If we, as humans, are children of God, how can we think, say, and do terrible things? This is a very good question, and one that philosophers and religious people have been wrestling with for thousands of years. This past summer I read John Hick’s excellent book, "The Fifth Dimension" (2004), that “deftly weaves together a case for the existence of a bigger, more complex picture of reality in which a fifth -- spiritual dimension – plays a central role” (book cover). Within that book, he introduced me to the philosophical term “privation”, a term that I had never heard before. This term was used by St. Augustine, a prominent Christian theologian and philosopher of the 5th century, to explain the origin of evil, how evil could arise in a world created by God. This concept of privation captured for me a fresh way to understand the fallen nature of humanity, and explained how we, as humans created in God’s image, can do such terrible things. Let me explain. Evil has always been a major theological issue for God-based or theistic religions. How can a God, who is understood as unconditionally loving and good, create a world in which evil exist? St. Augustine rejected the notion that evil existed independently, that is, something that God created. Rather, he proposed that the reality of evil is the privation of good, or a corruption of humanity's Divine nature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_theodicy). To help you understand what privation means, let me provide an image. Two essential qualities of the Earth’s sun are light and heat. Our sun is constantly providing light and heat to our planet. However, what happens when clouds appear in the sky and block this light and heat from affecting our world? The brightness of light and level of heat that get to the earth’s surface lessens and we experience dullness and coolness. And if the sun’s rays are completely blocked, like what happens each night, we experience darkness and coldness. The experience of darkness and coldness arise on Earth from the privation of the sun’s light and heat. This is how St. Augustine understood the reality of evil arises within humanity. He saw evil as the privation of God’s goodness, that is, evil arises when the goodness within humanity’s Divine nature becomes block or “corrupted”. “Both moral and natural evil occurs, Augustine argued, owing to an evil use of free will” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_theodicy). “He believed that this evil will, present in the human soul, was a corruption of the will given to humans by God making suffering a just punishment for the sin of humans” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_theodicy). However, this privation theory of evil by St. Augustine’s never gained prominence within Christian theology. I suspect today most Christians, even pastors, have never heard of this theory of evil. I don’t remember it being part of my theological training. However, when I encountered Augustine’s theory of privation in John Hick’s book, who is not a supporter of this theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_theodicy), it struck a chord with me, although I would frame it differently. Rather than evil arising from the privation of God’s goodness, I see bad actions arising from the privation of God’s Divine nature that exists within all humans. Privation, understood in this way, explains the existence of evil and fallen human nature quite well. The reason this concept of privation spoke deeply to me is because it echoes of the Theory of Holes as understood within the Diamond Approach, a sacred psychology developed by A. H. Almaas. The Diamond Approach has spiritual work schools throughout the world, one of them based in Toronto that I have been a member of since its inception in 2006. I have been working with the Theory of Holes for years now, both within my personal work but also in my spiritual direction and counselling ministry. Let me summarize the Theory of Holes for it illustrates quite well how the process of privation works. The Theory of Holes A hole within the Diamond Approach “is nothing but the absence of a certain part of our essence. It could be the loss of love, loss of value, loss of capacity for contact, loss of strength, any of the qualities of Essence” (https://www.diamondapproach.org/public-page/theory-holes). For example, “when you are cut off from your value, the actual experience is a sense that there is a hole inside that feels empty. You feel a sense of deficiency, a sense of inferiority,” a sense of lack of value, worthlessness, the opposite to your experience of essential value (www.diamondapproach.org/public-page/theory-holes). Since this loss of value is hard to live with, “you want to fill this hole with value from the outside. You may try to use approval, praise, whatever. You try to fill the hole with acquired value" (https://www.diamondapproach.org/ public-page/theory-holes). Many times, we get holes filled through our relationship with others. For example, “you may feel valued because this person appreciates you. You don’t know consciously that you’re filling the hole with their appreciation. But when you are with that person, you feel valuable, and unconsciously you feel the other person is responsible for your value. Whatever this person is giving you feels like a part of you; it is part of the fullness that you experience. Except that the value you now feel is dependent on the presence of the other person” (https://www. diamondapproach.org/ public-page/theory-holes). However, at the unconscious level, the unconscious part of your soul “does not see as separate that part of the person that makes you feel valuable; you see it as part of you. When the person dies or the relationship ends, you don’t feel that you’re losing that person; you feel you’re losing whatever is filling the hole. You experience the loss of a part of yourself. It feels like you’re being cut and something is being taken out of you. You may feel as if you lost your heart, your security, your strength, your will—whatever the person fulfilled for you. When you lose a person close to you, you feel whatever hole that person