Meeting 1 — Spiritual Condition of Man¶
Introduction for the Animator¶
According to Instrumentum laboris of the VIII Ordinary Synod of Bishops from 1990, the word “spirituality means a certain «style of life», or «life according to the Spirit» (cf. Rom 8:9), «walking according to the Spirit» (cf. Rom 8:4) […], a set of attitudes of hearts aroused by the Spirit, namely beliefs, motivations, decisions” (no. 21). Spirituality is therefore a set of attitudes, by which, according to the thought of Card. Karol Wojtyła, is understood taking a stance towards someone or something, not yet being an action, but being already something more than consciousness and at the same time readiness to act according to the taken stance.
Let’s try to “isolate” ourselves and look at us in solitude (see Tent of Meeting). Show that solitude is an inseparable part of life. Every choice of ours takes place in naked solitude…..let’s try to touch this experience, how we feel with it.
Introduction. Sharing the fruits of the day¶
Was it hard for You to talk for this long time with another person? What came easily, and what was more difficult?
What did you discover in yourself thanks to this time?
Do not rush with this point! Let people open up to each other. Let it be marked here right away that the wealth of this meeting is what we share ourselves.
What is spirituality?¶
We intend to talk about the condition of man. The person of man consists of many matters, we could distinguish: body, psyche, emotions and spirituality. Each of us can confirm with own experience that we have these things in us and they are our own. Why however do we want to devote so much time to spirituality?
(We give the whole group gradually the theses below. We try to explain them together, it would be nice if it was based on own experience. This is the main part of the meeting.)
- Body
“If someone contacts themselves only through the body, then it cannot explain the mystery of man to them, because the body does not know who man is and what he lives for. The body feels only its own needs and drives. Left to itself, the body becomes a kind of cancer that subordinates the whole man to itself and lives at his expense. A solely carnal man cannot therefore understand himself and cannot responsibly direct his life. A carnal man is a man subject to the dictatorship of the body.”
- Psyche
“Man cannot understand himself if he contacts only his own psyche, and thus his own thinking strategies or his own ways of emotional experiencing. The human mind possesses the ability to think but is not the source of knowledge about the mystery of man. The mind can discover this mystery but cannot establish or invent it by its own power. Left to its own spontaneity, the human mind does not seek truth but half-truths comfortable for a given person or even illusions. A man for whom his own thinking is the highest and only authority, is guided by so-called private logic in order not to discover the whole truth about his life, especially the difficult one and setting clear requirements. But by being guided only by subjective thinking, man usually does himself great harm, deceives himself and deprives himself of the chance for development.”
- Emotions
“Also from the perspective of emotions man cannot discover who he is and what he lives for. A solely emotional man does not know what attitude he should take towards his own reality and even towards emotions themselves. Emotions left to their own spontaneity are guided by their own logic: they seek only well-being. Immediately and at any price. Even at the price of destroying the man of whom they are a part. All addictions to people, things or chemical substances are a direct consequence of the dictatorship of emotions to which a solely emotional man condemns himself.”
- Spirituality
“The uniqueness of the spiritual sphere is the fact that in this sphere and only in this sphere man can ask about his own mystery not from a partial perspective (bodily or mental) but from the perspective of the whole man. And only in this sphere can he find the final answer, which will become the basis for taking a mature attitude towards life. Spirituality begins therefore only when man rises above his body and above his psyche to ask himself a question about his entire reality: about who he is and what he lives for, about what sense his body, his thinking and his emotions and he himself have.
There is therefore no freedom without spirituality, because man cannot responsibly direct himself and his life until he knows who he is and what he lives for. A man without spirituality is a man by definition dependent on one of his partial spheres or on pressures flowing from the external environment. He is a man who lives like a small child, that is unconsciously and only based on stimuli that affect him at a given moment.”
Question about our spiritual condition¶
To what extent are we able to look at ourselves from a spiritual perspective? That is: Look at our whole person - not separate us into several realities having nothing in common with each other?
Writing down answers on a sheet of paper we ask:
In what moments of life does such an approach come easiest to us?
