IIC 158: Who is Your Inmost Self?

Dr. Peter: [00:00:01] Who is your innermost self? That’s the question we’re going to be addressing today in episode 158 of Interior Integration for Catholics. Who is your innermost self? We’re going to get acquainted with who that is. And I am so excited today because I have two of my favorite people in the world to be able to spend time with, two of my friends who are also well-versed in parts and systems thinking. And I am so excited to be able to introduce you to them today. You have seen them before at various points on this podcast, but never together and never discussing this critical issue that goes to the core of our being who is our innermost self. So first, I am so excited to have as my co-host today, Peter Martin. And Dr. Martin is a licensed psychologist in the state of Nebraska. He’s the internship director of integrated training and formation at Immaculate Heart of Mary Counseling Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. He has served on the executive board of the Catholic Psychotherapy Association. He has also served on the executive board of Witness to Love Marriage Preparation Renewal Ministry, and he has helped them to develop their virtues-based and attachment-focused workbook and curriculum. Dr. Martin’s areas of interest include supervising therapists in faith integrated and trauma informed treatments of psychological disorders. He likes marital therapy, forgiveness therapy. He likes to work with implicit God image problems, and doing that in a way that’s informed by attachment theory. He and his wife, Larissa, have three rambunctious little ones. His family owns a 13-acre homestead where they raise chickens, turkeys, guineas, six Dexter cattle, two dogs, and an Arabian horse named Lucy. And as a fun fact, we’ve mentioned this before. Peter Martin and I did our Level 1 training together several years ago. That was back in 2018. So such a great time to be with you together. I am so glad to have you on as my co-host, Dr. Peter.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:02:17] Peter, it’s an honor to be back. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Peter: [00:02:20] And many of you will remember that Peter Martin and I did episodes 154 and 155 together, and also 156, right? We had three episodes where we were really focusing on attachment, on love, on being able to connect with God. And so we’re starting to bring that in to the inner system, to this innermost self. It’s absolutely key to get that innermost self involved. We’ll find out more about that. And I am so happy to have as a guest, Dr. Gerry Crete. He’s a licensed marriage and family therapist in Atlanta, Georgia. He’s the former president of the Catholic Psychotherapy Association. He’s been adjunct faculty at different universities. I can’t count them all. He’s the founder and owner of Transfiguration Counseling, and he and I co-founded Souls and Hearts in 2019. It’s been going strong for more than five years now. He’s the author of the Litanies of the Heart prayers from Souls and Hearts, The Litany of the Closed Heart, the Litany of the Fearful Heart, the Litany of the Wounded Heart. Those are all attachment-based prayers that so many people, I’ve heard this from so many people about how helpful those have been.

Dr. Peter: [00:03:28] And then he’s the author of the book Litanies of the Heart, published earlier this year by Sophia Press. Now, I just want to briefly give you my endorsement of that book. I say, “No other book is better suited to help Catholics understand and embrace the good in internal family systems and other parts and systems based approaches through clinical vignettes, psychological and biblical studies, reflection questions, experiential exercises, and meditations. Dr. Gerry makes parts work come alive for Catholics who seek interior integration as a prerequisite for loving God, neighbor, and themselves more deeply and in a more ordered way.” He is married to his dear bride Casie for more than 35 years. They have three children, all successfully launched and grown, and he has done as much as anybody in this field about harmonizing ideas from internal family systems and other parts and systems of approaches, and harmonizing those with an authentic Catholic understanding of the human person. And so, without any further ado, I want to welcome you, Dr. Gerry. It is so good to have you back with us today.

Dr. Gerry: [00:04:33] Great to be here and love this topic. Can’t wait to do it.

Dr. Peter: [00:04:37] Well, there are no two people — when I was thinking about this sequence, there are no two people I would rather bring together for a conversation about the innermost self. I know sometimes, Gerry, you call it the inner self, right? Or the inmost self. I tend to call it the innermost self. We’re going to going to be using that language interchangeably, but let’s just get right into it. Like what what do we need to know? What do we need to know about the innermost self?

Dr. Gerry: [00:05:02] Well, the reason I say inmost self, and innermost self is just perfectly fine as well, but is literally from Saint Paul. In most translations, from Romans 7, is “I delight in the law of God in my inmost self.” And that was one of the key verses to kind of start with. And it intrigued me to understand, well, what does Saint Paul actually mean by that? You know, what is the inmost self and why would it have the law of God in it? Because that sounds kind of harsh a little bit to me. In my mind, law of God sounds a little like Ten Commandments, Moses. And yet the law of God is a law of love, and the law of God is one of wholeness and integration and union, ultimately. And so I think what Saint Paul is talking about there is our deepest spiritual center where God connects with us. So we’ll unpack this quite a bit, but the notion that the inmost self most reflects who we are as a person created by God, but also most reflects the image of God. And is that intersection kind of place between the Holy Spirit, if you will, or Christ’s presence, God’s presence, the Trinity’s presence within us, and how the graces of faith, hope, and love are mediated into the whole self system. And there’s a lot to unpack there, and I know we’ll get into it, but that’s how I see this inmost self. And so it’s this powerful spiritual center. And so we’ll talk a little bit about how do we even connect with that or what do we know about that and how it relates to parts.

Dr. Peter: [00:06:46] So you’re taking this right back to Scripture, right back to Saint Paul. Right back to what he tells us about the inmost self. And I’m hearing the thing you were saying about the law, but also like the law is a gift, right? So there’s this idea that the inmost self is a gift to us.

Dr. Gerry: [00:07:03] Well, yeah, it is. And maybe I could just link it a little bit with Romans 7:23, because that comes right after the part about my inmost self. He says, “I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind.” And that word is nous in the translation. “Making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” So there’s this sort of a distinction between, in the prior verse, the inmost self which has the law of God, and our members, which may have some other law, which I would end up looking at as a burden or sin or what have you. But that there’s this little conflict within us.

Dr. Peter: [00:07:46] What’s coming to you, Dr. Peter Martin? I’m curious about what’s rolling around in your thoughts right now as we discuss this.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:07:53] No, I really appreciate Gerry’s description. I like how it’s scripture-based. I like how he’s using the language of scripture to describe what the self is, you know, let’s say from a Christian standpoint. One of the questions I had is you have so many different terms that are used in Scripture or used in the tradition, let’s say. Some more used in Eastern Catholic kind of schools of thought, some more Western. And I wanted to kind of explore that a little bit, just to look at things like the nous, for instance, which is not a rope that you tie around your neck. That’s actually a Greek term for something else. But yeah, I was hoping to kind of explore that a bit, just so the listeners can kind of grasp the way that it’s been used over the course of the history, but in different kind of lungs of the church.

Dr. Gerry: [00:08:39] Yeah, I get excited about talking about that. Basically, it’s tricky, right? Because we have a description of something in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Scriptures and language that’s used there. We have New Testament language. We have early church Greek kind of language, and then we’ve got later Latin language. And so we’ve got different words being used for sometimes the same thing, but with different nuances and different time periods. So it really is a tricky thing. And when I was writing Litanies of the Heart, I spent a lot of time figuring out, okay, what do they mean here? What do they mean there? How is this different? How is this the same? And so on. And here’s some of my thoughts. One is, is this concept of the heart. And another one is just the soul. And then what is meant by nous. And so those are three tricky terms a little bit because sometimes like a word like “soul” would be used to describe the entire person. Like ten souls were lost at sea, right? And they’re just meaning the whole person. And sometimes when they say soul, they’re talking about something kind of platonic, some sort of like, spirit or something. And other times they’re talking about something deeper kind of within. And the same with heart, like sometimes in the Old Testament, there’s this sense of like the heart being the sort of deepest center of the person is the heart.