has filled” (https://www. diamondapproach.org/ public-page/theory-holes). The pain associated with losing whatever is filling our holes is very painful, so painful that we do whatever is necessary to avoid this pain or take away this pain. These coping behaviors are no longer driven by our essential nature but by our egoic structured nature that has developed within our soul to help us cope with the pain from the holes in our Divine nature. Now you can begin to see how evil or immoral behavior can arise from us, as humans, who all have a Divine nature. We do evil as a way to cope with or avoid the pain and suffering due to holes in our soul. Almaas notes that “these holes originated during childhood, partly as a result of traumatic experiences or conflicts with the environment. Perhaps your parents did not value you. They didn’t treat you as if your wishes or presence were important, or act in ways that let you know that you mattered. They ignored your essential value. Because your value was not seen or acknowledged, you got cut off from that part of you; what was left was a hole” (https: //www. diamondapproach.org/public-page/theory-holes). One could say that each hole, caused by the egoic structures from our childhood, is an example of the privation process. Each hole prevents us from experiencing fully a certain aspect of our human Divine nature. Instead, because of that hole, we experience the lack of that Divine quality usually felt as a deficiency or the opposite of the original essential aspect. To help you comprehend more fully how this is true, I plan to explore how the dynamics of privation affect some key elements of human Divine nature, namely compassion, strength, truth, and will. The Privation of Divine Compassion As I indicated in my last blog, the experience of Divine Compassion naturally happens in response to the experience of pain and suffering. As a child, we are quite sensitive to pain, both the pain of others and our own. It does not take much pain to cause a child to tear up, a sign of Divine compassion arises. As we, adults, hold the physical and emotional pain of others or ourselves, we sense this Divine Compassion emerging as our soul softens, becomes more vulnerable and feels tenderness and caring. Tears may also appear. However, if our childhood holding environment didn’t hold our tears well, then the process of privation would start occurring around the quality of Divine compassion. Maybe we were scolded for crying as a child. Maybe we were told, “big boys don’t cry.” Maybe there was no one available to hold and respond to our tears and so we learned that it was pointless to cry. If this was the case, then we developed beliefs and coping patterns that would keep us from crying, softening, and becoming vulnerable. Over time, we would slowly lose full access to our compassionate Divine nature, and a hole would exist to some extent where Divine compassion would naturally surface. Not able to access our own Divine compassion, two dynamics often happen. One is that we often become dependent on others to provide us the compassion we can’t feel ourselves. We marry a very caring spouse or surround ourselves with compassionate friends. With this dependency in place, you can imagine the reactive behaviors that occur when our compassionate caregivers disappear due to death or relationship break-ups. Two, the opposite experience of compassion could begin to surface in us when we see someone in pain. Instead of being sensitive to the suffering of others, we become indifferent, critical, and judgemental toward them. We tend to downplay and ignore downtrodden people rather than allow ourselves to feel their pain. The Privation of Divine Strength Divine strength, like Divine compassion, also happens naturally except in this case it occurs when we see injustice or unfairness happening, or when truth is dismissed or not heard which is usually at the root of injustice and unfairness. This Divine strength first appears as the experience of anger. As we stay present to our anger, we soon see how our anger transforms into a Divine strength that causes us to speak our truth or the “truth” and act in ways that protect ourselves or others who are being be hurt by injustices. However, very few of us had caregivers in our childhood environment that held our anger well. Instead, as children, we were often scolded by angry parents for our inappropriate anger, sometimes excessively. As a result, most of us develop unhealthy beliefs and coping patterns around our anger, and again these ego structures formed in opposite unhelpful directions. For some of us, because of our fear of anger, these ego structures block the flow of anger and Divine strength in our lives and we struggle a lot with the opposite of strength, namely weakness. Every time, we find ourselves dismissed or treated unjustly, instead of feeling Divine strength arise, we unconsciously bury this anger and experience profound weakness and thus find ourselves unable to confront the bad things that are happening to us. Because of our struggle with weakness, we may seek out friends who are more in touch with their anger and Divine strength and thus protect us. For others, we saw how rage can be quite powerful through dominating others. So we came to believe that rage was a powerful weapon to use, especially when we felt wronged or hurt in some way. However, this rage often broke relationships or got us in trouble. Furthermore, and unexpectedly, we found ourselves struggling with weakness for we found ourselves often unable to control our anger. The Privation of Divine Truth Divine truth arises as we learn to listen to our mind, heart, gut and body in the Present Moment. Now, as children, we were sensitive to the different thoughts in our minds, feelings in our heart, and sensations in our gut and body. At first, we didn't have words or understanding for all of our experiences. This is a key purpose of healthy parenting, to help children find language so they can begin to understand their experience in the Present Moment, their thoughts, feelings, and sensations in their body and soul. This is the process of helping people