Self Reflection: Our Tool for Personal Judgment

            Life is a process constantly full of new experiences, circumstances, and troubles. From the time we are children all the way up through old age we face temptation, doubt, and sorrow. We make mistakes every day. Some days we may even feel like giving up on ourselves because the burden of becoming the person we want to be, or that the Lord wants us to be, is just too heavy. We are told that everything will work out in the end, and that the Lord loves us no matter what, but despite the truth in these reassuring words, we know it’s just not that easy. After a particularly hard day in which we seem to have lost every spiritual war we’ve been waging for weeks, we might let out a desperate prayer, “Lord, I want to be a good person. Help me to be that person.” Although this is a very useful and practical approach in bringing ourselves out of these dark states, the temporary strength we are imbued with by the Lord does not last on its own. We call on the Lord’s name for strength to fight our spiritual temptations, but we must use this strength He has given us to examine ourselves so that we can acknowledge our mistakes and turn to Him for help. It is through this process of self-reflection and examination that we are able to stop doing evil, turn to the Lord, and in doing so allow His qualities to flow into our life.

            When we reflect on our current state, we often receive mixed messages about whether we are doing the right thing or not. We are told, for example, that we should study hard and dedicate ourselves to school. Being a student is, after all, our current occupation. But what happens if we spend so much time dedicating ourselves to school that we alienate ourselves, ignore our friends, and fall short in other responsibilities we have? Similarly, a man or woman could genuinely love their job for the use it serves, but get so tied up in their work that they neglect their spouse and kids. These examples aren’t often clear cut decisions, and can be painful and confusing for all parties involved. We are told in Last Judgment Continued that, “The only way to acquire spiritual love is by a life of charity, and natural love remains natural if a life of charity is neglected.” Furthermore, this natural love, “if not subordinated to spiritual love, is its opposite” (LJC 21). These natural loves, such as the love of your occupation, are at the core good loves. When, however, we begin to subordinate higher loves, such as love of family, to these loves, they become opposed to each other. In times like this, the easiest response is to become defensive and think to ourselves about how hard we work, how many people we help, and how ungrateful our family is for everything we do. This is not true self-reflection, but rather our own selfish motives trying desperately to hold onto control. We read, “…whenever upon self-reflection we consider we are thinking good, or doing good, this comes from our ego, from some love, desire, craving. And whenever one attributes this to oneself, it is a sin in every particular” (SE 1561).

            How, then, do we truly self reflect? Divine Providence #195 tells us that we view something as evil if it ruins the pleasure of our feeling, and that we view something as false if it ruins the appeal of our thoughts. Being human, many things we find appealing and pleasing are evil and false. This allows us the freedom to shun the Lord’s truths from us, because we believe they make us unhappy. We do this in small ways almost every day. One simple example is starting a homework assignment at a reasonable hour. When we think about what we have to do, we feel unhappy and often find something more immediately pleasing to us, when in reality we would be much happier if we simply did what we were required to do. It is because we are capable of tricking ourselves like this that self-reflection is so important. True self-reflection, then is not simply thinking about our life and arbitrarily deciding what will make us happy, but rather deeply examining ourselves, discovering what makes us unhappy, identifying the evil that is the true source of this unhappiness, and shunning that evil.

            The process of self-reflection is often not a simple one, though. Although it may occasionally seem easy to identify an evil and decide to stop acting in a certain way, evil has a way of getting on our good side. If a friend of ours, for example, is extremely wealthy and tends to leave money lying around on their desk there might be a small temptation, even if only for a second, to take it. One might easily dismiss this temptation for fear of losing a friend. The evil around us, though, dispels these worries. “He’ll never know it was you. You could even help him look for his lost money and strengthen your friendship. He doesn’t need it anyway.” These justifications are slippery and quite easy to fall into. Heaven and Hell describes how we might act differently were we not afraid of consequences: “Everyone can judge from himself how he would act if, being such, he were left free to act with no fear of the law and no fear in regard to his life, and with no outward restraints, such as fear of injury to one’s reputation or of loss of honor and gain and consequent pleasures” (HH 508.5). This is precisely what self-reflection is all about. It is not enough to simply stop ourselves from doing harmful things; we have to stop ourselves for the right reasons. “…if we abstain from evils for any other reason than that they are sins, we are not really abstaining from them. We are only preventing them from being visible in the world” (DP 118).

