Saturday, January 9, 2010

Energy Budget - How to Manage Yours Each Day

On these Blogger pages we explore TOPICS in our desire to respond to Jesus' call to walk with Him in our world as his missionary disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring to humanity the Good News of the Father's love manifested and given in Jesus, the Divine Mercy. G.S.

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How to Manage Your Energy Budget Every Day

First, I’d like to invite you to explore the theory and formation principles of the Institut de Formation Humaine Intégrale de Montréal, which was first known as the Institut de Formation et de Rééducation de Montréal when it was founded in 1976 by Dr. Jeannine Guindon.  In the course of her very fruitful career, this amazing woman trained educators and helping professionals and worked with them, explored how the application of contemporary psychological and moral development principles in education and therapy might help people actually develop, and discovered ways to help people participate deliberately in their own development, wherever they left off when they became adults and left the formative years behind.[1]  It is generally accepted now that we human beings live out our lives in four realms of human powers: body, mind, psyche or heart, and spirit or soul. In this light, I would see the six levels of human identity mapped out by the IFHIM correlating this way. 

(Please consider these terms copyrighted to the IFHIM).  The body identity and identity of the doer are rooted in the body.  The individual identity and psychosexual identity are rooted in what we have been calling the heart, or psyche.  The psychosocial identity is rooted in the mind and its host of composite abilities: intellect, understanding, imagination, memory, intuition, and consciousness.  These five levels of identity come together finally in the sixth and composite identity, the identity of the self, which I believe to be rooted in the soul.[2]  It seems so reasonable to believe that our highest human power, our will, be rooted here, in the soul; since there remains persistent evidence of will in human beings who suffer the debilitation or loss of just about every other human faculty, ability, or power. 

In another time and place, may I suggest that you visit the stages of moral human development, which are an important parameter for assessing the degree of our development as human persons.  It would also be good to consider what benefit there may be for each person to have their own “rule of life” to enshrine all the disciplines they consider essential to their ongoing human development and assure the time and energy needed to practice these disciplines, for a greater health and stability in life.

Let’s examine how the IFHIM suggests we manage our “energy budget.”

(© Dr. Jeannine Guindon, IFHIM, 55 Gouin Ouest, Montréal, Québec, H3L 1H9 Canada - 514-331-6861).

An innovative and very practical way to look at the management of our overall vitality, that is, the energy built up and expended by our body/mind/psyche/soul self is what the Institut de Formation Humaine Intégrale de Montréal calls the “energy budget.”  The paradigm distinguishes three types of energy and ways of being: 

Ø   Mobile energy – colorful, emotional and imaginative impulse.

Ø   Bound energy – awareness of moral, religious, work, commitment, and all other common and personal obligations and impressions of expected response.

Ø   Autonomous energy – taking time to filter the other two forms of energy through the awareness of who I am, what is my condition and situation now, including what is my available time and what are my obligations and responsibilities, and the meaning and purpose I freely choose to give to my life – and then freely choosing a course of action and a timing for putting it into motion.

The operating principle here is that, while mobile and bound energy are integral parts of how we function as human beings, when we go directly from the mobile impulse we can lose sight of the reality at hand or the meaning and purpose of our life, and cause us to disturb others, forget responsibilities, or cause other kinds of troubles. 

Similarly, bound energy can tie us up into knots if we act immediately upon it as an impulse, because then we become driven by obligation or duty, laws and rules, or other fixed motives that of themselves sap us of the vital energy that is only generated by freedom, interest, and generosity. 

The goal then is to insert a discipline of awareness and reflection to follow upon the emergence of either and both mobile and bound impulses; in order to take other considerations into account, such as other duties, our available strength, the needs and wishes of others, and so on.  Only then, in a moment of freedom, can we make a truly autonomous decision to act upon the impulse, or delay it, or qualify it with certain conditions. 

The challenge is acquiring the disciplines that can help one resist the impulses generated by mobile and bound energy, by developing an internal “space of freedom” to stop, think, and discern what to do. For this, we need to find ways to recuperate from normal daily expenditures of energy. It is easier to be aware of impulses and resist them when we maintain stores of energy within our organism and psyche. Those energy reserves allow us the freedom to stop, consider, and decide what we want to freely choose to do in accord with the meaning and purpose we want to give to our life. 

The IFHIM clarifies three different ways of expending and recuperating energy:

S   Physical strain, effort, and work.   S   fatigue         S   è rest, sleep, & sensory stimulation:  

   e.g. shower, music, dance

Ø  Psychological attention.           Ø  psychic drain         Ø  è change of pace, i.e. mindless 

physical activity: e.g. doing the dishes,
cooking a simple familiar meal

o   Affective charges.                    o   physical tension         o   è vigorous sustained movement 

of the whole body in direct proportion to 
the intensity of the affective charges:
e.g. swim, run, cycle, aerobics, etc.
 