Looking at the obtained sheet we try to find some regularities.
How do we think: why exactly in such moments? what do they have in common?
What can we do with our own spirituality?¶
Spiritual attitude is “most important” when we try to answer these most important questions: “who am I? what am I like? what am I for?” What to do to be able to look from this perspective at this moment? It is worth paying attention to what moments of life these are? (usually moments of considerable sadness and “unstable emotional state”)
What “advice” would we give ourselves now at this meeting to be able to answer such questions maturely?
Hints (direct the group to this):
“simplest” solution: pose existential questions to oneself when it is good… when we can think efficiently, when we have stabilized emotions, when nothing “weighs” on our psyche. Such questions do not come by themselves then, they must be “provoked”
solution seemingly requiring more: look at every matter of one’s life through the prism of spirituality, then when these most important questions come “casually” we will approach them the same as any before
Do we have someone who “watches” over us asking ourselves such questions? Who is it? Do we feel gratitude for his efforts?
The modern world often tries to tell us that asking about the most important matters of another human being is a violation of their privacy, something bad. It is not appropriate to ask about something personal, something that concerns the interior.
However, the person who watches over us does not do it 24h/day. There are moments when we are only with our own solitude (even though there may be a crowd around us). These moments can tell us a lot about the state of our spiritual condition. It’s about solitude that exists between people (Jesus is always with us, but more about that tomorrow).
Do we feel such solitude? If we can, let’s give an example of it.
Sometimes it is so… e.g. we go for an important conversation to a best friend, we tell him openly many things, when he answers: “I understand You” we can only smile bitterly. Somewhere we feel that he cannot fully understand, that this is our personal and whatever we do it will remain such. There is something with which we must remain solitary.
Did it happen to us during our solitude to go out to another human being ourselves to talk to him about important things? In what way was this desire born in us? Was it such “by itself” or under the influence of an impulse?
How do we use our own time of solitude? Do we experience it as preparatory time for returning to people?
Let’s notice that the answer to the above questions testifies exactly to our spiritual condition. If we try to look through the prism of spirituality it is because someone “provoked” us to do so, so we experienced that this provoking is good and we want to encourage others to do so ourselves - responsibility.
The essence of what we are talking about now is whether we are able to go out to another human being by ourselves… it is extremely important to have such a skill, as long as people possess it and pass it on to each other the spiritual condition of man will be “stable”.
And what is needed to realize the second possibility? To look at every moment of life through the prism of spirituality?
First of all, awareness of the importance spirituality has (see beginning of the meeting!). It should motivate us to work on ourselves, to remind ourselves constantly, permanently who man is.
Wise courage to ask oneself questions¶
The point is to come together to the conclusion that if we stick to the principles we talked about above, the fear of asking oneself difficult questions disappears. They are no longer a threat, but something that develops our personality. For a man who treats his spirituality “on call” some questions terrify - especially those to which the answer must be sought longer than “for a moment”.
Do we have the courage to pose existential questions to ourselves?
Do we see such a need? What is so dangerous in these questions?
Dangerous is discovering who we really are, without masks. The most important questions, before which we stand alone, must discover the truth about us. It is nothing pleasant. Sometimes shocking. It is “making life difficult” for oneself - although in reality this is only true existence - because conscious.
What do we do with this truth about ourselves? Are we always aware that we never knew the whole truth? Do we try to constantly ask ourselves who we are?
One of the most important conclusions - not to let answers to questions about ourselves become our “private dogmas”, something we arrived at and no longer want to change - so as not to eliminate development from our own life! We need to explore the mysteries of man throughout our lives.
At the end let’s read:
Man changes from the cradle to the grave. When is he himself?
—Stefan Kisielewski
Application¶
The Light-Life Movement method does not allow us to remain only at the level of knowledge and information. Each meeting should end with “application”, i.e. concrete introduction of content into life.
Proposal for each of us to make now one small resolution in connection with the discussed topic, which we hope to be able to realize still during this retreat.
Final prayer¶
Any for the intention of perseverance in our resolutions and for this retreat.