Hi John,

I wonder why are you going so much after "desires" as a bad thing. There's no problem with desires. Without desires, we are not even functional human beings. Research on people who cannot feel and have no desires show their lack of will, depression, and inability to make decisions. We certainly don't aim for a society of zombies. Taken that we are not going to be deprived of desires, the quest of what kinds of desires we nurture begins. Buddhists will for enlightenment is nothing but a desire, but one of a different form. Thus the separation of the desire of the heart is of the ego, which is a separation coming from Buddhism, my main practice.

As for "mind vs desire", again, we feel first, then act. There's no pure rational mind in a human being. The idea that the mind can be a neutral judge is another illusion, at least for people without strong practices that allow them to observe. That is because stimuli reaches our amygdala ("feelings" part of the brain) faster than our neocortex ("rational" brain). No wonder many psychologists say there's no free will. But there's, free choice for those well trained to get out of the reaction rat wheel. Of course, we all like to think we are above average, but taken the number of choices we do every single day, we are mostly acting in autopilot, out of the shortest circuit, the amygdala.

I feel we overall agree but we have different concepts and differ in foundation blocks. I come mainly from Buddhism. Because of that, we get stuck in definitions. As spirituality is such a big thing in my life, I prefer leaving my concepts of "God" and similars aside in this conversation. So I will stop these points here as all other issues seem to come from basic understandings. Enjoy your weekend, dear!

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201411/the-problem-desire
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627308004558
https://www.livescience.com/26914-why-we-are-all-above-average.html