Continuing Your Own Transformation Into Your True Self.

 The Vine and the Branches

1. “I am the true vine and my Father is the vinegrower
2.  He prunes away every barren branch, but the fruitful ones he trims clean * to  increase their yield.
3. You are clean already, thanks to the word I have spoken to you.
4. Live on in me, as I do in you. No more than a branch can bear fruit of itself apart from me.
5. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who lives in me and I in him will produce abundantly, for apart from me you can do nothing:
6. A man who does not live in me is like a withered, rejected branch, picked up to be  thrown in the fire and burnt.”
7. If you live in me, and my words stay part of *you  you may ask what you will—it will be done for you.
8. My Father has been glorified in your bearing much fruit and becoming my disciples.
9. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Live on in my love.
10. You will live in my love if you keep my commandments, even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and live in his love.
11. All this I tell you that joy may be yours and your joy may be complete.
12. This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you.
13. There is no greater love than this; to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
14. You are my friends if you do what I command you.
15. I no longer speak of you as slaves, for a slave does not know what his master is about. Instead I call you friends since I have made known to you all that I heard from my Father.
16. It was not you who chose me, it was I who chose you to go forth and bear fruit. Your fruit must endure, so that all you ask the Father in my name he will give you.
17. The command I give you is this that you love one another.

In using this agricultural image, Jesus is trying to tell us who we human persons really are. Who we really are, our “True Self” is a deep spiritual mystery. Clearly, our “True Self” is deeply and intimately connected to Jesus, as a vine and its branches are one, fully interconnected, plant. Just as the branches are totally dependent on the vine for life, we humans are totally dependent on Jesus for life itself. As we mentioned earlier, this is very good news indeed! It is the best possible news to learn we are totally dependent on a totally loving, totally powerful God, who wants only the best for us.

Jesus emphasizes this dependency relationship when he says: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who lives in me, and I in him, will produce abundantly, for apart from me you can do nothing”. Jesus wants us to live in Him, and He wants to live in us. This mutual indwelling is the Divine Union that God intended from the beginning, but which was disrupted by intentional human willfulness, as described in the allegorical parable of the fall of Adam and Eve. Jesus has now come to heal this rupture, and bring our fallen human nature back into right relationship with God. In the paradigm we have been using, Jesus has come to deliver us out of the weed and into the flower. And this right relationship is one of love freely given. Just as the rupture was caused by using our free will to disobey God, and attempt to compete with God, Jesus now invites us to use our free will to obey His commandment to love, which unites us with Jesus’ love and Jesus’ life and heals the ruptured relationship with God. If we do freely choose to love, Jesus promises we will “produce abundantly”, but if we freely choose not to love, we “ can do nothing” but wither away.

It is really quite amazing that Jesus, Who is God in human form, deeply desires to share His whole life with us, especially His essential essence, His divine love. It is perhaps even more amazing that Jesus deeply desires that we fully share our lives with Him, just as he shares His life completely with God the Father. And the “glue that binds Jesus to His Father, and Jesus to us, and each of us to each other is divine love. We can think of God’s divine love (the love that the Three Persons of the Trinity have for one another, and for us humans) as the sap that courses through the vine and out into all the branches, thereby giving life to the branches and producing fruitful grapes from each branch.

This is certainly a beautiful image of divine union, the goal of all Christians. In divine union, we humans finally live out of our “True Self”, as a branch totally attached to Jesus, the True Vine. When we are living out of our “True Self”, the love of God flows through us, unobstructed by emotional suffering, out to God and to one another. We are bound to God and to one another by the love of Christ; the very same love which binds the Trinity together as one God, flows out to us humans and binds us to God, and flows through us back to God and out to one another, binding us all (the Trinity and all humans) together in love by God’s divine love.

This communion of love is a beautiful truth, but the reader can certainly be forgiven for wondering how the reader can actually participate in this love in everyday life. To show us how to do this, we will start with what Jesus has to say in verses 9-17 above. And then to actually accomplish the loving that Jesus commands, we will need the help of the saints, who learned from Jesus that self surrender is necessary in order to be able to love.

In verses 9-17 above, Jesus makes it clear that He wants us to remain in His love, that is, remain firmly attached to the vine. Jesus further says that we will remain in His love if we keep his commandment: “This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you” If we are able to obey this commandment, Jesus promises “that my joy may be yours and your joy may be complete” So Jesus wants to give us His joy so that our joy may be complete. This “complete joy” is one of the deepest desires of the human heart. The human being, made in the image and likeness of God, is created to image the love of God to others, and in the very process of loving, experience the Joy of Christ, in the likeness of Jesus experiencing His own joy.