In order to abstain from evils as sins we must submit to something higher than ourselves. In the Doctrine of Charity we learn that in order to do this, we must reject our base nature’s desire to be love and wisdom itself. When we do this, we return to the knowledge that we are merely recipients of God’s love and wisdom, as we were created to be. “…because the proprium of man, by the inversion of it, has become mere evil, the other means of recovering the image of God is to shun evils as sins. For if a man does not shun evils as sins, but only because they are injurious, he does not look to the Lord, but only to himself, and so remains in his perverted state” (Charity 204). When we think evil thoughts and put them into action, we are, as vessels of the Lord’s love and wisdom, turning ourselves upside-down. When, through reflection, we discover this tendency in ourselves and shun it as a sin, we allow God to change our interiors from the image of hell we have created within us back to an image and likeness of Him.

            Often times, though, we get caught up in our busy daily lives and lose sight of our ability to examine ourselves. When we do happen to reflect on things we’ve done or said, it is usually short and simple such as, “I was impatient with my friend and said something rude—I shouldn’t be so mean in the future.” This type of thought is a common, yet often fleeting one. Nothing is actually being done to fix the situation—it is as productive as thinking to yourself, “I should definitely write my paper due tomorrow.” The Doctrine of Charity explains further about self-reflection of this nature: “If it is only as to the actions, it discovers little; and this is not enough; give the reason” (Charity 5). Our problems are never figured out simply by acknowledging that we did something wrong—we must admit to ourselves why we were rude to our friend. “But if it is as to the thoughts and intentions, it discovers more” (Charity 5). Once we admit to ourselves that we were rude out of anger and frustration, and because we were very busy and late to a meeting, we discover a lot more about ourselves, our decisions, and why we do what we do. But we must also go that one step further: “…if it searches out what the man regards or does not regard as sins, then it discovers all. For whatever a man within himself regards as allowable, that he does” (Charity 5). This final step lets us realize and admit to ourselves that what we were really doing was placing ourselves above our friend, and in the process loving ourselves above all others. This mindset, although seemingly insignificant, is really a deep-seated evil within all of us. When we write off other people as stupid, insignificant, or not worth our time, we are raising ourselves up to be our own god. That feeling of importance, self-entitlement, and superiority is truly a sin. Once we recognize this atrocious sin, lying at the heart of a simple rude jab at our friend, we realize just how much it could have hurt them. Our reflection on the rude comment we made is suddenly transformed into a desire to love and respect our friends. This transformation is the Lord flowing into us and cleansing our interiors once we have done our part in shunning the sin we discovered within us.

            When we acknowledge various evil tendencies within us, it is not enough to simply be charitable to make up for it. In order to discover and properly deal with our evils, we must submit to what is higher than our own understanding—the Lord’s truth. Because we are inclined to evils, and can easily fall into justifying ourselves, the Lord has given us His Truth in the most accessible form possible to aid us in our self-examination. These are the Ten Commandments. True Christian Religion tells us, “In their literal meaning, the Ten Commandments contain general principles to be taught and lived; in their spiritual and heavenly meanings, they contain absolutely everything” (TCR 287). It can be a real struggle within us when two things we love conflict. We are faced with hundreds, if not thousands, of choices every day that lead us down different paths and shape who we are, for better or for worse. By examining ourselves in light of the Ten Commandments and submitting ourselves to them, we allow the Lord’s truth to guide our thoughts, actions, and eventually our whole life.

Because everything in the Word is about loving God and loving our neighbor, and the first tablet of the Ten Commandments contains a summary of everything about loving God while the second tablet contains a summary of everything about loving our neighbor, it follows that the Ten Commandments contain everything to be taught and lived.
If you visualize the two tablets, it is clear how they are connected. God looks at us from his tablet and we look at God from ours. The two tablets are therefore turned toward each other. On God's side it never fails that he is looking at us and doing what has to be done for our salvation. If we accept and do the things on our tablet, a reciprocal partnership with God develops. What happens to us then is indicated by the Lord's words to the lawyer: ‘Do this and you will live.’ (TCR 287).

The Ten Commandments, then, are not just a piece of God’s truth we are told to use as reference; they contain the truth of the entirety of doctrine that ever has, and ever will, exist. His truth is always right before our eyes. When life seems too complicated to figure out, or we feel so weighed down by our conflicts that we want to just give up, simply reflecting on our thoughts and actions in light of the Commandments will, as God promises, give us life. When a situation makes us unhappy, rather than looking for fault in those around us, we can quietly ask ourselves, “Am I following the Commandments?” This simple gesture, when followed by an honest attempt at “doing the things on our tablet,” is true self-reflection. It need not be a grandeur exercise in which we comb through the various intentions behind every act we do, but rather a simple quiet voice asking us to look towards the Commandments. When we do find ourselves feeling angry or covetous or even depressed, we can quietly reflect on the source of this discontentment and ask ourselves, “Which of the Commandments do I need in my life right now?” Once we let go of our need to control our lives, or the lives of those around us, we can take comfort in knowing that the Lord controls everything, and is perpetually leading us in the right direction, if only we reflect on His Word. "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever" (Matt. 6:13).