It has been ten years since I came up with what I call A Road Map for Spiritual Growth. Looking back, I cannot quite believe it has ONLY been ten years. I’ve grown SO MUCH.
I was raised Catholic and have always taken my faith very seriously. I remember my earliest religion classes, preparation for First Penance and First Communion. I even remember coloring pictures in the church nursery and getting advice from my older siblings on the way to my first Mass. (No gum chewing stands out. I think my sister told me that one.)
In Junior High, when many of the other Catholic kids in my class had whined or wiggled their way out of going to release time religious education classes with Sister Battle-axe, I still went. It cost me being in the choir, because they were the same period. That hurt. In Senior High, I was always one of the kids who signed up for youth group activities, retreats and days of prayer.
In college, I shocked the local priest by showing up during Freshman Orientation week to introduce myself and get the Mass schedule. By sophomore year, I was president of the Newman Parish Council. Dearest and I had our first date at a social function sponsored by the Catholic Charismatic prayer group.
Right after finding the house we wanted, we went to the local parish and joined up. I taught RCIA. Dearest chaired the Building Committee during the expansion. Sacraments were major family events. Sunday school and Youth Group were givens. The girls served on the altar until they were old enough for adult ministries, then they became Lectors and Sunday school teaching assistants.
Dearest and I went to every Bible study and, over the years, I had three spiritual directors. I’m not saying any of this to brag, but to explain how long and how hard I worked at my faith …. without making much progress. I really worked at becoming holy, because I wanted the peace and joy God promised. But until God gave me the wisdom to understand Self-Contempt and to create this Map for Spiritual Growth, I stayed mired in an ugly morass of anxiety-driven Scrupulosity.
It’s been ten years since I wrote the first version of A Road Map for Spiritual Growth. Since then, I have finally experienced the peace that passes all understanding. I am sitting here with tears, so GRATEFUL to God for giving me the wisdom that led to this growth. Scripture says, “By their fruits you shall know them.” I am about to turn 60. If my life is any measure, there is good fruit in A Map for Spiritual Growth.
A Map for Spiritual Growth
Scripture says that the virtuous heart produces good fruit, while the sinful heart produces bad fruit.
My religion teacher says that the sinful heart is characterized by the Seven Deadly Sins – Pride, Envy, Greed, Lust, Anger, Gluttony and Sloth – and that these vices are like two-sided coins, with each one having an opposite virtue.
Supposedly, if I could identify the vices (aka, root sins) that fuel my sinful heart, then I could identify the opposite virtues. Vices can be repented; virtues can be practiced. It isn’t that different from dieting, really. Stop eating the bad foods; start eating the good foods.
There is only one problem. I am 100% convinced my root sin is Self-Contempt. But Self-Contempt isn’t on any list of vices or sins that I have ever seen. And I have no idea what its opposite virtue might be. On top of that, the Church teaches that the chief of all vices is Pride and its opposite is the virtue of Humility, but that makes no sense to me. The last thing I suffer from is thinking too much of myself.
Plus, everything we are taught about Humility sounds exactly like me. But that can’t be right, either. We are supposed to love others as we love ourselves and I am very sure that I don’t love me.
These traditional formulations just aren’t helping me grow. Maybe I could make more sense of my spiritual situation if I traded in the two-sided coin metaphor for a number line.
I’ll put Pride (in its traditional sense) on the right side to represent the spiritual status of those who believe, “I am more special than anyone else.” And I’ll put Self-Contempt on the left side to represent the spiritual status of those who believe, “I am less special than anyone else.” It is suddenly so clear that true Humility must be right in the middle, where the virtuous soul knows, deep down, “I am unique and special, just like everyone else.”
The Bible is quite clear that Pride is the chief of all sins, so it is easy to be confused by the use of the word “pride” for only the right side. But in its scriptural context, pride is an improper emphasis on one’s place in His Creation.
The right-siders value themselves more than God values them; the left-siders value themselves less than God values them. In essence, SELF-CONTEMPT is pride turned upside down.