Dr. Gerry: [00:09:56] And you also get this notion of the nous. And so in Greek philosophy, for example, the nous connotes more the mind, right, and knowing. And that’s where you even get the word “knowing”. We get the word “noetic”. We get the sense of the nous is knowledge. The word “knowledge” even originates from this word nous. But in the Fathers, in the Church Fathers, the Greek ones, at least, it begins to connote more than that. It begins to connote or mean a knowing of the heart, a deeper knowing, not just knowledge or information. No, not that, but a deeper knowing of something spiritual. And so that word used by the church ends up being something that I think best describes that inmost self that Saint Paul is talking about. And then the Eastern Christian tradition, the idea that this nous, this deep spiritual center, this knowing of the heart can be darkened. This notion that it can be obscured and that through like original sin or what have you, they might say ancestral sin, but this nous is darkened. And so there’s a lack of access to God’s grace. And that as the soul is illuminated, as the soul, as the nous is illuminated or lit up or opened up, then there’s this access to grace. There’s this access to God’s light, if you will. And there’s something powerful about that, about suddenly seeing and connecting with God at our deepest center.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:11:28] You know, to follow up on that, Gerry, that’s a great response. I valued the way you described it throughout the tradition. When you use the term knowing of the heart or the heart knows or the nous knows, sometimes people might consider knowledge as simply like this intellectual thing, you know? So it’s kind of this dry, detached, intellectual understanding of something, something like Spock might understand, right? But when you get into biblical accounts, there will be statements that, you know, Adam knew Eve, and then all of a sudden, a child appears, you know, so there’s something very intimate about this kind of knowledge that you’re describing that’s much more than just kind of an intellectual curiosity or pure reason, for instance. Can you say a little bit more about that?

Dr. Gerry: [00:12:12] Yeah. I mean, my first thought when you just said that was the Shakespearean knowing, right? Like, I think that implies sexual activity in the sense of Adam knowing Eve. But I think there’s a deep knowing, a deep spiritual knowing of the person that goes beyond that. You know, you just did make me think of something as well. I mean, I’m going to jump around a little bit in history here. And this isn’t in Litanies of the Heart. So this is something I’ve been reading recently. So it’s like newer information, but it’s, you know, over 800 years old. Yeah, but would be, interestingly enough, the tradition in the medieval period with the Victorians like Hugh of Saint Victor and some of these mystics from the, I don’t know if it was like 12th century, 13th century. And there’s a sort of a tradition, and they talked about the soul having three eyes, which I thought was like a fascinating kind of concept. And that the first eye of the soul was able to understand sensible things like, you know, understand and connect with the sensible world, the material world. The second eye, as they called it, was able to know the interior world, like know oneself. But the third eye was able to contemplate God. I thought that was like a beautiful way of kind of expressing it.

Dr. Gerry: [00:13:27] And that due to sin, right, we may have lost access to that third eye. To to me, that’s a very similar concept to what I was talking about before, about the nous being darkened. And so that we kind of lose access to some aspect of our deeper spiritual center. Yeah, and that was Victorians, as they’re called, and it’s part of the Cistercian tradition, this concept of these three eyes. And so once you are enlightened, if you will, and you gain this faculty, they would call it like a faculty of the soul that is able to contemplate. And that takes us into this whole tradition of the church of the contemplative tradition. And I think that when we look at the whole tradition of our church and the contemplative tradition, that we see it over and over again, and whether it’s these Victorians or whether it’s like Saint Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross with the Carmelite tradition, or we see it in the Benedictines, or we see it in the Franciscans. Over and over and over again, we see this whole tradition that is looking for this deeper faculty of the soul that goes deeper into the innermost self or inmost self that is able to access.

Dr. Gerry: [00:14:35] And when you get into Teresa of Avila and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and all that, the best metaphor they have is a bridal chamber. That’s because it’s talking about this union between, you know, it’s not obviously a literal bridal chamber, but it’s a metaphorical bridal chamber that describes the union, the deepest union of the soul with Christ. And so these are all, they have different ways of expressing this amazing union. Sometimes you hear it described as the cave of the heart, or Saint Athanasius way back talks about the mirror of the soul. You have even, you know, you’ve got some people calling it true self, which we like a little less because it implies a false self. But this true self, this inner self, this deeper connection. I was just reading recently about another concept that was being used called the ground of the soul. It was a German mystic, Meister Eckhart, who used this concept of the ground of the soul. So it’s like almost like the very base. And I like the word ground because it implies to me soil and growth or something, you know. And this ground of the soul, we can access, and it’s fertile, deeply connecting with God, union with God.

Dr. Peter: [00:15:47] So this is going way beyond what Richard Schwartz was originally talking about with the soul, because, yeah, you know, when he originally started writing about this in the late 80s and in the 90s, he was looking at the innermost self. He was looking at it as sort of the, you know, this active inner leader, this organizing entity within oneself, you know, that has this capacity, has these natural capacities. But I’m hearing this is being expanded and sort of connected with our tradition in a much more developed and I would say richer way.

Dr. Gerry: [00:16:23] Yeah, yeah. And in a way, like in Litanies of the Heart and in one of the appendices, I criticize or critique, No Bad Parts. And I kind of critique Dick Schwartz for being kind of pantheistic in his approach, but I can forgive him as a secular person because, well, I do forgive him. But I mean, he’s amazing, he’s brilliant, right, in so many ways. But I do forgive him for this mistake because he stumbled upon something that is way deeper than he was expecting from a, I don’t know if you would say theological perspective or spiritual perspective. He stumbled upon the self and he ended up seeing the self as part of a bigger self. He was, you know, capitalizing SELF, as this larger self that embodies the universe and this kind of thing, and that our self is just a part of this big SELF. So he identified the spirit, some aspect of the spirituality of self. Even when I was talking about the ground of the self that Meister Eckhart was talking about, or any of these, even Teresa of Avila. When she gets to the innermost part of the interior castle, that’s where Christ is. So there’s a truth in us; the fact is, that we’re all created in God’s image. And so there’s an inherent aspect where God is present within us. Now, the tradition would say that gets darkened, right? Like or that gets unaccessed or something like that. And we need baptism to be regenerated. We need, you know, life in the spirit and so on in order for that to be active fully. But there’s something inherent, though, within us as human beings created in his image that I think Dick Schwartz was coming into contact with and trying to make sense of.

Dr. Peter: [00:18:09] Because he had this phenomenological approach. He made the case that he went into this with no previous assumptions. Okay, you know, and he was reporting what he experienced. And so, yeah, I agree with you. I think that he is brilliant. I think this idea of the multiplicity, the parts, the innermost self, the systems thinking, taken inside — amazing. Amazing. But I know that a lot of Catholics have had hesitations, reservations, concerns about this concept of the innermost self, kind of understood in the way that Richard Schwartz was laying it out. And his concept of the innermost self developed over time. Like if you go back and you look at what he was writing back in the 90s, there wasn’t as much of a spiritual aspect of this. He went on to say that IFS is a spiritual path, you know, and things like that. He wasn’t saying that back in the 90s. So I think he’s also started to have more of an interest over time in the spiritual or existential or transcendental dynamics of this.

Dr. Gerry: [00:19:12] Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting to me to reflect on what is available to us in the natural realm and then what is the potential with the supernatural connection.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:19:25] I was going to say, I’m glad that you’ve forgiven Schwartz. I don’t want to let him off the hook. I think we should always forgive, but I don’t think we want to let him off the hook entirely. In his text, and you actually cited this in your text as well. He says, “Everything is fundamentally one and separation among individual things is an illusion.” Right, so that’s where he gets into the all capital letters SELF and kind of that pantheistic kind of emphasis. One thought I had about it is, whenever Schwartz is talking, he’s describing spiritual. But when he’s describing self, at least from within the Catholic standpoint of self, is we’re describing something natural, not supernatural. Now, it may be the location of where at our inmost self we can connect with God at the core, but we’re still talking about something natural. And so I wanted to kind of flesh that out a little bit.

Dr. Gerry: [00:20:18] So, Peter, you have probably the strongest theological background here. And so when you say supernatural, natural, how do you distinguish that between material and immaterial? Or the fact that as human beings, we are created, we have both a body and a soul, so we are both material and immaterial. And that, according to my understanding of Aquinas, that those are connected. And so can we ever truly completely separate those things? In other words, can we be in the natural realm and not have a spiritual dimension, even if we’re fallen human beings, even if we’re, you know, not regenerated in Christ or whatnot?