In these passages, Jesus is giving us a gigantic truth, a truth that does not seem to be well understood in our culture. The gigantic truth is that the only way to true joy, to a truly happy human life, is to love others like Jesus loves us. This great truth does not resonate with the “false—self”, which is much more interested in being loved and approved of by others, then in loving others. And believing the lie of the “false—self” that surely I will be truly joyful if only everyone loved me, approved of me, and did everything I want them to do”, keeps the person firmly rooted in the misery of the weed. Not only is this great truth not believed by many, but when it is believed, it can seem impossible to obey. If Jesus had just said “love one another” and left it at that, it might seem doable. But He said “love one another as I have loved you.” So we are commanded to love at the same infinite level at which Jesus loves. This can seem impossible, and thus discouraging.

But we must take heart, and realize that we would not be asked to do something impossible, and remember that all things are possible with God. It turns out that if we can get ourselves, or more accurately our “false—selves”, out of the way, Jesus love can flow through us easily and effortlessly, just like the sap of the vine flows easily into the branches.

Now we will turn to how to get our “false—selves” out of Jesus way, so that He can love through us.

Let us begin with Therese of Lisieux, a saint and a doctor of the church.

I understand clearly
that it is through love alone
that we can become pleasing to God,
and my sole ambition is to acquire it.

And Jesus has deigned to point out to me
that the only way which leads to Love’s divine furnace
is the way of self-surrender.
It is like the confidence of the little child
who sleeps without fear in its father’s arms.
Through the mouth of Solomon
the Holy Spirit has told us:
“Whosoever is a little one,
let him come unto me.
To the one who is little
mercy is granted.”

St. Therese of Lisieux

St. Therese clearly understands Jesus command to love, and this truthful understanding has given rise in her to the holy desire (“ my sole ambition”) to love others, in order to please Jesus.

Therese entered the Carmelite convent at Lisieux, France at the age of 15, and died of tuberculosis there at the age of 24 , in 1897. Therese grew up in a loving Christian family, the youngest of eleven daughters. When her mother died when she was only 5 years old, her older sisters pampered her from then on. Therese was also a very sensitive person by nature. It was a shock, therefore, when Therese entered the convent and was not coddled or pampered or treated in any special way, as she was accustomed. When Therese tried to love her Carmelite sisters, more often than not she experienced irritation, annoyance, and anger, and felt no love at all. She was put off by noises some would make during prayer, by words, some would speak to her and certain behaviors some would exhibit.

When Therese discovered that she was simply not able to obey Jesus’ command to love others, she turned to Jesus for help, and as she puts it, “ And Jesus has deigned to point out to me that the only way which leads to Love’s divine furnace is the way of self-surrender. And then she gives us a beautiful image to capture what she means by “self-surrender”.  She says, “ It is like the confidence of the little child who sleeps without fear in its’ father’s arms”. Because the child has complete confidence in its father, the child is completely, without fear and rests in peace in its father’s arms. We are to have this same complete confidence in God the Father, Jesus, and, or the Holy Spirit. This is self surrender in complete trust, faith, belief and confidence that God will provide all that we need, as Jesus promised in MT 6:19. It is interesting that Therese is pointing out the very important interrelationship between fear and confidence in God. Complete trust in God drives out all fear, but less than complete faith gives rise to fear. As we have seen before, fear occurs in the bloom of the weed, while confidence and trust are required to actually believe the truth, the roots of the flower. To drive out all fear, one must totally believe that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life; and further believe that all His words are true (for example, that God will provide all that we need.) Such total faith in God heals all painful emotions, and roots us solidly in the heavenly world of the flower.

This call to self-surrender to God, echoes Brother Lawrence’s call to complete abandonment to God in all things, issued two hundred years before Therese. As Brother Lawrence noted, complete self-surrender to God includes complete acceptance of everything that comes into our lives, as we trust God to get us through all of life’s ups and downs. And not just get through but get us through without fear, and with a feeling of peace, and even a certain measure of enjoyment, because whatever we do with God is by its very nature enjoyable.

Furthermore, complete self-surrender requires surrendering every part of ourselves, as we have seen in the transformation from the weed to the flower. We must surrender our faulty thinking, and replace it with the trueful thinking of Christ, (the roots of the weed and flower). We must surrender our excessive and disordered desires, which is acceptance, and take on the holy desires of Christ (the stems of the weed and flower). Once we have surrendered our disordered thinking and willfulness, our painful emotions are surrendered automatically, because they can not live without the presence of excessive or disordered desire, just as the bloom of the weed can not exist without the presence of the stem (and the roots). And when our afflictive emotions are surrendered, we receive the peace of Christ, a peace which the world can not give; and we receive the joy of Christ, so our joy may be complete; and we receive the love of Christ, a peace which the world can not give; and we receive the joy of Christ, so our joy may be complete; and we receive the love of Christ which surpasses all understanding. And finally, now automatically and effortlessly, our abusive action is surrendered in favor of Christ’s loving action in every situation (the fragrance of the weed and the flower). For the weed is now completely uprooted and destroyed, and its fragrance with it. And the only thing that can come from heavenly world of the flower is the intoxicating fragrance of loving action.