Only God has the right to judge the value of a human being and there are only two ways for a human being to be in relationship with Him. I can put Him first or I can put me first.
SELF-CONTEMPT is a form of pride, because it is an improper relationship. Unfortunately, “pride upside down” isn’t very edifying, so I’ll stick with SELF-CONTEMPT.
For those on the right side of the line, spiritual growth is about learning to love God and others more.
For those of us on the left side of the line, spiritual growth is more complicated because what we truly worship is not God or ourselves, but safety. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, we were taught that we didn’t matter. Whether it was from abuse, neglect, or trauma, at some time in our lives we internalized this evil, toxic lie:
“I am unlovable and have no right to be safe.”
The pain of SELF-CONTEMPT is intense. Our natural need for intimacy forces us to continually seek out the respect and approval of others, while our fear-driven self-hatred forces us to continually reject any respect or approval we are given, while simultaneously magnifying and brooding on any criticism, however small, undeserved or well-intended.
But more than ANYTHING, we fear God. And not in the good way the Bible talks about. We are terrified that He might get a glimpse of our true worthlessness and so we approach Him only in our party clothes with our party faces on.
Yeah, I know. It’s silly to think you can hide from God. But trust me. That’s where I lived for years.
But He is such a gentleman! All the time I kept my real self locked inside a dark closet, He sat outside the door, speaking softly or singing or just saying my name. He never opened the door, though He could have. And He never ridiculed me for thinking I could hide from Him. He just waited until I was ready to crack the door just the tiniest bit.
Maybe that’s when the idea for the Map came to me … when I finally let that closet door off the latch.
There is a lot more to the Map, but for today, I just want to share one example of how I used it to begin growing in peace and true Humility. (If you want the whole thing, send an email to Chrissy@ChrissyOriginals.com and I’ll send back the file.)
All of the traditional spiritual practices I’ve ever been taught were based on the two-sided coin model; they were designed to move people to the left on my number line. That works very well for people who value themselves too highly, because it moves them toward God. But it moves people like me AWAY from God and INTO greater Self-Contempt.
In the graphic below, the traditional Act of Contrition prayer is on the right. I was taught this prayer when I was seven years old. Saying it always aggravated my unholy sense of shame, moving me farther away from God and the peace I craved. Once I had the Map to guide me, I was able to write the Act of Contrition that’s on the left. Saying this prayer moved me to the right … toward God. Saying it made me feel some of the first spiritual peace I’d ever experienced.
polination.blog 
Whoa. 😀
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This.
Amen, amen, amen!
I am just figuring out some of this for myself– I’ve encountered much the same problem, especially when trying to read the writings of many saints. I’m sure they were written for proper Divas that needed a swift smack to the back of the head (Gibbs-style, yanno), but when the Self-Doubt and Chastisement beasties are already gnawing on your ankles, these writings can be like steroid injections to them.
And, not to speak ill of her, but this was a major reason I had to stop reading Ann Barnhardt’s writings (as well as the writings of many other “conservative” Catholics)– it was making the beasties so strong that I was ending up paralyzed with the constant self-recrimination.
But then I started this program (which I am currently a whole week behind on, :P) to get me through the Bible in one year. Early on, I got to the point in Genesis where Adam and Eve are expelled from Eden. . . and it was nothing like how I remembered. I remembered the story as being full of anger and storm and wailing and the whole big stormy thing, like how the Romantic-Era artists painted it, and the authors of so many sermons about the Wrath of God.
But that’s not what I read. When I read it, God didn’t come across as angry. Maybe disappointed, a little sad, a little frustrated, and vexed with the serpent. . but when, after Adam and Eve have finally confessed to eating the fruit, it doesn’t seem to me like He’s dishing out punishments– more like, he’s outlining consequences of their choice. Like, “Okay, because this is the road you’ve chosen, here’s what you now have to go through.” And then, as they’re being shown the door (Because Eden is rather static, and Learning can only take place outside of Eden, where we must learn to deal with decay and hardship), He stops, kills some animals, skins them, and makes them clothing out of the animal skins, thereby teaching Adam and Eve to do the same. Because it’s cold and hard outside Eden, and He wanted to be sure that we could keep ourselves warm, and had sturdy clothes to protect our fragile skins.
