IIC 72: What Keeps You from Loving? Is it Really Only Your Vices? (Spoiler Alert: No!)

Dr. Peter goes right to the core of the Catholic life, our mission to love God and love neighbor and how those depend on us loving ourselves in an ordered way.  He discusses seven levels with six dimensions of understanding others, ranging along a continuum of developmental maturity and closes with an experiential exercise to help you discover why you lack interior peace.

[00:00:12] What is the whole point of your life? What is your mission and purpose? What is the most important thing for you to do? I really want you to think about this for a minute. What is your ultimate goal on this planet as a Catholic man or woman? All of us serious Catholics want to love God and love our neighbor. “And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, ‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ And Jesus said to him, ‘What is written in the law? How do you read?’ And he answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You have answered right. Do this, and you will live.'” Curtis Mitch and Ted Sri in the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture for the Gospel of Matthew say that, “Together, the two love commandments sum up the Ten Commandments, three of which delineate our responsibilities toward God, and seven of which concern our duties toward others.” Okay. Our whole mission, our whole being, is to center around love, being loved and loving, taking in the love of God and reflecting that love back to God and to our neighbor. That’s what it’s all about. It’s all about love, loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves. Right. Simple, right? But maybe it’s not that simple. I really like these passages from My Catholic Life, discussing Matthew 22, verses 36 to 40.

[00:02:38] That’s where Jesus was asked, “What’s the greatest commandment in the law?” “And Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.'” My Catholic Life, here’s what they say about this passage. “With this statement, Jesus gives a complete summary of the moral law found in the Ten Commandments. The first three commandments reveal that we must love God above all and with all our might. The last seven commandments reveal that we must love our neighbor. The moral law of God is as simple as fulfilling these two more general commandments. But is it all that simple? Well, the answer is both yes and no. It’s simple in the sense that God’s will is not typically complex and difficult to comprehend. Love is spelled out clearly in the Gospels, and we are called to embrace a radical life of true love and charity. However, it can be considered difficult in that we are not only called to love, we are called to love with all our being. We must give of ourselves completely and without reserve. This is radical. It requires we hold nothing back.” That’s the kicker. That’s the money quote right there.

[00:04:00] To love God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your mind, with every bit of us. Pablo Giddens, who in his commentary on Luke in the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, says, “The idea is that the commandment to love God embraces every aspect of one’s being.” Every fiber of our being, every last bit of ourselves is what I’m going to say. If we really think about this commandment, if we really think about the implications, to love God in everything within us, in every internal experience, every thought, every emotion, every body sensation, every intention, every impulse, every attitude, every belief, every assumption, every desire, every internal phenomenological experience being oriented toward loving God. That requires a lot of harmony inside. That requires interior integration for Catholics. And Interior Integration for Catholics just happens to be the name of this podcast. This whole podcast is all about helping you to get so much closer to loving God, your neighbor, and yourself with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole strength, and your whole mind, with all of you, every bit of you. And that, my dear listeners, is the whole mission of our online outreach, Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Welcome to Interior Integration for Catholics. I am clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski. I am here to help guide you toward loving God, your neighbor, and yourself in a healthy, ordered, and holy way. And how do I do that? What’s my particular take on this? I focus on the natural level impediments, the psychological obstacles to tolerating receiving love, that is tolerating being loved by God, our neighbor, and ourselves, and also by removing the natural level impediments, the obstacles, to loving God, our neighbor, and ourselves in the best ways possible.

[00:06:17] That is the mission of this podcast. It is all about your human formation. It’s all about what you need on the natural level to embrace a life of authentic love. And that is possible. That is possible. John the Baptist, he is our patron saint in this podcast because he prepared the way for the Lord. And I’m here to help you get ready, to help you prepare for the spiritual life by shoring up your natural foundation for the spiritual life. This is episode 72 and it’s entitled What Keeps You from Loving? Is It Really Only Your Vices? (Spoiler Alert! No.) The two great commandments, both simple and complex, like chess. I think chess is a great analogy here, because on one level, chess is a simple game. The rules are really clear. You can learn them in five minutes. And even the trickiest part of the rules, you know, that castling thing where the rook and the king do that switcheroo thing, or maybe even like that en passant, you know, that pawn capture thing? Well, you can learn all of that in five minutes. But on another level, chess is complex. People spend their professional lives learning to play.

