Exhaling

Ok, I will. Here it is:

Tear Down that Wall

When is it that we learn to hide ourselves?
When is it that we take the first steps away from our essential selves, erect the first portion of the barricade around our hearts?
At what age do we begin to connect knowing with loving, begin to believe that we will not be loved if we are fully known?

It seems we are born expecting to be known and loved for what we are (and for God, knowing and loving are one essential act: He knows-loves us), but at some point we discover that human love is all too often conditional. At the point at which something makes us believe we are not lovable, we make work of suppressing those things that we believe MAKE us unlovable. In that moment, we begin to find ways to keep our true selves hidden, even from ourselves, because we are afraid that if we are known fully we will not be loved. We build barriers and try to hide those things behind the wall, and act other than we are. Then, like East Berliners, we learn to ignore the wall and go about our business as if it isn’t there. But it is always there, keeping good things out, holding bad things in, threatening to reveal the truth.

We erect walls and then at some point grace illuminates them and we begin to try to dismantle them. We reach toward Heaven, we desire God’s love, and He says, “I love you already, but you’ve got to get rid of that wall you’ve erected around your heart if you want Me to come in.” And gradually He teaches us that we can’t remove one stone without His help (even though we put them all in place on our own!). So He gives us the grace to remove the barrier that keeps His love out and our true self hidden. One by one, He helps us identify the obstructions, and one by one He helps us knock them down, and at each victory His light shines through more fully until at last our true self is revealed.

Now we should be free, but…
But it seems that wall has come to mark a false boundary, so that even though it is demolished by His grace in us, that interior space is avoided, our newly-emancipated true self is not entirely free. It has forgotten how to reach out, how to trust fully, how to be loved freely. And our thoughts, accustomed to going about their business ignoring the wall, still routinely avoid that core space. The essential self has been guarded for so long it no longer remembers how to reveal itself confidently, without expecting to be driven back behind the wall, or perhaps even wishing it were pushed back there. An ambivalent dance.

What’s the point here? Why does the subconscious, the level of “sub-experience,” insist on pushing toward the light of consciousness? As if it wanted to reveal its story, in some way to inform the conscious, rational part of the mind with what it knows. Is there buried treasure there, or only more stone to weigh us down? How much does our “internal history” need to be consciously experienced?

Inasmuch as the true self may be trapped underneath the rubble, perhaps the seeking has value. Beyond that, who knows? But there is one answer that is inescapable and that is always correct: Christ is the answer to the question posed by every human life – His love reveals the ontological worth of each person, penetrates each life, gives each one a dignity that precedes any conscious act.

In order to realize this innate dignity, we must go beyond ourselves, we must reach out to the things and souls around us, allow ourselves to be affected by them. But this is only part of (a condition of?) the fulfillment of our unique humanity. The key to fulfillment lies beyond us – it’s a vertical transcendence, not horizontal. We are called to surrender the self that we are so that we can become – by God’s love alone – the self that He created us to be. Genuine change takes place on the condition that we choose to open ourselves to His transforming power.

We choose, but not all at once, because we cannot see the choice to be made all at once. We determine our course by small daily decisions – it is our liberty to decide, our daily actions, our exercise of decision over daily options, our integration of all we are and know and have done before as well as our willingness to transcend ourselves incrementally that determines what we are as persons. We recognize, initiate, determine, act, and are thereby transformed…

We say “free will” as if our freedom lies in the will alone, and as if every decision were black and white. But the measure of freedom in the person is more complex – it is more like the degree to which the person has integrated the many complex facets of consciousness and the many “dynamisms” within. To the degree one is able to achieve such integration within his whole being, he has realized the inherent and unique potentiality of his personhood, and he is free. Liberty is not in what we know in the intellect or decide with the will, but in our active self-determination. Every action affects the whole person and changes us, for better or for worse.

Without God, we can do nothing but lose ourselves, dis-integrate. But if we allow His love to penetrate us, surrender what we are to His mercy, correspond with the grace He continuously sends, we begin to act as integrated persons, whole and free. With His Spirit informing each action, we learn to act like Him, and our will gradually conforms to His; as our will becomes more united with His, our actions and choices continue to transform us into the persons He created us to be.

Free to love fully.

I always come back to that. We are made to know and to be known. We are made to love and to be loved.

Made BY love, made TO love, made FOR love.

But we put so many things in the way - so many barriers to our knowing and loving. And yet, there are no barriers beyond which grace cannot reach. Christ penetrates every darkened heart and mind with His unwearied invitation to light and truth. From all eternity He pursues every person with His love.

Sometimes that pursuit involves helping us untangle what is knotted within the subconscious to free what is trapped inside.