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:21:02] Correct. These are helpful distinctions. I would say, you could have some immaterial realities that are natural, and you can have some immaterial realities that are supernatural. So, for instance, the soul is by nature what makes this part of us as being human. So we are a body-soul composite. But that’s not supernatural. That’s just who we are by nature. Whereas supernatural would be above nature, something that nature itself could not provide on its own. And so you have supernatural beings like Mary in heaven, for instance. Nature alone could not have given her the graces and the reality of the beatific vision of her own accord. And so, as we look at those, one thought I wanted to kind of go through is I remember looking at Ludwig Ott and his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. And I highly recommend, if you do not have that text, it’s such an important text. I think even in particular in the work that we’re talking about here, the way that Ott describes it, he says non-rational animals, who also have an immaterial component to them. They have a soul, an animal soul. In the literature of the tradition, they call them traces of God. So non-rational animals are traces of God. Rational animals, which are all of us sitting here today, we have the image of God. So we’re images of God. Now a rational animal with an image of God and sanctifying grace, we now have the likeness of God. And then you have the rational animal in the glorified state in heaven. And then you have God himself, let’s just say, to stick with those two persons. So, God, divine persons, and then of course, human persons. Why do I bring that up? From a Catholic standpoint, the self would be natural. And so the most that the self could be, it could not be God, number one. It could not even have the likeness, after the fall, of God. That would require supernatural grace in order to get that likeness, to bring on that likeness. And then that becomes a process of developing, to becoming more and more like God as we grow in sanctification. And then ultimately, deification is the hope. So the most my understanding that the self could be from a Catholic standpoint is basically an imago dei, or nothing in terms of the likeness. It could not enter that without something supernatural.

Dr. Gerry: [00:23:33] That’s so interesting. I know in the Eastern tradition, I mean, there’s obviously some debate and different opinions, but they distinguish also between image and likeness. I think they would correspond likeness with that glorification. So in other words, we have the image of God and through sanctification or through, you know, theosis, if you will, like through the growing to become more and more like God, you eventually have likeness. But I think there would be agreement, total agreement here, that that is a supernatural process, like that is a grace-filled process of being transformed through grace into that likeness of God fully. But it’s interesting with the distinctions between natural and supernatural, because I think some would say. Like my buddy Saint Maximus the Confessor,  I believe, would say that humankind was meant to be in the likeness, so it would have been natural. He lost that natural likeness through the fall, but that was actually all along the intention of what human beings were meant to be.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:24:37] That’s an interesting point. So the idea is that there was a natural likeness, an imago dei as well as a likeness to God before the fall, and that was a natural state of bliss in the Garden of Eden. But then after the fall, the only way to reacquire that likeness is through a supernatural means, is through the ordinary means of our sanctification is baptism. And so we would say baptism is where that supernatural likeness is now received again.

Dr. Peter: [00:25:07] That was one of the most striking things to me when we were on Level 1 training, Peter. And then when I went on to Level 2 training and Level 3 training, and in other situations in which I was watching work being done in demos or triads, where the one in the therapist role or the one in the accompanier role — not a Christian, not baptized — the one in the accompanied role — not baptized, not a Christian. And amazing things were going on. That was really, really striking to me to see how much was released. IFS is described as a constraint release model, you know. So there was like all this opening up and amazing things happening, insights, fundamental change at a deep level. So I’m just curious, like, how would you guys understand that? You know.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:25:55] If I could jump on that real quick, like my initial thoughts are, I think of what Dick Schwartz is doing is magnificent. And I’ve seen those powerful transformations occur firsthand as well, like in those triad groups, but also with clients and myself, even, you know, just my own experiences of it. I think of what he’s doing, the term salve and salvation kind of have the same root. So healing, so Christ’s ministry is a healing salvation ministry, but it’s supernatural healing in the sense that it repaired a rupture that had taken place at the fall. And it repairs that rupture so that now we become children of God by grace. And so he’s healing us. But then what Dick Schwartz is doing through the self, the work that he does with self in parts is, I usually call it a natural salve. Christ provides supernatural salvation. Dick Schwartz provides natural salve. And it can be powerful, that natural salve, even from a phenomenological experience, more powerful than when we were baptized, for instance. It can provide, like you think of someone that’s had a pretty severe trauma history and they go through the parts work and they do the unburdening process and parts are now unburdened and more self-led. That can be subjectively, phenomenologically, more powerful from the experience of the individual that happened to, than let’s say they wake up late to go to first communion, they forget to shower, they throw on their clothes, they run up, you know, that may not have that much of a subjective impact at all on them. So I do find, like the supernatural salvation versus natural salve can be helpful.

Dr. Gerry: [00:27:39] Peter, would you say that there’s something spiritual going on in the example that Dr. Peter Malinoski just gave at an IFS type healing experience, like, would you say something spiritual is happening?

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:27:54] I think potentially so, yes. I mean, I think that is the case. Do I think it’s always something spiritual? I do think there’s, it depends on how you define it. So if you equate immaterial with spiritual, I would say definitely there’s always something spiritual going on.

Dr. Gerry: [00:28:09] Good, okay. I’m with you there.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:28:11] Yeah. Because if something’s happening at the soul level, which is immaterial. And if you equate immaterial with spiritual, then by definition that change brought about some kind of spiritual change.

Dr. Gerry: [00:28:23] Yeah. To me, that brings it together. And I like your distinction between something supernatural happening, which we’re not hearing so much, but that it is still a spiritual experience as well as, you know, there might be material effects as well. I just wonder, if it’s all right, if I could quote the Catechism, if it’s okay.

Dr. Peter: [00:28:42] That is permitted. It’s permitted on Interior Integration for Catholics. We do occasionally bring in the Catechism.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:28:51] Can we cite the Catechism more than once per episode? Is that allowed?

Dr. Peter: [00:28:57] Absolutely, absolutely.

Dr. Gerry: [00:28:59] It might, you know, bring this together a little bit because in 382, it says the human person is made up of an integrated body and soul, which we’ve been saying. And then it says in 363 and the soul is “the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him by which he is most especially in God’s image. Soul signifies the spiritual principle in man.” And here again, it’s this language, question and use of words. Because I think when they say soul, they’re not talking about the whole person, you know, like ten souls lost at sea. I don’t also think they’re only talking about the soul, like the hylomorphic body-soul thing. I think they’re really talking here when they say the innermost aspect of man, they are getting at that nous or that deepest center of the heart in that passage. I don’t know if you have thoughts on that, because this is the innermost aspect of man.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:29:59] Yeah. I mean, my take on it would be, yes. So at that point, especially that language there. So they seem to be saying, you know, because some philosophers probably would say the soul is the immaterial principle, the animating and unifying principle of the person in this case. But if they equate it with spiritual, I think those words can be interchangeable. I do think that would talk about what seems to be closer to the inmost self, in particular. That’s one component of the soul, definitely.

Dr. Gerry: [00:30:29] When I read that passage, I hear inmost self. I don’t just hear the Thomistic or whatever explanation of the soul as the animating part of the body. I feel like I’m hearing something different there.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:30:40] Yeah. And they’ll use language like the heart. They’ll say like, you know, that’s the inmost aspect of the person. Or they’ll say, like, that’s almost like a location where God resides. You know, it’s almost like that’s the interface center of the human person and God who now is within. Yeah, so they’ll use it in like a smaller sense versus a larger sense. So in this case, they’re using the term soul in a smaller sense, it sounds like.

Dr. Gerry: [00:31:11] Okay, that makes sense.

Dr. Peter: [00:31:14] Is there an equivalency? So, you know, Bonnie Weiss said that the innermost self or the Self with a capital S in IFS terms, is an active inner leader, that the self has the perspective to see reality, that it has the courage to take risks, that it’s balanced and fair. It’s like the conductor of an orchestra, which is an analogy or a metaphor that Schwartz has used. It works with parts. It connects with the parts of other people as well. I mean, is there like a way that this is also reflected in the Catholic tradition, these roles of the self, if you will? Or is there like not as much about that when the inmost self, in the variety of different ways it’s being discussed throughout the centuries of Catholic tradition, is there not as much about, like the functions of the self or the roles of the self in the system?

