Stop Freaking Out About Proprium and Read My Paper

Stop Freaking Out About Proprium and Read My Paper

by, Brandy Rose

            We all know that we have God-given freedom to be a good person, even though it is sometimes difficult. Our default setting is our natural, evil proprium, which does its best to govern the choices we make. We have the potential to be good people, but if our proprium, which inclines us toward evil is at our core, then how can we make good decisions? What decisions should we make when we are not necessarily dealing with a moral issue? What in our mind should we listen to? Why is it hard to know what the Lord wants? Can we ever trust ourselves to do the right thing? Having proprium does not trap us in always doing evil things from self-love; our proprium is a gift if we use it correctly.

Before tackling the issue of proprium and freedom, we should cover some basic definitions. There are three spiritual players in our lives: freedom, rationality, and proprium. People act from thought in freedom—it is called having agency, putting freedom and rationality together (DP 78). Proprium is the attribute that allows us to feel life from ourselves, and agency is the attribute that allows us to act as if from ourselves. While people are always acting from agency and proprium together, in many of the decisions we make we do wrestle with which one we will favor. Sometimes what our proprium wants is something we know we should not do. Agency and proprium are what make us human, and they are wound tightly together, making distinction difficult. The issue is which one we will consciously let guide us: our sense of freedom and self (proprium), or our sense of freedom and power over self (agency)? The Lord gave us proprium to feel life from ourselves, but if it is evil, how do we get out of it? Is agency the key?

            We all know how school feels. No one wants to do homework, but a good student will compel themselves to do it anyway. Sometimes it is easy to make yourself do homework. Perhaps it is the middle of the day; all of your friends are at work or in class—you are not missing any fun. But what about on a Saturday night when you are trying to buckle down and work. Meanwhile, you are texting back and forth with your friend who is currently out with your group having a good time. Now, this may not be a moral issue, but that almost makes it more difficult—that means that you cannot just rely on doing good over evil because neither choice is obviously good or evil. Are you going skip working to go out with your friends, or are you going to catch up on your work so you can have a more relaxing week?

            Your proprium is always telling us to do what it loves, because having what it loves gives it life (DP 78). You have a dominant love in your mind called your ruling love, but you never know exactly what it is. It sits in the highest region of your mind, waiting to be fed, taking whatever is useful to it (TCR 494). If what is useful to it is to hang out with your friends instead of doing homework, then that is what we will be driven to do. Your proprium, or self-love, wants to feed itself. The gratification of socializing with your friends would provide an easy, immediate delight; in other words, you know you like hanging out with your friends, whereas with homework, the outcome may not provide that sense of delight and gratification. The enjoyment of self-love constitutes our life; the enjoyment we get out of doing what we want is an enjoyment of freedom (DP 186). So, if hanging out with your friends is what you want, then it sounds like that is what you will do, since you are driven by proprium. But there are two parts of you here: one is thinking it might be a better idea to continue doing homework to maintain balance in your academic life and be a useful student, while the other is thinking, “No you want to hang out with your friends, so that’s what you should do.” Will good come from one and evil from the other? Is there spiritual merit in being responsible? Is hanging out with your friends the wrong choice just because it is seemingly what your proprium wants?

            These are the kind of issues that raise a lot of concern about the proprium. The case we are discussing is not moral; you would not be a bad person if you decided to hang out with your friends instead of doing homework. Is there a right decision then? Which mode of thought should win, interior or exterior? The right decision will most likely be to follow what your internal thought is trying to tell you. When internal fights against external, often it is the internal trying to do good, and the external bad (DP 145). The big question is: what will you appropriate to yourself in this decision? Anything you do in freedom is done from your proprium and thus appropriated to the self (DP 78). In other words, your proprium takes things to itself to give itself shape. How will the homework decision affect your proprium?

            Here is the problem: you were born into a hellish proprium which means you have evil tendencies (NJHD 145). From this you could conclude that you cannot ever trust what you want because what you want is from your proprium and your proprium is evil. It is a logical conclusion, but it is wrong. Everything you do, you do in freedom—while it appears as if from proprium (NJHD 141). Now, freedom can look like slavery. Looking at heavenly freedom from a hellish standpoint makes heavenly freedom look like slavery, while looking at hellish freedom from a heavenly standpoint makes hellish freedom look like slavery (TCR 495). If you are immersed in the idea that hanging out with your friends will be more fun than homework, then doing your homework will look like slavery. But if you blow off your homework, will hanging out with your friends be fun, or will you be in the slavery of worrying about your homework? As both can feel like slavery, both can feel like freedom, depending on which one you are immersed in (DP 43). Nevertheless, one is wrong. Two opposite freedoms cannot both be right (DP 43). Even though you are born with a hellish proprium, you can bring yourself into heavenly freedom because you are held in equilibrium between heaven and hell at all times (LJ 33). So, a useful question to ask in the homework situation is: what decision is harder to make? Which decision will require self-compulsion?

