IIC 14: Soulset: The Core of Us

In this episode, we explore soulset, and how often the impact of heart, mind, and body on soul is neglected and even ignored.  We begin to explore the importance of integration of the human person.

[00:00:00] In C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, the experienced demon Screwtape is training his nephew, Wormwood. Wormwood is a junior demon. He’s new, he’s wet behind the ears, doesn’t really understand a lot of the ways of men. So in this exchange of letters in this book, Screwtape is teaching Wormwood the ins and outs of how to tempt men, how to drag the souls of men into hell. So when Screwtape refers to the enemy, he’s referring to God. God is Screwtape’s enemy. So I’m going to read just a brief passage of The Screwtape Letters to you. Screwtape talking to Wormwood, his nephew. “Be not deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending to do our enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe in which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken and still obeys.” Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis Carpe Diem, where you and I rise up together and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. I’m clinical psychologist, Peter Malinoski, with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 14 entitled, Soulset: The Core of Us. It’s released on May 4th, 2020, right as we are still in the middle of this crisis or even at the beginning of this crisis. Many of us have been locked down for six weeks now, and we still have not reached the peak of infections in the United States with the coronavirus. Now we’re experiencing many more secondary effects of the lockdowns and of the health crises. And so this is a better time than ever to continue to focus on resiliency, resiliency in the face of crisis. In episode 4, we reviewed the four pillars of resiliency: mindset, heartset, bodyset, and soulset. We’ve covered the first three and now we’re on to soulset. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines soul as, “the spiritual principle of human beings. The soul is the subject of human consciousness and freedom. Soul and body together form one unique human nature. Each human soul is individual and immortal, immediately created by God.” So there’s our textbook definition. Let’s simplify this. Let’s talk about soulset and what I mean by soulset. Soulset is essentially our attitude of soul. It’s how we orient our governing spiritual principle. Soulset is at the core of every man, of every woman, of every child.

[00:03:16] And it can and does operate separate from mindset, heartset, and bodyset. Our soulset reflects how we see God and also how we see ourselves in relationship to God and how we see God viewing us. So consider the man that Screwtape was describing. This is a man who has lost his desire for God in his heart, who experiences God as vanished, who thinks he is forsaken. Mindset, right? He is distressed. He feels abandoned. But what does Screwtape say? He still intends to do the will of God in spite of what his wounded heart is telling him. In spite of all that his confused mind is telling him, in spite of what his aching body is telling him, that man still intends to do the will of God. That is an admirable man. So there’s something about soulset that is above or beyond mindset, heartset, bodyset. Mindset, heartset, bodyset. They all influence or can influence soulset. But they don’t have to influence soulset. Now for most of us, mindset, heartset, bodyset, they do influence our soulset. They do influence us. They pull us, right. When these desires of our hearts or of our minds or of our bodies are disordered, when they go against what our best interests are. That’s what Saint Paul refers to as the flesh. We talked about this in episode ten in bodyset.

[00:05:08] Soulset also includes our conscience. And I thought we would review conscience here because it’s so central and so important in our lives. Vatican II, in Gaudium et Spes, that’s the council’s pastoral constitution on the church in the modern world, defines conscience as, “Man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths. By conscience, in a wonderful way, that law is made known which is fulfilled in the love of God and one’s neighbor.” That’s all from chapter 16 of Gaudium et Spes. So here we see conscience as man’s secret core, his sanctuary. That’s the place where, in this paragraph, man is alone with God. God’s voice echoes in man’s depths. And through conscience in a wonderful way, God’s law is made known and fulfilled in the love of God and neighbor. Okay, I just love the idealism in this passage, and I believe every word of this definition. Back in 1991, when I was 22 years old, it was a tremendous gift to me to reread this, because I was at that time in the midst of an existential crisis at age 22. So this paragraph was really precious to me. And its idealism and its beauty and the way that it shows the dignity of men and women and children. But. Here’s the but. I’m a clinical psychologist and I’m a trauma therapist. And as a trauma therapist, I work with people in messy, painful situations, with raw emotions, with excruciating, unresolved experiences, and I don’t have the luxury of just retreating and staying in the realm of ideas like philosophers and theologians can.

