Self Mastery

SELF-MASTERY (Ref. Christian Self-Mastery by Basil W. Maturin1) Self-Mastery - what does it really mean? To one author, it means that I am responsible for myself and the direction I want my life to take. I actually like the word mastery because it indicates that it takes time and effort to master something. The happiest people are those who realize that self-mastery is a lifelong process while enjoying the journey. When we accept that we are masters of our own life we feel empowered. It forces us to figure out what we need in order to consistently like ourselves and what we need to do in order to create a life that is right for us. Part of selfmastery is learning to be comfortable with who we are and realistic about our strength and weaknesses. Trusting that when life sends us hardships, we can find resources within us to deal with adversity. I am convinced that every one can learn to increase their self confidence and coping skills through self-mastery. How does one learn that as an adult? The key is to open yourself up to learning. There are many ways to learn in order to grow to be the kind of person you want to be. But most of all, we have to trust that we have the potential within us to evolve to be the people we are capable of being. The major reference for this talk is the book “Christian Self-Mastery,” a book which is indispensable to anyone seeking the knowledge that matters most: selfknowledge. The author, Basil Maturin was a clergyman in the Church of England before converting to Catholicism at age 51. Why do we need to develop self-mastery? Because we want to enjoy true freedom in Christ through the art of self-mastery. No matter how hard we are trying now, we can have a better relationship with God and greater self-mastery, if we follow these simple steps proposed by Fr. Maturin to getting our passions in check and improving our self-knowledge. Develop self-knowledge: The spiritual life, according to Fr. Maturin, begins from one or the other of two points of departure: knowledge of self or knowledge of God. Two apostles epitomize these two methods: St. Paul and St. John. From the latter, we learn of the love of God. From St. Paul we gain insight into the mysteries of our human nature. The book focuses on what St. Paul has to teach us.

 Holiness consists in friendship with God. If we would be in any sense the friends of God, we must have at least that desire for holiness without which

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Reference: Basil W. Maturin, Christian Self-Mastery, Sophia Institute Press, PO Box 5284, Manchester, NH, 03108, 2001, 224 pp.

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such friendship would be impossible; the growth in the knowledge of God is the deepening of this friendship. But the knowledge of self is as necessary for the spiritual life as the knowledge of God. We do not really know ourselves Neither do we know what keeps us from God. We are surprised at who we really are Sin and sanctity reveal us to ourselves Changing circumstance show that we do not know ourselves  Thus it happens that some great change that takes place in midlife acts as a revelation of character to many a person, revealing dispositions, defects, and habits of which they were wholly unconscious. Partial self-knowledge blinds us. Self-knowledge is greater than self-analysis. Let us learn to examine ourselves in the light of our Lord  The more perfect the life that crosses our path, the clearer and more penetrating the light that it unconsciously sends flooding our souls. And all the light that other lives shed upon us are but faint glimmers compared with that which flows from the presence of Jesus Christ.  For example, how different it is to rise from our self-examination with the technical piece of dry knowledge of the fact that we have given way 6x to irritation, whereas yesterday we gave way only 5x, than to rise with the knowledge that has come to our soul from the comparison of ourselves in the presence of the irritating circumstances of our life with the example of our Lord, say, when He was struck in the face by one of the high priest’s servants, or when He was in the presence of a Pharisee or Sadducee who was striving only to trap Him in His talk. Test your self-knowledge  For instance, you have the general and indefinite belief that you are not uncharitable, or sharp-tongued, or disposed to gossip. Resolve, for instance, in the morning to mortify yourself in speech so many times. I think the results of a few days’ efforts to keep such a resolution will be no small surprise to you of how much you fail, and how unmortified you are with your tongue.  Or again, you say and believe that you are not really self-indulgent, that you take your food and sleep for the sake of health, and not for the pleasure they afford in themselves. Resolve to practice mortification in food, or to live the heroic minute upon waking up in the morning. Put these things to a few days’ test, and see whether your theory about your indifference in matters of self-indulgence is correct.

Discipline yourself:

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 None of our human faculties are bad.

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The first thing to recognize is that all our faculties are good. There is no "faculty, power or substance" within us that needs to be destroyed. We need not crush our powers, but discover their true use. St. Augustine's intellect was the same power before, as well as, after his conversion. What changed? His intellect became the servant of truth, not error.  Turn your God-given powers to the good.  Subdue your rebellious will  Control your other powers and faculties Abide by the laws of the spirit:

 Conquer your sins with more than self-knowledge.  It is certainly untrue to say that the one thing we need to overcome

