VIII. DESIRES AND IDEALS

"The beast within is a valliant steed whereupon the man doth ride." - Elof II

1. It is wrongly asserted that man must first learn to overcome his animal nature before he can develop his spiritual nature. The animal in man is a foundation and energy source upon which to build. One cannot be a good human without being a good animal first. Animals do not live immorally, and the task is to fully realize the glory and perfection of the animal nature while at the same time developing the intellectual and spiritual natures.

2. Many who seek mastery over others will present the animal nature as evil and will offer themselves as a way to "salvation". Such people will usually speak much about "sin".

3. A desire is a natural yearning for something which we feel will bring us satisfaction. Natural yearnings can be elicited by natural or unnatural stimuli occurring in natural or unnatural situations.

4. If one actively seeks to increase appetitive desires, then one has to use more time and energy than otherwise to extinguish those desires with "pleasure".

5. Hedonism is often equated with the idea of being liberated. Being truly liberated involves deciding for yourself what you will do without the slightest regard for what is fashionable. Compulsive pleasure seeking enslaves the individual every bit as much as the repression of normal desires.

6. Having a body with physical needs involving health and pleasure puts many limitations upon the easy development of the intellectual and spiritual natures. Other limitations are created by time, distance, and the elements. Notice that most of man's inventions and industry are directed to overcoming the limitations put on him by his body. This is especially obvious in areas such as medicine, transportation, communication, and information storage.

7. While it is enjoyable to gain what one desires, to "need" anything is essentially a debilitating condition. It is good to deliberately view anything greatly desired from the worst possible perspective in order to keep it in it's true perspective. In this of course, one must be on guard against self-deceit.

8. The training of the memory can aid greatly in the enjoyment of all things desired.

9. It is fortunate that most material things do not have to be owned to be enjoyed or appreciated. They can be vividly remembered at any time without cost.

10. It is erroneously held that enjoyable experiences must necessarily be repeated. All just recreational pursuits can be enjoyed deeply at the time and remembered later. There are too many wonderful adventures to be had initially to timidly seek undue repetition of any one.

11. "Ttrue heroism is proclaimed through deeds alone." ~ Elof II ~
Most of a person's desires are also best proclaimed in this same way.

12. If an individual does not bear a very marked resemblance to the individual he would create as the hero of a great epic novel, then he is living without personal integrity. Such actualization must, of course, fall within the constraints imposed by heredity, situation, and obligation.

13. Fantasy is the willful construction of day dreams within which we get and enjoy what we desire. Since fantasies propel us towards the objects desired, we should fantasize only in a way that is consistent with our highest ideals. There are many things that excite, but few that deeply satisfy.

14. Fantasy can first be used to clarify the strongest desires of the individual, apart from whether attainment of the desires is possible. It can then be used creatively to accelerate the attainment of those desires which are possible. Fantasy, however, should never be used as a substitute for attainment, as an end in itself, but always as a pathway to actualization.

15. To fantasize continually about something that one can't, wouldn't or shouldn't actually have, is a pathetic waste of time. If the actualization of a fantasy would be impossible or wrong, then the fantasizing itself is wrong. Evil impulses will present themselves randomly even to decent, self-aware individuals, but will always subside quickly if not nurtured. The notion that every desire must be explored and satisfied is the phony ethic of the compulsive hedonist.

SEXUAL CHOICES

1. Perhaps the biggest private personal struggle that life gives us is between what we want to do and what we think society will condemn us for doing.

Nature vs. Society
Desire vs. Inhibition
Id vs. Superego
Mr. Hyde vs. Dr. Jekyll
Reptilian Complex vs Cerebral Cortex

People use tobacco, alcohol, and drugs to disable the cerebral cortex so that the reptilian complex can be unimpeded. So they can let Mr. Hyde out for awhile and blame it on the drug later. When Jekyll and Hyde become friends you don't need drugs or excuses. When the two natures are finally on the same page most of life's problems disappear.

As long as you make no unjust encroachment against anyone else it doesn't matter what you do. Pleasure and evil are not the same thing. One of the greatest keys to being well adjusted and happy is to eliminate this false conflict. The fact that popular religion has fed on perpetuating repression should not deter the individual in this regard.

Prudes are not moral, just sick. They are not good, just cowardly. If they attempt to interfere with the pleasure of healthy people then they are also expendable and should be dealt with accordingly. When legal redress is not available, use your imagination.

