Realism and Desire: Balzac and the Problem of the Subject

our love of freedom is is one of the ways that we as apparently limited beings return naturally to our original condition

we are secret, forbidden, we excite them

Did I want to be like him? Did I want to be him? Or did I just want tohave him? Or are “being” and “having” thoroughly inaccurate verbs in thetwisted skein of desire, where having someone’s body to touch and beingthat someone we’re longing to touch are one and the same, just oppositebanks on a river that passes from us to them, back to us and over to themagain in this perpetual circuit where the chambers of the heart, like thetrapdoors of desire, and the wormholes of time, and the false-bottomeddrawer we call identity share a beguiling logic according to which theshortest distance between real life and the life unlived, between who we areand what we want, is a twisted staircase designed with the impish cruelty ofM. C. Escher. When had they separated us, you and me, Oliver?

There is a law somewhere that says that when one person is thoroughlysmitten with the other, the other must unavoidably be smitten as well. Amorch’a null’amato amar perdona.

I always tried to keep him within my field of vision. I never let him driftaway from me except when he wasn’t with me. And when he wasn’t withme, I didn’t much care what he did so long as he remained the exact sameperson with others as he was with me. Don’t let him be someone else whenhe’s away. Don’t let him be someone I’ve never seen before. Don’t let himhave a life other than the life I know he has with us, with me

Put simply, we try to measure what we value, but end up valuing what we measure.And what we measure is rarely what we mean to value. As Skinner showed, the goals of games — points, badges, trophies — are secondary reinforcers that only derive their worth due to their association with something we actually desire. But these associations are often illusory. A click is not the same thing as a food pellet. And points are not the same as progress.

This led him to propose two kinds of reward: primary and conditioned reinforcers. A primary reinforcer is something we’re born to desire. A conditioned reinforcer is something we learn to desire, due to its association with a primary reinforcer. Skinner found that conditioned reinforcers were generally more effective in shaping behavior, because while our biological need for the primary reinforcer is easily satiable, our abstract desire for the conditioned reinforcer isn’t. The pigeons would stop seeking food once their bellies were full, but they’d take far longer to get tired of hearing the food dispenser click.

nd you’re basically scrambling to come toterms with something, which, unbeknownst to you, has been brewing forweeks under your very nose and bears all the symptoms of what you’reforced to call I want.

I was going forthe devious smile that would suddenly light up his face each time he’d readmy mind, when all I really wanted was skin, just skin.

Such feelings are rooted in seeing life through the distorting filters of desire and fear

Réne Girard’s theory of mimetic desire:

Just bychanging something, the desire often gets fulfilled.

Desire for an idea is like bait.When you’re fishing, you have to havepatience. You bait your hook, and then you wait.The desire is thebait that pulls those fish in—those ideas.The beautiful thing is that when you catch one fish that you love,even if it’s a little fish—a fragment of an idea—that fish will draw inother fish, and they’ll hook onto it.Then you’re on your way. Soonthere are more and more and more fragments, and the whole thingemerges. But it starts with desire.

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Not merely the love of one person but the animal instinct, the simple undifferentiated desire: that was the force that would tear the Party to pieces.

mimic warfare of the evening became at last as wearisome to me as the routine of school in the morning because I wanted real adventures to happen to myself

I created a pull request to have the if (node.parentNode) conditional added to detach. It was not applied due to the desire to find the root cause of the <meta> tag manifestation of this issue.

My desire,More sharp than filèd steel, did spur me forth

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, andsome have greatness thrust upon ’em.

I say this house is as dark as ignorance,though ignorance were as dark as hell.

Calling my officers about me, in mybranched velvet gown, having come from a daybedwhere I have left Olivia sleeping—

Terry, in his solitary picnic, talked of the difficulty of creating the conditions in which his students will want to connect with others in the CLAVIER network.

SERIOUS GROWTH

Build Muscle Mass, Strength, And Power!

Knowledge will not give you what you want, but it will give you what you need and what you long for. Wants and wishes are temporary things, so changeable, so influenced by the world. The flames of your passions and desires can burn hot or cold, depending on what is stimulating you and how secure you feel within yourself. Knowledge is not governed by such emotions, and you cannot make it come into a relationship that you may want.