[00:07:11] I’m down here in the trenches, often with people who are desperate, who are frantic, whose lives are chaotic. And you know what? They hardly experience the voice of a loving God echoing in their depths. They are not experiencing in this wonderful way that Vatican II describes, and which is true. All right. Let’s emphasize that. It is true. What this says is true. But people are not experiencing it that way. They’re not experiencing God’s law being fulfilled in their secret core through the love of God and neighbor. It’s not feeling like it’s happening to them. And in our modern day and age, there is so much emphasis placed on our subjective experience. There’s a philosophical position called subjectivism, in which the one subjective experience becomes the measuring stick by which we evaluate the world, by which we evaluate reality, by which we evaluate truth. That’s how you can get certain celebrities saying, my truth, your truth. Doesn’t even have to be celebrities. We can say this. My truth, your truth. In their distress, my clients are not seeking out a philosopher or a theologian. Who does that? Right. Would you do that? I mean, if you were really suffering, would you go to the internet or pick up the Yellow Pages and look for theologians and philosophers in your area? Why not? Why wouldn’t you do that? We don’t do that because there’s an innate sense that we need to nourish and heal not only the mind, but the heart and the body and the soul.

[00:09:01] We need to work with the whole person. We need to work with the whole person in an integrated way. Otherwise, we have a deep sense that something is missing. And that’s why I think young people especially, are leaving the Catholic Church in droves, ladies and gentlemen. That is why, because they are not experiencing something that they feel that they need to be experiencing in order to heal. Now they can be totally wrong about that. They can be totally wrong about that, right? They may be totally missing things that God is offering them. But here’s the deal. Shouldn’t we still try to meet them where they’re at? Shouldn’t we still try to love them and accept them, that that’s where they’re at? That’s what I’m asking. Because I think we often make it so much harder for people to find the love of God, because we’re not loving people in their entirety. We’re not loving them soul, heart, mind, and body in appropriate ways. When people are suffering, all of these theological and philosophical constructs can just seem like words, blah, blah, blah. Kind of like Charlie Brown’s teacher, right? Doesn’t stick. It doesn’t resonate. Haven’t you all experienced that? You know, if you’re really hurting, you’ve just found out something that was really painful to hear and somebody starts to like, just offer you pious commentary about what you’re experiencing.

[00:10:55] How does that land with you? Right? Let’s just assume it’s all true. Let’s assume that it’s all true, that what this other person is telling you is theologically and philosophically correct. It can still land in a totally ineffectual way. It can actually be really alienating. How many sermons have you heard that might be speaking to your mind, right, but not to the rest of you? These intellectualized sermons that speak not to your heart, not to your body. They just don’t resonate. They just seem like abstractions. Then the Gospel can start to feel like it’s irrelevant or unattuned. It’s amazing how mediocre some sermons can really be. It’s not that the sermons are necessarily evil or anything like that, it’s just that they aren’t really connected in a human way. Or sometimes it happens the other way, right? A charismatic preacher with a sermon that just speaks to the heart. It pulls on the heartstrings. There’s all kinds of rhetorical devices, pauses and so forth that that grip the heart, right? But it might not nourish the mind. It might not nourish the soul. It might not nourish the body. These really emotionally moving sermons can be actually intellectually really confused. They can be unclear, or they can even be heretical in their content. How many of you have experienced that? Especially when you’re traveling and you go to some other parish that you’re not used to going to and you get something like that? Let’s also just say it like it is.

[00:12:41] Some sermons don’t seem to move the heart or the mind or the body or the soul. They don’t move any of it. Not at all. Boring. Dry. Distant. So here is what needs to happen. We need to have unflinching commitment to the truth, but we also have to have a capacity to really understand the other person if we’re going to love that person. And that starts with us understanding ourselves, which is why I’m so emphasizing these four areas, not just soulset, but also heartset, mindset, and bodyset because of how much those influence our souls, even if we don’t want them to, even if we don’t will that. This isn’t just something that’s directly under the control of our will. So what we need, again, absolute fidelity to the truth as revealed to the Catholic Church. But we also have to be paying attention to what’s going on, not just in the mind, not just in the soul, but also in the heart, also in the body. That’s why I think in years past, Archbishop Fulton Sheen was so popular. He’s very popular among the traditionalist crowd because he addresses psychology. He addresses the heart. He addresses the mind. He addresses, I don’t know how much he addresses the body. I don’t think that’s very prominent, but that would have been really unusual back in the 50s and 60s.