© Dr. Jeannine Guindon, IFHIM, 55 Gouin Ouest, Montréal, Québec, H3L 1H9 Canada - 514-331-6861



[1] Read Dr. Jeannine Guindon’s own account of those years of discovery and development of her new and quite revolutionary formation, education, and therapeutic approaches and methods in “L’autonomie psychique ne s’acquiert qu’au prix d’une vie engagée.  (“Psychic autonomy is obtained only at the cost of a committed life.”) Conference of Jeannine Guindon, Foundress of the IFRM and directress of the programs at the Colloquium of 1986, in La Vie sans frontières.  Les Forces Vitales Humaines.  Histoire et développement.  Tome 1.  I.F.R.M.  1991, pages 41-46.  

[2] As Dr. Jeannine Guindon herself writes: “Thus, psychic autonomy is only obtained at the cost of a life committed to a cause, in a profession, towards one or several persons, and further for believers, towards God.  Thus, is acquired faith in oneself, faith in man and faith in God.”  Ibid, page 46.

© Dr. Jeannine Guindon, IFHIM, 55 Gouin Ouest, Montréal, Québec, H3L 1H9 Canada - 514-331-6861

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I received and participated in this formation at the I.F.R.M. from 1986 to 1990 and wrote up notes with my first pc in 2000 from which I've taken the excerpt above, edited for these web pages January 26, 2021.

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On these Blogger pages we explore TOPICS in our desire to respond to Jesus' call to walk with Him in our world as his missionary disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring to humanity the Good News of the Father's love manifested and given in Jesus, the Divine Mercy. G.S.

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© 2006-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2006-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
 

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Wednesday, November 8, 2006

C.S. Lewis' Most Important Discovery - Why God Is Not Vain to Seek Praise

On these Blogger pages we explore TOPICS in our desire to respond to Jesus' call to walk with Him in our world as his missionary disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring to humanity the Good News of the Father's love manifested and given in Jesus, the Divine Mercy. G.S.

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VIRILITER AGE – ACT MANFULLY (
Ps 27:14)
        http://viriliterage.tumblr.com/

Why God Is Not Vain to Seek Praise       (27) C. S. Lewis’s Most Important Discovery

By Sam Storms           Nov 8, 2006                                                                            Series: Reflections

Since the western world is captivated, at least for now, by C. S. Lewis, and given the fact that tomorrow (December 9, 2005) the film version of “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe” is being released nationwide, I thought it might be good to say something about what I consider to be Lewis’s greatest theological discovery. I can’t say whether Lewis would rank it number one, but I suspect he might.

Lewis was extremely puzzled, even agitated, by the recurring demand by Christians that we all “praise God”. That was bad enough. What made it even worse is that God himself called for praise of God himself. This was almost more than Lewis could stomach. What kind of “God” is it who incessantly demands that his people tell him how great he is?

Lewis describes his struggle and how he worked through it in an extraordinary passage from the essay, “The Problem of Praise in the Psalms” (found in Reflections on the Psalms [New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958], pp. 90-98). Although I’m not widely read in Lewis, of what I have read this is undoubtedly the most important thing he ever wrote. To keep my comments distinct from those of Lewis, mine are in brackets preceded by my name.

"[Lewis] We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that demand. Thus a picture, at once ludicrous and horrible, both of God and His worshippers, threatened to appear in my mind. The Psalms were especially troublesome in this way – ‘Praise the Lord,’ ‘O praise the Lord with me,’ ‘Praise Him.’ … Worse still was the statement put into God’s own mouth, ‘whoso offereth me thanks and praise, he honoureth me’ (50:23). It was hideously like saying, ‘What I most want is to be told that I am good and great.’ … It was extremely distressing. It made one think what one least wanted to think. Gratitude to God, reverence to Him, obedience to Him, I thought I could understand; not this perpetual eulogy… .”

