-gratification by way of achievement, which makes them even more certain about the nature of their folly as being the only way to go. The only problem is, a human being’s concept of self-determination is delusional, and just part of a comprehensive illusion that is human existence. But let’s not go there just now.

Mitigating Lack

The whole premise for human delusional pigheadedness is born out of ignorance, where we can only see ourselves in the context of current state-of-affairs, and within the eighty or so years of our respective extant timeliness. We have no concept of the nature of the whole, as in, the nature of humanity relative to existence. As far as an individual human goes, existence begins and ends with them, and what they make of their life is all that matters. And this applies just as pertinently to lack, where it is perceived as exclusive to them. In other words, a human being looks at lack as something which directly affects them, and has to be dealt with in terms of quantifying their own sense of self-esteem.
But if we compare human existence to Divine existence, where Divine existence is fully complete and human existence is a work in progress, the concept of lack should apply to human existence as a whole, because it is the whole of human existence which is lacking and needs to be considered in that light. How can we work as a collective to contribute what is needed for human existence, in order to advance a meaningful and fabulous outcome?
Oh shit! As soon as the implication of collective comes up, everyone dives for cover. This is understandable, because we figure it means all thinking and doing the same as everyone else. Well that is true in the context of our human world because we are not able to perceive the big picture, so everything we think lends itself to bettering our world is all based on assumption. In other words, because we are not aware of the big picture and therefore can’t “see” what could be done to improve it, we can only go by what we believe might improve it. And because there are eight billion disparate belief systems, the solutions can only cause conflict and do more harm that good. Moreover, not only can’t we “see” what will make it better, we can’t even “see” what’s wrong with it in order to make it better. And also, because of the disparity between human belief systems, some will think it’s perfect the way it is and others will think it’s a disaster, and everyone else will have varying degrees of conviction in between.
I mean, if we live in an incomplete world of lack, side-by-side with veiled, fully complete Divine world of abundance, why wouldn’t we get the message of the absurdity of our incessant obstinacy? Well, first and foremost we are egocentric creatures with little concern for anything or anyone else, and see ourselves in this light.
“Unless the whole of humanity gets behind the drive to bring human existence to completion, what impact can one person like me have and who would care? Let’s face it, I’m only here for a short time, so I may as well just stick to what matters most to me.”
And here’s another thing. We think of civilisation as having come a long way towards making our lives much more enjoyable, but here again, only so we can enjoy our immediate lifetime. It has nothing to do with advancing human existence towards exquisite completion. And by the way, daily life per se, certainly is more enjoyable and easier than at any time in the past, BUT at the cost of having less integrity, lending to increased depression and any number of iniquitously induced maladies.
When I think back, just as many of my contemporaries have a tendency to do, to the peacetime years of the forties and fifties, life was definitely more raw and leaner, but it took so little to satisfy us compared with today. Securing a second-hand bicycle could be more satisfying back then, than a new car is to many people today. And the satisfaction we got even with a used car, would incline us to value it dearly. When we compare the way teenagers today apathetically treat their new cars, to the way we used to cherish our second-hand ones, we can see how far the integrity of our value system has degenerated.

The Big Picture

wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all work as team of human ants, in a united front, towards one overarching goal of executing the project of human existence towards completion. But first we'd have to conceptualise human existence in the context of a big picture whole. Not as a completed whole but as a whole under construction. I mean, how else are we able to conceptualise what needs to be done to bring it closer to this outcome. Now don’t get ahead of me here. You’re rightly considering this proposition as impossible, and not just the teamwork aspect but also the big picture. Let’s face it, the only way to see human existence from a big picture persepctive would be from a separate existent awareness.
To be perfectly honest, considering it relative to humanity, is just impossible full stop. However, it does work with the animal kingdom which I’ve written about extensively in other essays, and for a very good reason. There is an over-arching “authority” which all animals are spontaneously subject to, and this “authority” knows the big picture and guides the whole animal kingdom accordingly and seamlessly. You could think of it in terms of a model railway, like that ginormous one in Hamburg, albeit, one that is not being constantly added to, where a single control room watches over the whole project, and makes sure everything functions harmoniously. Who knows what that looks like relative to the animal kingdom, but it's concept that I’m implying, not the machinery.

Oh Yes, Desire

so you can see why desire is so important to human existence. It’s not relevant to the animal kingdom, nor as mentioned, to the Kingdom of God. And again for good reason. Humanity is the only “kingdom” in which all the participants each have their own self-awareness, moreover disparately, which would negate any possibility of an overarching authority, because everyone would have their own view of how things should be done, especially in light of their own welfare being paramount to all else. So to hell with an authority, even if it does happen to know best. Knowing best for the collective does not equate to what is best for an egocentric individual.
Of course, all of this is predicated on autonomous animal Kingdom, or semiautonomous model railway paradigms. But it could have some legs in the light of an autocracy, where every participant would have to toe the same line, no matter how disparate their views and how abhorrent they found the directives. And here again, this is due to our being narcissistically self-aware.
So what’s the answer? Well, I don’t really want to go there in this essay because it’s inappropriate to talk about religion or philosophy these days, at least in the context of this article. But it seems that both self-determination (capitalism) and collective determination (communism) don’t work long term, but are the only options available to us. Options, options, options. That is at the core of our dilemma and the source of our despondency.
So capitalism has lost its way and communism is not a good look by any stretch, but these are the only options on the table, which is incredible really, because one other that has worked reasonably well is religion in its various guises of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and so on. And to think that the powers-that-be are hell-bent on wiping out the only viable option in favour of unworkable alternatives. I guess to most people, including many religious ones, the idea of Divine existence is unpalatable, seeing how it requires relinquishing the ego.

A Bit More Amplification On The Human Kingdom

Why is it that other realms are known as kingdoms and our human realm is called a race? For instance, there is the Kingdom of God and the animal kingdom, and then there is the human race. Well the short and only answer, is that the first two are totalitarian, in that all are subject to the one overarching authority, as in a kingdom. Human beings on the other hand, are subject to only themselves and that’s why they are called a race, seeing how, by the very nature of their self-centred disposition, they are in perpetual competition with the world and one another.
You are probably thinking, “If being called a Kingdom means being subjugated to totalitarian rule, then we are fortunate not to be one”. On the surface this is a valid assumption because we’ve witnessed the devastating effects totalitarianism has had in our world, vis-a-vis communism. But the context of totalitarianism IN our world is completely different to a totalitarian world subject to an external and benign authority, such as nature in the case of animals. Also, it could never work successfully where its subjects were rationally self-aware, because they’d all have their own concept of how it should work, and it’d mean like communism, having to obey against one’s will or get eliminated.
You see, a rationally construed world governing authority, would be organised and operated as determined by a specific group of rational beings based on their belief systems. Now we all acknowledge humanity as having eight billion disparate belief systems, so it doesn’t take a genius to see how much conflict this would invoke. Moreover, even those in power would have differing beliefs about how the the authority should be constituted. This is not a problem for animals because they aren’t self-aware and don’t have belief systems as such. They just have an awareness which accepts the status quo and obliges flawlessly with its “directives”, which are also flawless. Anyway, I just wanted to point out why we’re a race and not a Kingdom.