As I prepare an Ash
Wednesday address for next week in Salisbury I am drawn once again to the
counsel of St John of the Cross (surprise surprise!). In particular the
distinction he makes between the ‘natural’ and ‘voluntary’ appetites. I include
below some of my address which I am presently editing for ‘Picturing the Soul’
that Dharmaram will publish in the summer. I still find this the best way to
approach the mortifications and process of Lent… really the ‘redirection of the
appetites’ to that which is life-giving and sustaining.
Following earlier
postings these last few weeks have seen an increase in light and warmth as
spring starts to take hold. George Mackay Brown, as I stated a few weeks ago,
saw 1st March as the beginning of Spring. So I wish you all a very
Happy Spring and a very Happy Lent. May it be a time of great renewal and
wonder as we return to the sources of life.
Best wishes
Peter
‘Chapters 3 – 13 of The Ascent of Mount Carmel present
John’s deepest account of what he terms los apetitos – ‘the appetites’.
At first sight his definition of them seems largely negative:
For the
sake of a clearer and fuller understanding of our assertions, it will be
beneficial to explain here how these appetites cause harm in two principal ways
within those in whom they dwell: They deprive them of God's Spirit; and they
weary, torment, darken, defile, and weaken them. (A 1.6.1)
The
appetites are wearisome and tiring because they agitate and disturb one just as
wind disturbs water. And they so upset the soul that they do not let it rest in
any place or thing. (A 1.6.6)
Yet to see John’s anthropology of los apetitos
as largely negative, as some commentators have done, is, I would argue, to miss
out on the subtlety of his approach to human nature. The first distinction to draw is the
difference John makes between what he terms ‘natural’ and ‘voluntary’
appetites. The former, he informs us ‘are little or no hindrance at all to the
attainment of union’ (A 1.11.2) for ‘to eradicate the natural appetites, that is,
to mortify them entirely, is impossible in this life’. Thus, as with the
anthropology of the desert fathers and mothers, to which we have seen John is
heir, there is a basic substratum to our human nature that cannot be
eradicated. These passions are there and are to be seen as part of what makes
us human. John, never talks about eradicating the appetites, but always
redirecting them, John is not, as some commentators suggest, advocating
destruction of the self, but transformation of the self. So, just as the
natural appetites will remain and cannot do harm, the voluntary appetites, the
consent to the natural appetites, will have to be redirected.
To help clarify this we could translate what John is attempting to
describe here into contemporary psychological language. Here I am helped by a
letter written in the 1960s by the British Benedictine Bede Griffiths. Writing to a friend of his, Dr Mary Allen a Jungian
analyst, Bede Griffiths makes some startling analogies between the
psychological insights of the twentieth century and the ancient Christian
ascetic traditions of the desert fathers and mothers. For Bede the life of
prayer is essentially a ‘reordering’ of the unconscious through the reflection
of God’s love: ‘The point is that though these sins (Pride, Lust etc) are
largely unconscious: our will has consented to them. This is the mystery
of original sin’. Much of the life of prayer then, becomes for Bede, a
purification of the unconscious on this radical level:
We are all by nature under the power of these
forces of the unconscious… these forces may be kept down, to some extent a kind
of balance established, and that is the normal human condition, but it is very
inadequate. (Griffiths 2005:4)
Struggling with the forces of the unconscious we have two choices – to
repress them or to give way to them in an undiscriminating fashion – ‘becoming
slaves to passion’. The first option, so
common in the West, represses these forces so much that we become slaves to
them, in which case we are controlled by the all-controlling, all-powerful,
all-knowing ego. ‘The average Christian’ says Bede, ‘simply represses the
unconscious like everyone else and lives from their will and reason’. However,
in baptism in Christ we have entered the deepest depths of the unconscious to
allow their purification:
It is Christ alone who can set us free from
the unconscious. Baptism is a descent beneath the waters, a conflict with Satan
(in which the soul is mystically identified with Christ) in which the daemonic
powers are defeated and the healing powers of the unconscious are realised to
give birth to new life. (Griffiths 2005:6)
This, for Bede, is what should happen in our Christian life – ‘The Holy
Spirit should penetrate to the depth of the unconscious to the ultimate root of
being, and transform us.’
As a practising psychotherapist I can attest
to the truth of Bede’s words in my daily dealings with clients. So many of us,
especially in the West, lock up the forces of the unconscious and are terrified
of opening up their contents (often with good reason), alternatively we see
around us total unconscious ‘acting out’ of the destructive unconscious forces
of the psyche. The Life of Christ penetrating into the darkest depths of the
unconscious can bring liberation and healing in a most unexpected and profound
way. The goal, following Bede, is to bring about a marriage of the conscious
and unconscious, the male and female, animus and anima in which each is
preserved and reintegrated in Christ.
In contemporary terms,
then, we can see John’s ‘natural appetites’ as equivalent to the Freudian or
Jungian ‘unconscious’ (which we shall return to in the following chapter),
whereas the ‘voluntary appetites’ are equivalent to conscious choices arising
out of deeper unconscious motivations.
Yet, over and above
his seemingly harsh counsel, is John’s gentle exhortation that the end to which
we strive, the redirection of the appetites, will only be achieved through ‘the
other stronger love’ that comes from God:
A love of pleasure, and attachment to it, usually fires the will toward
the enjoyment of things that give pleasure. A more intense enkindling of
another, better love (otra inflamación mayor de otro amor major), (love
of the soul's Bridegroom) is necessary for the vanquishing of the appetites and
the denial of this pleasure. By finding satisfaction and strength in this love,
it will have the courage and constancy to readily deny all other appetites. The
love of its Bridegroom is not the only requisite for conquering the strength of
the sensitive appetites; an enkindling with urgent longings of love is also
necessary. For the sensory appetites are moved and attracted toward sensory
objects with such cravings that if the spiritual part of the soul is not fired
with other, more urgent longings for spiritual things, the soul will be able
neither to overcome the yoke of nature nor to enter the night of sense; nor
will it have the courage to live in the darkness of all things by denying its
appetites for them. (A 1.14.2)
John recognises a
profound insight here that only by this otra inflamación mayor can we be
moved to tackle the steep and rough ascent of Mount Carmel which is the
redirection of the appetites. We do not fight the will or the ‘love of
pleasure’ (Freud’s ‘pleasure principle’) rather we strive to cultivate the
‘other, better love’ which will ultimately lead our appetites back to their
true home in God.
To conclude, contrary to many popular misconceptions of John’s
doctrine, he does not disparage the things of the world but rather our attitude
to them. In as much as we are ensnared and enslaved (like a bird, he says, with
its leg held by a thin wire, unable to fly) we will never be able to find the
freedom we desire. A brush of the wing, he says, is necessary to remove these
disordered appetites.
John’s counsel of non-attachment is a
counsel for redirection of the will, and by so doing, a working on the deepest
levels of unconscious desire and attachment. A reordering of self away from a
centre of gravity based on the hungry ego and its insatiable demand but towards
the eternal freedom and love that is life in peace with Christ. For John,
negation is no end in itself but rather it is a negation which arises from the
‘other stronger love’ of God. This, for John, and Ignatius, is the only process
that will ultimately lead us to the ‘place we know not’: the place of the
theological virtue of faith.’
