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Flow of Ideas: articles - Five Endings of Desires

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Chandos Book Publishing

The Five Endings of Desires



Victor Rikowski


What options does a person have when confronted with the need to fulfill a desire? One option, which is the most logical option in most cases, would be that this desire must be acted upon if its needs are strong enough to overpower its requirements or sacrifices that are needed in order to obtain the desired results. And then one needs to work out the possibilities of which the desired thing has, in regards to being fulfilled once the requirements are made. Ultimately many things need to be balanced out in order to come to the most promising arrangement for the desire to be translated into some form of action. This is ultimately the most simplistic form of fulfilling a desire. The process of carrying it out or deciding whether to carry it out or not obviously has its different degrees of complications, for it depends upon the situation, but moreover, it is the most empirically straightforward method in which to fulfill a desire. (By ‘empirically’, I mean things that are of relevance to the existing world, things that we can see and observe as things that are happening.) It is also a method best known and most accustomed to working people, for people that must earn all that they wish to gain.

The second option is to merely decide to not act upon the desire and to simply hope that the desire shall work its way to the person through chance. This is how a gambler would fulfill his desires, and indeed, gamblers never are worthy of respect for they usually sit around waiting for something to happen. They feel that their desires are out there to be fulfilled for them, or if they have no desires, the feel that something ought to help them find this as well. There are other types of gamblers however, and these are seen within the likes of untalented yet loud and in-your-face actors, who wave their arms about as though they were the centre of attention and should be the centre of attention.

Indeed, they do act upon their desires to an extent, because they do put on a show, but yet they still expect some well accomplished director to pick them up, give them a script and pay them a lot of money. The gamblers of their desires are over-egotistical and somewhat vain, but not only are they over-egotistical, but they also have little to no real reason or justification for being so, hence their reason to make such noise, or else a complete lack of noise, for they feel that the quieter they are, the more they shall appeal to the sympathies of those who can help them reach their desires.

But thirdly, there is always a far more somewhat self-defeatists form of desire, but yet a more respectable one, because these are desires that one cannot do anything about in regards to fulfilling them. For there are some desires that render action as almost unnecessary to actually work, for example, the desire to upon one night dream about being a buccaneer racing with pirates towards the prize. You cannot act upon this can you? Well you could read Robert Lewis Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island’ before you go to sleep, but other than this you have no control over it, although you can act upon it, but actions don’t really do much.

It is like the desire to be a great philosopher. For most men, although they are aware they have a chance or remote possibility of being such a thing, such a thing is also generally beyond their capabilities. If a man does not have the mental capacity to be a great philosopher, then he can’t be a great philosopher. But that still doesn’t discard the chance that he has at it, baring in mind that there is a chance that the sun shall not shine tomorrow morning. Thus it is a chance that no other man or indeed, perhaps even his own self has the right to deny, thus it shan’t discard his dream or his desire.

These are dreams that we hope shall come about in reality but some subconscious voice says that there is no chance, but they ignore this voice and continue in their pursuit. It is thus a desire that has no end to it, a desire that one can spend his entire life pursuing and get nowhere. The fact that it has no end is an end in its self. A mediocre man who wants to be a great philosopher, even though he shan’t be, will still learn a lot on the path will he not? Here, the desire does not fulfill its self by reaching an end, but it fulfills its self by collecting things along the path as it tries to reach an end that it will never reach.

However, a person can have excuses for not reaching the end of other such desires, for example, a father reconciling himself with a son that hates him. For this could also be down to the fact that we are human… for what human could ever truthfully say that he has done everything that he had ever wanted to do in life? Thus upon dieing, we are all bound to have a list of things that we sought after but never did reach. Thus death shall be an ending point for some desires.

Thus the basic nature of the third way, is that desires shall either be fulfilled by accident, such as in a dream, or within a dreamlike state within reality, or they shall be carried unto death because they are somewhat destined not to happen. I am not speaking deterministically (of things of fate and destiny); I am speaking for those that have already died.

Yet fourthly, we all have some element of desires that are simply viewed upon as impossible to achieve and are simply acts of fantasy or daydreaming, thoughts that give us comfort merely in the state of nothing accept thoughts, which are also desires. These desires seek out no form of fulfillment, for the desired effect and the desired product merely lies within its own form as a desire; it is a means and an end in its self. To dream of other worlds, to dream of having wings, to dream of magical things, to dream of things beyond our physical capabilities as human beings; these are the desires that seek no end, because these dreams are limitless, boundless and infinite as the imagination its self is, and because they seek no end, this fact is an end in its self.

