# Desire **Hub.** The soul's inclination or appetite toward a good, and above all toward God himself. Desire is not evil in itself — Teresa and John both prize "holy desires" as the engine of the spiritual life, and Teresa speaks often of the soul's desire for God and even for suffering out of love. It becomes an obstacle only when it clings to some created thing rather than to God alone. St John of the Cross's *Ascent of Mount Carmel* makes the purification of desire the entire business of the active night of sense: even one unmortified desire is enough to keep the soul from flight, "a thread" that holds the bird as surely as a cord, so the appetite must be emptied of everything that is not God before it can be filled with him. Rightly ordered and purified, desire matures into abandonment and is finally absorbed into the single desire for union with God. ## See also [[detachment|Detachment]] · [[abandonment|Abandonment]] · [[will-human|Will]] · [[faculties|Faculties]] · [[union-with-god|Union with God]] · [[contemplation|Contemplation]]