Forces That Nourish And Disintegrate The Soul: Exploratory Thoughts

(Part II follows immediately after this post) A human being may find himself or herself going through a period of being “troubled,” or “disturbed.” Perhaps one’s nights become occupied by disturbing dreams and thoughts. The person may not know clearly what is happening, although they do not feel right, and may become quite exhausted in the process. In direct terms, one has not sufficiently been communing with God—or to use more popular language, one has not been “praying” to the degree needed for mental and spiritual health. As a consequence of not being grounded in God, one shows signs of mental disintegration. Without active participation in the divine, one becomes (varying with time and circumstances in life): anxious, depressed, angry, worried, self-absorbed, obsessed, lustful, grief-stricken, embittered, and so on. The mind/soul not open to, and immersed in, the divine ground disintegrates under unpleasant weight of its own psychic forces. These negative powers (such as anxiety and depression) are centrifugal forces in the soul, dissipating or exhausting the psyche’s energies. The Apostle Paul writes: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”  Or, in a more literal translation from the Greek (assuming my translation to be accurate): “I am strong through the (one) empowering me.” In the context of Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, chapter 4, the one experienced as strengthening him is what he terms “Christ.” In other words, Paul experiences an inner strengthening of his psyche through the presence of Christ in him. If one thinks he or she “has faith,” but does not experience inner strengthening by the divine (however conceived), then one should suspect that his or her “faith” is mere credal belief. Real faith brings the soul into real contact with the living God. Credal beliefs at best fill the mind with images of what one believes may be true, but does not know through experience, and does not seek to know through genuine self-abandoning faith. What is at work in the Apostle Paul’s experience of Christ strengthening him? Faith as trust effecting union with Christ (the Divine) grounds psychic forces, strengthens them, recharges them. “Faith working through love” is a flow from the divinely-centered psyche outward into action, service, compassion, love, reverence, and so on. Some attitudes dissipate the psyche’s energies, and opposed attitudes concentrate the psyche’s energies. Put more correctly, based on nature: whereas some attitudes and responses to the fullness of reality ground, concentrate, refresh the inner resources of the soul or psyche, the opposite attitudes dissipate or squander these resources. Genuine faith (fides caritate formata) is the most effect means of grounding, ordering, restoring the human psychic forces to “sharing in the divine nature.” Why does trust concentrate the psyche’s energies? Faith as trust grounds the psyche in that which is, in the creative power at work in all things, causing them to be, moving them towards fulfillment; and we call this creative power “God.” Forces or powers such as depression, anxiety, ill-will, hatred are negative or destructive forces, as they dissipate, spend, squander the psyche’s resources. How so?  How does worry, for example, squander psychic energy? Worries remove the mind’s focus from what is (reality: divine, human, material) and spends the energies imagining what might be, or what seems to be. Futuristic illusions have the same effect as anxious worries: they exhaust the mind and its energies, spending them on what is not now, but on what one wishes or fears could be in the future. One could say that futuristic illusions—“dreams” of what could be—are forms of anxiety projected into an imagined future.  In any case, speculations about what could be, or what once was, remove the psyche from the all-nourishing present—the Now, the “Kingdom of God”—and fragment it into imagined realities. In exploring psychic processes, it is ever good to suspend one’s thinking, and return to the truth of direct experience. For in the realm of psychic, spiritual, or mental processes, truth is what one concretely experiences. So one can ask himself or herself:  Right now, is my mind grounding in the divine, or dissipating into speculative “realities”? Am I attuned to the truth of what is, or to opinions about what might be, or might have been?  If right now one’s soul felt troubled or worried by various thoughts (such as, “how can I afford to live?”), what should one do to overcome anxious, dissipating thoughts? Return to the truth of reality, so well symbolized as the I AM that spoke to Moses out of the burning bush. Compared to the I AM, what are these various worries and thoughts but specks of dust, as it were? Worries are mere dross before the consuming fire of I AM. In less poetic words, in the experience of the I AM—openness, trust, love, wonder, awe—anxious and disturbing thoughts are relaxed, let go, abandoned, transcended. In active trust in that which truly is (the I AM WHO AM), the mind feels refreshed, at peace, safe, nourished. Anxious thoughts dissipate and wear down the human person; trust and wonder refresh and build up into Christ. Every human being, having the same “nature” or way of being in the world, works the same way. Each of us is preserved, strengthened, refreshed through living contact with the Divine ground; and each of us is spent or wasted in futile speculations, worries, daydreams. Whatever grounds the psyche in reality is good and life-affirming; whatever dissipates the psyche is destructive and to be avoided. Hence, meditation—Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, for examples—preserve and nourish; daydreaming, worrying, playing “what if” games, and so on—spend and disintegrate the soul’s resources. Immersion in genuine beauty refreshes; trash music or pornographic images waste the soul. So one may ask: How, then, to ground myself on the divine ground? How to become refreshed by the refreshing source? “Turn and be saved,” in the language of the Israelite prophets, or “Turn to Me and live.” In the words of some mystics, “Return to the center.”  Why not now?