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sin and to attain perfection is a more perfect knowledge of our own nature and its laws. The drunkard and the sensualist know full well that they are ruining the health of both mind and body, but I doubt if this knowledge alone has ever succeeded in making one or the other either temperate or pure. The mere knowledge of what we ought not to do, often even of the disastrous results of what we are tempted to do, will not necessarily hold us back from doing it. In this, St. Paul shall be our guide. In his epistle to the Romans (7:2325), he tells us: “but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”

According to St. Paul, our interior life is governed by four laws: the law of our members, the law of sin, the law of the mind and the law of the spirit of life. The law of our members prepares us for the dominion of sin, and the law of the mind prepares us for the law of the spirit of life, which is, in fact, not a law, but a Person who acts according to law. Another conflict stirring deep within the soul of every one of us is the bitter divorce between knowledge and love. Originally intended to inform each other, so that "our love would be reasonable and our reason glow with love," they now vie for dominance, and the result is insincerity. Two other opposites contend within us for dominion: independence and dependence, or duty to self and our duty to others. These also must be restored to the balance that existed between them before the Fall. Finally, joy and sorrow, love and hate, and memory and imagination--each of

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these latter ones demanding autonomy--add to the conflicting currents in the soul. With all these opposing forces raging inside us, we need a strategy, if we're to make any progress in the spiritual life.

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Conflict will always rend your soul. Your mind and your will are at odds. The law of your member prepares the way for sin. Then, the law of sin leads you to spiritual death. Therefore, let the law of the mind guide you. Let the Spirit of Life lead you to our Lord

Train your will:

 Your character will last beyond this life.  Many forces form your character  Choosing the good grows easier with habit. Random efforts to root out a vice will avail nothing. Rather, method is required.  Every choice that is made develops a tendency to choose in the same direction.  It would be worse than misleading to tell a person who has long yielded to habits of sin that at any given moment he could, without constant prayer, vigilance, and strenuous effort, assert his liberty and never yield again. We can tell him that he must fight for his liberty. That, habit can only be conquered by habit; that he must form good habits to conquer bad, habits of resistance to overcome cowardly habits of surrender. We can tell him that he is born free, not a slave; that this sense of his inherent liberty he never can lose. We can tell him that it is not by violent and spasmodic efforts at self-assertion that he will overcome, but by steady and unremitting efforts at perseverance.  The law of habit can be conquered only by the law of perseverance.  Once acquired, virtue is difficult for your to lose  Choosing the good in small matters will help you resist temptations.  The hundred things each day on which we are obliged to come to a decision and make a choice---things in themselves of little importance---are the training ground of the will. In work, in study, in recreation, in the use of all those things that are necessary for our daily life. Such as food and sleep, in the daily calls of duty, in the exercise of the powers of mind and body, in everything we have to do, in our relations with every person with whom we have dealings, by the Providence of God, the will has to be exercised and trained, and it becomes weak or strong, free or enslaved, firm or vacillating, as a result. 

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He who habitually struggles with everything---however harmless in itself---that tends to get too much hold on him, checking and mortifying his appetite, denying himself in things he likes, forgoing the use of that which he might legitimately have, so that he may not allow these things to encroach beyond their proper place, who trains his will to use the material things he needs only as means to an end, never allowing them to become an end in themselves, is not likely to fail under the temptation to unlawful pleasure.

Control your thoughts: You may tell a man by his friends, but there are no friends so intimate as his thoughts; they enter into the sanctuary of his soul. If you know the companions of a person’s mind, you will know what kind of person he is. Choose which thoughts to listen to. Your thoughts color your experience Your mind is easily molded. Your mind can grow habituated to choosing certain thoughts. Controlling your thoughts requires prudence.  For instance, you cannot get rid of self-consciousness by trying, however hard, not to think of yourself. The thinking that you must not think of yourself only results in thinking of yourself all the more. The effort not to be proud will not necessarily lead you one step in the direction of humility. Humility is very much more positive and vital thing than the absence of pride. Drive bad thoughts out with good ones  There is a better way: the positive rather than the negative way. Let not your mind be overcome with evil, “but overcome evil with good,” as what St. Paul said in his letter to the Romans (12:21).  If you wish to fill a glass with water, you do not first expel the air; you expel the air by pouring in water. In other words, simply let good thoughts displace bad ones.  Therefore, a person who wishes to overcome any habit of evil thoughts must do so indirectly, trying not so much as not to indulge in anger as to fill the mind with loving and kindly thoughts, meeting discontent by rejoicing in the will of God, self-consciousness by wrapping himself around in the presence of God.  This, and the constant effort to keep the mind interested and occupied about healthy subjects that it can enjoy without strain or weariness will do much to recover it from the ill effects of lack of discipline. It is a great matter to know how to give it relaxation without laxity and by its studies and recreations, prepare it for prayer and the more strenuous work of life. A mind that is constantly kept busy will have no time for morbid thoughts. Bring your knowledge and love into harmony. Let memory and imagination guide you. 