[00:07:48] Grandmasters are learning about chess and the nuances into old age. So this loving your neighbor as yourself, this loving God. This is both simple and complex. Now, one of the things I want to do is get into this language a little bit. Love your neighbor as yourself. We are supposed to love ourselves. We are supposed to love ourselves. Love your neighbor as yourself. And, you know, it’s interesting because this command is not to love your neighbor more than yourself. No, Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself. Love your neighbor in the same way as you love yourself. And why didn’t he? Why didn’t Jesus tell us to love our neighbor more than ourselves? It’s not because he’s lax or because he sets the bar too low. No. In Matthew 5:48, Jesus said, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” No, this isn’t about a low bar. I think it’s because, and this is some Malinoski speculative theology here, so I could be off on this, so be careful, but I think he said it that way because it’s impossible to love our neighbor more than ourselves. I think the degree to which we love ourselves is the upper limit in the way that we can love other people. Now, again, I could be wrong. If you’ve got some information that contradicts that, you know, if you can find it in the Catechism or in some of the official teachings of the Church, let me know.

[00:09:29] crisis@soulsandhearts.com, (317) 567-9594. I would love to hear it. I will post a retraction if I’m off on that. But I actually think that’s the reason. I think that’s the reason Jesus didn’t tell us to love our neighbor more than ourselves. So this whole idea, if that’s true, if the upper bound of our capacity to love our neighbor is the degree to which we love ourself in an ordered, healthy, holy way, then we better pay attention to that. That’s something really, really important. And I don’t hear it discussed very much. You know, there’s all sorts of ways in which we can be self-indulgent. There’s all sorts of ways in which there can be disordered self-absorption. There can be this gratification of self that becomes disordered and so forth. So what are we talking about when we are talking about loving ourselves? What does that mean? Well, first of all, it means that we have to have a relationship with ourselves. And in order to have a relationship with ourselves, we have got to have some kind of parts, some kind of like distinctions within us. We can’t be just a monolithic, homogeneous personality because there’s no space for relationship in that. If you are a single, monolithic, homogeneous personality, the whole idea of loving yourself doesn’t make any sense because there’s no capacity for relationship there. So there’s got to be some way that we have parts or divisions or distinctions within us in some way.

[00:11:12] Kind of like God is a trinity in a unity, because there are three Persons in one God, a trinity and a unity. There’s the possibility for God to love himself in a way that you wouldn’t see in a monotheistic religion that doesn’t have the persons, the three Persons in one God, or at least multiple Persons in one God. So I’m going to make the argument also that no one can love you in your stead. Nobody can make up the love for you that only you can give, not anybody else. We’ve probably all known people who are very lovable, but who hated themselves, who didn’t love themselves in spite of the love from other people, in spite of God’s love for that person. They didn’t love themselves. And that often has tragic consequences. So not even God can love you in place of you. No one else can make up for the love that you need to show to yourself. No one can love you in lieu of you. That’s the first point I want to make. The second thing is, in order to love ourselves, in order to love others and in order to love God, we’ve got to have some interior peace. Great book, Father Jacques Philippe, Searching For and Maintaining Peace. I’m going to give you a few quotes just to illustrate what I’m talking about here. Page 5.

[00:12:50] “It is of the greatest importance that we strive to acquire an interior peace, the peace of our hearts.” Now, I think it’s really significant that he says the peace of our hearts, not just the peace of our souls. It’s not just a spiritual peace. It’s the peace of our hearts. Father Philippe says, “The more our soul is peaceful and tranquil, the more God is reflected in it, the more his image expresses itself in us, and the more his grace acts through us.” It is so helpful when we are peaceful, when we are calm inside, for God’s action to work. Father Philippe quotes Saint Seraphim of Sarov who said, “Acquire interior peace and a multitude will find its salvation through you.” Oh, think about that. “Acquire interior peace and a multitude will find its salvation through you.” And then he also says, “Very frequently, spiritual combat consists precisely in this: defending one’s peace of heart against the enemy who attempts to steal it from us.” This is the whole point of that book, Searching For and Maintaining Peace. We have to maintain peace of heart. I think the reason why so many Catholics are interested in mindfulness, psychologist Greg Bottaro’s work, for example, he’s done a lot in the area of mindfulness. I think the reason they’re interested in that is that they’re looking for peace. And what are the consequences if we lack peace? Well, I’ll tell you the main one I see on a psychological level. I’m not talking so much about the moral consequences.

