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One Love
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| Posted 2/2/2011 4:52 PM (GMT -6) |   | | This was a statement Tom made in this old thread. After all this time, I now think of it as the double movement function of "respiration" in fully functional human spirituality, with the Holy Spiritual Presence of Jesus as interpersonal "atmosphere." He said..
The inward moment is where we embrace “what God means to us” (as ground, Lord, giver of grace, granter of sonship, and us as “created,” as God’s canvass, as “art,” etc.). On the other hand the outward moment of creative expression is “what we get to mean to God” (as creators, artists, and determiners of loving expression). So ‘who we are’ encompasses BOTH what God means to us AND what we get to mean to God. Personhood as one's MEANING in the world is comprised BOTH of what God means to us and what we meant to God. So in a sense it's only PARTLY true that "only God can tell you WHO you are." In terms common to us all--our grounding--yes, that's true. But in terms of the concrete personal existence which is unique, it's only half the truth. The other half is that "only we can determine WHO we are" when it comes to determining what the sonship common to us all LOOKS LIKE uniquely in me. So the whole truth is: Only God and you can say who you are, since who you are is 'what God means to you' + 'what you get to mean to God'.
Here's how I see it: the human spirit " perceives and enjoys" the reception of God's self-giving unconditional "gift" of their own existence via God's love and Grace in the inward movement in the and worshipfully responds within the " secret place of the heart". This faith movement is empowered by the Holy Spirit in human constitution as it's ground. In the outward movement, the human spirit perceives and initiates opportunities for re-presenting/re-expressing that love, joy, and peace of God within, living "gift" as "task" before God, particularly with others and one's environment. And it plain correlates with the Great Commandments...
"What God means to you" <=> Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
"What you get to mean to God" <=> Love your neighbor as yourself.
Like I said before in some other thread (I think), the human spirit "asphixiates" in so far as it is separated from the "inhalation" of the Breath of God's Love (Spiritual Presence of Jesus). It can also "fail to exhale" through failure to give out to self and others the gift of pure love one has taken in from God. Within this interpersonal "respiration" of the human spirit in the "open air" of the Holy Spirit of Jesus, human personhood actualizes from it's mere potential in the human ego function, naturally presented by our human mind/brain relational unities.
Jesus, the Incarnate Word, never failed to "breathe the Spirit"...and images how human spirituality is to function.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 2/2/2011 4:04:28 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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BBBCanada
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| Posted 2/2/2011 7:35 PM (GMT -6) | | D, just wondering what you exactly mean by,
"...human personhood actualizes from it's mere potential in the human ego function, naturally presented by our human mind/brain relational unities."
Brandon
It is the purpose that makes strong the vow, but vows to every purpose must not hold.--A friend.
To love without love is slavery--Mother Teresa
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One Love
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| Posted 2/2/2011 9:21 PM (GMT -6) | | Brandon:
D, just wondering what you exactly mean by,
"...human personhood actualizes from it's mere potential in the human ego function, naturally presented by our human mind/brain relational unities."
Reposting...
Tom:
I mean, I'm fine with saying human beings naturally are the potential for becoming true persons. What parts of the process you choose to call by which labels doesn't matter.
The corrolary to this idea, IMO, is that being "merely human" is NOT the same as being a truly existent person who is "fully human" like Jesus was. One is not instantly an actual "person" or "hypostasis" just because one is a human being living, breathing, and walking around. It doesn't work that way. There is the work of faith. Without the Spirit, we are pretty much higher functioning animals (humans ARE a part of the animal kingdom!) that have capacity for rationality, emotionality, will, and "individual" self-reflection...possessing the capacity to be truly human, but never exerting that capacity. We could just as easily talk about the difference between spiritually dead humans who live in "beasthood"...and spiritually regenerated humans who are on the way to becoming "created gods" through Grace. We never lose the image living as humans who self-reflect and self-relate...but we are NOT truly personal until we are lifted into hypostasis (ecclesial hypostasis, if you wish) by our indwelling of the Holy One.
Basically, any human being is going to have an "ego" function generated by the human mind/brain relational unity. This is the psychological locus bounded by conscious, pre-conscious, and unconscious material for agency, choice, and belief in the human being. But just having a well-adapted human ego function in a social setting does not a "person" make. Ego functioning and "world composition" is made truly personal when transparently grounded in God in love. Taking Fr. Stephen's language, it's the difference between "mere" human existence and "authentic" human existence. The difference between being an "individual" and being a true "person."
