Finally we get to the practical use of the Religious :Spiritual Direction. If you have not read the previous posts I suggest you go back to the first by clicking here.
Let us now examine the relationships between the various modes we discovered in the combination of transactions
I view some of these categories as positive and negative polarities. Grace seems much better than fate. Salvation seems better than despair. Yet, as I look at Lowen’s categories, that each seemed positive, and they seem to go together in pairs work/play – challenge/creativity. Thus true to my type (ENFJ) capacity of Suspector, I suspect positive and negative possibilities in each box of the chart. Let’s start at the bottom and work up.
Creativity has a dark side. Many of our contemporary and ethical dilemmas are tied to creativity. Just because science and technology have created certain possibilities, doesn’t mean it is in our best interest to follow through with them. Think for example of the area of genetic engineering. Just because we can transplant a baboon heart into a person, doesn’t necessarily mean that we should.
How do we decide? From a spiritual point of view the other four categories help provide an answer. From what kind of religious mode are we operating? Will this creative idea serve worship or bondage? Will it create despair? Will it lead to salvation? Do we let fate decide? Do we think since we can do this we should? On the other hand, do we need some law to help us make a judgment? How do we justify following through with our decision? By what right do we do it? Do I say “I am a descendent of a long line of scientist,” or do I seek permission from a higher authority?
Lowen gives us a clue to the positive side of seemingly negative categories. When he deduces that creativity itself is a combination of Lock and key. Lock identifies the problem. Key provides a solution. How then might we see a positive side in bondage? St Paul gives us a clue when he tells us to become slaves to righteousness.
“What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 6 :15- 23 NIV
Can there likewise be a positive side to despair? Yes, it is the incentive to seek salvation. Turn again to the problem of addiction. It is despair that finally breaks the unconscious bondage of denial. When someone hits bottom (whatever that is for each person, loss of job, family, etc.) he/she will finally admit there is a problem. Then he/she can, for the first time, really have the possibility of salvation.
Fatw seems to be an anti-Christian concept. Yet, arises in the form of predestination. Again we can look to St Paul.
“ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ.”
Ephesians 1:3-10
In isolation, fatalism is a crippling attitude. Yet, it is also a powerful image of the love of God for us, and can lead us to appreciate Grace.
The same passage from Saint Paul includes the idea of inheritance. Like creativity, it has a positive feel to it. Is there then, a negative side? The sons and daughters of persons who have achieved success, often run into problems. The parents want them to have all the privileges that they themselves didn’t have as children. Consequently, the second generation often doesn’t know the value of a dollar, the necessity of work, or learn the responsibility of power. An inheritance can be a curse, as well as a blessing.
As Lowen has shown, there is a dynamic entropy relationship between work and play. I suggest this holds true across the chart. Worship/ministry: salvation/atonement: grace/law: authority permission: all go together, hand-in-hand.
The same holds true in the lower half of the chart: challenge/creativity (necessity is the mother of invention): superstition/bondage: bargaining/despair: occult/fate: regulation/inheritance. Thus, we can also look to some positive connections between the positive aspects of the last two rows. Let’s identify the positive and negative sides of challenge, superstition, bargaining, occult, and regulation.
Challenge seems positive. As I look at my thesaurus, I see trial listed as a synonym of challenge. The modern translation of the Lord’s prayer says “save us in the time of trial” now that feels negative. One of the ways in which we are saved is to have an attitude shift that sees trials as challenges. It’s the kind of thinking that says this isn’t a problem. It’s an opportunity.
A positive side of superstition is a ritual. A ritual is any method of doing something in which the details are always, faithfully repeated. A ritual can be a great day to worship. It helps us transcend this physical world, and enter into the spiritual realm for more intimate communion with God. The pitfall of ritual is letting the means become an end in itself, and thus slipping back into a superstition. The point of saying the rosary is not to add up 100 Hail Marys. No, the point is to use the process to reach an open state of prayerfulness, if it takes 10 or 1000 repetitions.
The Bible presents a few cases of positive bargaining. Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, each contend with God. I love Abraham’s discussion with the Lord, in which he bargains for the lives of a few just men in Sodom and Gomorrah. The story of Jacob wrestling (contending) with God tells how he and the whole people got the name, Israel “those who contend with God” Moses has several discussions with the Lord which seems like bargaining as well. We might also add the example of Jesus pleading with the father in the garden of Gethsemane. Thus there are biblical examples of bargaining with God.
I divide ocult, into magic and mystery. Magic is the negative side, mystery the positive. Magic strives to control the spiritual powers of creation. Mystery stands in awe, and receives the mysteries of faith as offered.
Regulation can also be seen to have two sides. Various regulations give order to society. They protect and give order. But, as with some of our other categories, they can become ends in themselves. Then, instead of being justifications, for life-giving possibilities, they squelch and kill the situation in which they apply. Developing and enforcing regulations is one of the most positive and useful tasks of government. The miss application of regulations, has created some of society’s greatest nightmares.
Here again, is the chart of the categories with the positive and negative sides included in each box. We can see more clearly, the relationship between the bottom and the top rows.
Take, for example, bondage and superstition, with her positive sides, ritual, and slave, for Christ. Sometimes the only way to rescue someone from the superstitious bondage of demon possession is through it, right of exorcism, which delivers a person to become a slave of Christ, instead of a slave to Satan.
Continuing to move up the chart, we come to the role beginning with Lawrence transactional role of play. I have called negative play, recklessness. When we move from being childlike to being childish, then play loses its positive qualities. The negative side of ministry is duty. When child like playfulness leaves are activity of ministry, the fruit of the spirit departs. There is no joy. Only duty remains.
Atonement in a negative sense is described by the idea of enmeshment. It is a term from the recovery community used to describe an aspect of codependent behavior. Enmeshment happens when a person is not aware of his or her boundaries. In enmeshment, I don’t know where I end and you, Begin. When this happens in our relationship with God, we get religious addiction. For example, think of a person who turns to God in prayer for every little decision in life. When this exaggerated in measurement with God happens one’s freedom to act in the image of God is create a personality is stifled or lost one such woman was an unofficially nicknamed crazy Alice. I was could hardly breathe without having an audible conversation with God to ask permission. The voice she heard, let her life down a destructive path, from a useful member of society to a dysfunctional homeless Street person.
The negative side of law is like it’s cousin, regulation. When the letter takes over the spirit of law, it becomes an end and itself.
This brings us to the top row. I was playing without responsibility is negative, so his work without someplace on this. The others this example is a workaholic.
The negative side of worship is a dollar tree. This is worship misplaced. We somehow worship a part of the creation instead of the creator.
The negative side of salvation is hard for me to discern it is perhaps seeking rescue from the wrong God. This may tie into religious addiction. I have chosen the word damnation as a designation for this category.
The negative side of grace is what has been called cheap Grace GOD’s Richards Christ expense is taken for granted. St Paul describes cheap Grace when he says “shall we go on settings so that grace may increase? By no means, Romans, 61.
Lastly, the negative side of authority is unrestrained power, recalled well-known proverb power, corrupts, an absolute power corrupts absolutely
These various modes (transactional, religious, security, judgment, and justification close parentheses, can help us focus on areas of spiritual development, and the process of conversion for each type. The specific categories can highlight for each type of the issues to address, and the Temptations to overcome and each category. We can visualize each type in the following chart..
See future post with the chart for each of the 16 personality types..