[00:14:37] I’m talking about the psychological consequences here because that’s my bailiwick. That’s my wheelhouse. Psychological consequences of a lack of interior peace are self-absorption and interior focus. Why? Because what’s going on inside when we don’t have peace indicates that something’s not safe. Something’s not secure. Something is threatening. That’s going to grab our attention. When we don’t have interior peace, it is very difficult to love others in any kind of consistent way. I liken this to the starving waiter syndrome. And what do I mean by the starving waiter syndrome? I want you to imagine a waiter who is starving, who is really, really hungry. Well, how well is he going to be able to cheerfully and joyfully and in a grace-filled way serve food to the customers of the restaurant? It’s so hard to do that. No, he’s going to be focused on his own internal need. However, a waiter who is well-nourished is much freer to be able to serve others. Another analogy, the analogy of the burning castle. Imagine the self as a castle and imagine there’s chaos and internal fighting and fires breaking out. Well, the owner of the castle is going to be focused on the castle. He’s not very free to go off and do diplomatic visits to other castles. He’s not free to enter into the phenomenological world of the other communities, the castles of other people’s lives. No, that self-absorption takes over when we are agitated inside, when we don’t have that peace.

[00:16:28] So I’m going to just recommend that book, Father Jacques Philippe, Searching For and Maintaining Peace. It’s excellent, addresses these things at a spiritual level. I’m going to be focusing on the natural level. I’m going to be going into the different domain. You can keep going the way you’re going with your spiritual life. If it’s working out for you, great. What about adding the dimension of interior integration at a natural level? Wouldn’t that be fascinating? Could we harness what we know from natural disciplines, what we know on a natural level, harmonized and grounded in a Catholic anthropology, a Catholic worldview? Wouldn’t that be great if we could do that? And I say we can. All right, so let’s talk about dimensions of understanding others and ourselves. We brought this up in the last episode, episode 71, when we were talking about understanding ourselves and understanding others. I’m going to take this into a new frame because it’s so important to being able to love others. There are three elements in loving another person or in loving ourselves, right? The first is benevolence. In Latin, bonae voluntatis means good will. Benevolence is goodwill. We have to will the good if we’re going to love another person. If we’re going to love them perfectly, we want to will their highest good. That’s the first element. Second element is the capacity. We need to have the capacity to love.

[00:18:14] And that means understanding the other person. We want to operate in the mode of the receiver. So we want to be attuned to what that other person’s needs are and also the ways to meet those needs. And that knowledge is dependent on us understanding ourselves well. I don’t think we can know other people very well if we don’t understand ourselves very well because of the possibility and actually the likelihood of misattributing something that’s going on within me to the other person in the relationship. Also, if we are really operating with so much going on in the unconscious, so many dynamics are going to get misinterpreted, and that happens all the time. We also, under capacity, need the ability to choose the good. Freedom is the capacity to choose the good. And when we are well-governed, when our passions are ordered, when we’re well-regulated and organized on a natural level, when we’re calm, when we have that interior peace on a natural level, not just a spiritual peace, but internal peace on a natural level. When we have that, it increases our capacity to love other people. A third aspect of capacity is to possess the virtues. When we possess virtues, not just when we exercise them, because that’s really a matter of benevolence, right? Exercising a virtue in the moment has more to do with exercising our will. I’m talking about capacity, the second element of love. When we possess a virtue, it comes naturally.

