Speaking of integration around the good -- and the impossibility of integration around its converse -- the following words popped into my head this morning. No, they are not original to me:
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.
Once again we see a whole metaphysic expressed in narrative and dialogical form: on one side integration and harmony, on the other dis-integration and dissonance.
Now, we live in disintegrating times, but then again, it seems that all living systems at all times work against entropy, from biology on up. Where is the Center, and how do we keep things from flying apart -- from the same old anarchy being loosed upon the world? Another unbidden thought comes in for a landing:
He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
To repeat in other words what was said yesterday,
On Aquinas's views, the internal integration necessary for closeness, union, and love is possible only in integration around the good (Stump).
If dis-integration is a kind of disease, then integration is the cure. And for Thomas, sanctification and justification are "the remedies for the psychic sickness whose source is the human propensity to evil." And "without these remedies, even God cannot be close to a human person or united to him."
We've suggested before that every religion proposes a cure for the disease it diagnoses. And for Thomas, "all human beings have a sort of latent disease in the will." Give it sufficient oxygen and "In the right circumstances, it blows up into moral monstrosity."
How do we integrate if it is not around the Good? Perhaps it's easier if we consider how it is possible for the intellect to be integrated if it is not around the True. Wouldn't integration around error and falsehood be disintegration, precisely? Or an a priori impossibility of integration?
But the mind, being a dynamic system, doesn't achieve integration in a static way. Rather, it must be an ongoing process. I am not the first to suggest that truth is to the mind as nutrition is to the body; thus it is a question of ongoing metabolism, whether speaking of biology or psychology: the mind needs truth, and in its absence cannot flourish.
We might also say that the soul needs beauty as the will needs virtue; each of the latter terms is the telos of the former. Intellect, will, and sentiment must be conformed to the true, good, and beautiful, respectively, otherwise to hell with it.
Some people are just un-willing to be integrated, meaning that they must implicitly will to be dis-integrated. In such a case, "the defect in the will is such that it could be fixed by the person who has it only if she did not have the defect."
Which is contradictory: a divided will trying to unite itself will redound to nothing more than an ad hoc patch-up job, like trying to repair your car while driving it.
Which, if I am not mistaken, goes to the function of ideology, which is a kind of exterior and top-down structure the person takes on board in order to exert a faux integration. This is who we're dealing with. Prior to the content of the ideology is the existential desperation of the person who has adopted it. As with any delusion, the head-on attempt to disprove it only makes you part of the proof. For example, if you're not a racist, this only proves you are one.
In the past I have also suggested that the patient, in order to be healed, must relinquish the effort at self-healing, which is a symptom of the very dis-ease it is attempting to cure. And the means of self-healing on offer are too numerous to list, but everyone has their favorite. Truly truly, the Devil's Menu is endless.
Incoming again:
Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Hmm. An alignment of wills, as it were.
In Aquinas's terminology, this is cooperative grace, because in giving it, God is cooperating with a person's own higher-order desires....
By desiring a good will, she desires a good that God himself desires -- that is, her internal integration and with it the possibility of her union with God.
The higher-order, meta-desire for the Good?
The process in which God cooperates with a human person's higher-order desires for a will that wills one or another particular good is the process of sanctification.... By this means, [the person] will make progress in integrating her will around the good.
Progress, integration, sanctification, the latter of which "is not finished during a person's lifetime." It seems that the disease cannot so much be cured as treated. Then again, we do not call "hunger" a disease, rather, just a signal to seek nourishment. Likewise the hunger for the true and good. There is no "final meal" unless you're already on death row.
Stop resisting!, as they say on Cops:
Surrender of resistance and quiescence of the will are the start of the moral and spiritual regeneration required for internal integration, and for all the things for which internal integration is necessary...
Conclusion:
In the surrender of sanctification, a person lets go of the effort to bring her will through her own activity into the state she wants to have. Instead, she seeks God's aid for her will, to strengthen her will in the good she herself wants to will.
Oh, and "Both justification and sanctification are therefore also relational, and so is their goal," but that's another post.
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By desiring a good will, she desires a good that God himself desires -- that is, her internal integration and with it the possibility of her union with God.
It has always struck me that the people who say, "If God is with me, who can be against me?" have it a bit backward. The question isn't so much whether God is with any of us, but if any of us are with God.
Stop Resisting!
Seems like one of those phrases, right up there with "Calm down!", which is likely to garner the opposite result. I wonder if it ever works?
They always insist they're not resisting even while they're clearly resisting, leading to more force and more resistance.
It's a vicious cycle. Conversely, we were watching part of a documentary a couple weeks ago about some guy whose mom called the cops because she found a head and hands in her son's closet. When they came to arrest him, he was so calm they didn't even bother to cuff him, which is good because the dude was huge. Had they pulled guns and started shouting, though, the whole scenario would have been very different.
We recently have had to tell our kids to stop telling each other to "chill." Usually the first time it's said is unnecessary, which then makes the other one irritated, and suddenly where everything was fine there's a squabble.
F*ck I'm in a world of trouble. But first, from the post: "Surrender of resistance and quiescence of the will are the start of the moral and spiritual regeneration required for internal integration, and for all the things for which internal integration is necessary..."
I'm wondering if this is aligned with "when God asks you to go to Nineveh, you do not run for Tarsus."
Unless you want three days in the belly of a fish.
Resistance is not good. Obedience is wise. Which brings up my horrid dilemma.
I have "attachment trauma" because Mother of Trench, through no fault of her own, developed post-partum depression after my birth and was off to hospital. Father, through no fault of his own, wasn't the greatest with newborns. Trench was left to "cry it out," popular at the time, but....ouch that's going to leave a mark. A big one. A permanent one.
So I became "dismissive-avoidant" and this is how the digger of holes rolls. I am well adjusted enough but apparently when romance is on the agenda, this does not go well. The tearful admissions spill from lovely upturned faces: "I feel like I'm not important to you." "I don't feel like you really love me." "You hurt me when you said you would be OK while I went away for awhile. You don't care if I'm gone."
I could have chalked all of that up as the way of a woman's heart, but I know this is not so. I am a menace to women. The consistency of these remarks across time and many different women makes it abundantly clear I'm damaged goods. I cannot access my emotions. It is difficult for me to experience grief. I'm sure I have, but when I try to put my finger on what it feels like to grieve, its a cipher. All I know of it I get from other people.
The problem is I've just terribly wounded someone close to me and I've no idea how to repair the damage. Maybe I am grieving. I am ugliness that despairs of its own ugliness.
Why say this here? Because the good Dr. is a mother-infant bonding specialist. But he cares not for my troubles. The one named Julie is kind and merciful but I've burned her out with my issues.
I am just miserable and f*cked and I came here to lament because I don't know what else to do. My apologies.
trench.
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