Dr. Gerry: [00:32:06] It’s tricky. I think, again, it’s that language problem of using it in different ways. I think there’s a sense in which they’re talking about a deeper spiritual center that is less about running things. That sounds like a manager on some level, like when I hear even the IFS self as being the leader, sometimes I think to myself, oh, isn’t that a manager? If you’re leading, I’m just saying. And that the idea of even Schwartz talks about the self as having no agenda or whatever. Then there’s a sense in which this deeper self is wanting to be connected with God at its core. It’s seeking that home. It’s seeking that union. And we see, like in Scripture, they talk about Pharaoh’s heart being hardened. And in the Catholic tradition and our understanding of heart, I think in the Thomistic tradition, there’s a sense in which the heart is almost like the conscience or related to conscience in some way. And so that your heart could be, you know, you could be formed or not formed. So there’s a sense in which there could be some obscuring of conscience. And that’s related to this deeper center as well, which I don’t know that Schwartz would like to hear or would would see it that way. I don’t know. Nevertheless, so I think there’s a sense in which the inmost self, the way it’s described in our tradition, is God-facing, not that it can’t turn around and be this healer and be this agent of love and healing to the whole system. But it ultimately wants to be God-facing. And I think that’s missing in IFS, of course. Okay, but in Litanies of the Heart, though, one of the things that I did that I thought was probably the most original thing that I did in that whole book — because a lot of it is just me bringing together lots of things, aside from the prayers, I suppose — is looking at how Christ himself exemplifies what roles could exist for the inmost self. And so that’s where I identified lover, seeker, protector, true friend, healer, pathfinder, bridge builder and nurturer, as being the natural kind of actions of Christ and therefore our model and what our inmost self most naturally wants to do for the self system. We can unpack that if you want.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:34:26] Before we go there, because I think that’s a very important topic that could launch. I wanted to touch on something if it’s okay. Schwartz actually changed his view on whether or not the self has an agenda. He cites this in his text. I remember reading it just the other day. He said his old belief was that the self had no agenda. His new belief is, and I quote him directly, he says, “Self is not attached to any agenda.” That’s different than saying it doesn’t have an agenda. “But it does have the intention and ability to bring healing, harmony, balance and connectedness to any system it encounters.” So notice it does have an intention, but it’s not so attached to it that it’s somehow probably imposes on the part or on the self or other people, let’s say. Like my sense to define it, and one is the self has an agenda of love. Like if you think about, to bring healing, right, salve, there’s that language again. There’s harmony. He wants to bring integration to the system. There’s balance, connection. And so my sense is that he’s driving forward that, at base, the self does have this kind of core intention in mind which again lines up a little bit better, even though I don’t like him talking about self as if it is divine, because it’s not. But the idea that it has this intention, need I say agenda, but not an imposing one, that is love. And that seems to square fairly well with maybe Christian teaching.

Dr. Gerry: [00:35:59] No, I love that. I think that would be the most brilliant qualification, I think Schwartz could make, because I see it as a unifying principle of the self-system is this inmost self, that it brings harmony to that whole self system, that it wants to have that unity. It brings together the diversity of the human person and all the parts into communion and into this harmony. That is a beautiful thing that we’re really talking about, integration. Right? And so if it does anything, it does that, right. It brings it all together, which is to me a reflection of the Trinity in some respect, of that beautiful, some sense of diversity, but total oneness.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:36:43] I agree with that. I get the sense that Schwartz would take that 1 John, is it 1 John 6 where he says, “God is love.” And he might say, self is love, right? Or at some base level, at the core. That is what the purpose of self is. And, you know, you might distinguish it and differentiate the way we might conceptualize love. But really, that’s what he’s kind of driving at is the integration.

Dr. Gerry: [00:37:05] But self should become love. Like the idea would be, yeah, that would be ideal. I don’t know that that happens for most people that purely, right. But that should be what we aim for, you know, the self would become love in a sense.

Dr. Peter: [00:37:19] So there’s this concept of blending, right, that we’ve been sort of walking around but not naming where any given part of us, when that part gets concerned, anxious, can blend with the self. This is IFS language, right? Sort of take over, start driving the person’s bus, and it seems like the innermost self has to have the cooperation of all the parts, the agreement of all the parts not to blend in order to take this sort of central role, right, in order to conduct the orchestra or whatever. And I’m just really curious about like, how you guys understand that from a Catholic perspective? Like, okay, there’s a constraint release model that the self is the innermost core of us, but it sort of can be knocked off base by any part that’s upset, you know, like how do we work with that?

Dr. Gerry: [00:38:18] First of all, we have Saint Paul himself saying, “I do what I do not want to do.” We already know that, even for Saint Paul, some part was taken over at some point, giving him distress. Right? So we know that that can happen, that we have these inner conflicts.

Dr. Peter: [00:38:32] And it doesn’t seem to me that that is a problem of the will, because if I think of strong willed saints, you know, like man, Saint Paul is like real high up on the list in terms of like the capacity to execute the will. So just really fascinated about like how that all works together, what you guys are thinking about it.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:38:50] I really like that component of the way he describes the self, that it’s not a passive observer. And so if we are to believe that the self is the internal, supremely, you know, unfallen attachment figure to the parts, I’m glad the self is not a passive observer, not a passive parent, let’s say.

Dr. Peter: [00:39:09] That was a big thing for him, by the way. He was sort of saying mindfulness is not enough. It’s not enough to just be kind of observing what’s going on, that there has to be some leadership, some direction. You know, it can’t just be that we pay attention.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:39:24] That’s right. I agree with that. I think that’s very, he has a wonderful article on that, by the way, too. Just looking at how mindfulness is not the same as what IFS is doing. There’s overlapping components to it, but it’s not the same. One thought I had, so he of course identifies self as kind of the inner divine, you know, it’s not an image of God. It is God in some ways. Right, it’s the connection to the larger SELF. In Catholic thought, we say God is only act. He’s pure act, not potential, not potentialities. He’s unchanging, he’s pure act. And we find that in our own systems, the less agency we have, the less self-leadership we have, the more unhealthy generally we are, to the point of where people will go into collapse mode, right? They’ll feel stuck and frozen, you know, and that’s more severe than, let’s say, fight or flight per se. And the more burdened the parts are and the more they blend, the less agency, the less godlike in that sense, we are, and the less alive we are. I like the idea that the self is this active observer, actively participating, actively seeking love, in my words, in the system. Because otherwise he’d be like a deadbeat dad.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:40:34] You know, if you’re going to make the self kind of like a god inside, like Schwartz does, I wouldn’t want a Deist God. I wouldn’t want a God that just, you know, kind of winds up the clock and then just sets the clock going and doesn’t intervene and doesn’t interact. I wouldn’t want that kind of a self. That’s not the kind of self, if I’m a part, that’s not the kind of kind of stuff I would trust or I’d want to go to. So I think he’s tapping into a very important component here, that if we are image-bearers and if we bear the image of the ultimate reality, which is triune, which is God, which is pure act — health and agency are essential pieces to human flourishing. And so I like that he has this self as such an active observer. It’s very different, like just to kind of go on my monologue here, but it’s very different, let’s say, than when you get into the Good Samaritan passage, right? You remember the two — I oftentimes think of mindfulness as what maybe the priest and the Levite did as they kind of walked by. Now, it’s not a perfect fit. But they kind of just walk by. They notice the pain. Okay, we’ll catch you later. Now there’s more to it than that. But then when you get the Good Samaritan. Now, that’s what the self should be like to the parts. Very active, very compassionate.

Dr. Peter: [00:41:52] Let me stop you there, though. It seems like, at least from an IFS perspective, the innermost self is helpless if any part is upset or agitated, you know. So then it seems like the self does become more passive, or at least more constrained. It sounds like unable to exercise, you know, this leadership inside. So I’m curious about like do we agree with that from a kind of a Catholic perspective? What does the tradition say about it? I’m just really curious about, you know, more of that. So I know I kind of cut you off there.

Dr. Gerry: [00:42:24] No, I love Peter Martin’s monologues, by the way. I think I’m going to go in a slightly different direction, perhaps, and that is in the earlier tradition of the church. But I think it’s goes on throughout, but would be the sort of ascetic and monastic and ascetic tradition of the church. And I think it’s fascinating that the focus is on being detached, dispassionate, this whole idea of apatheia. You know, when I think of Saint Anthony out in the desert and he gets visited by these different, you know, lust and gluttony and various things, and he has to, like, struggle with those, right. And we have all these desert fathers and other monastics who go into their cell, right, in a sense, or go out into the desert. And they struggle with these things and they’re battling on some level. And so when they do that, the victory of that battle is to be dispassionate and to be disconnected, indifferent in a sense. Not where they don’t care about anything, they’re not beholden or enslaved by their passions. And this is what definitely the early church tradition would say, is we’re not to be enslaved by our passions. And so when I think of parts running the show or driving the bus or whatever, it’s we’re being enslaved by those passions. And so those parts are running things because this is happening. And it isn’t an easy thing in the Catholic tradition to get disconnected, right? To be not ruled by those passions.