The human ego function provides the POTENTIAL for becoming a true "person" whose "being is communion" with God and others. The new being in Christ provides the ACTUALIZATION of becoming a true individual-in-community...Zizioulas "ecclessial mode" of existence.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 2/2/2011 11:48:10 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 2/3/2011 1:49 AM (GMT -6) | | More old school Tom...
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I think, D, you want to explore how the two moments relate in one movement, right? How does the inward moment of ‘self-surrender’ to our ‘ground’ relate to the outward moment of ‘self-determined’ creative expression? Let’s think in terms of a double asymmetry (or would it be double symmetry? Whatever). The inward moment is the ground for which the outward moment is the consequence. The inward grounds the outward as its goal and purpose. The inward is constitutive of the outward as any ground is to its consequence. But the latter is constitutive of the former as any fulfillment is to its anticipation. The outward moment (creative expression) is the goal and fulfillment for which the inward moment (grounding) is the necessary precondition. There’s double asymmetry here in that you can’t reverse the order BUT each nevertheless participates in constituting what the other is and means. See my point? Grounding is prior, yes. But this grounding is incomplete in as much its very design and structure are anticipatory and purposeful. Like any seed that is planted, the seed must surrender itself to death to realize its purpose in fruitfulness.
This way we can affirm the best of what you’re been emphasizing and the best of what I want to emphasize. We’ve each seen a part of the truth and have wanted to make it (perhaps?) the whole truth. What will separate us, though, is your rejecting my claim that the latter ‘outward’ moment that completes the movement to fulfilled human personal being MUST be a creaturely self-determined moment of creative expression (whose specific movements are not chosen by God; rather God specifically chooses NOT to choose in this instance and in so doing creates space for the creature to determine what she will mean to God, for her to shape that her ‘unique particularity’ in the world).
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We AGREE that a human being's identity as a PERSON doesn't come from the memories she has, the actions and behavior she engages in with her context, her relationships with other human beings, nor from anything else in the created realm. Nothing in creation and tell me WHO I am. Only God can do that. So there has to be a place, a moment, an experience where God and I get this done, where I experience God in Christ through the Spirit telling me that I'm a priceless beloved son, that the very sustaining core of my existence, where the potential for fulfilling my 'logos' resides, is an indestructible grace-gift from God that doesn't derive from anything in the created order.
...
I want to agree that the fulfillment of God's intentions for us (the actualizing and fulfilling of our 'logoi') begins in the dependency relation to God in Christ via the Spirit, but for me it ends in the moment of creative expression in the world. So these two moments constitute an indivisible movement in which our 'logoi' embrace BOTH the inward and the outward, the derivation or grounding of identity in Christ AND the determination of creative expression outward toward the world. We're only FINALLY 'persons' when BOTH occur. .. For me, my 'logos', the 'person' God intends me to be, is a WHOLE MOVEMENT OF DERIVED AND CREATIVELY EXPRESSED IDENTITY. So until you've contemplated some creative expression (which can only be actualized through our natural capacities), you haven't contemplated your 'logos' IN ITS FULLNESS. Digging deep and going beyond all the dimensions of the created order can mediate an intimacy with the source and ground of my being, yes. And I have to connect to that or else I can't move on to everything else my 'logos' offers. But that grounding moment is just the first necessary moment in a movement of fulfillment that ends in the creature's ultimately being Godlike--viz., the moment of self-determined creative expression.
...
My point is that fulfilled human being is all it can be in a personal sense only when BOTH moments comprise a single movement of derivation and creative expression, of deriving our identities in Christ and determining creative self-expression.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 2/3/2011 6:59 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 2/3/2011 12:51 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
Tom who?
One of these, I think...
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 2/3/2011 11:55:14 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 2/4/2011 4:30 PM (GMT -6) | | It's on the calendar, bud. 
Like this quote...
As long as we are closed within ourselves –within our ego– we are individuals but not persons. Once we exit from our closed individual existence and begin, in agreement with this guidance based on Theosis, with the Grace of God, but also with our own cooperation – to love, to offer ourselves all the more to Him and to our neighbour, we become true persons. This is to say that when our ego encounters the Thou of God, and the “you” of our brother, then we begin to find our lost self. For, within the communion in Theosis for which we were moulded, we are able to open up, to communicate, to really enjoy one another... and not only in a selfish way.
