What about appetites?

The word "appetite" names a craving, usually physical, for something external to be consumed. We also use the word to denote a desire for experiences or power. Appetites can be experienced in our desire for food, substances, fun, relationships, sex, adventure, exercise, emotions, and even destruction. The Course calls appetites "getting mechanisms."

There are two prerequisites for an appetite to be experienced: (1) You must believe you presently lack the thing you crave. (2) You must believe that the thing you crave can be obtained. Notice that in the first condition, you are believing in scarcity and limitation. And in the second, you are believing in separation, in that the thing you crave is not (yet) part of you and your world.

Hmmm..... scarcity, limitation, and separation.  Not exactly traits of God.

So here we are, again, back where we always find ourselves when we follow avenues that seem so real in human experience. Trying to prove that there exists something that is 'Not God.' Trying to make duality real. Trying to attack Truth. Trying to 'make' rather than 'create.'

To delve a bit deeper, it's fascinating to observe the cannibalism and vampirism inherent in most physical appetites. The idea of 'consuming life' in order to stay alive, 'taking' substances to get a physical effect, two 'becoming one' through sex, elevating a sense of self by conquering an obstacle, the catharsis (temporary) in releasing strong emotion, the ego boost after destroying physical objects. In the extreme, the taking of life through acts of abuse, murder, or mayhem.

We have appetites that make us crave relationships with others. Big ego trip there when we can achieve something to the effect of the famous cheesy line from "Jerry McGuire":  "You complete me." (Wonder if he felt the same way seven years later.)

Any avenue we pursue in the quest for completion will eventually prove unsatisfactory, and we'll usually just find a different appetite to sate. We keep attempting this dynamic in many different forms until we (dimly at first) become aware that they are really all the same. As we ASK, and as we demonstrate a willingness to see things differently, we being to realize that the goal of satisfying appetites is just another one of ego's myriad smokescreens.

The mistake is in the premise. The error is the initial perception of a self that is incomplete, lacking, unfulfilled, separated from God. As we gradually see that God is All There Is, we begin to release our grasp on this fragile, temporal illusion of self, and we begin to glimpse our True Identity. Appetites diminish, and then disappear, along with all that we formerly believed in, as Reality dawns and we awaken from our dream of separation to the Truth of Oneness.