Dr. Gerry: [00:43:54] It is a battle on some level. It’s a struggle. And this is because of sin and everything else. And so we have this war, if you will, going on. And so the whole process of being disconnected or disconnected or dispassionate is all about ultimately surrendering ourselves to God, which our parts don’t necessarily want to do, all of them, right, at least not right away, because we don’t 100% trust that that’s actually in our good. Because we’re clinging to things for various reasons. We’re coping in various maladaptive ways, however you want to describe it. And so there’s a process here of ultimately surrendering and trusting that when we unite with God, we don’t lose ourselves. We in fact become ourselves fully. That in fact, it’s a good for us that we’re given life, that we’re given freedom in that surrender. And that is a tricky business because most of us, myself included, like cling to the things that we want to hold onto and we don’t want to let go of.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:44:58] Yeah, I like that. I’m glad that you’re talking about how authentic freedom ultimately culminates in that surrender to God, but that should be freely chosen, not forced or imposed, because then God would be more like a slave master cracking the whip at us versus someone who loves us and doesn’t want to compromise our freedom in any way, but wants to augment it. Going back to something that Schwartz had said. So, Peter, when Schwartz says the self is not attached to any agenda, what are agendas? Agendas are a way to kind of impose something that the parts of another person, or my parts for that matter, are not ready for, may not be open to. Even if they are open to it, it still feels coerced and forced. So God respects our freedom more than we do. And one thought about why that’s okay, that the self, even though it has all these healing capacities and the parts can still block it. I think we do that to God all the time. So the image that comes to my mind, I think we had talked about it in a previous podcast is, imagine, you know, you think of Saint John the Baptist. He’s one of the patrons of Souls and Hearts. And he says, “I’ve come to make crooked paths straight.”

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:46:13] If you imagine a light being flashed into a cave or a tunnel, and that cave has some sharp turns and some corners, that light cannot get through to the other side, it’s not possible. We are the ones that are blocking that light. And so if we allow God in, then his grace can flow through us, but he will not impose it. The other thing too, is when it comes to Scripture, if you look at 2 Corinthians 12, when it talks about the ideal family system, the external family system, which is the body of Christ, fully in accord, fully led by the spirit. That particular family system works well because they have freely surrendered, to Gerry’s point. Ideally, we’re freely surrendering, and we trust the Lord implicitly. But what happens in the rest of reality? You know, what happens with me day to day and hour to hour is not something like that. It’s something that’s opposed to surrender. So what we’re doing then is we’re blocking omnipotence from working through me in grace. You know, because grace is participation in the creator. I have blocked my participation in absolute freedom, in the source of love. So I’m okay with Schwartz saying that the parts will obscure that and even block the self in some cases.

Dr. Gerry: [00:47:34] Okay, I have a thought.

Dr. Peter: [00:47:37] I bet you do, Gerry. I could see the wheels kind of turning. Like if you watch the video, you can kind of see Gerry’s wheels turning.

Dr. Gerry: [00:47:43] Yeah, I’m not a good poker face. When it comes to agenda, I’m coming to agenda here because I think there’s one aspect here which is we’re talking about, which is the self, soul, the person, surrendering, and all the parts and inmost self surrendering on some level. And so there’s this internal harmony and this internal turning to God ultimately, and union with God ultimately. But I think that’s half of it, because the other half is the agenda, which is the kingdom of God. Because if we don’t have that sorted out internally, at least to some extent, then how on earth are we able to turn it around to others? Because the entire mission of Christ, and I’m drawing from Maximus and others, but is to transfigure the entire universe, us included, like the entire world is meant to come into contact with God, and his whole mission is about transformation of each one of us, but all of us. And so what that means ultimately, is that the kingdom of God is about creating, if you will, not creating, participating with Christ as he makes the world into a place like he describes in the Beatitudes. A place where the blind can see, so to speak. Where there’s freedom of captives, where there’s, you know, there’s this kind of transformation of this world. And I think that agenda of the kingdom is what the inmost self should align with, right? And that gives it, not just union with God or whatever, surrendering for its own sake, but also meaning and purpose. Because you’re active, there’s an excitement about participating with God’s work in the world. Like, you know what I mean? Like, that gives us a whole reason for being, as well. That was my thought.

Dr. Peter: [00:49:38] I love it. Well, I’m curious, what do you think Schwartz really added to our understanding of the inmost self, the nous, the heart? Like, if you had to sort of distill out something that you thought, okay, this really is an interesting kind of addition or insight or something like that. What would you guys think it it would be?

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:50:05] One quick thing and then definitely want to let Gerry kind of chime in. One quick thing is, you’ll see in other systems when they describe this phenomenon of a person who’s in a better place, a more secure state of mind, you know, that would be attachment theory. They’re in a secure state of mind. Okay, good. Or in schema mode, it’s like a healthy adult. You know, they’re in this kind of healthy adult mode. And so they’re basically observing the data. They’re observing the data what healthy adult looks like, the symptoms of it. You know, the smile. Or maybe their heart rate has gone down or something like that. What Schwartz brought in when it comes to the self is this inherent goodness, this kind of inherent goodness that has good intentions, that is not completely marred by the fall. I don’t think other systems and psychology think too much about the fall, but at least with Schwartz, you know, he says there still is this intrinsic or inherent goodness that has not been damaged to the core by the fall. You know, I think of the kind of the Thomistic capacities of the soul. He would say the intellect is darkened but not pitch black, and the will is weakened, but it’s not totally paralyzed. And so Schwartz is able to kind of draw out that there’s this something that still resides, that cannot be damaged to the core. I think that’s a really important contribution, especially for the clients who are the most severe functioning, to know.

Dr. Gerry: [00:51:38] Yeah, I think that’s wonderful and well put. I would say that, for example, in ego state therapy, I’ve been trained in that. And they would call the self, all the parts together would be the self. And so you might have a part that would resemble Schwartz’s self, and that would be like that ideal parent or that leader figure or something like that. They wouldn’t have necessarily — they might, they could — but they wouldn’t necessarily separate it. In other words, it’s, the self is all the parts together. And so what Schwartz does, which I think is more consistent with the Catholic spiritual tradition, is makes a distinction between parts and self. And I think that’s an important distinction that there is in the Catholic tradition, there is a cave of the heart, a deepest center or some kind of innermost self that is able to connect with God. And I think that is one reason I really like Schwartz’s concept of self, or what it contributes is because it aligns with at least that part of the Catholic tradition. And I think you can go too far a little bit with that distinction, and start to see the parts as something other than you. But they are part of you, like they’re part of you. And so they’re just different expressions of you. And I don’t think they should be like less than because they’re not this innermost self or something. But I think there’s a truth phenomenologically that Schwartz stumbled upon that is actually very consistent with the Catholic way of looking at it.