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

maternal lamentation

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

While this false vision, inspired by Desire, caused many mis-steps and much trouble andsuffering, and you gradually lost confidence in your Self -- in Me, the Impersonal One within, --in fact, you forgot Me, so that you did not know where to turn in your helplessness; yet it wasonly through your thus losing the memory of your Divine estate, and centering all yourconsciousness in these Earthly conditions, that I could develop your human mind and will, andall your faculties, and provide your human body with the strength and powers that would enableMe to give perfect expression to My Divine Idea on Earth, which eventually must BE

31Real, keeping your consciousness continually busied with these myriad illusions of your DreamWorld.Now the intellect is a creature of and wholly controlled by Desire, and is not, as many suppose, afaculty of the Soul. In other words, this mist then was the clouded lens of your human intellect,which, because controlled by Desire, falsely portrayed and interpreted to your consciousnessevery image, idea and impulse I inspired from within or attracted from without, during theprocess of My awakening your consciousness to a recognition of My Idea within ever urging forouter expression.All this I did purposely, however, through the agency of Desire, in order to lead you consciouslyinto the heart of Earth conditions

While dwelling in the Garden you were still wholly Impersonal, for you had not yet tasted of thisfruit. Having once yielded to Desire, the Earthly agent of My Will, whose main work is to makeyou eat this fruit, the moment you had eaten, that moment you descended, or fell, or were forcedfrom your Edenic estate (like the chick from the shell or the rose from the bud), and you foundyourself involved in conditions altogether new and strange. For now, instead of having dominionover the lower kingdoms, and of their supplying your every want, you had to till the ground toget it to bring forth fruit, and by the sweat of your brow had you to earn your bread.Having taken upon yourself this Earthly mission, it now became necessary for you to enter fullyinto all conditions of Earth life, in order to develop a mind and perfect a body capable ofexpressing perfectly My Idea on Earth, -- the real cause and reason of your entering into thisDream condition.

Thus was born Your human personality, and since its birth have I impelled You to nourish,support and strengthen it, by filling You with longings, hopes, ambitions, and aspirations, withall the various manifestations of Desire; which are but the human phases of My Will, operatingin the preparation and development of a medium capable of expressing perfectly My Attributeson Earth

And finally the necessity of Desire casting its complete spell over You (Humanity), that YourCelestial or Impersonal nature might be kept deep in sleep; until, in your Dream, by the free butignorant use of My Will, You could taste and fully eat of the fruit of the so-called Tree ofKnowledge of Good and Evil, and through the eating could learn properly to discriminate andknow its fruit for what it really is; and thus acquire the strength to use the knowledge thus gainedwisely and perfectly in the expression of My Idea onl

And the wisdom of having this influence, through the Serpent of Selfishness (the shape I causedit to assume in your mind), first generate in the passive, feeling, receptive part of You -- Desire,the mortal agent of My Will, which was to supply the motives and the power for the further andcomplete expression of My Attributes on Earth

Now, I shall not tell you in detail how or why it became necessary for Me to "drive" You (nowmanifesting as Man or Humanity) out of the Garden of Eden, other than to remind you of the partthat Desire plays in Earth expression, and its relation to My Will; how it centers your interest inouter things and makes you forget Me within.When you have solved that and comprehended somewhat of My reason, then perhaps you canunderstand the necessity of first causing You (Humanity) to fall into a deep sleep (You havingarrived at the close of another Cycle called a Cosmic day), and of letting you dream you hadawakened, -- but in reality you were and are still asleep, and everything from that day to this,including all seeming Earthly events and conditions, have been but a Dream, from which youwill fully awaken only when You (Humanity) again become wholly conscious of Me within, --and of finding Yourself (Humanity) no longer outwardly one, but two; one an active, thinking,aggressive part, thereafter called a man, and the other a passive, feeling, receptive part, -- awomb-man, or woman

Therefore, every real desire you feel, every desire of your heart, comes from Me and must ofnecessity sometime, in some shape or other, be fulfilled.However, as I have no Desire, because I AM All Things, once this Idea of expressing My Self inthis new condition was born, I had but to think, that is, to concentrate or focus My Attentionupon My Idea and Will It to come forth into expression, or, as is told in My other Revelation, toSpeak the Creative Word, and at once did the Cosmic Forces of My BE-ing, set in vibration bythe concentrating of My Will, proceed to attract the necessary elements from the eternalstorehouse of My Mind, and, with My Idea as a nucleus, to combine, form and shape around Itthese elements into what is called a thought-form of a planet, filling it with My Life Substance --My Consciousness -- and endowing it with all the potentialities of My Being.

