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Acknowledgment
and Regret |
Forced to Act |
Psychological Motivation |
Pushed by the Drive |
Pulled by Desire |
Understanding Hidden Needs |
Triggers for Impulses |
Desire for the Holy |
A Psychological-Spiritual Hitch: The Hidden Desire for Self-destruction
O LIVE a holy
life, we must acknowledge that certain behaviors are wrong and we
must regret doing those things.
Now, for many persons, this
combination of acknowledgment and regret is sufficient to change their behavior.
Once they know what is right, they do it, and once they know what is wrong,
they repent it,
confess it, and stop doing it. Its that
simple, because the change is motivated by their love of God.
Some individuals, however, persist
in doing things even though they know they are wrong, and, surprisingly as
it might sound, even though they dont want to do them. In these cases,
something more than acknowledgment and regret is required. Understanding
is required.
Forced to
Act
To begin to explain what this
understanding might entail, lets consider the curious statement
that you can persist in doing something even though you dont want to
do it. In some way, that sounds ridiculous, right? If you dont want
to do something, then why would you do it?
Well, consider what would happen
if you encountered a robber. The thief puts a gun to your head and says,
Give me your money or I will kill you. Even though you dont
want to give him your money, you do it anyway, for
fear of the consequences of refusing. Therefore, we
can say that someone might do something he doesnt want to do simply
because he is forced to do it.
Psychological
Motivation
Now, being forced to do
something doesnt have to be taken in just the literal sense of
coercion under threat of punishment. It can also be understood in a psychological
senseand this leads us to the psychological concept of
motivation. To comprehend this concept, lets use a practical
example.
Imagine that you are a child
with a small wagon. To movethat is, to motivatethe wagon, you
have two choices: you can get behind it and push it or you can stand in front
of it and pull it. In this example, pushing and pulling are literal, physical
actions. To get to the psychological aspects of the example, we can describe
pushing as the psychological concept of drive and pulling as the
psychological concept of desire.
Pushed by the
Drive
In psychology, then, a
drive refers to that which pushes
us into satisfying our needs. We have drives for acquiring food, for
finding shelter, for reproduction, and even for staying alive. Thats
why, when a thief puts a gun to your head you will most likely give him your
money: you have a drive that pushes you to stay alive.
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Have you ever
had a dream in which you are a passenger in a car
while someone else is driving? Thats an
unconscious
way for you to realize that, in terms of your current behavior, you are being
pushedthat is, drivenby some hidden emotional issue. The dream
may not tell you exactly what the issue is, but it does give you the clue
that, just as you can be driven like a passenger in a car, so your life is
being driven by some need outside your conscious awareness. Finding out what
that need might be is the conscious task of
interpreting
that dream. |
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Pulled by
Desire
Think of a drive as something
very primitive and fundamental in the human psyche. Infants, for example,
are governed by drives. But as we grow up and develop the ability to think
and act independently, we begin to attach symbolic meaning to our drives,
and, as a result, we begin to experience
desire. That is, we begin to
wantthat is, to desirewhat we need.
Desire can have several
forms.
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The highest level of desire is
the desire for God. This is a desire that, when properly nurtured, can overrule
any other desire. Evidence of this can be found in the Bible in regard to
the life of Saint Paul, who went from being a murderer of Christians to a
missionary for Christ. In essence, Saint Pauls desire to serve Christ
overruled his desire to puff up his pride with cruel power over others.
Similarly, Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Francis of Assisi both allowed
their desire to serve Christ to overrule their desire for military
glory.
Now, individuals such as Saint
Paul, Saint Ignatius, and Saint Francis could make such radical changes in
their desire precisely because they had the experience of pursuing other
lower forms of desire. This illustrates the psychological point that once
you have attained something, you have the ability to let it go. Many
individuals, however, will experience severe impediments in trying to do
the same things that many saints have done. Why? Well, lets
see.
To begin, instead of talking
about the highest level of desire, lets look at some of the lower levels
of desire.
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The lowest level of desire is
the desire to fulfill natural needs. Infants, for example, need
to be fed, but, as they grow, they begin to want to be fed. They need
attention, and, as they grow, they want to be given attention. They need
to sleep, and, as they grow, they want to sleep.
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A higher level of desire is the
desire to fulfill acquired needs. We can see this sort of desire in
regard to alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, and sexual pleasure. These sorts of
desires do not exist for an infant, but they can be acquired as
psychological defenses that attempt to provide
a physical satisfaction to compensate for unfulfilled natural needs from
infancy.
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Note here that
having natural or acquired desires does not provide any help to someone seeking
to develop a desire for God. Natural desires come, well, naturally, and acquired
desires are, well, acquired passively and not attained through dedicated
effort. In neither of these desires is anything attained; thus neither of
these sorts of desires fits into the paradigm of being able to let
go of something once you have attained it.