[00:14:11] But at least he was getting at more of the human experience, right? And by the 1950s and 1960s, you’re starting to see more of the influence of phenomenology entering into philosophical and theological circles. I think in our modern age, you are seeing Catholic influencers, people that are connecting with their audiences because they’re bringing in more than just the theological and the philosophical. They’re bringing in a human dimension, right? People like Bishop Barron, for example, you can sense in a certain way that he’s with you in more than just a theological or hyper spiritual way, that there’s some kind of capacity for human connection, with Bishop Barron. And then when you look at a whole range of other Catholic influencers, Matt Fradd, for example, he has a way of connecting with his audience that makes him much more popular than than many other people who have podcasts. Dietrich von Hildebrand, the phenomenologist, has said, you know, this is a quote from the introduction to his book, Transformation in Christ, hugely influential book for me. “God has called us to become new men in Christ. This new life is not destined merely to repose as a secret in the hidden depths of our souls. Rather, it should work out in a transformation of our entire personality.” There’s the money quote, ladies and gentlemen. This becoming new men in Christ, according to Dietrich von Hildebrand, should be reflected, it should be worked out in a transformation of our entire personality.

[00:16:03] All of us, all of our sets, mindset, heartset, bodyset in addition to soulset, that there is not this dualism, this split between the mind and the body, the split between the spirit and the material. We need to be integrated. And the embodiments of Christ, alter Christus ipse Christus, another Christ, Christ Himself, that we are supposed to become, needs to radiate throughout our entire person. I would go beyond what Dietrich von Hildebrand would say. Not just our entire, it shouldn’t just radiate and become and transform our entire personality, it should transform our entire personhood, right? Which would also include our bodies, bodyset. Right now, I don’t think that’s anything that Dietrich von Hildebrand would disagree with. He just didn’t say it in that little quote. It should have an impact that radiates through all of us in an integrated way, all facets of our psychic life. That’s what Souls and Hearts is all about. It is all about grace building on nature, the supernatural building on the natural. It’s all about integration of the entire person, mind, heart, body, soul. Integration, harmony, all of those aspects of ourselves, God-given aspects of ourselves, being oriented in love and through love to God and to neighbor. And you don’t hear this very much. You don’t hear this. It frustrates me to hear the same old tired tropes, the same old sermons over and over again, the same kinds of literature coming out, the same kinds of writing.

[00:18:12] I think there’s a kind of comfort in the familiarity. There’s a kind of comfort in the orthodoxy of what has been established. I think there’s a natural, conservative effort amongst those that are faithful in the Catholic Church, because they do not want to slip into heresy, and I totally get that. I go to the traditional Latin Mass. I want there to be no infringing on the integrity of doctrine. And we have had so much of that since the 1960s and before. But we can’t neglect moving forward in a way that helps us to understand the human person in ever more deep and real ways and ever more human ways. We cannot sacrifice a way of connecting with other human beings because we’re hoping to preserve orthodox doctrine. We need to have both. We need to have the Orthodox doctrine. We also need to be able to connect with human beings in ever more human ways. And we have the capacity to do that in ways that we never did before. Part of that is advances that have happened in philosophy, especially with phenomenology, but also in psychology. We have ways of finding the errors, the biases, the heuristics, the distortions that we bring to our thinking. We should be, as Catholics, really interested in that. Really interested in that because that is part of mindset, which has a huge impact on soulset. And so much of the way that the faith gets presented, that the faith gets taught, is as if the soul is entirely separate from the rest of us.

