13 Who Governs Me?
Darnell was wrestling with himself again, as he often did. Darnell had come to see that he had two personalities in conflict with one another. The uncivilized one urged Darnell to do as he pleased, to indulge his appetites. The civil one, though, constantly opposed Darnell’s instinctual hungers, warning him against the consequences of their pure pursuit. Sometimes, Darnell would listen to one side, while other times he would listen to the other side. Yet on other occasions, Darnell would struggle to decide what to do, as the two sides warred within him. But then the thought occurred to Darnell that perhaps the struggle wasn’t so much within him as outside of him. Maybe, Darnell had to choose which of his two sides was more authoritative in the larger cosmic structure.
Governance
The question of helping oneself should not be an entirely interior question. The possibility exists that we owe an allegiance, and perhaps much more, to something or someone outside of ourselves. To get ourselves right, we may need to acknowledge the universe’s superior authority, while stopping our support for the rebel cause. Our standard for fullness, completeness, and resonance may further involve recognizing a universal hierarchy and committing to an aligned interior priority. We may not, in short, rule ourselves. We may need instead to accept the rule and governance of another. If our mind, soul, and spirit are to be anything other than ungovernable, perhaps we need to identify and adhere to an external governor. In this self-constructed, post-modern world, you may shudder at the thought of submitting to anything other than yourself. But authority is inherent in all rationality, in consciousness itself, which you may need to admit in order to arrive at your adequately aware, sound, and complete soul.
Authority
To the extent that psychology and spirituality diverge to any significant degree in their understanding of the mind, spirit, and soul, their difference may be around the subject of the rule or governance of the soul. Psychology’s practitioners may not generally acknowledge an exterior ruler of the soul. To the extent that they perceive an internal authority, they may instead grant that authority to the unconscious, the superego, or simply to the brain, reason, and will. Psychologists may see a clear need to mediate and control human urges but afford that authority to the conscience, parental archetypes, or social behavioral controls. Spiritual counselors would generally be more frank in saying that authority has an author, the transcendent creator who gifted us consciousness. Whatever characterization you choose, accountability must come from somewhere. The soul must have a ruler. And affording its creator that right seems highly appropriate, clearly logical, especially when he explicitly invokes that right.
Attributes
No matter how you conceive of the soul’s ruler or conscience, that authority should have sensible attributes to which we can respond. To submit to authority, we must know the authority’s requirements. Better than knowing the authority’s many rules, we should know the authority’s character from which to derive our obligations. Rules require not only remembering them but also their context, application, and interpretation. Knowing the authority’s character or attributes helps us both generate and apply the rules. Indeed, we may then live instead with the authority’s character in our conscience and heart, without even having to know the rules. This ruler of the soul should be reliable, for that is what the soul seeks in authority, someone to whom to submit the will. The soul’s ruler should also be rational, someone whom we can understand and to a reliable degree predict based on consistent principles, natural reason, and plain logic. The soul’s ruler should also be sensitive to the human condition, even compassionate if not also sympathetic, perhaps even having suffered as we suffer. And the soul’s ruler should also be both fully just and entirely merciful, which seems an impossibility until realizing that we have seen it done.
Revelation
We have plenty of examples of moral codes to govern the soul. Draw from them deeply and often. But the psyche, spirit, and soul need more than guides and rules. For wholeness, we need to know and reflect the author of those guides and rules. Extraordinarily, we have only one example of a fully authoritative governor and guide to the soul who speaks to us from our heart, has experienced everything we experience, and brings both justice and mercy to the soul. That authority is of course the transcendent creator, the author of our consciousness and rationality while also a priest, counselor, and king. Who better to accept as an authority on how to rescue our psyche than the one who gave us its life, awareness, and conscience? The creator knows the creation. That we can turn to the creator to rescue and restore our soul is not just a most-unusual but also a wholly unique offer. We have only one creator, and he has made himself available as our authority, governor, and guide. Embrace that opportunity to heal your soul.
Treatise
How extraordinary it is that we have such a magnificent revelation of our governor’s love for us and such clear guidance for our souls. The scriptures revealing our governor and guide are humankind’s psychological and spiritual treatise, set in history’s grand arc. That psychological and spiritual manual teaches lesson upon lesson. It does so both in the abstract and in settings sufficiently varied and numerous that we have no excuse for how to understand and interpret them. And the scriptures’ morals, principles, and lessons all connect to the transcendent creator and his plan and purpose for humankind. To ignore that revelation when seeking salve for the psyche and balm for the soul is to cast aside the greatest possible psychological aid and spiritual tool. Indeed, the revelation offers a remedy so profound as to rescue from death all who embrace it, no matter the broken condition of their psyche, spirit, or soul. Indeed, brokenness is itself the precondition to its genuine and effective embrace. Turn in confidence to the revelation.