Dr. Peter: [00:53:13] And really needed in our day and age, right. Really needed that, that sort of positive thing. I came to it a little bit more pragmatically. I wasn’t thinking as much about the theological implications of this when I was looking at different systems to really help me work with clients, especially since I was confronted with the reality of parts, you know, at least the phenomenological reality of parts with clients that were diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, and so forth. And one thing that really made internal family systems stand out in contrast with developmental needs meeting strategies, or ego state therapy, or structural theory of dissociation, or other models, because there are other models that look at parts. But one thing really stood out to me was that there was this innermost self, and that it was qualitatively different than the other elements in the system. You know, so I very much kind of came at it from that pragmatic side. And like, this seems to work actually really well, which we would expect if there is a greater conformity to actual reality.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:54:12] I like that, Peter. That really did stand out to me as well. I think that’s definitely something that kind of keeps me enamored and interested. I find the self to be one of the most important, but most problematic aspects of the way Schwartz describes IFS. You know what I mean? Because he does go too far, to Gerry’s point. He takes something good and then he kind of goes too far with it in some ways. So it’s good, it’s inherent in the person. But now it becomes God, you know, now it’s God as opposed to an image of God. I found a quote of his. It’s an interesting point. He says, “Enlightenment is signified by a shift in a person’s center of gravity and identity from parts and their burdens to the essence, which is self.” That’s what he says a lot of spiritual traditions might call enlightenment. Now, that would be a natural enlightenment, you know, you might say, as opposed to supernatural or like fully Christ sighted approaches to seeing self and neighbor and God and that kind of thing. But there’s something extremely important about that shift. And to see it as some kind of a fundamental, it’s a qualitatively different shift to focus and look through the lens of a burdened part versus the lens of the self. And I do think that’s important. It reminds me, Frank Sheed has this really fascinating quote about the intellect. He says, “Seeing what is there is sanity, the health of the intellect.” So there’s just something about, like, if my lenses are poop-colored, or if my lenses are somehow blocking out things, then I’m not really approaching reality in a very humble approach in the spiritual tradition. I’m not approaching it through, let’s say, Christ’s sight fully, and we need those supernatural eyes to see, like the eyes of faith, to see things as they fully are.

Dr. Peter: [00:56:02] And we have kind of gotten away from that in our culture. It used to be that one of the hallmarks of psychological health was to be connected to reality, right? To be connected to an external, objective reality that does not depend on our experience. So psychosis, for example, was described as a disconnect from that reality. If I believe that I am a fish, if I’m delusional, you know, that was a sign that something is seriously wrong. But now we’ve gotten into this idea where we can create our own reality. You know, that reality is what I believe it to be. So this idea of kind of regrounding ourselves in one of the pillars of the Western tradition that, yes, external reality exists. It does not depend on my perceptual processes. And that part of what I’m doing is trying to conform myself to it is something that I think we really need to refresh ourselves on in this day and age.

Dr. Gerry: [00:56:57] You’re making me think of Saint Augustine’s, you know, in the Confessions, right? Pretty close to the opening line is, “My heart is restless until it rests in thee.” In the sense in which, when we are not connected to our inmost self and our parts are not in harmony with that, and we are not in connection with God at all, then we’re restless. We’re in a state of chaos or instability or insecurity, and it’s uncomfortable. And if any of us have ever been struggling with sin, when we’ve ever struggled with something, and we’ve felt ourselves to not be ourselves in some way or another. Maybe more extreme cases are like deeply involved in addiction or some problematic behavior. Then we’re not ourselves. And we kind of, at a deep level, know that’s true. And in Ephesians 1, I think Ephesians 1:18, Saint Paul even says, he talks about the eyes of the heart. You know, it’s implying a deeper sense, like the heart is one thing, but that there’s eyes. 

Dr. Gerry: [00:57:57] We hear others talk about ear of the heart and stuff like that. But it means like this deeper perception that we have and we have access to, but that we can lose in a sense, like we can lose touch with and become restless, therefore. And restless is a mild way to put it. We can become very lost. We can become where we’re miserable, and we don’t know how to get out of that misery. And the only way in my mind to do that, is to return, is repentance, of course, but return to God, return to ourselves. And I don’t mean that in a new age way. I mean it as like return to who we are at our deep core center, because it’s who we are made to be, children of God. And so anyway, I don’t know if that gets to what you’re getting at there, but I just think this interior inmost self is, at our core, who we are.

Dr. Peter Martin: [00:58:51] You know, I have a question on that. And this is just something I’ve more recently been thinking of. So it isn’t well developed. And I don’t claim to have the corner on the philosophical market here, but sometimes I catch myself saying things like the self is the mediator between God and the parts. I’ll say things like that. I’m wondering if I should shift that a bit and I’ll tell you why. Is it the self that’s the mediator, or is it the person that’s the mediator? And the reason I say that, the person has a self and parts, according to IFS theory. But the self does not have a person. Most of the language in the Catechism would say it’s the person is the acting moral agent. So it’s not so much that the manager parts have agency as much as they participate in the person’s agency. And it’s the person who manages, so to speak, and the person who firefights. Does that make sense? One other quick thing. In Scripture, when it gets into Christ’s mediatorship, it says, “The only mediator between God and man is the man Christ Jesus.” So it’s not just Jesus’s divinity that’s the mediator between God and man. It’s the God-man. It’s the fullness of who Christ is, the the divine person, the human being, and the divine being as divine person. So I’m starting to wonder, should I say it’s the person that’s the mediator between God and the parts, or is it still acceptable to say it’s the self is the mediator between God and the parts. Just to float it to both of you.

Dr. Gerry: [01:00:29] Really interesting about the man of Christ. I think that makes sense because Maximus and others, I’m sure, would say that the very reason that we can have that mediation is that the second person of the Trinity became man. That enables that mediation. So I think that’s, first of all, accurate and makes total sense. That’s our access point between the material and the immaterial. But I’d be asking a little bit of the question, like, what do you mean then by person? Because is not the person, the inmost self and parts, isn’t that the core of the person? Like that’s the heart of the person. You could say the person also includes the whole body, of course, but the arms, hands and nose are not like making choices right on their own. So isn’t it the inmost self and all the parts together the agent that is making choices?

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:01:21] I would say, yeah, to your point, the person, the human person in this case, because there’s three types of persons. But the human person in this case would be the body-soul composite. And that includes every aspect of the person, the soul, the body, the parts, the self. So the idea would be, the correlate would be, it’s only Jesus’s divinity that is the mediator between God and man. And that’s not what Scripture says, because the correlate would be his divinity, would be the self, so to speak. And that, well, I guess the natural would be that the self of the human nature. And then you’ve got the divine.

Dr. Gerry: [01:01:54] But couldn’t you, you can’t separate that, right, totally? The fact that he is a God and man together allows that mediation. It’s not like it’s just the man of Jesus that causes it, right? It’s the two natures together.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:02:10] That’s right. But aren’t we separating self? So I guess when we use the language of Schwarz, the way he describes the person, it’s body, self, parts. So that kind of tripartite approach or triadic approach I think would be, if we’re using IFS language, we would say it’s the self, in contrast or distinction from the parts and the body, is the mediator between God and the parts. But if you’re using self in a different way, like some people would say, the self is the whole person. That includes the body-soul composites, you know, that kind of thing. I think that it would be okay to have self as the mediator.

Dr. Peter: [01:02:47] Well, from a clinical perspective, like I’ve worked with so many people, and my own system, too, where the innermost self introduces parts in prayer to God or to, you know, one of the persons in the Trinity. And so in a sense, it’s that bridge or at least phenomenologically, you know, mediating in a really immediate way. But yeah, I want actually make sure that we have time because I just sense there’s a gift. You know, Dr. Gerry, you and I were talking about the about the possibility of doing an experiential exercise. So, you know, I’m super excited about that possibility. So is that still, I mean, are you feeling up for that?

Dr. Gerry: [01:03:24] Yeah, I have something. Okay, if you want to go there, can I just say one little thing because this could be expanded in a future episode?

Dr. Peter: [01:03:32] Yeah, and also remember, you’re going to have your time for key takeaways at the very end, too. So if there’s the 1 or 2 things you want people to really remember, we’re going to cover that.

Dr. Gerry: [01:03:39] It isn’t so much that, but it’s just one — I don’t know how it jives with what Peter Martin was about to say, which is just about, I see the inmost self or that image of God being the mediator in the sense of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love coming from God at our core, through the inmost self to the parts, and that the parts are developing the other capital and cardinal virtues. And then with the addition of the supernatural virtues, there’s this flourishing, right? There’s this growth. That’s a little how I conceive of it. So to me, mediation is happening through virtue. But we can talk about that another time. That’s how I see it. You want me to do an experiential?