develop their sense of Divine truth, that sense of knowingness around what is true for them. However, by the time we become adults, we struggle in knowing how to discern Divine truth. We have many holes or places of privaton around Truth. There are many reasons for our inability to discern Truth. One involves how truth has been reduced to knowledge within our Western culture, knowledge that we learn from others about the world and how it works. By seeing truth as knowledge, we learn to gather tons of knowledge from the Internet, books, education, and others, but how do we apply this knowledge, sometimes conflicting knowledge, to our own lives? By always looking outside ourselves for Truth causes us to disconnect from our inner Divine truth. This deeper truth is something that we can only discern through listening to our heart, body, and soul. Another factor that forms this hole around Truth involves parents having a hard time being truthful to their children. We tend to protect our children from hearing bad news or suffering, and yet children, due to their sensitive nature, are often more in touch with the Truth than their parents. How does a child make sense of a parent's comment that "everything is fine" when they sense their parent is sad or anger or anxious or depressed? No wonder then that when we become adults we struggle with self doubt and don't trust the experiences of our soul. It is even more confusing now since our Western culture itself is struggling with the privation of Divine truth. It seems that lying and false truths have become so epidemic that our heart and soul find it extremely hard to discern what Divine truth truly is. A further example of this privation around truth involves the opposite of self doubt, namely certainty. When people think they possess the truth, that is, they have “certainty” around what is true in a particular area in their life, they stop listening to Divine truth. They believe Divine truth is static, unchanging, when in reality Divine truth is always unfolding in the Present Moment within every aspect of their life experience. True, many times Divine truth maybe unfolding in the same way over and over again, but because our experience of Reality is always changing, it is essential that we discern Divine truth in each and every moment. The Privation of Divine Will Let me explore one final aspect of God’s character, namely God’s will or Divine will. St. Augustine saw privation of God’s goodness caused by humans using their “free will” in evil ways. As we have seen through looking at different forms of privations, the reason these ego structures form in our soul in our childhood has little to do with human free will. Most of these coping patterns were the best behaviors available for our child’s soul to use when dealing with the discomfort, fear, hurt, and pain from our childhood. However, there is truth in what St. Augustine concluded, that evil arises from humans exercising their “free will” in immoral ways. To perceive this truth, we have to understand the privation of Divine will. St. Augustine had it right, the essential nature of Divine will is “free will.” When we are living from the place of pure Divine will, we are living from a place of freedom, free of any compulsions, addictions, impulsions, or structures of our human will. This free will is that state that all of us found ourselves living from as young children. With each experience of the Presence Moment, we, as children, followed the natural flow of our curiosity, feelings, and life which were shaped by the opportunities and limitations of our childhood environment. Part of our experience of Divine will includes our desires, determination, steadfastness, and confidence that naturally arise as we confront both positive and negative aspects in life. Children simply surrender to the flow of what is happening in their life. However, by the time we enter our adult years, many of us struggle with the privation of Divine will. Rather than having “free will”, many of us find our willpower highjacked by different beliefs, coping patterns, and compulsions/impulsions as we seek to negotiate both positive and negative aspects of life. We struggle with loss of control and feelings of hopelessness. For others, instead of surrendering to the flow of our experience of life, like we did as children, we find ourselves seeking to control our life at every turn, through seeking pleasure and avoiding suffering. It is this fallen human will, what Augustine labels as the “evil use of free will”, that causes both moral and natural evil. However, I am hoping you are seeing by now that sinful and evil behaviours are not due to just the privation of Divine will. Sin and evil can arise from the privation of any of the aspects of Divine nature found within humanity. In the chart below is a summary of how the process of privation affects the many different aspects of Divine nature within humans. Seen in this way, you can begin to see how privation is a major dynamic behind human sin and evil. (Please note that sinful and evil actions don't arise when we get our essential needs met through merging with others to experience what is missing in our lives due to the process of privation. Rather, the risk of sin/evil arise when this merge breaks with the person we are merged with due to death or broken relationship and we find ourselves feeling intensely the pain of our exposed hole.) Conclusion
In the previous blog, I showed how each person is a child of God, that each of us possesses God’s Divine nature within our soul. In this blog, I sought to explain how humans created in God’s image can do such terrible things. The answer I propose to this complex question is the reality of privation. As we, as humans, lose contact with the different aspects of our Divine nature, we experience much suffering due to the lack of these God-like qualities affecting our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. As a result, we are tempted to commit many sinful and evil acts to cope with our suffering despite deep down still having a Divine nature. Questions to Ponder
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