liberation of the heart

"In our exuberance however, we continually ask of God's creation more than it can be. We regularly pour our heart's desires into some part of God's creation and ask it to be the fulfilment we seek. We ask some part of God's creation to be uncreated. We take a good and ask it to be a god.

The heart, weary from its continual pilgrimage, seeks to settle down and make camp, refusing to go on. It settles down with lesser gods, finding some joy, peace, identity, security or other alleviations of its desires. This short term relief masks a spiritual problem and also a problem in human development. John of the Cross was convinced that when the individual centres on something or someone other than God, the personality eventually becomes dysfunctional.

Such "attachments" create a situation of death. Whatever or whomever I am asking to be my god, my desires' deepest fulfilment, cannot bear the expectation. The idol will begin to crumble under such pressure as I ask it to be my "all". And because we cannot grow past our gods, a lesser god means a lesser human being. Consequently, that to which I am "attached" is dying under my need, and I am dying because my deepest desires can find nothing and no one to match their intensity.

The self-transcending dynamism within our humanity will not allow us to declare that we have "arrived" at journey's end. By declaring a premature victory as we cling to idols, we are engaging in inauthentic self-transcendence. In other words, the heart is no longer free to hear and follow the invitation of the Beloved. This slavery of the heart is the result of disordered desire. The solution, the liberation of the heart, is not accomplished by annihilation of desire but by its reorientation."

Seasons of the Heart