Yet that Desire you feel in you is from Me, because it is born of My Idea, which I implanted inyour mind only that It might come forth into expression through you. Indeed, whatever youdesire is I, knocking at the door of your mind, announcing My Purpose of manifesting My Self inyou or through you in the particular form indicated by that Desire.What is called Desire in human personalities, is but the necessary Action of My Will pushingforth the expression of My Idea into outer Manifestation or Being.What to you would seem to be in Me a desire for expression, is but the Necessity of My Idea ofMy Self to Be, or Express Itself

Expressing what?What else could I express, if I AM All that Is, but My Self?You cannot yet see or comprehend when I inspire you with an Idea.Therefore, if I AM All there is, that Idea, which is direct from Me, must be part of or a phase ofMy Self in Being or Expression.Any Idea, once born within the realm of My Mind, as has been shown, immediately becomes aReality, for in the Eternality of My Being Time is not. With you, however, an Idea first createsDesire, a desire to express that Idea; then Desire compels Thinking, Thinking causes Action, andAction produces Results -- the Idea in actual outer manifestation.In Reality I have no Desire, for I AM All Things, and All Things are of Me. I need only to thinkand Speak the Word to produce results

In the beginning, at the dawn of a new Cosmic Day, when the Word consciousness was justawakening and the stillness of Cosmic Night yet prevailed, I The THINKER, conceived MyIdea.This My Idea of My Self in manifestation in a new condition, called Earth expression, I sawcompletely pictured in the mirror of My Omniscient Mind. In this mirror I saw the real Earthshining forth brilliantly in the Cosmos, -- a perfect Sphere, where all the Infinite phases,attributes and powers of My Divine Nature were finding perfect expression through the mediumof Angels of Light, living Messengers of My Will, My Word in the Flesh, even as It is in theCelestial World of the Eternal.I saw My Self manifesting outwardly as Nature, and My Life as the vivifying and evolvingPrinciple back of all Manifestation. I saw Love, the Divine Creative Power, as the animating andvitalizing Force back of all Life, and My Desire to give perfect expression to that Love as thePotential and Real Cause and Reason of the birth of My Idea.All this I saw mirrored in My All-seeing and All-knowing Mind, which could see and reflectonly the Soul of things or their Reality. Therefore this that I saw pictured in My Mind was theReal Earth, in fact, its beginning, its conception into Cosmic being

finally how to control and utilizeyour desires so that they will always serve YOU, instead of your being a slave to them.You have within you all possibilities. For I AM there. My Idea must express, and It must expressthrough you. It will express itself perfectly --- if you but let it; if you will only still your humanmind, put aside all personal ideas, beliefs and opinions, and let if flow forth. All you need to dois to turn within to Me, and let Me direct your thinking and your desires, let Me express whateverI will, you personally accepting and doing what I desire you to do. Then will your desires cometrue, your life become one grand harmony, your world a heaven and your self one with My Self.When you have begun to realize this and have glimpsed somewhat of its inner meaning, then youwill be ready to grasp the real import of what follo

When you can once realize this and can know that I AM Consciousness within you is one withthe consciousness of all animate and inanimate matter, and that Its will is one with your will,which is My Will, and that all your desires are My Desires, then will you begin to know and feelMe within, and will acknowledge the Power and Glory of My Idea, which is eternally expressingItself Impersonally through you.But it is first wholly necessary that you learn HOW to think, how to know Your thoughts, thosedirected by Me, from the thoughts of others;

You may wrongly interpret My Desires, My Urges from within, and seek to use them for yourown selfish purpose, but even while permitting this they still fulfill My Purpose. For it is only byletting you misuse My Gifts and by the suffering such misuse brings, that I can make you intothe clean and selfless channel I require for the perfect expression of My Ideas.

Yes, all ideas and all desires come thus from Me. They are My Ideas and My Desires which Iinspire in your mind and heart in order to bring them through you into outer manifestation.You have no ideas of your own and could not possibly have a desire that came from other thanMe, for I AM all there Is. Therefore all desires are Good, and when thus understood unfailinglycome into speedy and complete fulfillment

Once I have given your human mind a view of Its possibilities, and have enlisted your interest,then does your human personality take up its task; for as I created and inspired the Idea in yourmind, so did I cause that Idea to fructify therein and give birth to Desire, -- desire to bring intoouter manifestation all the possibilities of the Idea, Desire thus becoming the mortal agent of MyWill and supplying the motive Power; just as the human personality is the mortal instrumentused to confine and focus that Power

For who is the master? -- Your body, your mind, or You, the I AM within?Then why not show You are master, by thinking the true things the I AM of you within wishesyou to think?It is only by your thinking these other things, by allowing these inharmonious thoughts to enteryour mind and by so doing giving them the power so to affect or disturb you, that they have anysuch influence over you. When you stop thinking into them this power, and turn within to Meand allow Me to direct your thinking, they will at once disappear from your consciousness, anddissolve into the nothingness from which you created them by your thinking.When you are willing to do this, then and then only are you ready to receive Truth, and, byproper conscious thinking, directed by Me, to create the true and permanent things I within wishyou to create.Then, when you can thus distinguish the true from the false, the real from the seeming, yourconscious thinking will be as potent to create all things you desire, as has been yourunconsciousness thinking in the past in creating those things you once desired but now findobnoxious

The Bible says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.“1 This means that no matter how deeply we may seem to be buried in the distortions of a personal, three-dimensional, finite frame of mind, the faith that we find everpresently abiding within us is our everpresent “connection” with the Actuality of our Being as It is really going on. In other words, it is our Actual experience of Substance, inviolably “held in trust” for us, you might say, so long as we indulge in attempting to experience the Reality of our Being from a partial view. This is why it is “the evidence of things not seen.” It is the evidence of Reality, present and undistorted, in spite of the distortions inherent in the partial view. Faith, intuition, and desire constitute three aspects of our everpresent conscious experience of Reality while we are involved in the deception of existing as a finite mentality.