Dr. Peter: [01:04:27] Yeah, just a couple of cautions, you know, just to be safe, right? If you are operating heavy machinery or if you are driving, or if you are, you know, kind of engaged in some other activity, like cooking or something like that, it’d be good to wait until you have an opportunity to really enter in to this experience. This is something that’s going to invite you, I’m assuming — we haven’t talked about it. But invite you into contact with your innermost self. So, you know, if you’re riding the city bus, it could be really hard to sort of stay in the space that you might need for that. And just to kind of pay attention to what’s going on as you do this, to what’s happening in your body, your level of arousal, are you staying in that window of tolerance, or are you moving up into that fight or flight, you know, or dropping down into that hypo arousal, that freeze response, you know, to take really what’s helpful from this, to feel like you can engage with this in whatever way is really best for you. So, just be mindful. I don’t expect that there’s going to be, you know, people reacting negatively or anything like that, but just to kind of make sure that you’ve got that kind of protected space and that we’re doing this in a way that really is about you relating with yourself in a way that’s infused with love. So, you know, just kind of wanted to set that up.

Dr. Gerry: [01:05:44] Yeah. No, that makes sense. Okay, so this little meditation is one I’ve been working on and it’s not, you know, adjusted or whatnot. It’s a pretty high level meditation because I don’t think I could just jump in in ten minutes or so and do a meditation that would automatically make everyone connect with their inmost self, because there might be a lot of unblending and stuff that needs to happen. So maybe just see this as a taste of something. And if you are unblended — because there might be an assumption that some unblending has already happened. The other thing is I’m really excited about, like deep diving into this sort of spiritual tradition of our church, and a lot of it comes from monks and nuns, you know. And so they’re at a level that most of us aren’t living every day because we don’t have, you know, hours of contemplation and prayer every day like they do. So I would just say that, first of all, if you only get a little bit out of it or a little bit speaks to you, that’s fine. If none of it does, you know, do whatever you can. But I am going to jump in at a little bit of a high level. I thought maybe we would talk about it, but we didn’t really come up. But I bring up this notion of the cloud of unknowing. The cloud of unknowing is this medieval piece of literature that we don’t even know who the author was for sure. It’s the idea that when you get to a certain level of contemplation, you kind of go beyond your physical senses. You go beyond mediation on a sensible level, and you enter into a space of like infused contemplation, I guess, where on some level the potential is that God is reaching you and speaking to your soul at this deeper level. Do I think in ten minutes we’re all going to get there? I don’t think so.

Dr. Peter: [01:07:27] But it brings to mind that you might come back to this when you’re in a really good place. You might come to this moment when you’re in a really good place, and this moment will be marked. We’ll put it in the YouTube description so you can click on it and go immediately to that moment where we start the meditation. But yeah, and also feel free to like pause it, you know, if you’re really in a beautiful spot, we don’t have to condense this to ten minutes. You can pause it and kind of spend the time that you need at a given moment, you know, and it’s something to come back to as well.

Dr. Gerry: [01:07:56] Yeah. All right. Well, find a comfortable and quiet place where you won’t be disturbed and sit or lie in a relaxed position. I invite you to possibly close your eyes and just take a few deep breaths to center yourself. Maybe take a moment now to hear some of the words of Saint Paul. They may be familiar. Just let your heart listen to them. “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” Let us reflect a moment on this love, the love that is deep within our hearts. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Take a moment to notice whatever parts of the self system that are present. Notice how your parts are good, resourceful, and helpful.

Dr. Gerry: [01:10:35] Notice how they have helped you in feeling safe and getting your needs met. Invite them to come together, no longer needing to compartmentalize to survive, free to connect. Allow each and every part to be aware of your identity as a child of God. Feel the harmony of your parts coming together, aware of the call to become like Christ, to be love. We put away our past sins. Let go of burdens. Give them to Christ. We are renewed in his spirit. We receive the spirit of wisdom. We are clothed with the new self, called to holiness. We receive the spirit of counsel. Our mind, our heart, all the parts of the self system are renewed. Take a moment to see how your inmost self has relied on faith in God. Notice the clarity that comes with the illumination of our mind. Feel your heart softening. Notice the freedom that comes with this faith in Him and His love. Invite all the parts of your self system to turn with you toward him. Now imagine yourself surrounded by a vast, impenetrable mist or cloud. This cloud is a metaphor for the divine mystery that transcends our limited understanding. As you dwell in this cloud, you acknowledge the limits of our understanding, our knowledge, and our perceptions. We let go of any need to grasp or control. We trust in God’s presence and wisdom that lies beyond our comprehension. We notice the consolation that comes with the awareness that we’re being carried away by the love of God.

Dr. Gerry: [01:15:10] There is a helplessness and powerlessness that happens. But it comes with a sense of safety and confidence in God’s tender care, allowing ourselves to be passive and receptive. We hear the words of Our Lady: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” We immerse ourselves in the darkness of the cloud. Even in the absence of certainty, we embrace the possibility of light. Holding on to the hope that amidst the unknown, there is a guiding presence of God that supports and loves us. We know we’re not alone. We trust in the source of our very being, the Blessed Trinity that has always guided and protected us. And allow our mind to wander freely. We observe thoughts, feelings, or sensations that arise. We don’t cling to them or judge them. We can let go of burdens or distractions that weigh us down. And let go of the need to know or understand everything. Surrendering to our Lord. Trusting that all will be revealed by him in time. We receive this grace of faith as we trust fully in God’s love. When we’re ready and the right time, we can slowly open our eyes, bring ourselves into the present moment, knowing that even in our life’s uncertainty, regular life, that God’s presence will support and guide us. We pray all these things through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Dr. Peter: [01:18:33] Well, I’m curious, Peter Martin, what that was like for you. If you felt like you had something that was right and good to share, that your parts wanted you to speak for them to our audience. Again, no pressure with this. I don’t have an agenda for that, but just wanted to make a space about how that landed with you and your parts. If there’s an openness there.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:18:55] Yeah, it touched me in a particular area that is private enough that I won’t probably talk about it directly, but it touched me in a way that things don’t seem clear ahead. And so there were parts that kind of are confused about what the future holds or what direction to take. And so there were a couple of phrases that stood out to me, that stood out to the parts in particular, Gerry. The one where, it will be revealed to you. Can we trust, you know, that it will be revealed to us? Because I think when I’m in those parts, when those parts are up, I question, I become very nearsighted, I think. I am nearsighted physically speaking, but I also become very nearsighted when it comes to the future. And I lose sight of, you know, that trusting in God in this particular area means that we’re optimistic that whatever happens, the Lord will take care of me, that things will be okay. And so that kind of stood out to me, that it will be revealed to me at a time — maybe not the time that I possibly want it to be revealed or necessarily expect it to be revealed, but it will be revealed. And that stood out to me, that I can kind of surrender to that. Yeah, so that was important for my parts.

Dr. Peter: [01:20:13] I really resonate with that. It’s the first time I ever thought about it this way, but I have parts that certainly would have eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and good and evil too. Absolutely. Would be like, because I, you know, there’s a kind of perceived security in reaching, grasping. That word stood out to me, grasping for omniscience. And maybe not an overall omniscience, but maybe a localized omniscience, just for all things pertaining to me, you know, and my safety and security and so forth. I don’t need to know about how every fly is doing in the Sudan. You know, just me, just things associated with me. And so to be able to release and to embrace my identity as a beloved little son of God, very little, not having to drive the car, being able to ride in the back in a sense, you know, and let others, you know. And I actually had that in a very real sense, with just having both of you here on this episode, to be honest with you. It’s like, I don’t have to know all this stuff. I get a lot of questions about these anthropological questions. You know, like a lot of questions about these issues, I mean, what is the self and so forth. And there’s so much I don’t know, you know, but I’m so glad that I don’t have to be alone in figuring it all out. You know, that you guys are here with me, that others are contributing to being able to understand in a way that allows us to harmonize, you know, IFS with our faith and not the other way around. So just kind of a comfort with that.

Dr. Gerry: [01:21:52] I was curious because what I was trying to do there, a little bit, or at least touch on, is the sort of Eastern Catholic, I suppose, approach that is like God’s unknowability, so that he’s ineffable. We can’t fully know anything. And in fact, all of our language fails to grasp that who God is, versus a more Western approach, which is more about being able to like, even Aquinas, like being able to hear all the things we can say about God. But the mystics, the people, like even John of the Cross, for example, and Dark Night of the Soul, I mean, there’s this moment where you go beyond your imagination of God and all your sensible mediations of God, and you enter into a space where it’s darkness in a sense, and you’re no longer relying on your intellect or your imagination, and you’re now just sort of like in his presence. And there’s something about that. It’s almost indescribable. So doing a meditation like this is almost impossible, really, to guide somebody to get there, when it’s like really something that will only fully happen if God lets it happen also. But nevertheless, you know, to introduce the idea of it and a little bit of how one can like sit at least in that unknowability of God and that transcendence of God and allow God to work in that space, is sort of what I was after.

