Moral and Spiritual Integrity
Religious or spiritual traditions have called this spiritual maturity or in other words perfection. We have taught perfection to mean that one has a state of knowing how to do anything without having to gain the knowledge through learning, or never making a miscalculation and not having to eat or sleep.
We make it out to be some unobtainable goal or idea. On the other hand, the true authentic definition of perfection is one who has become unfailingly true and sincere and is able to give of their physical energies of true love just as Jesus said:
You have heard that it was said,
You have heard“love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven . . . . If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? . . . Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect
Matthew 5.43-48
Perfect Unity
The type of perfection Jesus speaks about is the result of conscience that is linked to God to not be blocked by our arrogance or selfishness and flow freely. This is true moral and spiritual freedom.
The person who has attained this mind and body unity will feel the greatest joy of being able to readily act upon any worthy inspiration beaming from his heart and conscience. This is likened to a well-learned musician who can play any tune that comes into their head.
This person is free to be ruled and used by true love. Most people have experienced this. "She kept on thanking me for caring for her child." Relates Marisa concerning her mother who had collapsed on the sidewalk from her illness. She had to leave her young son crying when Marisa, who was a bystander, had offered to take care of her child for a few days.
“But I’m a mother myself—how could I not respond the way I did? It was nothing really.”
Jesus related this kind of story to the Good Samaritan who helped the man who was robbed when others ignored him. This "nothing" comes about automatically when one repeatedly subdues the selfish interest of their body and the heart is then liberated to respond to the call of true love. In other words, this is the state of releasing one's ego in order to live for the sake of the other.
God
Mind Body
Individual
Perfection
When this becomes the dominant mode of living, a person becomes a window of the divine heart and character. “The Supreme Reality stands revealed in the consciousness of those who have conquered themselves,” states the Bhagavad Gita (6.7-9).
Likewise, Jesus declared,
“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father”
John 14:9
More than just a window, such a person is where God also wants to reside. Where he or she is, Heaven and Earth intersect.
The War Within
Do we truly witness this standard in our daily lives?
Our minds and bodies are usually at odds. Sometimes people are generous and kind and at other times they are only caring about themselves.
We seem to live our lives based on bad emotions. A caring mother may suddenly erupt in anger toward her beloved children after a long day. A usually friendly boss who becomes stressed out over a key account may take it out on his employees.
In their deepest of heart, caring people truly want to act good and loving at all times, but this God-given sense within is usually overwhelmed by negative passions and desires.
“Our selfish desires and moral capacities are at war with one another,” states ethicist James Q. Wilson, “and often the former triumphs over the latter.”
This is the classic battle between mind and body. Christians call it the battle between flesh and spirit; Jews, between the good and evil inclinations. The body is overly occupied with its own concerns of taking care of itself and this overpowers the unselfish desires of the mind. Individuals find themselves acting in ways they believe they should not—and not practicing what they should. They end up regretting too many things they have done.
St Paul spoke directly to this fact when he confessed,
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”
Romans 7:15
How often do people find themselves saying the most hurtful things to the ones they love the most? Or letting their selfishness ruin an important relationship?
How many times have we seen or said the most hurtful things to the one we love the most? Or we let our own selfishness ruin an important relationship?
“She was the girl next door, we loved each other; we were thinking of getting married once we graduated from high school,” recalls a middle-aged man of his high school sweetheart.
“We had only kissed and hugged, but the guys were always pushing me to go for more. One night in senior year I had a few beers and tried to get real physical with my girlfriend and wouldn't let up. She got really upset with me, it was never the same again. I messed up a real good thing.”
This self-contradictory and often self-destructive state is what religious traditions call that of sin.
The mind or conscience suffers under the oppression of the selfish instincts of the body, its desires relentlessly frustrated. St. Paul ends his confession of self-contradiction with his question, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
In order to find perspective on this fight between mind and body some people have demonized the body and deny it as much as possible. They then seek to escape within their mind which is closest to God and wait for freedom after their spirit has been released once they pass onto the next world.
This has been necessary for a time period when there was no greater teaching to free us from the confines of our body through the Second Coming. The Messiah is to give us God's words that will liberate us not just from spiritual sin, but physical sin.
The body is essential for spiritual growth. It is part of God's order to have an inner and outer nature. the body only needed to be controlled after the flesh dominated the mind after the Fall.
We say that we are just like the animal and we follow our instincts like those in the animal kingdom and can't help many things we do under the rules of the flesh. When we observe the animal kingdom, we see that nature is not self-destructive and unreliable in potential like we human beings are. In other words, when we are subjugated by selfishness this is unnatural and is contrary to God's design.
Humans repel God and invites evil.
There is no betrayal and no conflict within God's nature of true love. Therefore, God cannot connect to a being whose mind and body are at war. He will not be able to find His image in them. This means that in losing His connection with human beings, He cannot fully delight in His children to degree in which He created us.
Moreover, He cannot manifest through His children as He would want so He cannot trust them. Consider the Heavenly Father’s many expressions of pleasure in the obedient Moses—
“I am pleased with you and know you by name”
Exodus 33:17
Yet when Moses disobeys Him and yields to his own anger, He forbids him to lead the people
into the Promised Land. Numbers 20.12
Because each individual is fighting a battle within themselves, we have an even harder time seeing God within others as well. It is much easier for us to see depravity than goodness in others. This is not the natural process of creation, this contradiction is the reversal of the proper order.
The body oppressing the mind is the very definition of evil and immorality.
