Joy Philosophy
	Desire And Duty <  Previous Contents Next  >

Desire has urged us so long and so hard. We have persistently cuffed it into the corner and gone after new gods.

But despised Desire, deprived of its surface expression, has sunk deeper and deeper into our souls and refused to be comforted. After trying everywhere else for satisfaction, for a god. to guide us, we have come back again to poor neglected Desire. In our extremity we see Desire with new eyes—we begin to think, and to understand. We try to coax Desire out of the corner and make peace with it. “The stone that the builders rejected” has become “the chief of the corner.”

The only way to find peace is to follow desire. Desire is the only guide to heaven, and the road lies through hell. Worse yet, it trails a labyrinthine way over the dead-levels of indifference, where Duty lies in wait to nip its every expression.

Sometime you will grow to hate the dead-levels where Duty stalks. You will wake to the duty of being undutiful; to the desirability of following desire to the mountain-tops. You will look at desire with new respect and ask it to lead you up and out of hell and the dead-levels.

Hell comes before the dead-levels, you know, and all on the road to Transfiguration Mount. And when you begin to want desire to guide you you will have been a long time on the dead-levels.

Then desire will whisper to you that she is God and you want to follow her.

And when you agree she will begin by leading you straight away from Duty.

Many, many times your faith will not stand the test—you will turn back again from following desire. You will turn to duty because you are afraid to leave her.

Well, never mind; caution and conscience are good things and easily taught. Follow Duty when you must.

But keep your eye on desire and follow her every time you dare. “Lay for” desire and make haste to follow her every time you can. Keep in mind that desire is God. Keep watching and she will prove it. When you just must follow Duty, do it; but tell yourself it is desire you are following—not Duty. You are doing your duty, not because you must, but because you DESIRE to. Always remember this. Never humor Duty to the extent of letting her think she is making you do things for her sake.

Let me whisper something to you: Duty is a sham. She is a hollow mockery. She wears a dignified demeanor to cover her real nature. Duty is DESIRE in a goggle-eyed domino which scares you stiff. Just you follow desire and never, never give Duty the satisfaction of thinking you’d follow her, and by and by she will get tired of masquerading. She will take off her mask and you will smile to see that she really was desire all the time, and you knew her not.

You see, you and other folks had such a habit of cuffing desire into the corner every time she tried to lead you, that she had to go and cover herself up in order to get you to follow her at all. So all along on those horrid dead-levels where you thought Duty was leading you such a stupid and righteous chase, you were really following desire all the time.

Now if you will keep telling Duty to her face that you know she is only desire—that you are following desire and not Duty; if you will keep resolutely sticking to it Duty will soon give it up and take off her mask, and you will really see the smiling face of desire where you thought there was only stern-eyed Duty.

I write Duty with a capital D because that is the way we have always thought of her. But desire has always been just plain desire to us—something naturally and loveably wicked and familiar; so familiar that we bred contempt for her. But our eyes are opening.

Do you remember that when you say “must” to the children they straightway are “willful.” Children are true to God, to desire—"of such is the kingdom of heaven.” When you dress desire up as a goggly-eyed scarecrow Duty, the child will have none of it. He might have been just on the point of following desire into the very thing you desire him to do, but one sight of Duty is enough—he won’t go a step.

And you call him stubborn, contrary, bad. You are mistaken. He is only true to God. And until you become like unto him you cannot enter the kingdom of eternal youth and joy and godliness.

Practice doing as you desire, to the end that you may desire to do as you will. You cannot go far astray, for in your real essence you are the Good God, who cannot go back on himself.

Duty is a fetish of the conscious or objective mind, whose processes comprise only about five per cent of all your thinking. The other 95 percent mind is subconscious and is true to desire.

Desire is the drawing power of 95 percent of you; will is the drawing power of only 5 percent of you. Then do you wonder that desire often governs you in spite of your little will to follow Duty?

Your little percent thinker has conjured up Duty as a guide, whilst your 95 percent mind sticks to desire. You are two-minded, at war with yourself.

Unmask Duty and you will find yourself ONE and invincible. The 5-percent tail will lose his job of wagging the 95-percent dog, and you will reach Transfiguration Mount.