Learning to Love With Your Whole Self
There’s a familiar story of some seekers who find a spiritual teacher and then request a rule by which to live.
They go to him and ask, “Which commandment is the greatest?” But their question of course is not brought forth in good faith.
It is disingenuous at best. Because while presenting themselves as curious seekers, their interest really lies in preserving what they have already predetermined—all the things they already know, or at least believe ought to be.
“Give us something by which we might conduct ourselves,” they demand. “A singular philosophy of sorts—one which systematically summarizes all possible ethical nuances under the sun.”
To protect the familiar arrangements of their lives, they deploy a false reductionism that aims at avoidance. The point under the inquiry being that any attempt to distill is sure folly; it’s better then to just leave things be.
It’s not unlike a common murmuring in our contemporary life. As some will so adamantly insist, “[Insert geopolitical conflict of choice] is complicated; it’s best to leave these things to the experts.”
Complexity has a convenient way of being constructed whenever avoidance is the aim. Sometimes a defense of complexity is actually concerned with quite the opposite: simplistic, self-centered impulses that are really anything but nuanced.
All-too-often, complexity can become a deflection, one carefully designed to avoid accountability. Baiting someone under false pretenses though is a good way of disarming an argument one would rather not have. So, these so-called seekers add to their request of the great teacher, “Be sure to make it nice and pithy, too.”
Nevertheless, he replies, simply, “Love.”
It is always a choice whether one decides to love—or not.
In his book Works of Love, Søren Kierkegaard suggests love must become habitual. We might think of it as a “rule” (or put differently a credo) by which one lives. Because love does not simply happen by accident.
Love is the result of intention. And because choosing to love is so rarely convenient—oftentimes being really quite disruptive to our preferences and the things we think we know—it must be rooted in something more than personal comforts and predetermined preferences.
More than a mere vibe to opt in or out of, love is a command. Because if the realm of Love is to be entered into fully, whether that be personally or collectively, it must become a duty. And its for this reason, as a philosopher and in particular a theologian, that Kierkegaard insists love is the ethical imperative.
This must be so, at least for the Christian. Afterall, as Jesus says to those so-called seekers, “You shall love…”
The Enneagram helps us discern the work of love in our lives.
One of its core teachings (love it or leave it) involves three centers of intelligence. It is really the most central gift of this psycho-somatic-spiritual typology: providing a helpful framework to identify different ways of knowing.
In brief, each personality type is situated in one of three centers:
- Head: The source of our intellect
- Heart — The source of our emotion
- Body — The source of our intuition
All of us are imbued with these three different ways of knowing and being known.
As the Enneagram teaches though, one of these centers functions as our primary means of knowing; it is a preferred lens through which we experience and process the world. Another operates as a secondary source, and finally the third typically remains underutilized, or even neglected altogether.
In Jungian terms, this third center of intelligence is our shadow: an unconscious source of knowing, which is suppressed and thus often left unintegrated into the self.
Locating the primary center of intelligence in which we are situated helps identifying those preferred ways of receiving, processing, and exchanging information. It is our most natural way of being in the world ourselves, and our most natural way of being in relationship with others.
Locating which of these centers is our shadow helps to identify a personal path of integration. As it is the most set pattern of avoidance in our lives, it provides a way of moving toward greater wholeness in our lives.
Because the more we understand these two critical parts of the self, the better we are empowered to pursue development and a fruitful spirituality. Even more importantly though, the better equipped we become to get on with the work of love.
All of this has to do with far more than identifying personality quirks or personal growth maxxing. Locating our center and our shadow is invaluable for spiritual discernment—because through it we discover the presence of Spirit.
It is through our primary center of intelligence that we will hear the voice of God most clearly—or perhaps feel or see or simply know. Likewise, it is through our shadow center we find ways Spirit is seeking to invite us onward.
Now, again, whether it be the Enneagram or any tool that attunes our spiritual senses, what’s most valuable is its ability to reveal how to love.
Love is how we live full lives.
Returning to that familiar story: for as uninterested as those so-called seekers may be (then or now), they do in fact get a rather nice, pithy summary of how one ought to live.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
In the same threefold way the Holy Trinity functions with each member existing in loving relation to the other, we too shall love in three part harmony: God, self, and neighbor.
Strange as it may be to conceive of love as a command, it is our duty to love God in whole, not in part. As that great teacher said, love with your whole self, “with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And this is just where things get really interesting.
Head, heart, body: Gather up all the fragments of yourself and offer it up as a means to love. All the parts of your person. Those particles of you're proud of alongside those you might prefer to discard—your joys and sadness, hopes and despair, beauty and pain.
For any who would wish to love God, love yourself. And for those who wish to learn just how to love themselves, love your neighbor. With the whole self, love your whole humanity and the whole of humanity—within which the image of Love dwells.
Love pretty well sums things up: the story of God, the gospel of Christ, and the very purpose of our human lives.
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