[00:19:53] It comes spontaneously. And that can happen in the realm of natural virtues as well. So the third element of love is constancy. And it really again helps to have that peace and interior integration, to be able to stay with another person in a consistent, constant way. So let’s go a little deeper into the capacity to love another person in terms of understanding the other person and in terms of understanding ourselves. We’re going to talk about six dimensions of this. We’re going to bring in geometry and physics, right? So this is one of the ways that I have traditionally looked at how mature is a person’s development. Where are they in terms of these six dimensions? Now when you’re talking about geometry, you can actually have a point, a single point in space that has no dimensions. It has no length, width, or height. It’s got no dimensions at all. It’s just a single point in space, no dimensionality. And that kind of is reflected when somebody says, for example, “You are nothing to me.” Right? So somebody cuts you off on the freeway. That person is nothing to you. The only identity that person has is as a point somewhere around you. That person is now totally in orbit around you. The person doesn’t have a separate identity. The person is not even really human to you if you’re operating in a zero dimensional space. If you’re seeing that person in zero dimensions, the person is just in orbit around you.

[00:21:43] Now, if you have one dimension, you can have a line, right? In geometry, if you have one dimension, you can have a line. And so the person who cuts you off, if you’re operating at this level of dimensionality with respect to another person, the person has only one quality, right? So the person who cuts you off is a loser. Loser! Right. Only one quality. Your experience of the other person is still very personalized. The person’s a loser because they cut you off on the freeway. Their whole identity in your mind is bound up in that one act of cutting you off. They have no past. They have no future. They have no history. They have no complexity to them. They’re just a loser. And the reason they’re a loser is because they’re still in orbit around you. It’s because you are reacting to the fact that they cut you off in the freeway. All right. So that’s operating at one dimension. Now, when people move into two dimensions in geometry, well, we’d have a plane, right? So now the person has a little more dimensionality. You might think of the person who cuts you off as a loser. But maybe you think, “Okay, maybe they had a bad day.” Right? So there’s a little less personalization, the idea that the guy who cuts you off might be having a bad day, that’s not entirely in orbit around you. And so the person has a shape, but they’re kind of like a cardboard cutout.

[00:23:17] No depth, no dimensionality, a person not well understood, but at least there’s more than one dimension, more than just the loser dimension. When we get into three dimensions now, it gets much more interesting, right? So now in three dimensions you can have three dimensional objects. They have length, width, and height. So in the third dimension, we take into account the personality style of the person, their needs, their emotions, their body sensations, their beliefs, their thoughts, their desires, their intentions, their impulses, their interpersonal style, their worldview in the moment. Right. So we are looking at that person on the freeway in the moment, but we’re recognizing that they’re not just a loser, and they’re not just a loser that’s maybe having a bad day, but there’s all these other things going on with this person in this moment. They’ve got all kinds of things happening. Maybe they’re on the way to the hospital, right? Because there’s some medical problem, or maybe some loved one of theirs is in danger of dying. And they’re trying to get to that person in time to be able to connect with them. Maybe they just had a really terrible experience with their boss and they’re fleeing from that whole environment in order to try to protect themselves. It could be any number of things that are going on in the moment. Well, what happens when we get to four dimensions, Dr. Peter? Well, I’m glad you asked.

[00:24:44] Right. What is the fourth dimension? Now when we get into four dimensions, we now move from geometry to physics. Because the fourth dimension in physics assesses an object’s position in time. That’s the critical thing, in time, right? So objects can move over time. And the fourth dimension assesses that position in time. And so now, when we’re thinking about somebody in four dimensions, we realize there’s a dynamism to the person, that things shift within the person. We’re no longer dealing with a static person in three dimensions in a particular moment in time. We’re starting to think about this person in terms of a lifespan, in terms of all kinds of things that may have been going on, not only for our experience of the person in the present, but in that person’s past, in the present, and also in the future. Well, let’s move on to the fifth dimension. What is the fifth dimension? Well, I’m not talking about the Champagne Soul band from the late 60s and early 70s. Some of you, maybe, you know, old enough to remember Marilyn McCoo. You know, they had the big album Age of Aquarius in 1969 or 1971. We’re not getting into that. That’s kind of new agey stuff. We don’t do that here on this program. No, in the fifth dimension, this is a dimension, according to physicists, that’s unseen by humans, where the forces of gravity and electromagnetism unite to create a simple but graceful theory of fundamental forces.