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God has given man two great powers: one that looks backward into the farthest past and stores up its treasures, the other that presses forward and lifts the veil overhanging the future. These two powers are memory and imagination.  Do not abuse memory and imagination 

Strive for balance:

 Do not develop only part of your soul. In the effort to conquer our faults, we have to be on our guard against the danger of being one-sided.  For example, humility is the perfect blending of the very highest and the lowliest of man’s thoughts. The humble man is conscious at once of his own nothingness and of his exaltation as God’s creature, whom God would unite to Himself.  Meekness is the blending of gentleness and strength---a strength that has been won by victory over self and passion, and a gentleness that shows that this victory is the outcome of no harshness and bitterness toward self or the world, but of love.  So with charity. Christian charity is not blind disregard of facts, as refusal to see things as they are, a condoning of the sins of others. True Christian charity blends in perfect proportion justice and love.  There is more truth than we realize in the saying: “Every vice is a virtue carried to extremes.”  Balance your independence with your dependence on others.  Know how powerfully other affect you.  Hate and anger are essential elements in the spiritual life 

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Anger is the sword that God puts into man’s hand to fight the great moral battles of life. As man was created to love God, the more he will love good and hate all that assaults or tries to undermine good. It is not the anger that is bad; it is the ill use to which it is put.

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The peevish anger of a vain woman and the righteous indignation of the saint differ only in this: the latter is using an essential element of human nature as God intended, the former is not.  Use anger wisely.

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We must strive to conquer that which is the cause of the abuse of anger, and that, is the reign of self in the soul---the living for self instead of for God.  Govern even your love.  Love is not merely a blind passion. “Love has eyes,” and the eye of the heart is the reason.  But it is in its first movements that the outgoings of the heart must be controlled. Later on, it may be impossible. It is by the yielding in things small and insignificant in themselves, each of which could have been easily resisted, that love becomes an unruly passion.

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On the other had, it is by small things, often, that the love we owe to others is gradually killed.

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Only as we try to love God aright can we love man aright. Only by turning our hearts steadily toward God shall we be able to set its movements right toward man.  Let the Commandment help you govern you love.

Govern your body:

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Do not try to crush the spirit or the body. The Fall destroyed the union of soul and body. Your character affects your body. Your self-discipline will affect your resurrected body. Deny your body whatever weakens your soul’s union with God. Cultivate the fire of holiness in your soul. Submit your flesh to your spirit. Avoid indulging your body.

Sacrifice the good for what is better:

 Do not use mortification as an end in itself.  For the value of mortification is as means to an end. And the end is not

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death, but life. It is not the act of mortification in itself nor the pain that it costs that gives it its value, but what it gains. It is not the mere giving up, but the receiving, the surrender of something good in itself for something better. The pain of the sacrifice is valuable as witness and test of the worth of that for which the sacrifice is made and the faith of him who makes it. In mortification, focus on what you gain, not on what you lose.  The law of gaining possession is the parting with what we value less for what we value more. The principle is, “Little for little, much for much, and all for all.” Be ready to “die” to oneself to rise to a higher state of life. Let our Lord Jesus Christ impart divine life into you. Surrender yourself to God’s grace.

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This is the mortification that the Christian life demands: the surrender of our whole selves to the new life that descends it from above to sanctify and energize every power and faculty of our nature and fits us to enter into the Vision of God.

Persevere: (Ref. chapter 3 of "Itinerarios de vida cristiana," Javier Echevarría, Planeta, 2001)

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“When a person, moved by the Holy Spirit, makes his entire life a response to the demands of love, the things God may ask of him are no longer seen as renunciations and sacrifices, but as opportunities to find God and unite himself more closely to him. Christian maturity is attained precisely through the victory of love, which overcomes fear and selfishness…. But in the spiritual life, as in everything, victory is not attained without a struggle, and this struggle will last one’s entire life. We are attached to ourselves and short-sighted, and often let ourselves be blinded by a momentary pleasure or the affirmation of our ego, instead of opening our heart to the greatness of God’s loving plans. On this journey of our spiritual growth, the Holy Spirit is always urging us forward. The only thing necessary is to be docile to his inspirations.”  So let us persevere in such ways as we have been considering, or in any of those manifold ways in which God is wont to teach those who are in earnest.

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Let us discipline all our powers of mind and body and allow no voice of inclination or passion ever to issue a command or assert authority until order has been restored throughout the whole kingdom of the soul, and there is but one ruler whose lightest word is law, and that ruler receives its commands from God.

In summary, Christian self-mastery entails developing self-knowledge, disciplining oneself, abiding by the laws of the spirit, training one’s will, controlling one’s thoughts, achieving balance in one’s spiritual life, governing one’s body, sacrificing the good for what is better and persevering in all these. ******

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