Thus this is how most humans work; it is within the huge landscapes of the above four ways. It is the basic capacity in which they can dream or desire. I am in no way trying to simplify what it means to desire as such but rather, I am trying to simplify the different methods of desiring, the different methods of how desiring can be approached. The above four ways are essentially the ways that makes a human what he or she is… a human.

But who has ever seriously considered another option to claiming something that they desire? How can a fifth method even exist! I ask of you to stand back my readers, and reflect for a while and try to answer this question and take is seriously as such… for without doubt, you cannot think of this fifth can you? What other possibility is actually accessible? I shall tell you my friends, I shall tell…

Imagine for a moment if it were the desire itself that was the energy that created a desire to come true. Imagine if all that was necessary for the desire to become true was only the mental energy, or will, or forward thrust that the desire creates, being energy devoid of any actual planning or of any aimed knowledge towards fulfilling the desire. An example of this that I shall use is quite farfetched in terms of realism, but it is the most straightforward way to explain my meaning. Imagine if a person was sleeping and also within a dream, however, that person has obtained the ability to in fact know that they are inside a dream whilst being inside it. And upon this knowledge they learn about how they have an element of control in regards to the events that happen within the dream. In a situation such as this, it is the actual force of the desire within the dream that can bring the desire into some form of truth. The desire to fly upon its own accord would be the deciding factor within the dream that the person shall begin to fly. For I did myself do this once, but I didn’t consciously think that I wanted to fly, but instead, some voice said to me from above me these words; ‘you shall fly’. That was the voice of the will within my desire to fly and it was not my conscious thinking, for it came down upon me like an outside voice.

The desire may then require no thought into the act of flying or any planning into the act, for the act merely happens from out of the existence of the actual desire its self. No thought would actually have to be put into the action of flying, but it would merely be the desire itself that shall make the person fly.

But here is the big question… how is such a thing possible in real life? How can only a desire create something by its self with little more to help it other that the tools that are at hand from the person’s thoughts, thought that the desire feeds upon in order to actually exist but not in order to fulfill its self? These things that a desire can feed on are things such as imagination, or art or love for example, things which without a knowledgeable plan and focus shall always remain as nothing but apart of the ingredients that create the desire its self. So upon removing all the essential and necessary requirements that I highlighted earlier for the desire taking some form of action within the existing world, namely a plan and a focus for that desire to work upon, in order to bring the desire into some form of reality… What is left for the desire to work upon in order for it to – come alive?

I could answer this question but I wish not to… I wish for you all to hang in suspense and suspicion. But I shall give you some clues to nibble on whilst you shall do so. If a desire is great enough, bold enough, perfect enough, devoted to enough, if a pure soul is poured into a pure desire whilst in agony and pain as well as joy and self-reverence, then after some time, the desire its self, within its own existence… will begin to develop its own mind, its own consciousness. It shall be a mind separate from your own, that feeds upon your own, it is the mind of the will of the desire. Thus to run this in the right order, there is a desire, then a will and then a mind. ‘But that isn’t right!’ some of you shall surely say. ‘How can a will from a desire suddenly create a mind separate from your own?’ Indeed, it is not possible… unless you also do this; you take the desire and you go about fulfilling it in the first example that I told you of. The part where you do the weighing out of the strengths and weaknesses, the likelihood and the possibility that must all be balanced out before tackling what is needed to fulfill the desire. Thus you shall work by this pattern; desire, weighing and then planning. But the strange things is that you must be unaware… of the will and the mind that works in secret, that works behind walls as whispers and ghosts that you suspect but never speak with because you are already so thoroughly blinded by your huge amounts of weighing and planning. All you end up doing is preparing the moment for when the will and the mind shall do the work for you but without you knowing as such.

Do you have a slight clue about what it is I speak of? I’m interested… because either you shall be thinking ‘this man speaks of impossible things’, or ‘this man has no idea about how desires can be fulfilled realistically, humanly and practically.’ I would agree with the second, there is nothing humanly or practical about it. But another might say: ‘If such a thing can be done, then teach us how to do it’. Little do they know that my teaching of it would be the undoing of what little chance they had to doing it in the first place! Remember, ignorance is a good tool is this way of fulfilling desires.

Have I told you too much too quickly? Probably, and indeed, I don’t like to simplify things about me too extensively, but the funny thing is that this is the simplified version of things in my eyes. How are they to yours… my curious readers?


© Copyright, Victor Verne Rikowski
London, October 2005

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