Dr. Peter: [01:23:25] Well, we would love to hear your experiences of the meditation. We would love it if you wanted to share with us whatever seemed right and good to share in the comments section of our YouTube channel for this episode, and we will definitely read those and respond. So I, you know, make a commitment to do that. So would love to hear what this was like for you as our viewers, for you as our listeners. And so as we kind of bring this episode into land, I always like to ask my guests, I would really love to hear what you think are the number one takeaway, maybe the one and a half takeaways that you would like people to remember from this episode. Things that you think are most important about this idea of, who is your innermost self?

Dr. Gerry: [01:24:15] Yeah, like I think that there’s something beautiful in knowing that our very core is in the image of God, and yet we’re distinctly us and we never lose our individuality, ever. But we are distinctively made in love by God, the God who is love. And so at our very core is love, and is a person who wants to be to be united with God, wants to be compassionate, and so on. Dick Schwartz stumbled upon some of that truth, which is amazing. And what we’re hoping to do is to show how that is consistent, and there’s so much more to it from our faith perspective.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:25:00] Yeah, I agree with everything Gerry kind of posed there. You know, I would go back and just because there are so many concerns about this notion of self from Schwartz, you know. I think it’s in some ways his most helpful but most problematic, you know, kind of aspect of his theory. I think my main takeaway, though, from our discussion today and also just the readings that I’ve done on the self, the self in my perspective is more of a positive than a negative. And what I mean by that is he takes something really good. He stumbles on it, as Gerry put, he stumbles on this reality of this core goodness in us because we are image bearers. And then he takes it. And I think what the Catholic tradition does is it puts parameters on how far we go with it. He goes into the capital SELF, whereas we say in some ways, this understanding of us being image-bearers and having a self actually is propaedeutic in some ways to understanding God. So it is true that when we think about God, he helps us to understand us and others. But even as we think about ourselves being image-bearers, there are some things that we can kind of understand about God. And it’s just glimpses of it, others that it doesn’t help in some ways to help us understand God because of our limitations of intellect. But I think overall, I see the self as hopefully propaedeutic. It’s something that can be stepping towards inclining us toward toward faith in God and having a deeper relationship with him. Just stay away from pantheism. I’ll just close with that.

Dr. Peter: [01:26:40] This is just bringing together in such a clear way the entire mission of this podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics, but also Souls and Hearts. Because we want to bring together the best resources, wherever they may be found, to help us toward flourishing, to help us to be freed from the impediments to being able to love, especially those in the natural realm. We really are working on doing this human formation arithmetic to be able to help us better do the spiritual algebra, you know, the algebra in our spiritual formation. And so we’re catholic with a small c, and we’re Catholic with a big C, right? Catholic with a small c, and in the sense of being universal, bringing all of these things in, like Saint Augustine so emphasized, like Saint Thomas Aquinas did in his synthesis in the Summa, and to really mine and draw from all the good that we’re finding in non-Catholic approaches as well as Catholic approaches. And you are exemplifying that, you know, it’s so wonderful to have this conversation. And I do believe that in Souls and Hearts, we are doing as much as anybody else out there, as much as any other organization, to really ground these approaches to healing, to ground these approaches to flourishing in an authentic Catholic anthropology and an authentic Catholic understanding of the human person.

Dr. Peter: [01:28:09] And so it’s not just restricting ourselves to books that have an imprimatur, you know, but actually bringing in these other sources. So thank you for that. Thank you for being here with us. And a lot of gratitude to all of our viewers and listeners for engaging with this. I want to thank you for the work that you did in this experiential exercise, because everything that you do that leads you toward greater love, that leads you toward that interior integration, that leads you to healing and growth and flourishing, builds up the entire mystical body of Christ. We’re all one body. And so that inner work that you do, the connection that you make with your innermost self and your parts, that helps me personally because we’re all in one body in this Catholic Church. So I really want to say a personal thank you for the work that you do in this podcast and viewing this podcast. So, any final parting thoughts? One line or so from each of you guys as we bring this to a close.

Dr. Gerry: [01:29:15] I wasn’t expecting a one-liner to wrap it all up. Other than, okay, just to delight in your inmost self, as Saint Paul calls us. Like delight in this freedom. Rest in this place, this center that God has made for you. This shelter, really, this cave, if you will, of the heart.

Dr. Peter Martin: [01:29:38] I like that. Yeah. I like the language of resting in the home of the heart, let’s say, in the inmost self. And then to allow, when you rest in the heart the way that God has designed it. And then, of course, having the Christ-sight, that you can see from the heart and to have the Christ-heart, it just transforms everything. I haven’t arrived at that, I might add. I haven’t quite gotten there, but I trust that that’s the case. Yeah, just wish that all for the listeners as well.

Dr. Peter: [01:30:05] So with that, we’re going to enter into the announcements. Our upcoming episode, episode 159 is, What Are the Parts in Parts Work? Dr. Peter Martin will return for that one. And we have Bridget Adams of Souls and Hearts joining us as the co-host. I want to encourage you again to like and comment and subscribe. Like this episode, comment on it, especially what your experiences were, what you liked, what you didn’t like, what you resonated with, what you didn’t resonate with. We want to engage with you. We want to hear from you. Conversation hours — you can call me on my cell phone every Tuesday and Thursday from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Eastern time. That number (317) 567-9594. Listeners to my podcast, I want to hear from you. Call me up. That’s my cell phone number. I’m available during those hours. If I’m on another call, it’ll drop to voicemail. Leave me a voicemail. I’ll get back to you. I also want to remind you, the Formation for Formators group. Catholic formators, I’m talking to you. That means Catholic therapists, spiritual directors, Catholic coaches, seminarians, formators of all kinds, priests, other faithful Catholics who accompany others professionally on an individual basis. I’m inviting you to work on your own human formation with me, with Dr. Gerry, with Dr. Peter. They are on our staff at the Formation for Formators community. So if you like what you’re hearing, what we’re talking about here, we bring this to this to life in small groups, foundations experiential groups. We bring it together in advanced groups for those that have done significant human formation work, you know, within their own systems, that are connecting with their parts. We’ve got new groups starting up in March 2025. It’s an excellent opportunity for you to do your own human formation, informed by internal family systems, but grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person. It’s all about removing the beams from our own eyes as we help to remove the specks from others’ eyes. And so check all that out, soulsandhearts.com/fff. Peter Martin is offering a foundations experiential group; there’s only nine people allowed into that.

Dr. Peter: [01:32:12] It’s on Wednesdays from 6:15 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. Eastern time. It starts on March 12th, 2025. Check it out. soulsandhearts.com/fff. Click the little registration information button. You’ll find out how many spots are remaining. Peter Martin is also offering a Preparation for Transcendence group on Wednesdays from 8:15 p.m. to 9:45 p.m. Eastern time, starts on March 12th. That is the turn upward. That’s the turn from within ourselves, upward to looking toward God. I also think it’s a turn inward to connecting with God inside of us. It’s really focused on overcoming the human formation deficits to connecting deeply with God, in a personal relationship. Gerry Crete is offering his advanced Journey Into the Heart from 1:00 pm to 2:30 p.m. on Fridays beginning March 14th, 2025 as well. That’s an advanced group. So is the Preparation for Transcendence group. So you have to have done some work with us, but I just want to let you know that there’s some advanced offerings out there for those of you that are doing formation work. The Resilient Catholics Community is reopening for new members on February 1st, 2025. I could say so much about that. You can check it out. soulsandhearts.com/rcc. It is really central to Souls and Hearts. This is our structured, year-long program to help people along the road in small groups toward better human formation, toward flourishing. Really, it’s all about flourishing. Also, just check out our weekly reflections at soulsandhearts.com/blog. There’s a series going on right now on vision, values, mission, and goals. And so we will bring this to a close by invoking our patroness and our patrons, Our Lady, Our Mother, Untier of Knots, pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.