THE HEART14/02/22
Can human transcend the material into being? For millennia, the material is caught on a cycle of deterioration. What could happen at the end of the line if the internal development of the heart and mind surface to transform the material into being?
Through struggles of the material world; the conscience collects and filters data from decisions of your feelings, emotions and thinking. It is filtered to separate subjective material aspects from objective ones.
Subjective material aspects accumulate to form your 'self'; Objective aspects form principles of your 'being'.
Material self is formed from everything material that you desire through your feelings and senses that make you feel happy and satisfied. This include dreams, wishes, ambitions; it's all about you and there is no room for anyone else.
Objective being is the stable outcome of constructive practice of principles that you applied in your decisions. It is about you and everyone else.
The material self promotes the realm of individualism; the objective being promotes the realm of the community.
Desire is that longing for something or somewhere to feel happy and peaceful without pain.
So material desire is the experience of the body, the physical person. If you visit YouTube, it is full of people demanding attention to themselves. And in so doing they use all sorts of attractions from food to skills, sports, fashion and sex. And this develops a sense of pride and self worship when he/she attracts a following. Not to mention that one's followers is a source for promotion and selling goods.
However, the individual exists in the material self. The decisions of the self are determined by feelings and senses to fulfil material desires. And material desires lead to powerful cravings and addictions that thoughts of safety and harm are overwhelmed.
Obviously, material desire is subjective and destructive as disease and illness of addiction could lead to death. Nowadays, death doesn't deter some people who are severely addicted.
Now, when the mind is overwhelmed by the material desire, it becomes corrupted and thinks in ways to support the material desire. Such that the individual claims that his/her desire is more important than his/her family or community.
When the mind is obsessed with the desire, it changes the perception of the senses. And the individual is looking at the object of his/her desire through something completely different. The desire of the addict can alter the perception.
Now if subjective self's decision is determined by material desires; then the objective being's decisions are determined by principle desires. And principle desires are desires of the mind involving thoughts and ideas. Therefore, objective desires are mental desires.
Mental desires also reason through conscience, emotions and perception to stabilise principles in material reality. So when the physical person is influenced by material desires to commit harmful or unstable action, the objective principles attempts to modify the motive and change the act.
Nevertheless, mental desire is overwhelmed in powerful addiction conditions, and not as strong in younger persons. This suggests that experience is valuable to the determination of decisions.
We have now established that decisions involve on the one hand; instincts and desires of the material and on the other hand; objective principles of the mind. All we have to do is place the heart of human somewhere in the middle.
Heartful decisions may involve principles of love, compassion, empathy and understanding.
A nurse was forced to make a decision to save an elderly woman. In the same rundown hospital is a child with a leg infection. There was only one doctor available and can only operate on either one. The trouble is, if the doctor operates on the child, the woman would die. If the doctor operates on the woman, the child would lose a leg for the rest of life.
You see, both material and mental desires are straightforward decisions but mutually exclusive; it's either one or the other, not both. So when you reason top down from principles and elevate the gound up material, it is the heart that connects both worlds.
It is love, understanding and compassion. Material desires cannot be curbed and modified by objective principles, so the nurse had to be tough and make the call. If she didn't have love and understanding, it would have been an economic decision and one wouldn't make it out alive.
In our modern world, ethics and principles tend to favour material desires for the individual's happiness and business's profits.
We have learned that some illnesses and diseases are not cured but controlled by medication therapy to appropriate and expand the market.
And there the reality of our material is enduring desires and their escalated painful consequences over and over time, there is no end.