Impressions, like passions, pleasures and pains, are “original existences,” which “arise in the soul originally from unknown causes”.

From Hume’s Treatise:

“As to those impressions, which arise from the senses, their ultimate cause is, in my opinion, perfectly inexplicable by human reason, and ’twill always be impossible to decide with certainty, whether they arise immediately from the object, or are produc’d by the creative power of the mind, or are deriv’d from the author of our being.” (T, 84)

D.H. Lawrence wrote: “Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes.”

When we are motivated by immediate gratification to do “just what we like,” we will feel continuously driven: No amount of productivity or consuming or recognition can break through the trace of unworthiness and put us in touch with the “deepest self.” As Lawrence points out, to do what the deepest self likes “takes some diving.” To listen and respond to the longest of our heart requires a committed and genuine presence. The more completely we’re caught in the surface world of pursuing substitutes, the harder it is to dive.