[00:26:32] Okay, so it’s essentially where electromagnetism and gravity unify. Okay. I don’t understand a lot about the fifth dimension, but this in my analogy is pretty cool because so many people don’t understand themselves or each other in terms of a self and parts, in terms of a unity and a multiplicity. All right. So now we can start to think about this guy who cut us off on the freeway, not just in terms of full personality at a particular moment in time, or not just a full homogenous personality across moments in time with some dynamism. No. Now we’re starting to see him with something of the complexity that’s actually there in the human person, with a self that may be blended with one or more parts. So, for example, a part of him may be in a real hurry because it’s really struggling with fear that his wife will be angry at him if he’s late again, will accuse him of lying to her about when he would get home, and that might increase the possibility of divorce. Now, there may be another part of him that’s busy fiddling with the radio. It’s a firefighter part that’s fiddling with the radio to distract him from the fear that he’s experiencing, because this firefighter part is concerned that he’s going to get overwhelmed by fear. And in that distraction with the radio and in that self-absorption, he’s not driving carefully. And that’s why he cut you off, right? This becomes much less personalized, right? This isn’t really about me at all.

[00:28:15] This is this guy wrapped up in his own world, very much self-absorbed because of the lack of interior integration, because of the lack of peace of heart that he has. And he didn’t even realize what he was doing when he cut me off. Let’s talk about the sixth dimension. It’s hard to find a good discussion of how physicists look at the sixth dimension. Some physicists will use string theory and up to ten dimensions to describe the realities in the universe. The sixth dimension, in terms of my analogy, we’re really no longer in just the natural world. The sixth dimension involves seeing the other person as a child of God through the eyes of faith, as God sees him. Now this is not available to people just by the natural light of human reason. The other ones, there’s a lot that you can do with natural reason. This one, when we’re in the sixth dimension, when we are trying to see the other person as a child of God through the eyes of faith as God sees him, this requires supernatural grace. And now our chess game has gone from just two-dimensional chess to three-dimensional chess. This is much more complex, but it also allows us to love others more wholly, to love others from the perspective of appreciating how they are not only a unity, but also a multiplicity of parts.

[00:29:59] This helps us to understand why people do what they do, why they can act in radically different ways and in different moments, helping us with that fourth dimension, helping us to understand why there are so many contradictory impulses within them in the fifth dimension. Understanding parts, understanding the unity and multiplicity of people, can really help us make sense, can help us map out what’s going on inside us and what’s going on inside other people. All right, so let’s review briefly the IFS model of a person. This is really a strength of Internal Family Systems theory. Within Internal Family Systems thinking, a person is the self plus the parts plus the body. And the self is the core of the person. It’s the center of the person. This is who we sense ourselves to be when we are in our finest moments. This is when our self is free, when it’s unblended with any of our parts. It’s governing our whole being as an active, compassionate leader. This is when we’re recollected. This is when we’re like the conductor leading the musicians in an orchestra that’s playing well. This is like the captain of a well-ordered ship. When we are in this place of self, when we are recollected in self, we have these eight C’s: calm, curiosity, compassion, confidence, courage, clarity, connectedness, creativity. And we also have a sense of kindness. This is where we are when we are unblended from our parts.

[00:31:52] When our self is governing, our parts are still active. They’re contributing just like the musicians in the orchestra, just like the sailors on the ship, but under the governance of self. All right. What about our parts? Well, these are separate entities within us, like little personalities, each with its own personality style, each with its own needs, the attachment needs or integrity needs. We talked about those in episode 62. Its own emotions, its own body sensations, its own beliefs, thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, its own ways of interacting with people, its own worldview. And often parts have burdens too. Each part also has an image of God. Robert Falconer calls these “insiders.” There’s these patterns that we see over and over and over again, where these different elements come together in like this little internal personality. And parts have different ways of connecting. They have different roles within a person. We talked about this a lot in the last episode, episode 71. But what I’m going to talk about today is how so many parts are hidden, right? They’re not accepted. They’re not loved within our system. And this brings us back to our whole question of the two great commandments. Love your neighbor as yourself. You know, Jesus really reached out to the outcasts in society, made a special point of loving those who were rejected by society, tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, all these members of society, members of the community that were reviled, that were condemned, that were rejected by the more upstanding members of the community.