This complete surrender of our “false selves” to God is exactly what Jesus meant in His first words of public ministry, when He said, “Reform your lives and believe in the gospel!” In total self surrender we re—form our thinking, willfulness, emotions, and behavior to conform them to Christ’s thinking, will, emotions, and behavior. And notice it requires one to “believe” in the gospel”, which is Jesus entire message. This belief, as we’ve seen, roots us firmly in the flower.

But surrendering our human will can be “very hard to do”.

The Stubborn Human Will

For help with our stubborn will, let us turn now to St. Theresa of Avila, doctor of the church, and reformer of the Carmelite order along with St. John of the Cross, from whom we heard earlier.

In what does the highest perfection consist?
Do not look for or expect to find it
in interior delights,
or in great raptures and visions,
or in the gift of prophecy,
but only in conforming our will
to the will of God.

Then there will be nothing
that God wills
that we do not will ourselves,
and with our whole will.
We will accept the bitter with the sweet,
knowing it to be the will of God.

For the raptures may pass,
leaving only scanty obedience to the will of God.
Self-will will remain, our soul joined to self-love
rather than to the will of God.

Choosing the will of God is very hard to do.
For not only must we choose
to do the will of God,
but we must be pleased with doing
that which, according to our nature,

may be in every way the opposite of
that which we would choose for ourselves

Certainly this is hard.
but love, if perfect
is strong enough to do it.

In love we forget our own pleasure
in order to please the God
who loves us so much.

St. Teresa of Avila

For Teresa, spiritual perfection requires using our free will to unite our will to God’s will. This means freely choosing the stem of the flower (God’s will), and freely choosing to not choose the things of “the world”, the stem of the weed, such as money, sex, power, control, winning, and “success”.

To conform our will to God’s will requires that we completely accept everything that comes into our lives. We must “accept the bitter and the sweet”, treating these two imposters the same, because if completely accepted they can not harm us in any way. We will remain undisturbed in the peace and joy of Christ as they came and go in our lives. Acceptance keeps us firmly in the heavenly world of the flower; but the moment we refuse to accept reality as it is right now, we immediately enter the painful world of the weed. This is why Brother Lawrence advocated both trust in God, and complete acceptance of whatever comes into our lives. This complete acceptance is the “detachment” that St. John of the Cross was talking about when he said, “In detachment the spirit finds peace and rest because it coverts nothing”. If God is willing to accept reality just as it is, flaws and all, even while God works hard to bring the Kingdom of God to full fruition by calling all persons to God’s Self, we too must accept reality just as it is. It is important to understand that acceptance does not require us to approve of all the obvious flaws, the abusive action, the lack of love that is widely prevalent throughout the world. Like Jesus, we can call a spade a spade, and call abusive action abusive. But we must accept it, or we will not be able to love. Acceptance allows us to continue loving in a world that is not completely loving. If we are unable to accept what is, we will get caught in fear and anger, which block our ability to love. If we stay in acceptance, we stay in the peace and love of Christ, and all of our actions will be loving actions. These loving actions, such as helping our neighbors in any way we can, help Jesus to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. As we noted earlier, Jesus first words of His public ministry were “This is the time of fulfillment. The reign of God is at hand! Reform your lives and believe in the gospel! “ (MK 1:15) the reign of God is at hand in the person, teachings, and saving mission of Jesus, but it still has not come to full fruition, and therefore flaws and abuse remain in the world. The reign of God will come in complete fullness when each and every person has re-formed their lives to con-form with Jesus. We cooperate with Jesus when we freely choose to con-form our will to His will. And His will is that we accept life as it is, so that we are able to obey His commandment to love.Once we have done that, “the time of fulfillment” will have arrived for us as we have in the joy of Christ. And in this state of “fulfillment”, the log will finally be removed from our eye, which will allow us to be a loving help to our neighbor in removing the speck in our neighbor’s eye.

While Teresa says “ Choosing the will of God is very hard to do”, it is also the most rewarding thing to do. Let’s hear more from St. Teresa of Avila.

One day I heard these words:
“During this life true gain consists
not in striving after greater joy in me,
but in doing my will”.