"You gotta let that boy, you gotta let that boy, b-b-b-boooogie, boooogie!"
~ Robert Plant paraprasing John Lee Hooker ~

2. Young people should get as much nookie as they can while they can. Having sex with a large number of attractive partners is very satisfying at the time and when reminiscing later. It is always pathetic, however, to encounter someone whose self-esteem is too deeply involved in the amount of their sexual indulgence. As with anything else, quality is more important than quantity. It is better to key self-esteem to higher modes of attainment. These things will endure when sex is no longer of consequence. Nobody cares about your sexual conquests but you. You can't take them with you. After you are gone the only thing that will matter will be what you did to make the world a better place.

3. Neither should people allow self-esteem to become unduly involved in mundane qualitative choices. Inhibition is culturally determined. Sexual relationships are based upon natural pecking order which itself merely reflects archetypal ideals mitigated by the realities of supply and demand. In any given relationship this pecking order will determine who demands what and who delivers what. People should be introspective and analytical about what they really want in these situations and never allow society's values to determine their behavior. Sex is the business of the participating individuals only and should not be discussed with others. Personal integrity depends on being independent in such matters. At the end of your life you will want to have lived it your way.

It's just sex! ~ Heidi Fleiss ~

4. Perversion occurs only when someone has sex with someone other than a consenting adult member of the opposite sex. There can be no perversion between men and women, only imaginative variation. Fantasy exploration and actualization should occir in an atmosphere of friendship and trust. Sex should be as light and cheery or as grim and anguished as the couple both want. In general, natural simplicity works best. It is usually better to avoid cultivating complicated bizarre variations, no matter how enjoyable. Such will take the individual further and further away from being thrilled by what is commonly available. With all the personality clashes that are natural between men and women, practicality dictates not adding a lot of special qualifications to what excites. Kinky scenarios are usually naive, often dangerous, and almost always selfish and one-sided. These qualities are not the essence of good sex.

5. Sex is a general energy source when sublimated for useful work. It is also the reproductive faculty. These creative and procreative functions are the only evolutionary purposes for the sex impulse. The pleasure which accompanies sex did not evolve biologically as an end in itself, but simply as a natural motivator for creatures not consciously aware (science believes) of the cause and effect relationship in procreative activity. Sexual activity that it is not more or less connected to these ends is, to that extent, unnatural. The further from the evolutionary function, the less natural. Even normal procreative sex with contraception can be unnatural when done in such amount that the happy quality of good balanced living is spoiled.

6. Calling perversion by other names does not alter the qualitative nature of the activity. Having a venerated council of psychiatrists, responding to political pressure, declare that perversion is functionally normal, simply because the participants have no repressed trauma or because they experience deep emotional cathexis, does not make the activity itself into something other than what it is. These psychiatrists are not considering the evolutionary purpose of sex, which is not the momentary gratification of the individual, but the propagation of the species. We know now that some perverted sexual activity proceeds from congenital physical abnormality. While this removes the desires involved from the realm of choice, it does not render the resulting behavior viable from an evolutionary standpoint. There is a big difference between not persecuting generally decent people, and the wholesale endorsement of everything that they do. People who are normal sexually are not being intolerant simply because they don't want the media or schools to teach children that perversion is just another healthy lifestyle alternative, equal in viability to normal sexual expression. It is not that, and no amount of rhetoric or prideful parading, can ever make it so. All this nonsense is just another example of the culture of insubstantive posture.

7. People afflicted by perversion should not give in to the lazy trend of redefining what is difficult to cure as normal. Sometimes character and open-minded effort can get positive results. There are a number of psychiatrists who have found that about fifteen percent of patients who are regressed back to infancy under hypnosis reveal no treatable trauma where it would otherwise be expected. When these same patients however, are regressed back even further, before their own birth, and dealt with in that time, the cure rate then becomes one hundred percent. From a standpoint of therapeutics, it is not relevant whether this represents traumatic memories of ancestors passed on genetically through DNA, or whether it represents previous incarnations. The important thing is that the theraputic treatment works. Those resigned to a lifetime of perversion should contemplate these matters objectively. Very few perverted individuals will say that if they could go back and choose, that they would prefer a life of perverted sexuality and all that goes and does not go with it (22).