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Angustia: no way out!

  Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae describes anxiety as a narrowing (from Latin angustia - narrowness): "Anxiety is that which so takes possession of the mind as to leave no opening for escape" It is sorrow so intense it "binds the soul" and "shuts out all hope" The soul becomes trapped, unable to find a way out. This image is precise: anxiety feels like being in a space that keeps getting smaller, the walls pressing in. Aquinas's proposed remedies all point towards "dilatatio" (expansion) : -Grace as "enlargement and strengthening" of the soul. A distraction that provokes a "dilatatio" (expansion) and therefore:  -Joy and love causing the heart to widen -Hope opening what anxiety has closed -Contemplation of truth delighting more than pain saddens This is grace - not as theological abstraction, but as lived experience of sudden release. My frustration:  Around my 20s when I was trying to deepen Catholicism, I bega...

Getting rid of bonds

 


Step after step, getting rid of bonds, malicious bonds, which hold you captive like in a mold, a matrix, you learned to consider your skin…

It takes time.

The first step is to realise you are in a mold. When you fully realise it, you just want to liberate yourself, and yet you can’t. Every time you try to cut the ties that keep you in the mold, you simply can’t. Fear and strong guilt feelings are the major hindrance. Therefore you step back, suddenly ashamed of yourself for that kind of pride that pushes you out of the common rules, daring too much. Now you see how wild you were. Submissive and obedient you feel docile and pious again, and the blessings pour onto you. You are back, well protected inside the mold.

And yet, after some time here it is again: that deep push inside. Again you feel tremendously lucid in your thoughts and feelings. You clearly see the inner prison which binds you like in a spell. You realise that indeed: it is a spell! And again you feel that terrible urge inside to severing ties. But you can’t. There is not enough strength inside.

Once again, the rebellious wave calms down and once more you humbly go back in the ranks.

Eventually, one day, totally out of the blue, without any sign that could reveal you were getting ready, something of minor importance happens, and you simply cut off everything which was still binding you to situations and people, holding you hostage in their emotional and pseudo moral blackmail! And you are out of the mold, out of the matrix. Surprised that everything happened without any effort, but very smoothly, simply and naturally!

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