Augustine and Self-Integration I

As a start in understanding self-integration as the integration of mind and heart, it might be helpful to look at St. Augustine.

Of course, all this talk about "integrating" the intellect with the emotions suggests that the intellect and emotions are at odds with one another and need to be brought into harmony. There is a conflict going on. In many ways, the best description of this conflict occurs in chapter 7 of Romans, where St. Paul describes the conflict of the will: "What I do I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate" (Romans 7:15). Our passions and desires do not listen to the reason of the mind.

Augustine in his Confessions describes this same conflict as he struggles with his sexual addiction to bring his moral conversion to Christianity in line with his intellectual conversion. "Make me chaste, O Lord, but not yet!" (Book VIII, Chapter 7). That Augustine had to grapple with his sexual addiction before he could give himself to God is essential here. As Twelve Step programs acknowledge in the first few steps, the antidote to addiction is spiritual - recognition that one is helpless and only one's Higher Power can deliver one from the addiction ("Miserable one that I am! Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ Our Lord" [Romans 7:25]).

Why is this? Why must it be God? Augustine's anthropology explains and provides a foundation for his moral philosophy. Augustine considers love to be the driver of the human will. But he uses "love" broadly. As the will seeks - whether it is for food, sex, power, esteem - the will is restless, never ceasing in its seeking until it finds what it wants. Augustine notices in himself, though, that even once he got what he wanted - he still felt empty. The will might rest in satiety for a moment, but it soon starts all over again. (Those of you familiar with Augustine can probably tell where this is leading: "O Lord you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you" [Book I, Chapter 1].)

Augustine eventually understood that the only love that could satisfy the human will was love of God. He shaped his moral philosophy around this proposition. God calls humans to love God solely and to find appropriate love of that which is less than God through love properly ordered toward God. God wants us for Godself. God wants our ultimate allegiance to be to Godself. After that, of course, God wants us to have good things that we need. But those good things should never claim our love to the exclusion of God.

The integrated human person is one who has given oneself entirely to God - who has fallen in love with God and whose desires are appropriately ordered in relationship to the love of God. The lesser loves are characterized by a certain detachment toward the lesser goods of human life. We enjoy them for what they are but recognize that they are not God and cannot rule our soul because we are under God's rule.

This is where contemplative prayer comes in. We experience the profound love of God in the depth of the prayer. The regular practice forms us as God's own; we know that we are God's and we desire only to be God's. Contemplative prayer makes us God's own and instills the detachment within us toward that which is less than God.