Show Notes
Episode 36: Why We Flee from Real Love October 5, 2020.
Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being love and to loving.
Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 36, released on October 5, 2020 and it is titled: Why We Flee from Real Love.
1. Getting right into it today, not reviewing, no listener questions, so buckle up. This is a critically important topic
2. Three main reasons. Pain, fear and anger -- all rooted in misunderstanding and distortions.
a. We want to avoid all these things. Natural instincts.
i. Freud's pleasure principle: is the instinctive seeking of pleasure and avoiding of pain to satisfy biological and psychological needs.
3. Tolerating being loved -- deliberate use of language
a. No, I just want to be loved -- what they are saying is I just want to be emotionally gratified. What we want
i. Hallmark Card Commercials
ii. Hallmark Movies
iii. Romance novels. Easy love that just come naturally. Emotional Junk food that nourishes illusions.
b. Easy to be loved when you are a baby-- natural openness and receptivity
c. Negative experiences
d. Fallen natures in a fallen world
i. Slings and arrows -- attachment injuries, relational wounds
ii. More significant trauma
iii. Sense of vulnerability, it's not safe.
1. Fear
2. Avoidance
3. Adam and Eve in Genesis 3
iv. We are familiar with the disorder, the dysfunction -- our ways of coping.
e. People who want to focus on loving, not being loved.
i. More "noble"
ii. Focus is on the other
iii. But so limited. Doing good things for the other, not "being with."
6. Real love burns -- it hurts --
a. Gratification and Frustration.
b. Perfection of God's love has an impact -- burning, purifying effect -- refining of silver and gold
i. 1 Peter 1:7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
ii. Isaiah
48:10 Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.
iii. Zechariah 13:9 And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’”
iv. Proverbs 17:3 The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests hearts.
v. Job
23:10 But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.
3. Examples of PT. Burn unit.
a. Not understanding. Being small. Children.
4. Fleeing from love leads us to hell. Ultimately It's the only thing that lead us to hell. If we embraced love fully, we would not sin. God is love. If we embrace love fully, we are embracing God fully. And then sin becomes impossible for you.
a. Hell on earth -- pain is God's megaphone -- CS Lewis.
b. Gauge of holiness -- one's receptivity to love (Episode 35 -- radical receptivity)
5. Love is not what we think it is. Gratification and Frustration. We misunderstand love.
6. Being loved is the most important prerequisite - Absolutely required
a. Old Latin saying Nemo dat quod non habet
i. No one gives what they don’t have. Nemo dat rule.
ii. You can't give what you don't have.
b. What every client needs coming into my office
c. Sin is a lack of love - a moral evil. Failure to love. Two great commandments -- the opposite is omission, the omission of love.
d. Evil is a privation of good. Of love.
i. St. Augustine in the Enchridion Chapter 4: All of nature, therefore, is good, since the Creator of all nature is supremely good. But nature is not supremely and immutably good as is the Creator of it. Thus the good in created things can be diminished and augmented. For good to be diminished is evil.
ii. not just the absence of a good, but the absence of a good that properly belongs to a species.
iii. Darkness is a lack of light.
e. Evils we experience make us jaded.
f. ls us. It perfects us.
7. Why being loved is important-- Real love restores us. It brings us back. It heals us.
8. Examples of tolerating being loved
a. Animal Examples
i. White Fang -- love master Weedon Scott
ii. Horse Whisperer -- Buck Brannaman Polayed by Robert Redford in the 1998 movie -- acts as a therapist
b. Literature examples
i. Beauty and the Beast (French: La Belle et la Bête) is a fairy tale written by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740
ii. Story of Refiner's fire.
iii. Insert Lucy Segment
iv. Petrarchan Sonnet: She Who was Abused
Her spiteful eyes, they scream, “We swim in tears.
You see how God has cursed and battered me.
Yes, speak again of grace and care that He
poured out on me in childhood’s tragic years.”
“You fool! Are you so blind, as my death nears,
To try again to love me, Pharisee?”
“I’m wounded, and ashamed, and damned I’ll be
If I’ll get speared once more by hope,” she sneers.
In anguish, angry and ashamed, she fled
from One who loved her, deep and sure, who stayed
behind her, patient, silent. His heart bled,
respecting her will, choices she has made,
still yet He seeks her. She now turns her head.
At last, their eyes meet, His calm, hers afraid.
1. This outcome can go either way. I've seen both ways.
2. Gentle balance here.
9. The iterative dance -- childlike trust -- Fear of vulnerability. Little bit of openness, retreating.
10. Extreme examples -- reactive attachment disorder
11. Bridget Adams Bellingham, WA
a. One of the definitions of "hind" is a female deer or a doe. Johnny translates to John. So our imaginary listener John Doe who wants to remain anonymous changed his name to "Johnny Hind." That is the Dad play on word
12. Lucy on the Dad Poem.
13. Send me your poetry -- psychology and Catholicism. Journeys of the Soul. Website Souls and Hearts.
The RCCD community brings together people like you, people that are really interested in growing more and more resilient, both in the natural realm and in the psychological realm, and who are seizing this day, this moment as an opportunity for great spiritual and psychological growth. We are adding features to the RCCD community.
$25 per month after that, and there is a whole host of resources available to you there. Closing November 3 – less than a month away
Go to soulsandhearts.com, click on the tab that says all courses and shows and register for the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem Community.
Past Zoom meeting September 29 7:30 PM Eastern time. Openness and receptivity. Garden wall exercise. Really great for people who are afraid of God. You can actually see and feel how God respects your boundaries and limits and doesn’t want to invade or violate you or take you over, but to be separate but near. We will record parts of this so RCCD community members can do it on their own.
Patroness and Patron