There are two worlds: power, wealth and sexuality on one hand and intellect, imagination and love on the other. When these two powers are in the presence of smallmindedness and self-centeredness we exhibit individuals who rarely live in service to others, but live in service only to oneself. This is how America has come from its greatness of living for others and for God to losing hope.
Thus, every kind of pathology and iniquity is possible. Mind and body disunity is a fundamental condition for evil to manifest itself within the individual. It makes true love impossible.
The Challenge of Self-Discipline
Theodore Roosevelt once said, “With self-discipline most anything is possible.” Self-discipline is fundamental to character growth, which in turn is fundamental to the capacity to give unchanging love.
“Before you desire to control the universe,” Reverend Moon has said, “you must first be able to completely control yourself.”
Such a thought has echoes throughout the world religions. “Who is
strong? He who controls his passions,” states the Jewish Mishnah (Abot 4.1).
The Sikhs have a saying, “With the conquest of my mind, I have conquered the whole world” (Adi Granth, Japuji 28,M.1).
In the Hindu Upanishads, the self is described as a rider, the body as a chariot, the intellect as the charioteer and the mind as the reins. The physical senses are likened to the power of the horses thundering down the mazes of desire (Katha Upanishad 1.3.3-6).
In this image we can see that self-discipline is strong and the desires of the flesh enslave a person.
Self-discipline requires faith perseverance, and courage especially with the free society of 'do whatever you want" flows against the trend of training the body for good deeds. It is the moral direction of the will.
A man who admits to his wife that he has an attraction to a co-worker requires moral will. Also, a young woman who runs from door-to-door to alert other students that the dorm is burning and the teenage boy who denounces bigotry being practiced in his neighborhood are examples of moral integrity and will.
The Key to Reaching Any Goal
In order to realize even practical goals, one must have the will to suppress the body's harmful impulses, resist unhealthy attractions, and delay immediate gratification.
A study was conducted years ago with a group of children where each were given one marshmallow. They were told that if they waited they would then receive another marshmallow as an award. Some children immediately ate the marshmallow exempting them from getting another one.
Then there were others who wanted to control their bodies and not immediately eat the treat in order to obtain the second marshmallow by distracting themselves and were rewarded with a total of two marshmallows.
Then there was a follow-up study years later when the children graduated from high school. The study showed that the children who were able to wait for the second marshmallow grew up to be more confident, persevering, trustworthy, and had better social skills than the children who did not delay immediate gratification. The ones who did indulge in the one marshmallow first without waiting for the reward were more troubled, resentful and selfish.
Self-Destruction
Conflict
Sinful, jealous, anxious and easily upset.
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Therefore, if one learns self-control and discipline at an early age, this sets up a pattern that leads to even greater self-mastery.
Other research confirms that adolescents who have learned self-discipline enjoy increased self-confidence, affording them greater resistance to the appeal of negative peer groups.
These teenagers who have learned to control their body's instincts are less likely to cut classes, abuse drugs or alcohol or get involved in sex. They have less anxiety and depression and perform better in school. Team sports, after school activities and interests in the arts have kept many students occupied with good activities instead of heading for trouble.
Certainly they are also in a better position to be responsible sons and daughters, loyal friends, faithful
spouses and sacrificial parents.
The practice of self-discipline also leads to respect for legitimate authority.
“In self-discipline one makes a ‘disciple’ of oneself,” writes William Bennett. “One is one’s own teacher, trainer, coach and‘disciplinarian.’”
When a person exhibits mind and body unity, they have less need for social control, but have more appreciation for it. Democracy was founded on this very concept of a citizenry that was self-governed by the power of religion and education instead of the communistic view of total control.
The founder of the Boston settlement in America, Robert C. Winthrop, stated:
“The less [societies] may have stringent state government, the more they must have individual self-government . . . . Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them, or by a power without them. . . .”
An individual who is self-controlled makes a better neighbor and citizen.
Fostering Mind and Body Unity
Contemporary society’s fondness for maximum individual freedom and autonomy presents challenges to those who would discipline themselves, and who would strengthen the moral will of those under their care.
At the same time the society also designs less external controls on the individual's behavior and responsibility than the traditional norm. This means that as the social norms are more lax on etiquette and sexual behavior, the more that an individual must have the laws of self-control living within them more than before.
Then on the other hand, there has probably never been less social support for individual self-control until the symptoms come to the surface sometimes too late to control.
America and the rest of Western society calls out for comfort and self-indulgence and it pokes fun at and scorns discipline and restraint as a threat to individual freedom. In this type of thinking, to embody self-control in oneself or onto others goes against the cultural fallen norms.
Yet it is an essential task. “To conquer the realm of the body is an awesome responsibility which every person must undertake,” asserts Reverend Moon.
The religious traditions are clear in their recommendations of the path to mind and body unity. There are two basic means. One is to weaken the influence of the body by denying its desires.
“Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God,” exhorts St. Paul.
Romans 12.1
The other is to reinforce the strength of the mind through various methods, including prayer, study, respect for parents and other well-known measures.
The struggle for control of the appetites and passions does not have to lead to anti-physical, otherworldly excess.
The challenge is to set up the appropriate order between mind and body, so that
both can function in the best way. We'll talk about these steps further in tomorrow's post.
Photos courtesy of : freedigitalphotos.net
Return for Tomorrow's Post: How to Weaken the Body's Harmful Desires
This text was taken from and rewritten from the textbook: True Love Chapter, Mind and Body Unity
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