[Storms: I suspect this strikes us as problematic, as it did Lewis, because we want to think that God is pre-eminently concerned with us, not himself. We want a God who is man-centered, not God-centered. Worse still, we can’t fathom how God could possibly love us the way we think he should if he is so unapologetically obsessed with the praise and glory of his own name. How can God love ME if all his infinite energy is expended in the love of HIMSELF? Part of Lewis’s problem, as he himself confesses, was that he did not see that …]

“[Lewis] it is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men. It is not of course the only way. But for many people at many times the ‘fair beauty of the Lord’ is revealed chiefly or only while they worship Him together. Even in Judaism the essence of the sacrifice was not really that men gave bulls and goats to God, but that by their so doing God gave Himself to men; in the central act of our own worship of course this is far clearer – there it is manifestly, even physically, God who gives and we who receive. The miserable idea that God should in any sense need, or crave for, our worship like a vain woman wanting compliments, or a vain author presenting his new books to people who never met or heard him, is implicitly answered by the words, ‘If I be hungry I will not tell thee' (50:12). Even if such an absurd Deity could be conceived, He would hardly come to us, the lowest of rational creatures, to gratify His appetite. I don’t want my dog to bark approval of my books.”

[Storms: Lewis is addressing, somewhat indirectly, the question: How, or better yet, Why do you worship a God who needs nothing? If God is altogether self-sufficient and cannot be served by human hands as if he needed anything (Acts 17:24-25; Romans 11:33-36), least of all glory, why does he command our worship and praise of him? Lewis continues.]

“[Lewis] But the most obvious fact about praise – whether of God or anything – strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless … shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise – lovers praising their mistresses [Romeo praising Juliet and vice versa], readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars… . Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible… . I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: ‘Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?’ The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value.”

[Storms: What Lewis is touching on here is how the love of God for sinners like you and me is ultimately made manifest. God desires our greatest good. But what greater good is there in the universe than God himself? So, if God is truly to love us, he must give us himself. But merely giving us of himself is only the first step in the expression of his affection for sinners. He must work to elicit from our hearts rapturous praise and superlative delight because, as Lewis said, “all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise.” That’s the way God made us. We can’t help but praise and rejoice in what we most enjoy. The enjoyment itself is stunted and hindered if it is never expressed in joyful celebration. Here’s how Lewis explained it.]

“[Lewis] I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with… .

If it were possible for a created soul fully … to ‘appreciate’, that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude… . To see what the doctrine really means, we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God – drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable, bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression, our joy is no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds. The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”

[Storms: If you can, go back and read it again. It’s not the sort of statement one can fully digest at one sitting. Permit me to summarize.

God’s pursuit of my praise of him is not weak self-seeking but the epitome of self-giving love! If my satisfaction in him is incomplete until expressed in praise of him for satisfying me with himself (note well: with HIMSELF, not his gifts or blessings, but the intrinsic beauty and splendor of God as God), then God’s effort to elicit my worship (what Lewis before thought was inexcusable selfishness) is both the most loving thing he could possibly do for me and the most glorifying thing he could possibly do for himself. For in my gladness in him (not his gifts) is his glory in me.

If that was hard to digest, try this.

If God is to love my wife, Ann, optimally, he must bestow or impart the best gift he has, the greatest prize, the most precious treasure, the most exalted and worthy thing within his power to give. That gift, of course, is himself. Nothing in the universe is as beautiful and captivating and satisfying as God!

So, if God loves her he will give himself to her and then work in her soul to awaken her to his beauty and all-sufficiency. In other words, he will strive by all manner and means to intensify and expand and enlarge her joy in him. All of which is to say, and I owe this thought to John Piper, that God’s love for Ann is seen not in him making much of her, but in him graciously enabling her to enjoy making much of him forever.

So, God comes to Ann and says: “Here I am in all my glory: incomparable, infinite, immeasurable, unsurpassed. See me! Be satisfied with me! Enjoy me! Celebrate who I am! Experience the height and depth and width and breadth of savoring and relishing me!”

Does that sound like God pursuing his own glory? Yes. But it also sounds like God loving my wife perfectly and passionately. The only way it is not real love is if there is something for Ann better than God: something more beautiful than God that he can show her, something more pleasing and satisfying than God with which he can fill her heart, something more glorious and majestic than God with which she can occupy herself for eternity. But there is no such thing! Anywhere! Ever!]

AUTHOR      Sam Storms

From:  http://viriliterage.tumblr.com/

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On these Blogger pages we explore TOPICS in our desire to respond to Jesus' call to walk with Him in our world as his missionary disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring to humanity the Good News of the Father's love manifested and given in Jesus, the Divine Mercy. G.S.

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© 2006-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2006-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
 

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Humanity at the beginning of the Third Millennium is in crisis. The R.C. Church is in crisis, but so are the other Christian churches and other religions. What are we to do about it in 2024?

On these Blogger pages we explore TOPICS in our desire to respond to Jesus' call to walk with Him in our world as his missionary discipl...