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Consider, then, a third level
of desirethe desire for accomplishment. This desire is illustrated
by wanting to get an education, wanting to plant a garden, wanting to redecorate
a room, wanting to learn a language, wanting to play a musical instrument,
and so on. This sort of desire requires an active dedication to work and
practice. Saint Ignatius and Saint Francis, for example, became soldiers
because of this sort of desire.
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Children from
dysfunctional families, however, often stifle
this sort of desire. Exposed to the chaos of their family environments, these
children quickly discover that bad thingssuch as criticism, punishment,
or humiliationwill happen to them if they allow themselves any desires
of accomplishment, and so they learn to exist at the lowest level of desire
only.
Such children
might even get educations, plant gardens, redecorate rooms, learn languages,
and play musical instruments, but they do these things more to satisfy the
desire of their parents than for the sake of their own desire.
Children from
dysfunctional families will discover, therefore, that the lack of an experience
of pursuing the desire for accomplishment will make it extremely difficult
to develop the desire for God. |
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Understanding
Hidden Needs
and Misdirected Desires
I said before that understanding
is required. Understanding of what? Well, now that we have defined the terms,
we can say that you might endeavor to understand the lower levels of
desire that motivate you to do sinful things.
Most likely, as a child, you
did not receive healthy nurturance and guidance from your parents, and so,
as an adult, you could now be starved, so to speak, for emotional experiences
such as attention, respect, admiration, soothing and so on. Your current
sinful behavior carries with it a yearning to fulfill these hidden needs,
but your current sinful behavior is not an authentic fulfillment of what
is really missing.
In more psychological language,
we can say that you have sinful impulses. In theological language,
these impulses are called temptations. Either way, these things are
desires created unconsciously in the hope of fulfilling natural or acquired
needs.
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Note that in
her writings, Saint Teresa of Avila also spoke about impulses. She used the
word impulse, however, in a very specific theological sense. For her,
an impulse was not a psychological urge to do something; rather, it was a
sudden, overwhelming, divinely inspired feeling of
love. |
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Sinful impulses, then, are
misdirected desires; that is, instead of desiring the true fulfillment
of all needs in divine love, we deceive ourselves
into desiring the partial fulfillment of needs through sinful
behavior.
Triggers for
Impulses
To understand your impulses,
then, it will be important to examine very carefully the psychological
experiences that occur beforei.e., that triggerthem.
Rather than merely act on an impulse, teach yourself to recognize
the subtle mental images, thoughts, and feelings that occur to you just
before an impulse begins its work of temptation.
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Learn to
recognize
those images as soon as they occur. Notice how they manifest in your particular
circumstances. Are they a matter of your being overwhelmed with obligations,
without proper guidance and assistance, so that you feel weary and
lonely? Are they a matter of your being obstructed and hindered by others,
so that you feel insulted and neglected? Are they a matter of your
own inner confusion and lack of confidence (which often result from some
lack in your father), so that you feel
frustrated and stuck? Or are they a matter of something else? |
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Put the feelings
into language; that is, consciously
explain
to yourself how these feelings connect to similar feelings from your childhood.
Remember the actual childhood events that precipitated the feelings and describe
them in detail. |
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Whatever the
circumstances that trigger your feelings,
remind yourself
not to take it personally. For example, even if a store clerk is rude to
you, and even though you may feel that the rudeness is directed at you
personally, struggle to remember that all rudeness
is a sin inflicted on Christ, not on you directly. Yes, the insult passes
through you, and it cuts deeply as it passes, but the fuming rage you feel
(and the violent tantrum you are in danger of throwing) is really a reaction
to the times when your parents wounded you with their failures to perceive
your childhood needs. And even then, your parents didnt neglect you
because you deserved it; they neglected you because their parents
neglected them. Thus, a lack of healing
was passed down from parent to child, generation after generation. But it
can stop with you, if you desire to be the one to stop it. |
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After you have
identified the real pain tormenting you, do not try to push it awayi.e.,
to get rid of it. Moreover, do not merely tolerate it stoically.
Rather, endeavor to
endure it
as Christ Himself endured His pain: willingly, not as a
victim. With a full understanding of how much
you dont want to do something, do it anyway, for the desire
of love. For the desire of love, we make sacrifices
for the sake of our neighbors salvation. So, rather than drive that
rude clerk into hell with your curses, endure the pain as Christ endured
His Passion, with the hope of the salvation of even those who mistreat you.
For the desire of love we work out our own salvation.
For the desire of love, all needs are fulfilled. For the desire of love,
suffering is given meaning. |
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This is hard work, and you may
need a psychologist to help you. But the point is that all the mental images,
thoughts, and feelings that occur to you just before an impulse carry profound
clues as to what your needs really are.
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Note that certain
forms of meditation, such as in Buddhism, tell you to let your mental images,
thoughts, and feelings pass before you without your taking any interest in
them. But Christian meditation is different. In Christ you are called to
notice and embrace those mental experiences so that you can understand and
redeem them. |
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Desire for the
Holy
To do this work of mental
examination, it will be necessary to nurture a state of mind that is receptive
to understanding. That is, do anything it takes to increase your desire for
the holy. Butand see if you can follow this logic nowyou
cant push yourself into increasing your desire for the holy. Do
you see? Only desire itself can increase your desire.