[00:33:49] It’s startling how many times in the Gospels he is spending time in ways that are so loving. The woman caught in the act of adultery. The woman at the well. Zacharias, the tax collector. Over and over and over again, he is reaching out to those that are considered unacceptable by other society members. And I argue that in the same way, we need to love the parts of ourselves that other parts of ourselves have condemned as unacceptable, unlovable, unworthy, dangerous, or inappropriate in some way. Why? Because if we’re not loving all of ourselves, then there’s something missing. There’s members of the orchestra that are not contributing to the music in any kind of constructive way, that are not allowed to be in the roles that God wants them to be. And so I don’t know myself really, if I don’t know my parts. There’s been different kinds of neuroscience studies that have said that 90% of us is in the unconscious. We don’t know most of ourselves. Well, I don’t know about that so much, but I do know that so many people, the vast majority of people, do not know themselves very well. They’re very disconnected from so many aspects of who they really are. So many parts of them that they are not in touch with, so many modes of operating that they do not understand very well, that they misunderstand in so many different kinds of ways.

[00:35:28] And I’m going to say that I don’t know myself when I don’t know my parts. If I don’t know my parts, I don’t know myself. And you know what? I don’t know my neighbor if I don’t understand something about his or her parts. Now, I may not think about it that way. I might think about it in terms of their internal conflicts or their internal struggles or other types of ways of capturing something of this. But what I think is so powerful about parts language is that it makes it so much clearer. It helps us to map out in such a brighter light what’s happening within ourselves and what’s happening within others. And if I’m not loving a part of me, then there’s deficits in my love for myself. If I’m not loving a part of another person, then there’s a deficit in my love for that other person. Right. So there’s something missing in my love for my neighbor when I love some of my neighbor, but not all of my neighbor. When we look at what Christ did on the face of the earth, he loved all of the people. And I’m arguing by analogy that we need to love within us all of our parts. And when we’re trying to love our neighbor, we need to love all of our neighbor’s parts. IFS allows us to turbocharge our understanding of parts, helping us with that capacity to love all of our parts, those dark regions within us, those regions that are an unknown within us.

[00:36:53] This frees us to love other people much more completely in all of their parts. Anything that we reject within ourselves, we will reject in other people. And this came up in a podcast that I had done with John Heinen and Sam Guzman on The Catholic Gentleman. There was a recent episode where we talked about how I rejected fear within myself, and that made it hard for me to understand the fear that my teenage son was experiencing at the time. This was several years ago. And so anything that we reject within ourselves, we’re going to reject in other people. So acceptance of what’s real within us is going to help us accept what’s real within other people, which is going to increase our capacity to be able to love. And all of this is happening on a natural level. This is not just happening on some sort of spiritual level. I think so many of the impediments to loving and to being loved, to taking in love from other people are not, in their essence, primarily spiritual. I think they have so many of their roots in the natural level experiences. And so we need to be focusing on that human formation. We need to be using means in the natural level as well. So an experiential exercise. Are you, my listeners, up for another experiential exercise? Are you up for one? All right.

[00:38:25] Well, let’s go ahead and do one. Now, as always with experiential exercises, I’m going to invite you to really create a space for them. This isn’t something that should be done while you’re driving. This isn’t something that should be done while you’re operating heavy machinery or cooking. We need to be able to dedicate time to our own human formation through experiential exercises like this. And so this should be done in a quiet place where you have the freedom to be able to really enter into it. It’s not going to be very long, only about seven minutes long. So also, if this exercise doesn’t land well with you, if it’s making you really uncomfortable, if you’re starting to feel a little destabilized or you’re starting to feel a little off, don’t continue with it. Right? Let’s listen to that. Let’s make sure that we’re attending to those kinds of things so that we don’t exit the zone of tolerance and get hyper-aroused or hypo-aroused. If this kind of exercise does destabilize you, then there’s some significant reasons for that. And I would really recommend that you get those checked out by a mental health professional. If you have trouble handling these kinds of exercises, it’s a sign really that it would be helpful to get some professional eyes on this as to why.