            You are born with a hellish proprium, but into equilibrium so that you can have freedom (HH 293). This freedom is essential to our humanity. In equilibrium, you can use your agency to appropriate and produce; that is what makes you an agent and recipient of life from the Lord (AE 1138). You shape the way you are by how you receive the Lord; you can turn toward yourself or toward Him (TCR 491). You must compel yourself though, however difficult it is—Divine Providence requires that every single one of your actions must feel like it is coming from you (AE 1138). When there is a pull between heavenly or hellish freedom, you must decide what to act on. Your rationality begins the struggle by questioning what you want, and then your freedom allows you to pursue it; that is how self-compulsion works (DP 145). True rationality and true freedom exist when we compel ourselves to do the Lord’s will (DP 145).

            Why do we have to compel ourselves? Why does Divine Providence require that? Divine love, which is the Lord’s Essence, wants what It has to belong to people. If people did not perceive His love, thus life, as though it were their own then they could not conjoin with him (AE 1138). That is intrinsic in love’s function: you cannot give love if you do not feel like it belongs to you. Further, if you did not have proprium, or the perception of life from self, then you would have no purpose (AE 1138). The purpose of proprium is to sustain itself, so if you did not have one, you would have no compulsion to do anything. Your love is your purpose, and the reason you act is the delight of that love (AE 1138). To have real life, people need the delight of receiving, appropriating, and producing. (AE 1138). Divine love delights in giving what it has to people, while people delight in feeling that love from themselves. The key is to compel yourself to follow (and thus receive) good loves from the Lord so that there is a reciprocal relationship between His love and yours—Divine love loves you, and you grow to love it. It is a difficult concept to grasp. Even spirits who have already passed into the next life torment themselves because no good comes from them (AC 2891). Objectively, your proprium might look lifeless if nothing comes from it, but the Lord can give it life if you will it (AC 149).

            The Lord alone has Proprium; He has the Proprium. His Proprium is His Divine love which is life, and that life can be in you if you choose it (AC 149). You can gain a heavenly proprium when acting on heavenly freedom (NJHD 145). By compelling yourself and letting your good interior thought prevail over your bad exterior thought, you can have enjoyment of good (DP 145). It continues to be hard to know what the right thing is to do sometimes, but the key is to remember the Lord and humble yourself to Him by putting His purpose above your concern about your life. While you live under the appearance that you are alive from yourself, the Lord is always leading you invisibly and silently—He is always inviting you to Him (DP 186). When you take some time to reflect on what the Lord does in your life and what He provides for you, it removes you from your proprium so that He can be with you (AE 77). As you humble yourself to Him and strive to obey His Word, your union with Him will strengthen your freedom, and thus enrich your life (DP 43).

            Circling back to our first issue between hanging out with friends and doing homework: there is not really a righteous decision. I was in the homework situation, and I chose my homework over my friends. It was miserable, but I think it was a good decision for me—I think it was my internal thought prevailing over my external thought, which is what useful good self-compulsion looks like. Instead of slaving over doing the “right” thing, I looked to the Lord and just made a decision. However, I think I could have made a different decision and it would not have necessarily been bad. More important than making sure every little decision you make is the “right” one, is to practice looking generally toward the Lord in everything you do, and so gradually orient yourself to Him. Humility is key. Look to the Lord for guidance in your life. When you are getting caught up in some decision, step out of your immersion in yourself and your life, and humble yourself before the Lord—there are bigger things than the little concerns you get yourself caught up in (Doctrine of Proprium Ch. VI). Making decisions will feel easier if you shift focus from being perfect to being good (enough).

The Lord gave people proprium in order to enjoy the delight of Divine love. It is hard to feel like a good person sometimes because we get swept up in our sense of self, but we can always return to what the Lord wants. If we want what the Lord wants then we tap into a never-ending supply of delight, and that is the motivation behind human life: feeling desire, taking action, feeling delight (Doctrine of Proprium, Ch. VI). Sometimes we will learn the hard way what makes us truly happy and what does not—but that’s life. People are prone to error; the Lord is not. There is no need to resist the feeling life from yourself or wanting things for yourself. The Lord gifted you that ability for His purpose. You have proprium, thus you have freedom. You have freedom, thus you can compel yourself. You can compel yourself away from evil and thus grow closer to the Lord. You do this by recognizing and shunning proprium’s evil tendencies which turns you toward the Lord. And when that path is unclear, you can always step back and remember the Lord. The key truth to remember is that the Lord has created us for reciprocal conjunction with Him—He has created us to receive the blessedness of His Life. “[W]hile man by acknowledgement and faith from love as from himself, ascribes to the Lord everything belonging to life, the Lord, on the other hand, ascribes to him the good of his life, which is attended with every satisfaction and blessedness” (AE 1138).