So what do you do?
Well, you do what it takes to
remove whatever in your life obstructs your desire for the holy. Because
ordinary distractions of the world such as TV, video games, sports, newspapers,
magazines, and so on not only block any experience of the holy but also infect
you with desires for self-indulgence, immodesty,
lust, sensuality,
irresponsibility, rudeness,
competition,
hate, and
revengepernicious desires that drive holiness
away from youendeavor to begin a lifestyle of
detachment from the sinful
world around you.
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Conceptualize
this not as an attempt to show others that you are better than the
world around you but as an understanding that God offers you something
better than what the world offers you. |
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So even if your sinful impulses
are about sex, alcohol,
or
anger,
for example, and you keep falling back into them, pare away everything
else in your life that does not nurture a holy lifestyle. Aside from
your need to work for a living, focus your attention on
prayer, confession,
Mass attendance (daily if possible), holy
reading, and mental
examination, and follow the
spiritual counsels on this website.
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Let the prayer
underlying all of this be for enlightenment, wisdom, understanding, and courage,
rather than preoccupy yourself with asking God to change somebody
else, fix something, give you something, or make something
happen. |
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Do this and the Holy Spirit will
guide you into a place where all human needs are filled to abundance, desire
for the holy is overflowing, and sinful impulses are seen for the
illusions they really are.
A
Psychological-Spiritual Hitch:
The Hidden Desire for Self-destruction
Even though you might say that
you want to love God more than anything else, there can be a powerful
impedimenta hidden desireworking against you. Whether you come
from a dysfunctional family and, as a child suffered the emotional chaos
of outright criticism, punishment, and humiliation, or whether you suffered
more ordinary childhood experiences of
not-knowing, a
lack of guidance, and feelings of aloneness, you
could have developed a hidden desire to punish, sabotage, and destroy
yourself.
Similar to parasites that can
ultimately kill the host, this self-destructive desire can lurk in the
unconscious as a constant background suicidal wish. Infected with this secret
desire, an individual, even though wanting to live a holy life, will constantly
encounter an obstruction that overrules the desire for God.
Moreover, its at this point
that victim
anger emerges, for the desire for self-destruction is really a veiled
attempt to get revenge on the victimizer(s). With every self-destructive
act, with every failure, you say to the Other, Look at what you made
me do to myself! Thus you can fall into the trap of
sending yourself to hell in order to prove
to others how much they have hurt you.
Some
Examples |
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Some
individuals lives are plagued by stuckness, self-sabotage, and a lack
of success. Now, where does this desire for self-destruction come
from?
Well, consider
a woman, newly married to a man who turns out to be irresponsible; she is
now despairingly pregnant with a child she doesnt want. Right in the
womb that developing fetus will be infected psychologically with
the belief that It would be better if you were dead.
Or maybe a woman
is too emotionally immature to attend to an infants needs. As that
infant struggles with the dark terror of its neglect, it will be
infected psychologically with the belief that It would
be better if you were dead.
Or maybe the
child is a living accident, the unanticipated result of raw sexual
pleasure stripped of any responsibility to reproduction. As that child struggles
with lonely isolation, it will be infected psychologically with
the belief that It would be better if you were dead.
However it may
originatein the womb, as an infant, throughout childhoodthe
childs unconscious desire will be to destroy itself in fulfillment
of the rejection it feels from its parents. And that desire will persist
even into adult despair, where it will wreak its own secret havoc, unless
it is recognized and healed. |
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In cases like this, two things
will be necessary for spiritual growth.
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Once you understand that you
have desires and how they function, work on nurturing desires for
accomplishment. Find good and productivenot sinfulthings
that you want to do and, with prayer, set about accomplishing them. Discover
how it feels to do something because you really want to do it, rather
than doing something because you have to do it or because someone else is
pushing you to do it. You will find that these desires for accomplishment
will be able to overrule lower desires. |
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Rather than keep the desire for
self-destruction something secret and feared, explore it
therapeutically. You may need professional help to do this, but learn
to think about it (in prayer) and talk about it openly (with a psychologist
or spiritual director), not with the intent to dwell upon it for morbid
satisfaction but to discover its
unconscious
meanings.
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What does it
mean to explore a desire? Well, consider how you explore a park. Walking
through it casually and thinking, Thats nice is not
exploring. To explore the park you will note carefully how things are
related: where the various trails lead, what vegetations grows where, and
what wildlife lives where. In essence, you will make a map of the
park in your imagination, so that you can navigate the terrain of the
park.
In a similar
way, when dealing with psychological matters, you map out the terrain of
your memories and desires by noting the various associations that arise
unconsciously when you speak about a particular problem. |
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