Article July 10, 1926 Issue

Desire

MARIAN GREGG

Mankind is always longing for something. As time goes by the longing changes, and new goals are set up toward which it strains with more or less effort, according to individual character and training. These aims, ambitions, dreams, have come to be known as the heart's desire. Indeed, our desires and our efforts to gratify them largely make up the days and nights of our human experience. As we study the two accounts of creation as given in the book of Genesis, we see that for every real and enduring quality with which man is endowed, so-called mortal mind has claimed to present a counterfeit, and tried to convince us that the counterfeits are as real and lasting as the spiritual ideas, which are part of our real nature.

At no point has this false claim of a mind apart from God been so successful in deceiving us as in the matter of our desires. Have we felt and responded to the immortal stirrings of heavenly desire for spiritual riches, then mortal mind has said, That is all very well; but see what a feeble flame it is compared with the blaze of desire I can kindle for earthly wealth! Desire, when used in connection with so-called human love, produces such a destructive picture of jealousy and fear that it takes heavenly understanding indeed to search for that true desire which enables us to know and understand more of divine Love. Even in our desire for health, we often seem to lose sight of the real desire for spiritual wholeness in our mighty longing for ease in matter.

Mortal existence is made up of fulfilled and unfulfilled desires, which we have named joy and sorrow. We find that the gratification of these mortal desires brings no permanent satisfaction; but we keep on running round and round in a circle, always desiring something, trying to satisfy that desire in the hope that we may finally attain some measure of peace. But the only way that peace and happiness can ever be made sure is by turning from the false concept of desire and studying to know more of the longings and aspirations for the things of Spirit; for it is by the cultivation and gratification of such desires that we grow into the consciousness of man's real nature. Now, in reality, man, as the image and likeness of Spirit, can know no desire but that which is spiritual; and we find these heavenly aspirations fulfilled as soon as we are conscious of them. This is a Christianly scientific fact, as logically true as is mathematical law, and as capable of practical proof. The astonishing thing is that we have allowed ourselves to be so deceived as to the value and importance of spiritual thinking.

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