This is hardly the picture of a Deity given over to Wrath, and it gives a whole different flavor to everything that follows. Most especially, the general standing of any given human in His eyes at any given time.
As Catholics (and this troubles many other denominations, too, not just ours), there’s almost a cultural pattern of exactly what you describe above, Chrissy. How many times have we read or heard about how very sinful we are, how very much each sin hurts Jesus, how personally offensive it is and how no amount of repentance will ever make things any better, because we’re so dumb that even if we examine our consciences and confess our sins, there’s a slew of sins we’re committing all the time that we’re not even aware of! Man oh man, this is a banquet for the beasties– Self-
Chastisement and Self-Doubt get so stuffed on this they gotta invite their brothers, Guilt-beast and Self-Loathing-Beast along to help out. And once these four are happily munching on your ankles, Cousin Despair is only a few minutes away.
And Despair is a killer.
When writing my novel, and sketching out ideas for this one society (the Space Ninjas, lol), there’s a scene I’m toying with, where Niut (Main Character 1) visits the cathedral in her hometown of Yamagakure, and brings her friend/sister/student Mara (Main Character 2) with her. Along the sides are small side altars dedicated to various saints revered by the shinobi of her clan, the left side dedicated to the kunoichi (word for Lady Ninja) saints they honor. Among the representations of Judith, Esther, The Blessed Mother, Catherine of Sienna, and others, is a statue of Therese of Lisieux. As I was first running through this scene, I noticed that the statue of St. Therese was different than the standard– she still had that great big bouquet of roses, but in this version, was only holding it in one arm. Her other hand was showing a butterfly with hurricanes painted on it’s wings.
This gave me pause, because it wasn’t the first time my imagining-things-out for the women of this society had included the image of a butterfly. When they attain a certain level of achievement, they earn the right to wear a certain insignia that features a butterfly, due to their relationship with, in simplest terms, might be called “Primordial Chaos”. But I hadn’t yet put this in terms of the spiritual life, which is what happens when The Little Flower holds such a thing. From this perspective, The Little Way becomes a sort of Chaos-Theory-Spirituality. The emphasis on not necessarily doing great and heroic things for Christ, but on small, everyday things with great love was profoundly revolutionary (still is, really). A lot of people still don’t get how utterly subversive this is to our established way of seeing and measuring such things. Because then, it’s not just the immediate and direct results of our efforts that result in Good Fruit– its also the fruit several steps removed, the ripples we send out into the system, the hurricanes we spin when we flutter our weak, delicate wings.
And this realization is what lets me slip loose of the hold of those terrible ankle-chewing beasties. If we’re sinners and there’s nothing we can do about it (true enough, as Grace is the one essential, our efforts useless without it), then dwelling upon that fact does not one any good, once accepted. All you can do is try your best to find the sin, confess it, let it go and move on, trusting in the merciful breeze of the Spirit to take you where you need to go, and every so often fluttering those wings, trusting that maybe somewhere, half a world and a thousand removes away, you may have catalyzed something really quite impressive.
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ZM, your comment is such a banquet! I also had that thing about feeling shame and aversion to saints and Mary also. I think that’s why I loved the 1989 movie, The Passion of Bernadette, so much. It depicted this super famous saint as kind of a sickly, useless goofball. I could really relate.
And wow … a butterfly with hurricanes on its wings is a POTENT image. It speaks to me more profoundly than the more common one of “ruling with an iron rod” that shows up in Scripture. Butterflies themselves are a great image of us. I’ve not been too crazy about them, cuz I dislike insects and they’re basically bugs in party dresses. But that in itself is a wonderful idea! Have you ever seen Illustra Media’s “Metamorphosis” documentary? They explain what happens inside the cocoon. I never thought about it. The caterpillar becomes SOUP. Talk about your spiritual metaphors!
