Psychologists claim that man needs escape and fantasy to survive! It’s true that we can live eleven days without food or water, but not eleven seconds without lies. Our false security depends on a highly complicated system of tease that operates through deceit and emotional intrigue. 

Because the lie we “love” with originates in hell, is it any wonder that it evolves to reveal itself for what it is between husbands and wives, governments and their people? 

How does “choice” enter the picture? Let’s go back to the beginning. The first desire of the mind is to be free; but to the ego, being “free” means being free from Reality to be Reality. And the factor that actuates the secret wish to be God is choice.

So, here we have two factors: desire and choice, the latter arising from the former. The factor that makes choice (freedom) possible, and that cleaves us from our original environment, simply because it does so, must be the opposite of Truth.

It must, therefore, be the lie. The lying spirit is the antithesis, the negative pole, of the Truth spirit. It has a gravity of its own that fascinates, attracts, and finally draws our spirit in.

Are we not always attracted by the lying word and the lying spirit behind the word? So, when the inclination of your soul tilts toward freedom and glory, you find yourself involved with the wrong people (even if they appear to be religious), and you are falling downward. Yet, to you, it will seem as though you are rising upward, because you are “caught up” with deception and illusion. 

Unfortunately, once you make that fatal choice, you discover that choice is no longer voluntary; in fact, it ceases to exist for you at all. Forevermore, you are under a compulsion to “choose” liars and teasers to give you the illusion that you are gloriously alive. 

When wrong comes to life in your consciousness, it is naturally defensive toward the truth that it seeks to displace in your heart. So you must start defending yourself against the good by surrounding yourself with the liars and teasers who can reinforce your right to be wrong, and thus relieve you of anxiety. 

You are totally caught up in the dilemma of compulsive “choosing,” totally involved with anything that can serve your selfishness through mind, body, and soul. The last thing you want to see is the Truth, and the only way you can avoid seeing it is to immerse yourself ever deeper into sensuality and fantasy. 

"The first desire of the mind is to be free; but to the ego, being “free” means being free from Reality"

Sensual appetites represent the evolution of the animal nature in man, which arises out of a deep spiritual failing. And the principal appetite of the evolving beast is the sex drive, with which all the other senses are linked. 

While original sin was, and still is, disobedience, choice brings you down into a compulsive “choice system.” If you find yourself constantly “choosing” wrong, you must see that your stubborn soul has become enslaved to sin through the evolution of your flesh. 

You awaken in an animal form, with growing needs and hungers. Any hope of glory and happiness seems to lie in the gratification of your evolving animal senses. Actually, you begin to see your spiritual needs and lacks as a need for more sensual ego support. 

And the more you reject Truth, the more sensual craving takes its place, along with the guilt that drives you to escape by fulfilling yourself through the senses. 

Ideals and principles no longer mean anything to you. Your conception of good deteriorates until you see “glory” as domination over other “animals.” Happiness becomes whatever it is you do to escape the truth of the misery you have brought upon yourself through the exploitation of your evolving pleasure centers.

When you are not in your center, you go to extremes, simply because you cannot stop choosing something wrong to support your failing. Nor can you find rest in any of your extremes. When you try to restore some balance in your life by going the other way, to another extreme, all you get for your effort is anxiety. 

Suppose, for instance, that you try to buy freedom and happiness through sex, only to find betrayal, guilt, misery, and enslavement on the other end. Will you not then be driven to try the other extreme?

Your rebellion might take the form of fear, even impotence, but it will be a choiceless choice. Your mind will make excuses, of course, and rationalize that if sex is making you guilty, then giving up sex should return you to innocence.

So now, the opposite extreme becomes attractive and plays the role of the tease, the temptation. You might even “choose” to become a monk or a recluse, but you fail to see that it was your pride that sucked you in.

The choice is always compulsive; and the “opposite” attracts only because your proud mind has reasoned it out to be a logical means of escape, a distraction, another way to build your ego.