What if you Don't Love What You Think
What do you want? — first, last, foundation
Many of us can identify. If I ask you, a Christian, to tell me what you really want, what you most deeply long for, what you ultimately love—well, of course you know the right answer. You know what you ought to say. And what you state could be entirely genuine and authentic, a true expression of your intellectual conviction. But would you want to step into the Room? Are you confident that what you think you love aligns with your innermost longings? “This,” comments Dyer, “is one of the lessons of the Zone: sometimes a man doesn’t want to do what a man thinks he wants to do.”
Interestingly, Dyer has an important insight that is relevant to our concerns here. “Your deepest desire,” he observes, “is the one manifested by your daily life and habits.” This is because our action—our doing—bubbles up from our loves, which, as we’ve observed, are habits we’ve acquired through the practices we’re immersed in. That means the formation of my loves and desires can be happening “under the hood” of consciousness. I might be learning to love a telos that I’m not even aware of and that nonetheless governs my life in unconscious ways.