This is the ethos of the Divine Liturgy, in which we learn to overcome the narrow, atomistic interest to which the devil, our sins, and our passions compel us, and instead learn to open up to a communion of sacrifice and love in Christ.
Archimandrite George
Theosis: The True Purpose of Life
70-71
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 2/4/2011 3:34:01 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 2/5/2011 9:35 AM (GMT -6) | | A.G.:
This is to say that when our ego encounters the Thou of God, and the “you” of our brother, then we begin to find our lost self.
That's just like in "The Transforming Moment" where Loder talked about the untransformed and transformed human ego. As I understand it, the problem with the untransformed ego is that it is, for all intents and purposes, locked into a self-preoccupied mode such that it cannot really be a "thou" to any other person. To be a "thou" to another "I" would effectively de-center the ego...and in the untransformed ego, there is too much sense of existential absence, pain, and defensiveness for fear of "losing oneself." Because the untransformed ego has itself as it own ground (being locked into biological hypostasis), it cannot let go of the seat of power that it believes it has in it's own existence. To be sure, the untransformed ego can compose it's "worlds" such that other "thous" exists in them...but it cannot truly let another person become the "I" in it's world. Of course, this eliminates all real opportunity for genuine empathy, intimacy and self-giving love. The untransformed ego then reacts mistrustingly defensive to or exploitative of personal existence "outside" itself.
The way to transforming the ego, per Loder, is when the human ego is grounded in something outside of itself, namely Divine Presence. When the human ego acknowledges God as God, it is forced into the "thou" position...because, ultimately speaking, we are all created "thous" to the Tri-Hypostatic God's Uncreated "I". God's unconditional love transforms and frees the human ego from existential pain of "Void" (death, loneliness, etc) and allows the ego to see others as gift/blessing rather than as an implicit threat to one's own existence. The transformed ego works self-referentially still, but in an INTEGRATIVE/PERSON-CENTERED mode rather than a DEFENSIVE/GRATIFICATION-CENTERED mode. It can now be a "person" who re-presents God's love in all of it's various world compositions.
"As indicated in the previous chapter, ego transformation should be understood not as destruction to the ego, but as decisive recentering fo the personality around a transcendental reality that points to the invisible God. The net effect actually enhances ego functioning, because the ego has less need to control or limit perceptions or understandings of self, world, or others. The ego-as-center constricts its vision lest the underlying existential negation (ala Void) come into view and the centripetal force of nostalgia for the true center (ala the Holy) draw it back into nothingness. However, once the ego's anguish at absence and abandonment is dissipated, and its defensive energies can be poured into its competencies. As described earlier in reference to "mundane ecstasy," decentering the ego liberates and empowers its functioning even though and precisely because it is no longer the presumed center of the personality."
James Loder
"The Transforming Moment"
Page 167
This is why the "I, not I, but Christ" process, when genuinely lived out, frees the person from prioritizing self-preoccupation and securing oneself in culture or society.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 2/5/2011 9:05:52 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 2/5/2011 9:59 AM (GMT -6) | |
I try to think of things like this. It's helpful for me. If I think of my life is a movie or TV show, who's the main star of it? Who does the movie/show center it's focus on? For me before, life was "The Dwayne Show" starring Dwayne, co-starring the rest of the world and God. But when God broke in on me in 1997 and worked on me over time, I began seeing that the movie/show of my life (and that of every other creaturely sentient) was actually a subplot in GOD'S overarching Story where CHRIST is the creator, director, and main star of it all. This de-centers my ego, at least in concept. So, "I, not I, but Christ" is like saying "Christ is the 'main star' of the 'subplot' that is my life."
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 2/5/2011 9:09:37 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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| Posted 2/5/2011 10:16 AM (GMT -6) | | A.G.:
Once we exit from our closed individual existence and begin, in agreement with this guidance based on Theosis, with the Grace of God, but also with our own cooperation – to love, to offer ourselves all the more to Him and to our neighbour, we become true persons. This is to say that when our ego encounters the Thou of God, and the “you” of our brother, then we begin to find our lost self.
"If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?"
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. | | Back to Top | | |
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