In at least one previous post, I've talked about the spiritual concept of sacrifices. I just want to embark on a further reflection of the concept here. It is such an important concept that multiple reflections on it are deserved. It has helped me very much in my life, and I believe that it will help as many people as practice it. But to practice something, you have to know it first. Ergo the many reflections aimed at exposing to you what it means. Let us proceed. The concept of sacrifices is one that concerns the mastery of human emotions, especially negative ones, such as loneliness, loss, grief and depression. It teaches that one may view the situations in life that inspire negative emotions as chosen rather than unwillingly received. It teaches that one may see negative emotions as unnecessary, but only possible. Through self perception, one can select as from a menu what emotions to feel at every point in time.
You see, in Metaphysics we are taught that there are only two realities: necessary and possible ones. There is ultimately only one necessary reality, and that is God. There are an innumerable number of possible realities, and they include angels; human minds; the qualities of human minds; ideas; bodies; the qualities of bodies, and pure matter. A necessary being, such as God is, causes itself to be. But every possible being is caused by another. A necessary being never changes because it is complete act, but every possible being is capable of change, when viewed against the backdrop of the one necessary being, God. And if every possible being can change, then God working in agents can change all possible things, especially to better resemble himself. And humans are agents. We participate with God in this task of changing possible beings to ever so gradually resemble the divine.
Our emotions are possible beings. They are not necessary to us. They do not cause themselves, and they do not have the power to control us. We are more eminent than our emotions. We possess the power to both control and cause them, when we act as agents of the necessary God. On a scale of ascendancy from pure potency to pure act, human minds rank above the qualities of human imaginations, which include emotions. And so we can determine what emotions we feel at every step along the path of life. Especially if we work as agents of God. But what does it mean to work as an agent of God? It means that we seek to know his will (epistemology); accept him as lord and master of our life, and try very hard to always do what we know he would have us do (ethics). When we, acting as God's agents, seek to master, transform and control our emotions, we assert our metaphysical superiority over the qualities of human imaginations, and progressively perfect ourselves as humans; as rational animals. The foregoing is asserted by Kant, Descartes and Aquinas, to mention but a few.
The concept of sacrifices is a powerful mechanism for controlling, mastering and transforming human emotions; it is a powerful technology by which we progressively perfect ourselves as rational animals; as thinking things (Descartes). It is a way to become ever more perfect divine agents. We have already explained the concept of sacrifices to mean the situation of viewing especially negative human emotions as possible and manipulable owing to viewing the situations that inspire them as freely chosen rather than unwillingly received. It means assuming responsibility for the qualities of our souls. Recall in this regard in any case that we have defined soul as the sum total of all the unconscious, subconscious or conscious activities of a human being's life. What this means is that even the situations that arise in our lives which we ordinarily did not cause should be viewed in a sense like the ones we did in fact cause. Now, there is a danger to reasoning like this I agree, because it might make some people assume guilt for situations over which they should not have the slightest guilt. But spiritualists would tell you that the very fact you "chose" to be human means that you "chose" every possibility that comes with being human. You chose to be living in that house at the time when it crashed and injured you, killed your parents and made you materially poor. You chose to be in that car that was being driven by a reckless driver who sped so quickly that he killed all your friends in a ghastly accident and made you cripple in the process. You chose for your parents to die while you were young.
The proper question you might here ask is: But why would I choose these painful situations for myself? Well, we all are in this world to learn something; to fulfill a purpose marked out for us by God. We are souls on a mission, and God is the sender. As his agents, we work together with him to create the situations that will ensure we learn the lessons we are supposed to. And so even the conditions we are seemingly unconscious of, we are responsible for them as agents of a universally conscious God. Especially as "all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called to his purpose" (Rom. 8:28). And so, viewed in this light, all the ordinarily bad things that have happened to us may properly become teaching moments, moments that present to us the opportunity to transform a possible reality and its concomitant possible menu of emotions into profitable, didactic realities for our lives. We can see a situation A as a tragedy or a lesson in patience; we can see situation B as a disaster, a loss or a deprivation, or simply as a lesson in frugality or detachment, or humility. We can see situation C as a setback, or simply as a lesson in long-suffering and prudence. We can see situation D as a trauma, or a lesson in personal holiness and sanctification.