[00:20:00] That’s my experience of it anyway. If you have a different experience, write me. Let me know. If you’ve had a different experience, what a gift. What a gift. I think what we’ve wound up with in circles that really value truth, objective truth, that exists outside the subjective impressions of all of us, in the sector of Catholics that want that truth, we have had a sort of siege mentality. I see a kind of siege mentality in which innovation, new thoughts, new ideas are devalued because of the possibility of somehow getting away from truth. Right? That’s, I think, in response to a doctrinal crisis that has happened in the last 50 years, throughout all of my lifetime. On the other hand, people that have really embraced a lot of psychology, a lot of new understandings of human beings that have come to us from the sciences and so forth, really are not that interested in orthodox Catholic belief. So there’s this gap, this polarization here. And we should not be forced into a position where we have to choose. This should be one of those areas where there is an “and” not an “or.” And that’s what Souls and Hearts is all about. If you are really interested in human formation, psychological formation, emotional formation, emotional health, if you are really committed to the faith, to the truths of the faith that exist entirely separate from us, and that have been true for the entire history of the human race, if you are also really interested in human formation and committed to development in the natural realm, and you’re willing to work on yourself, that’s what we need for people to really benefit from Souls and Hearts. I think it’s actually a really small percentage of Catholics, to be frank with you. I think this is a niche market. When I think about Souls and Hearts, I think about us looking at a niche market. And oftentimes we have been sort of separated from each other, right? Where, you know, we might have these ideas, but everybody else seems to either just kind of go along with whatever’s going on in the cultural milieu of our parishes and so forth. And I am looking to inform psychology and human formation by the perennial truths of the faith. But I also think it cuts both ways. This is what Saint Augustine meant when he talked about despoiling the Egyptians. Saint Augustine says, “Moreover, if those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, who have said something that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use from those who have unlawful possession of it.” Saint Augustine says, “The human institutions such are as adapted to that intercourse with men, which is indispensable in this life, we must take and turn to a Christian use.”

[00:23:14] The passage is a little difficult to sort of grasp through the reading of it in a podcast. But basically Saint Augustine makes this claim that if nonbelievers have legitimate insights, if they have captured something of truth, there is no reason that Catholics shouldn’t grip onto that and appropriate it for their own use. In fact, Saint Augustine says it’s important for Catholics to claim those insights, to adopt those insights for their own use, whether they come from Egyptians or pagans or wherever they come from. And that’s what he means by despoiling the Egyptians. It’s a reference to Exodus, when the Israelites took all kinds of gold and silver and garments from the Egyptians as they were leaving. The Egyptians gave them to them as they were departing after the ten plagues into the desert. Often these insights, often these truths that non-Catholics, non-Christians have discovered, are very mingled, they’re very intertwined with a whole lot of other problematic beliefs, incorrect beliefs, untruths, if you will. But we’ve got to be able to parse that out. We can’t just abandon it, which is sometimes what happens, especially in more Orthodox Catholic circles. I’ve had a number of people say they just don’t believe in psychology. And in one hand that’s understandable, because often psychology, as it’s practiced in the modern day and age, is not grounded in anything like a Catholic worldview or a Catholic anthropology.

[00:25:07] But it’s also anti-intellectual to just throw the whole endeavor of psychology, a whole pursuit of knowledge, because one’s imagination isn’t sufficient to recognize it as valuable. Alice von Hildebrand notes how difficult it is for us fallen men to will what God wills. For as much as we believe we love God, we are tempted to love our own will even more. I really do not see myself as qualified to say much more about soulset. I pretty much limit myself to how much heartset, bodyset and mindset impact soulset. Because there you have one of those junctures, you know, where the natural meets the supernatural. And I will go into where the natural meets the supernatural. But I’m not ordained. I’m not a priest. I’m not a confessor. I can’t pretend that I understand how the Holy Spirit’s moving somebody. That kind of guidance, that kind of counsel is really reserved for confessors and spiritual directors. However, the zone that I do function in is, I think, the most underserved zone, that junction of the natural and the supernatural that exists in our church and its ministry today. Period. Full stop. So I’m not going to be continuing much more with soulset per se, as we move forward. We will be talking about how these other things impact soulset. It is really important to know, though, that there is this core, this central core that cannot be touched by all these other influences.

