Knowing how values hang together and when to pursue things under which circumstances and to what degree—and then developing the will to do so—is the work of a lifetime.

The transformation of desire happens when we become less concerned about the fulfillment of our own desires and more concerned about the fulfillment of others. We find, paradoxically, that it is the very pathway to fulfilling our own. The positive cycle of desire works because the primary thing being imitated is the gift of self.

We can’t access our desires without models. And we will always follow those models that are most real to us—who possess a quality of life that we feel transcends our own. So stalk your highest and noblest desire, but you will have to find it in the form of a model.

Stalk your greatest desire. When you find it, let all of your lesser desires be transformed so that they serve the greatest one.

we must make a decision about what it is that is worth sinking our teeth into. Otherwise, our bones will get picked dry by the winds of mimetic forces without our ever having staked a claim on anything that touches us at the depths of our being.

This kind of substantial transformation—which is, at root, a transformation of desire—is painful. One thing that every spiritual tradition is clear about is that changing how we desire, at least in a positive way, requires suffering. Nobody wants to let go of thin desires.

The transformation of desire, on the other hand, is a dynamic process. The Greeks have an entirely different word for a total transformation from within, one that isn’t wholly patterned on any one particular model: metamorphosis.

the perennial understanding of numerous spiritual traditions about the link between desire and suffering: desire is always for something we feel we lack, and it causes us to suffer.

“Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want,” he said.