In other words for example I could go back mentally and recall my father's suicide, which I obviously as a five year old did not cause, and "choose" it for myself. Placing myself by faith in God's all-knowing embrace, and acting as agent to this all-conscious deity that knows the end before the beginning and that calls us into trusting communion with him, I can spiritually invite the situation into my life and assume responsibility for it. Similarly, I can travel mentally to 1992, to the site of my mother's plane crash and accept responsibility for that. Acting as agent to the necessary principle behind the entire universe, I can claim responsibility for my mother's death; a death which ordinarily I have not even the slightest responsibility for. Having so claimed responsibility for these otherwise losses in my life, they no longer become losses; they no longer become things that happened to me without my wanting them to happen. They become instead things I strategically chose to happen, relying on the far-reaching foresight of the universally necessary principle, God. They become my sacrifices, not my losses or upsets. They become my freely chosen deeds rather than the sad things that happened to me without my consent or participation.
The next question then becomes: But why would you choose to take away your father and mother? Why would you assume responsibility for their passing? The answer is simple: If I believe I took my parents away by my own hands (sacrificed them myself), then I firstly am assuming responsibility for being human, for being myself. I am assuming responsibility for all the situations possibly attendant upon the situation of being human in the first place. Secondly, I am willfully participating in the overarching wisdom of God that permitted these things to happen, and so acting as his agent. Thirdly, I am choosing to participate in the awesome event of recognizing that all emotions, all qualities of human imaginations are potentially subjugated to the human mind, and need not control it. And by such participation I am choosing to exercise dominion over my emotions by acting from a position of power rather than of powerlessness. In other words, I am refusing to play victim in the face of life's vicissitudes. Fourthly, I am choosing to replace in one fell swoop all the negative emotions that come along with powerlessness or being a victim, such as: regret, sadness, loneliness, loss, pain, sorrow, mournfulness and so on. I am choosing instead to feel emotions associated with power and strength, such as: victory, security, purposefulness, positivity, and so on. I am choosing the role and the mentality of master, rather than those of slave. I am choosing freedom, rather than emotional oppression.
But what about guilt? If you sacrificed your parents, aren't you then guilty for their passing? Aren't you guilty of robbing your siblings of their parents; your grandparents of their children; your aunts and uncles of their siblings, and so forth? No. Sacrifice is not the same as killing. It happens in reverse time. Sacrifice happens when the event of loss has already taken place. You then mentally backtrack and claim responsibility for it. And you do so only as an agent of God's consciousness, believing that the God who allowed such and such to happen to you did so for a purpose, which will ultimately contribute to your good. You may or may not know the purpose, but your faith and hope in God supply the impetus for your sacrifice; your confidence in all things working together for your good because of your love for God and your belief in his purpose for your life (Rom. 8:28) make the sacrifice sensible. And so there is no guilt associated with sacrifice. There is only the exchange of negative emotions, such as: pain, regret, loneliness and so forth, for positive ones, such as: security, freedom, peace and powerfulness.
Also take for example that your wife or close friend left you; or you lost a job, or something you valued. You may feel sad or lonely or depressed or mournful. And this would be so because you saw yourself as the powerless victim of sad experiences; the helpless pun in a sad experiential chess game. But if you mentally backtracked and visualized yourself consciously taking these friends away from your life by yourself, you would then be the powerful, responsible instigator of a strategic separation from the person or the thing. And because you would have done this chronologically retrogressively, you would not feel guilt, but only a replacement of a whole set of negative emotions with positive ones. You would be tapping into God's consciousness and sharing in the task of domination over the qualities of human imaginations. You would be perfecting the exercise of rationality. If you knew the greater good for which the sacrifice was useful, the justification for making the sacrifice would be easy to procure. But even if you did not know such greater good, your trust in the ultimate providence of God would supply the justification for the sacrifice.
I used to have certain friends who left me as soon as situations in my life changed for the better. At first I was tempted to be sad. But then I applied the concept of sacrifice to this situation and I realized that the greater good in the service of which these separations took place was my success in the seminary; my success in pursuing my vocation. And so I am happy and relieved. I don't even want these individuals to be my friends ever again. I don't want to undo my sacrifice; lest it be that since I sacrificed these relationships for my success in the seminary their re-establishment might jeopardize such success. After all, Jesus asks us not to put new wine into old wineskins (Mk. 2:22). Plus, I do not want to entertain the possibility of having to make new sacrifices of old situations previously sacrificed, when these untrue friends act up again. Besides, commonsense tells us that some relationships are for a time only, and should be discarded once they have served their purpose, lest they encumber one's spiritual growth. We all must travel light and unencumbered on the journey of life. A word of advice: when the thought of a so-called friend causes you only negative emotions, it's time to sacrifice that friendship completely. Only God is necessary to you. No human is.
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