[00:27:05] The secret core, as Vatican II put it, in terms of discussing conscience. It can be heavily, heavily influenced and we often let it be heavily, heavily influenced. So I don’t have an exercise for you today. And I’m actually going to be doing fewer exercises in the podcast, because I’m going to be moving those into more of the community work as we develop that and get that up and running. I will be talking much more about integration, the integration of bodyset, mindset, heartset, and soulset. How we integrate these in a really appropriate way, in a way that’s ordered in a way that is harmonious within, in a way that fosters and deepens our sense of peace, not just peace at the spiritual level, but also peace at a natural level. And so I’m really looking forward to all of you coming along with me on that journey. As always, I do want to hear from you. Email me, crisis@soulsandhearts.com. The phone number for this podcast is (317) 567-9594. Leave a voicemail. Send me a text, give me a call. I really want to hear what you thought about this particular segment. If you ever hear anything that you object to and you’ve got grounds for it, you think, or that you have questions about, let me know that too.

[00:28:38] I certainly don’t want to teach any error. You know, but we are also in speculative zones, and I am willing to run some risks because I think that this integration of heartset, mindset, soulset, and bodyset is so absolutely important that the greater error would be one of omission, to not address it, to not bring it to you. So if you see some error of commission, some theological problem, let me know about it and let me know about it with some sources if you can. Right. I don’t want to just hear that you thought you heard from a priest 14 years ago that, you know, a line from a homily that contradicted what I said. I’d really like to get more substance than that. But I definitely want to hear it. I am still considering the name change. Just a little update on that for this podcast. Many of you really resonated with the idea of Resilient Catholics. Some of the same also resonated with the Carpe Diem. They did not want to lose that. They did not want to lose the carpe diem aspect of it. And so one possibility is this is evolving that I’m strongly considering is Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem, bringing the two together. In fact, that was actually suggested by two of our listeners who wrote in. So that’s not set in stone. Please let me know what you think about that because we are all in this together.

[00:30:01] I’m very excited about reducing this podcast down to once a week, in part to be able to do all the planning for the stuff that’s going to be coming along with it, including some of the much more personal ways that I’ll be able to connect with you through webinars and also through this process of tailoring some instruments and so forth to really focus on increasing your resilience, especially in this coronavirus crisis. We’re going to get back to that theme of resiliency. We’ve had to delay some theoretical groundwork. We’ve had to sort of lay out some basic terms, had to like, do some work to just kind of get some basic information across in everything from episode four on up to this episode 14. So we’ve had about 11 episodes of that. But as we go into the next episode, which is going to come out on Monday, May 11th, because these will be coming out on Mondays, we’re going to be getting much more into integration. And this is where it gets really fun. This is where the rubber really starts to meet the road. This is where we can get into a lot more examples. And this is where I’d like to bring your experience in much more as well. So some of you have written me about your experiences in working with some of this around heartset, especially bodyset. The bodyset stuff is really powerful. So let me let me know what you’re experiencing.

[00:31:22] Let me know what I can share, you know, with our listeners, because I think it’s really important you all can learn from each other. And we will be moving on with that. We’ve got some really exciting things happening. If you are a 20 or 30 something, we have just released a course on overcoming the psychological impediments to finding and living out your vocation. That’s with Dr. Mark Glafke. He spearheaded that along with Dr. Gerry Crete. We’ve also got a new course, brand new, that’s also just been released. It’s free and it’s a Catholic’s Guide to Choosing a Therapist. It takes you baby step by baby step through the entire process, finding a Catholic therapist and settling into a therapy with that person. So it’s got a lot of worksheets and exercises to help you through every little step of the way. So that’s another resource that we’re bringing to you free. Please, please pray for me. Pray for this whole endeavor of Souls and Hearts. Pray that we be guided by the Holy Spirit. Pray that we not fall into any errors of omission or commission. Pray that we bring you the things that you need, the things that our Lord really wants you to have around natural formation, creating that natural foundation for the spiritual life. And with that, we’ll invoke our patroness and our patron. Our Mother, Undoer of Knots, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, who prepared the way for our Lord, pray for us.