The foundation for everything, the only matter that was created, is desire.
Desire is thus primary, and thought is an upshot of the desire.
However, in order to obtain what we desire, the mind develops alongside the desire, in correspondence with it.
No matter how much we might resist the idea that desire precedes thought, nonetheless the mind—and thus, thought—is the desire’s servant, developing solely for the sake of serving the desire.
We can thus never make our minds objective and independent of our desires. But we can change our desires under the influence of the environment (see the article “The Freedom” by Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag [Baal HaSulam]), i.e., under the influence of social, cultural and other educational impetus that surround us. In other words, we can observe examples in our environment that promote the importance of fulfilling one desire over another, and by doing so, we can change what we desire.
Understanding this principle and the vast importance of the environment’s influence over us, then under the influence of an environment that leads us to the ultimate goal of our lives—to a harmonious connection where we reveal the positive force hidden in nature—we can constantly develop both our desires and our minds in harmony.
Moreover, if we have big desires but our mind is undeveloped to actualize them, we could then lose our ability to sensibly control ourselves.