My first morning prayer is to bind and rebuke all “demonic spirits, powers and forces of the air, earth, water, fire, satanic forces of nature and Hell itself away from everyone and everything and anyone and anything in my network.”
When I say the “air, earth, water, fire, satanic forces of nature and Hell itself” part, I always visualize a circle with air at 12, earth at 3, water at 6 and fire at 9, then I go into the center for forces of nature and it’s always a tornado spinning wildly, then I go down the eye of the tornado into Hell.
(FYI: Because demons are very legalistic, my spiritual director taught me to pray binding as if I was doing a legal contract. Hence, “everyone and everything and anyone and anything.” “Network” is a designated group of people, like Party of the First Part, that I established long ago and periodically refresh in a formal way. It includes all of my family, friends, business associates and enemies and all of their families, friends, business associates and enemies. Adding in “things” is to limit demonic power over stuff like heat, electricity, water, car, house, computers, internet connectivity, yada yada. My spiritual director taught me about binding enemies because they already are willing to sin against us, so they are easy tools for demons to use to get at us.)
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I’m generally not a fan of insects, although I love butterflies because they’re shiny, lol. Yay pretty colors!!! I’ve always gotten the “resurrection” metaphor with butterflies, but the Chaos-Theory symbolism being applied to the spiritual life is rather new and exciting for me.
. . .
Your spiritual director taught you bindings? And, um, what very much looks to be a form of warding?
. . .
I would pay inordinate amounts of money and coffee to access to such an adviser. Seriously.
So much of my self doubt comes from trying to talk to priests (and other trusted “authorities”) about such things, and they tell me quite firmly that lay people (and female lay people, especially, hmph!) shouldn’t be doing such dangerous things. Because of how I learned them. And why I learned them. (How else was I supposed to keep that multi-armed shadow-man-thing from suffocating me at night? I mean, really!) It’s the primary reason I refer to myself as a Bad Catholic, or a Catholic-with-a-Questionable-Past. Because of where and how I learned such things.
I know exactly what you’re talking about (although I place the elements in different positions) and it’s something I stopped doing because I was told I shouldn’t be and–
Aw, dangit! That’s when the self-doubt and chastisement beasties showed up and started chewing on my ankles!
sunova–! (Insert Dean Winchester irritated-face here)
Ok. Deep breath. Pinch the bridge of my nose. No head-desk at work. Or crying. Not at work.
Imma get back to you. I gotta go cool off. to be clear, I’m not vexed at you, or even myself. I am, however, really super vexed with people I trusted to advise me, that I tried to explain things to, that convinced me that I should try to be other than how God made me. . . and a little vexed with myself, for listening to them . . . even though, they are the people that I’m supposed to trust with those things . ..
Lemmee go work on my long post for you. *stomps off, eye twitching, growling about needing a cup of tea. . .*
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You will x-post here, right?!
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LOL … and THERE’S the link. 🙂
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And I’m much more calm now. the Mulan helped, I think. . .
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“the Mulan”?
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the vid I put in my post. Had to run it through to make sure it was the right one, yanno?
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Just got to it. Note to self: Read linkies before commenting or asking potential dim-witted questions.
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Just put a link in the other comment stream, but here’s another:
^_^
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ZM, I know what you mean about people who should help but end up making it harder.
I went to confession once with a priest who told me not to take it so seriously. Really? Sin? Damnation. Are you FREAKING KIDDING ME?! Another priest I tried told me God had no plan for my life. I was so depressed, I wanted to put a chunk of lead between my ears after that one. Instead I went STRAIGHT to another parish and quoted the first priest to a second priest, verbatim, and second priest was SHOCKED he’d said any of that, since it’s NOT Catholic doctrine.
I’m so grateful I got into the Charismatic movement very early on. THEY get it about demons. My instructors said I have authority by virtue of my Baptism over demonic influence in my own life and in the lives of my family members. So yeah, priests have more and broader authority, but the ones who know how to use it and are willing and brave enough are thin on the ground. I once had a demon manifest in the middle of confession and, although the priest actually did know what to do and did it, he was so freaked out about the incident that he refused to ever see me again. Oh yeah. THAT’s a big help.