My brothers and sisters, let the will of God,
to whom we belong, be achieved in our lives.
This means surrendering our lives into the hands of God,
doing what is best with our gifts,
forgetting as far as possible all our self-interest,
and resigning ourselves entirely.
To truly serve God is to forget ourselves,
our advantages, our comfort,
and our apparent happiness.

The point is that we should make a gift
of our hearts
emptying them of ourselves
that they may be filled with God.
What power lies in this gift!
Our almighty Father becomes one with us
and transforms us,
uniting Creator and creature.

How desirable is this union!
to attain it is to live in this world and in the next
without care of any kind.
There is not secret, occult, or mysterious formula.
Our whole welfare consists solely
in doing the will of God.
But God will not force our wills.
God will take only what we give.
But God will not be ours entirely
until we yield ourselves entirely to God.

St. Teresa of Avila

Here Teresa hears God saying to her that “true gain” consists in “doing my will”. We are not to strive directly for “greater joy” in God, for this is the false-self centered approach found in the weed. We are instead to strive to do God’s will, which is always other-centered, particularly the love of others. This places us firmly in the stem of the flower, and leads directly to the peace, joy, and love of Christ. Thus the joy of Christ, which can not be apprehended by directly pursuing it, can be received as a gift from Jesus, if we obey his will to love, and do His will in all things. It is similar to the pursuit of a butterfly; if you want to see it up close, it is better not to pursue it directly, for it is nearly impossible to catch it in your hands. But if you sit quietly in your garden, it may make a gift of itself to you by landing on your knee! As we have already seen, True joy only comes from loving God and other humans (and, indeed all creation).

Then Teresa goes on to say that doing the will of God “means surrendering our lives into the hands of God, what is best with our gifts, and forgetting as far as possible all our self-interest…” Saint Theresa’s phrase “…surrendering our lives into the hands of God..” reminds us of Saint Theresa’s phrase of “…self surrender.”, and Brother Lawrence’s phrases, “ We must trust God once and for all and abandon ourselves to Him alone”, and “we should surrender ourselves in things temporal and in things spiritual, entirely and with complete abandonment to God.” As we have discussed, this surrender includes every part of ourselves, including our thinking, willfulness, emotions, and actions, although Saint Theresa is certainly emphasizing willfulness here.

Saint Theresa goes on to say that the point she is trying to make is we should make a free will “…gift of our hearts emptying them of ourselves that they may be filled with God.” Saint Teresa is referring here to complete transformation of the False-Self into the True-Self. “ What power lies in this gift! Our almighty Father becomes one with us and transforms us, uniting creator and creature.” This is divine union, the goal of every Christian, where we now live out of our True Self, a state where God can live God’s life in and through us. God’s love can now flow through us, unobstructed by the deluded, self-centered False Self. We become a healthy branch on God’s vine, where God’s loving sap flows freely into the branch, and produces good fruit of loving service to others.

“How desirable is this union! To attain it is to live in this world and in the next without care of any kind.” In this state of divine union, all human emotional suffering has been eliminated; we now live without care of any kind. There is no more worry, anxiety, fear or anger, because the world of the weed has been completely uprooted and replaced by the world of the flower; the excessive and disordered willfulness of the weed has been conformed to the will of God, and the deluded thinking of the weed, which gives rise to the disordered willfulness has been transformed into the trueful thinking of God. Now that our thinking and willfulness have been completely transformed, it is now impossible to experience emotional suffering. In its place, we experience the peace, joy, and love of Christ; and coming from this heavenly place, all our words and actions are effortlessly loving and tremendously fruitful for others. It is now impossible to be abusive toward others any more, because the causes of abusive action (deluded thinking, leading to disordered willfulness, leading to painful emotional suffering, which then leads to abusive action) have all been eliminated.

The False Self has now completely dissolved, like the wicked witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz. Now we are living a truly authentic and meaningful life, where in we allow God to fully live God’s life in and through us, and God allows us to fully participate in God’s life and God’s mission to fully bring about the Kingdom of God on earth by drawing every human into the divine union with God. This then is the mystery of living out of our True Self, like a healthy, fruitful branch firmly connected to the divine vine. There is no more meaningful life to live on this earth than helping God to bring about God’s Kingdom of love, on person at a time, by inviting that person to come into the closest possible relationship with God, which we are calling divine union.

We have now described the entire spiritual journey in some detail. It encompasses the complete transformation of the human mind into the mind of Christ. It is the journey out of the False Self into the True Self, which is divine union. It is the journey out of the living hell of the weed, into the Kingdom of God, represented by the flower.

But the False Self dies hard, and will fight to live on until it has been dissolved completely. In the next chapter we will return to the dirty, nitty gritty daily struggle to progress  on the spiritual journey.

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