Self-emptying Love

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Glorification lives from self-emptying love, but when self-realisation is weak, self-emptying may descend into psychotic disintegration.   Casualties of psychotic dislocation may occur in souls who by-pass psychological integration with unintegrated self-emptying, in which case spiritual integration must include psychological with spiritual realisation.  Elders normally stand back when Christ awakens in the heart, but there is no avoiding withdrawal of psychological projections in healthy spiritual development.  Difficulties arise when unhealthy dependence interferes with healthy self-emptying, causing psychotic confusion or schizophrenic division.  Then, wisdom re-lives old traumas to reintegrate energies caught up in past trauma into uncreated wholeness, working holy healing by transforming confusion into communion and division into indivisible union.

Wholesome self-emptying transfigures shattered fragmentation into differentiated communion, drawing appropriate psychological boundaries whilst transcending bounded bondage to compulsive fixations.  Discernment can be difficult but is essential in such circumstances, requiring affirmation of difference without division, communion without confusion.   Self-emptying in souls that are not yet well-grounded in self-formation can lead to self-disintegration, not spiritual realisation.  At the same time, spiritual realisation must not be reduced to psychologism, a mistake that is all too common in an age of relativism and nihilism.  Self-emptying is integral self-completion, not self-disintegration, but few there be that find the narrow way in an age of dissipating nihilism.

Self-emptying love overcomes self-obsessed fear by communicating communion without confusion, strengthening union without division.   Wholesome co-inherence balances mutual exchange with mutual differentiation, conjoining individuation with indivisible communion, whilst avoiding individualistic separation.  Elders stand back to let grace reveal the multiformity of wisdom in integral glorification, avoiding collusion whilst encouraging communion.  Wisdom discerns mysteries of glorification without regressing into fear, negotiating narrows between clashing rocks without disastrous wreckage.  Self-emptying compassion suffers with Christ in his Holy Passion without descending into worldly passions, revealing the narrow way of loving wisdom.  Love empties the self of its self-centred selfishness, revealing glory to wisdom by unveiling the glory of grace, embracing kenotic self-emptying with healthy communion.