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That’s been my experience, too. I knew a seminarian once who studied to become a priest specifically because he found most priests were terrible confessors and terrible spiritual advisors, so he wanted to focus on being a good one. Unfortunately, he was one of those who got called away to marriage, but that ended up being a good thing, too, of course.
Excellent account, Chrissy.
Keep looking, Zoph. You’ll be able to find one eventually who can really help. Like good doctors, priests willing to be brave warriors for Christ are few, I guess.
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🙂 yeah. . . I know. . . When I was on my Confirmation retreat, the priest there got it. We had a good talk. I liked him. So did a lot of others on that retreat. When we tried to send thank-you notes to his monestary (he was a Franciscan), no one had ever heard of him.
And there was a priest a few years ago who *got* me. But then he was transferred.
In defense of the other priests I know, I don’t think it’s a lack of courage, so much as a lack of knowledge or training. And unfortunately, while I prolly could school them on a few things, I haven’t the authority or credentials to do so. . .
In the meantime, I confess as well as I can, and then fuss at God a bit.
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I think a lot of it is straight up ignorance. Some of the guys (I’m still simmiering about) are very well educated, well trained, orthodox priests. (Others, not so much. That’s another problem). But the reality of the higher and lower realms constantly interfering with this one –in a way that is not predicable and therefore controllable –is something they really can’t handle. I know of one person who used to travel the length of the state to visit her spiritual director once a month, because they are so hard to find, and then so hard to find one that “fits” right.
I do undertand why priests are transferred on a regular basis (to help prevent the “cult of personality” that can grow around them, and this is a real danger)– it’s also why it’s hard for me to get to confession or talk to priests in any meaningful way. I have serious trust issues– not because of any sort of abuse, but because of all the unintentional frustrations caused by being someone that doesn’t do well with the “Standard approach”. By the time I get to a point that a priest and I have some basis of mutual understanding, he’s about to leave. In the past decade, I can think of one priest that I actually looked forward to going to Confession for, because he *got* metaphysical thinking, so it was easier for him to understand things I would say. I’m friends with a slew of priests, even on facebook, but there’s not a one that I feel I could chat about my life with. I’m too weird. They don’t tend to handle funny stories about the Archangel Raphael too well. . .
Even some that are aware of the (growing) problem out there with demon infestations still have a lot of bad intel. I can’t tell you how irritating it is to be listening to a talk by a priest, who’s explaining the reality of concious, intelligent evil, who then veers into “And that’s why you shouldn’t allow your kids to be exposed to Harry Potter, because it teaches them the occult.”
[As someone familiar with both, hearing this immediately voids any credibility of anything that guy might say, and I think a lot of other people find the same. They may not be as familiar with the latter as myself, but they dang well know Potter and know there’s nothing truly “occult” about the series.]
Due to the 1) lack of training in spiritual direction and coaching (because that’s what some of us need, is a coach and mentor who teaches us useful skills and is there for backup) and 2) bad info where there is learning availible . . . well, it’s no wonder there are so many quasi-catholics among the esotericists. They leave because of point one, and have a hard time coming back because of part two. I know that was part of my problem. Theres not a one who would believe, much less understand, that the whole time I was running after Jesus, just by a non-standard road.
It would just be the same accusations as when I genuinely wanted to know why women couldn’t be priests. (The other reason I had to “journey abroad”– to find that answer).
*sigh* sorry about the venting. I apparently have a lot of bottled up frustration, and your combox is convinient. . .
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Hey Chrissy,
Can I use some of these graphics in a post I’m wirting? I’ll link and credit, of course. . .
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Sure! I can email you the full set of files if you want. There is a lot more to the Road Map which I (of course) think is utterly fascinating. 🙂
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That would be awesome!!! oohhh, if I had a tail, it would be wagging, lol! 😀
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