You are sitting, right now, as the Omnipresence of infinite Good, actively, Omnipotently unfolding and fulfilling Itself without exception. It is the intuitive perception—it is the desire, faith, and intuition of there being something to wake up into—which must remain the focal point of your conscious experience, regardless of the illusion of being boxed in. Then you must desire to wake up. Do not waste any energy in attempting to overcome any facet of the dream, since the way things appear is imaginary. It, therefore, cannot be dealt with in any way other than waking up!

Now, it does no good to have a lifeline attached to us while trekking around in the foreboding territory of the three-dimensional frame of reference if we do not use it to guide ourselves back into the Fourth-dimensional view, wherein perspective returns and there is no foreboding. In other words, it serves no purpose to stand in the finite view and have faith, have intuition, and have desires. From within that frame of reference, the distortion applies equally to those three everpresent perceptions of Reality. It causes them to be experienced as arising out of the absence of that which we have faith in, intuition about, and desires for. One can sit and rot in the illusion of “hell” while tenderly fondling and embracing his intuitions, faith, and desires. Your faith in what is Real, your intuitions about It, and your desire to experience It must be seen for what they are, and utilized, no matter how infinitesimal they seem to be from the standpoint of the partial view!

The Bible says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.“1 This means that no matter how deeply we may seem to be buried in the distortions of a personal, three-dimensional, finite frame of mind, the faith that we find everpresently abiding within us is our everpresent “connection” with the Actuality of our Being as It is really going on. In other words, it is our Actual experience of Substance, inviolably “held in trust” for us, you might say, so long as we indulge in attempting to experience the Reality of our Being from a partial view. This is why it is “the evidence of things not seen.” It is the evidence of Reality, present and undistorted, in spite of the distortions inherent in the partial view. Faith, intuition, and desire constitute three aspects of our everpresent conscious experience of Reality while we are involved in the deception of existing as a finite mentality.

Faith, intuition, and desire constitute three aspects of our everpresent conscious experience of Reality while we are involved in the deception of existing as a finite mentality. Now, it does no good to have a lifeline attached to us while trekking around in the foreboding territory of the three-dimensional frame of reference if we do not use it to guide ourselves back into the Fourth-dimensional view, wherein perspective returns and there is no foreboding. In other words, it serves no purpose to stand in the finite view and have faith, have intuition, and have desires. From within that frame of reference, the distortion applies equally to those three everpresent perceptions of Reality. It causes them to be experienced as arising out of the absence of that which we have faith in, intuition about, and desires for. One can sit and rot in the illusion of “hell” while tenderly fondling and embracing his intuitions, faith, and desires. Your faith in what is Real, your intuitions about It, and your desire to experience It must be seen for what they are, and utilized, no matter how infinitesimal they seem to be from the standpoint of the partial view!

You see, it was your desire to no longer have what you think is right, and what you ought to be able to do, that opened the Door of your Being to allow your Identity as Fourth-dimensional Man to begin to flow through as your conscious experience of Being.

Drop the concept of time as you request and desire the answer to your need. Stay fixed on the desire. Do it gently. Do not push it. Do not be overly intense. On the other hand, be genuine, sincere, and consistent. Realize that it is your very own Being to which the desire is being expressed, knowing as you do, that every answer and every demand arises out of your very own Being. As I have said before, trust Your Self. Lean on It. Depend on It.

Beloved friends, these things are of critical importance. For anyone who enters into a so-called “spiritual path” must eventually face and deal with their deep need for forgiveness, which is an expression of the soul’s deep desire to be forgiven. For there is no one who walks this plane who has not been touched by the poison of judgment.

The little-discussed fact is that it’s super uncomfortable to be loved when the feeling is not mutual (see my song Please). So uncomfortable, in fact, that many of us would rather act like callous, cold-hearted assholes than be in the same room as the person who loves us. We panic, we get distant, we deny any interest or care for the other person, we stop returning their texts. But that’s not an aversion to love, or to the lover; it’s the attachment and expectation being hurled in our direction with such intensity.