Rule
The rescue of our psyche, spirit, and soul depends on accepting the transcendent creator’s rule. You don’t receive the benefit without acknowledging its authority. That condition of agreement and even of submission is not unique or unusual to the transcendent creator’s offer. The transcendent creator is not tyrannical in demand but instead offers rescue as a gift to voluntarily accept. We must likewise consent, and to a degree submit, to any therapeutic or corrective regimen if it is to do its work. Yet the consequences of rejecting the creator’s offer are more significant than rejecting a counselor’s advice. You cannot have the creator’s new heart, mind, spirit, and soul without consenting to the transplant. Tweaks don’t work for transformation. The greater the offer, not just for a little self-improvement but for a new heart, the greater the submission that its acceptance requires. Advice taken with a grain of salt may give your soul and psyche a boost. But for soul transformation, you must relinquish all reservations, embrace the offer as authoritative, and submit with gratitude.
Proof
We must first, though, believe that the transcendent creator exists. We don’t generally require proof of the existence and value of moral codes and psychological advice. Their existence is obvious and their value is clear enough. We also treat moral codes and spiritual advice as something to which to listen if we so choose, not as transformational events. Perhaps that’s why we tend to demand greater proof of the transcendent creator’s authority, indeed his existence and not just his stance. His invitation for a transformation of the psyche and soul requires a deeper conviction and greater submission. We have more to give up, even if more to get. And so we demand more proof that we are not just following our imagination. The proof is in the historical record, the fulfillment of the predictions of that record, and the revelation’s millennia-long impact. Human history, psychology, and society all changed with the revelation’s fulfillment. To have that opportunity at psychological and spiritual transformation offers the most profound of all possible resources.
Obedience
Obedience to authority isn’t the way one usually thinks of approaching the subject of psychological and spiritual recovery. After all, the authorities with which we are familiar, whether parents, teachers, supervisors, or various experts, even psychologists and priests, are fallible. Obedience to the transcendent creator risks none of that fallibility in comparison. Obedience to the transcendent creator is in that sense more like obedience to a pure, personified ideal or principle, which would seem exactly the solution to set a soul or psyche straight. Our problem with obedience is subjugating ourselves to another, when we feel at least equal to others, if not superior out of our own self-preference. But when our submission is instead to the embodied ideal, we should not face the same problem we face when lowering ourselves below others. We know that we are not the ideal. We are already short of the ideal’s standards. Submitting to and obeying the ultimate embodied ideal should be instant, easy, and obvious. The struggle to do so isn’t in the rationale but instead with our controlling ego and self-seeking will.
Patterns
If accepting the authority and rule of our transcendent creator is too much to contemplate, then consider instead conforming to the patterns the creator’s edicts leave. To conform to the dictates of love and care, truth and justice, mercy and forgiveness, fairness and equity, prudence and stewardship, fortitude and temperance, and holiness and purity is to follow the patterns the transcendent creator weaves into creation out of his very own attributes. Obedience to those patterns heals the psyche, spirit, and soul. If kneeling before your maker in submission is more than your ego and will can stand, then submit to your maker’s principles, one step removed from his person. Your heart might not receive him, but your mind will entertain his desires nonetheless as it traces his patterns into your soul. In time, you may find that the barrier you have erected between the transcendent creator and his attributes has dissolved so that you can receive him along with his desires for you, revealed in his principles and patterns.
Sacrifice
While love is the transcendent creator’s primary attribute, out of which all his other attributes flow, love’s primary expression is in sacrifice. Sacrifice remade the world, restoring to it the transcendent Spirit for whom the creator intended it. While the transcendent creator’s patterns are restorative, the creator’s sacrifice is what most rescues the psyche, spirit, and soul. Through sacrifice, the creator was able to pour his consciousness back into us, recovering us as his very own. When he gave himself fully over to us, expressly for us to do him the dishonor that our arrogance so much wished, he at once proved himself our perfect superior and perfect rescuer. His gift to us cost him the life of his Son, but only momentarily, because his Son’s willingness to die at our hands ensured that the Father would resurrect him. Through that sacrifice, we, too, have victory over our death.
Reflection
Do you have a sense of your need for authority, for something to which or someone to whom to submit? Do you believe that your psyche, spirit, and soul need a governor, someone or something to keep them in line? Do you already recognize authority over your self, spirit, or soul? Are morals, duties, and principles authoritative to you or instead merely advisory? Do you acknowledge allegiance to the holy and divine? Do you fall under the rule of the transcendent creator? Would anyone or anything serve us better than to acknowledge our creator’s rule? How familiar are you with the transcendent creator’s revelation? Have you ever thought of the holy scriptures as a psychological treatise? What risks do you face from submitting to your creator’s beneficent rule? Would you rather pledge allegiance to an earthly ruler or the divine ruler of all? Do you already follow the transcendent creator’s patterns and principles for the world? What more could the creator have done for you to convince you of the beneficence of the creator’s rule than to sacrifice himself for you, to offer you victory over death?
Key Points
The soul requires a ruler or governor, whether internal or external.
Authority inheres in reason, without which we could not be conscious.
The authority on which the soul relies must have positive attributes.
The governor of our soul should know our soul and experiences.
The scriptures reveal the transcendent creator as ruler of the soul.
For authority to be effective, we must accept it as ruling the soul.
The revelation has the most reliable possible record of authority.
Obedience to the transcendent creator risks nothing of consequence.
Follow the transcendent creator’s patterns for recovery if you prefer.
The creator’s sacrifice is what above all rescues the spirit and soul.