[00:39:46] So with that, I’m just going to invite you to really have a big open heart toward yourself. What’s getting in the way of you loving you? What’s getting in the way of you being calmer inside your own skin? I’m just going to invite you, with curiosity and with openness, with receptivity, to hear what is it on a natural level that keeps you from having more peace? That peace of heart that Father Jacques Philippe talks about? What gets in the way of that? Can you be curious about that? Can you let that curiosity about what gets in the way of peace, can you let that grow? With a sense of acceptance of whatever we’re going to find. Can we be small and humble and open like a little child, with a sense of awe and wonder? We’re fearfully and wonderfully made. What keeps us from peace? Does some part of us believe that to be peaceful wouldn’t be good for us? That there has to be agitation or distress for some reason? If so, can we ask why? Can we just ask any analytical parts that want to think it through to step aside so that parts can answer directly? Because parts know why. And if they sense that we’re willing to hear in this open, humble, accepting way, which again, doesn’t necessarily mean we endorse everything. But if they sense that we’re really interested in them, all kinds of things can come to light, things we didn’t know about ourselves before.

[00:43:45] That helps us to love ourselves, and it helps us eventually to love others and God. Peace. Why is it that a part of you might believe you shouldn’t be peaceful? Why it’s not a good idea? Why is it that the gift of peace may be something that part of you keeps from you? Again, on this natural level, or maybe on a spiritual level. Maybe there’s something that it has to say about that. A lot of gratitude to your parts for sharing, for connecting. And this doesn’t have to be the last time that you connect. This doesn’t have to be an end. It can be a beginning. I hope that people are creating space and time to connect with their parts. I hope that you, my dear listeners, are setting aside that time for some work on your own internal systems, working with your parts, getting to know them, right? You know, if this podcast and these kinds of exercises is really resonate with you, if they really make sense to you, if you want to be in a community where people are doing this kind of work on a regular basis, if you want to be on a pilgrimage with like-minded Catholics, on a journey toward human formation, where we’re learning about loving God, loving our neighbor and loving ourself, and doing all of that in a really psychologically-minded way, drawing from the best of our understandings of the human person, from both the spiritual and the natural realms, I’m going to really encourage you to take the Resilient Catholics Community at Souls and Hearts seriously.

[00:46:46] That community, the RCC, the Resilient Catholics Community, grew up around this podcast as a place for us to connect, as a place for people who really want to bring these things together, this niche market, if you will, this confluence of people who are serious, faithful Catholics that are struggling, that are wanting to work on their human formation stuff and looking for a place to do that with other like-minded people. Hey, that sets you up to be one of us. I’m really going to encourage you to check that out. Go to soulsandhearts.com/rcc. There’s all kinds of information there about our programming. Our community is open for the month of June or until 80 spaces are filled. If you’re discerning that, I would love to talk with you about it. Conversation hours for me are Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time. You can reach me on my cell phone, (317) 567-9594. Our community is small, it’s personal. We have about 40 people that are in it right now. I’m looking forward to meeting you if you’re interested in that. People are often surprised when I actually pick up my phone when they call during conversation hours. I do do that. You can also email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com, but I’m really going to invite you to take it to prayer. See if you might be called to this.

[00:48:16] See if you might want to be a pioneer with us, you know, on this pilgrimage, on this adventure, on this hard road. Admittedly, it’s a hard road, but it’s an adventure. And it’s an adventure we’re taking together, breaking new ground in terms of bringing together the cutting edge of human formation into the spiritual life, bringing together all these disciplines in the natural realm, and putting them at the service of loving God and loving our neighbor in ordered ways, following the two great commandments. I’m also going to invite you to tune in next week, when we really start to explore whether Internal Family Systems is really Catholic. Is that way of thinking really Catholic, Dr. Peter? That’s what we’re going to be addressing in the next episode. I am really excited to be in relationship with the people that are in the Resilient Catholics Community, and to be connected with all of my listeners. I’m going to, again, ask for your prayers, especially that I be small, that I be childlike, that I be open, that I be receptive to the graces God has for me in leading this community. I’m going to ask you to pray for me and for all of the people in the Resilient Catholics Community. I pray for all of you. And to pray for all the other listeners to this podcast. And with that, we’ll invoke our patroness and our patron. Our Lady, our Mother, Untier of Knots, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.