In the previous chapter we saw how the person as a living being must grow and develop: ‘not to develop’ means ‘to die’. The way for a living person to grow is to embrace more territory with intelligence, willpower and sentiment, and to establish new spheres of life. The child opens to the life of reason, shapes his or her willpower and develops in sensitivity, while at the same time learning to create spheres of interrelations of every kind.

This creative activity mobilizes the whole human being: one’s tendencies and preferences, one’s instincts and ideals, one’s vital needs and desires, in order to realize the values discovered throughout life. Disintegrating instinctive greed and the throbbing of physical desire block this personal dynamism and provoke a whole series of conflicts. This blockage is profoundly anti-ethical for the basic and decisive reason that it impedes the normal development of the human being.

The ethical attitude is achieved when one wishes to live to the full and appreciates the stimulation of the sensitive aspect. But at the same time he or she avoids attachment to such satisfactions in order to see life as a whole and integrate the value of pleasure with other values which are considered even more relevant. A pregnant woman who is unable to play a sport is obliged to choose between two values: the pleasure produced by the sport and the satisfaction of giving life to a new being. The pleasure and the satisfaction are both feelings, but they differ in level:

- the first feeling is enclosed within the woman, whereas the second opens generously to the other being;

- the first is joined by a certain euphoria, while the second is linked to sacrifice;

- the first can be part of a process of vertigo which destroys; the second is part of an experience of ecstasy which constructs.

A summary confrontation of both types of feeling enables one to see that the second is light years higher than the first; the woman who decides on the highest value promotes her life which she lifts it to a higher level. No matter that she has to relinquish one value, her capacity for development will be increased, because the human person realizes oneself far more quickly the higher the category and power of the appeal of values to which one is inclined.

This capacity to choose at each moment the highest value enables us to integrate the three basic planes of human activity: sensitive-corporal, creative-ethical and spiritual-religious. If the mother-to-be opts for the child, creates with it a personal relationship, and commits herself to what such a relationship implies, she adopts a totally ethical attitude. If the woman is a believer and makes this choice in virtue of life coming from God and being His gift, the ethical meaning of her decision then becomes religious, because the high value she has chosen is linked to the supreme value. But this ethical and religious scope of her attitude does not contradict the sentimental, affectionate and sensitive aspect of the relation between the mother and her future child. She may well feel an affection inspired by blood ties, appreciate it as of her own, and experience the gratification of caressing it. These feelings and pleasures, typical of the "aesthetic" state as understood by Kierkegaard, integrate perfectly with the ethical decision to give life to a new being, to love and educate it as a person, and, with a religious attitude to respect it as in God’s image endowed with a sublime vocation.

A similar form of integration can be seen in the sexual relationship of the married couple. In an integral view of the life of love, the married couple links (a) the pleasant tactile union, or the aesthetic state, (b) to the wish to establish together an ambit of unselfish, generous friendship, or the ethical state, and (c) to the undertaking to live in conjugal friendship so as to accomplish together the task which God, who is defined as Love, commends, that is the religious state.

Conflict arises when the three attitudes are not correctly coordinated. The true meaning of the first or aesthetic is kindled in the second or ethical, which culminates in the third or religious state. One shapes his existence and gains inner equilibrium when he does whatever fully achieves this state and fills it with delight. Conflicts always come from dissatisfaction, rooted in lack of fulfillment. Imagine a Gothic vault with ribs pointing upwards, reaching toward form integration. Leave it half finished, and soon the whole will crumble. Integration produces unity, which supposes structure. In all beings, structure is the source of solidity and dynamism, of fulfillment and eternity.

Hence nothing is more important in one’s life than to examine in depth how to develop one’s personal life – in what way and through what phases its structure and manner of being can be shaped. Let us complete then what was said in the previous chapter regarding the basic characteristics of the human being and its development.

1. By being sensitive one can grasp stimulae, feel a special attraction towards what is satisfying and therefore constitutes a value. But being spiritual, possessing intelligence, and having to direct one’s development as a person, one cannot consider the enjoyment of pleasing stimulae to be one’s goal. Rather, one feels the need to guide all one’s energies towards attaining the links which allow one to grow and to reach one’s due stature in all respects.

One such link is that to other persons. From childhood, we realize that personal relationships establish us as human beings. Separation from our families tears us from the roots which enable us to exist. Conviction that we are destined to involve ourselves with others and create fruitful ties suggests that the person in greeting another is beginning a friendly relationship with a personal being.

2. It is decisive in a person’s formation to discover that sensation and various other human functions are often pleasing to man, but that this is not all that such experience gives. Such pleasure is produced only when the sensorial experience is carried out with ease and efficiency. To look and see clearly without the least effort, to walk gracefully and agilely gives special satisfaction. To breathe deeply, drink thirstily, or hear a faint sound at a distance, etc. – any organic function properly carried out is pleasing. This pleasure is already a value in itself, but bears a higher value when it awakens a person. When we feel pleasure, we know we are normal; if we feel displeasure, we infer something is wrong, and take appropriate steps. The good smell of food is pleasing to our sense of smell, but this pleasure involves more than simple pleasure for it tells us that such food is good for our health. A bad smell is nasty, but beyond this it warns us of a danger in such food to our organism.

Following this line, every sexual experience presents a first value for the pleasure it holds. But this delight does not happen within itself, but refers to a higher function which constitutes its meaning and fulfillment, namely, expressing the enjoyment of personal unity.

3. The mere study of the different aspects of the development of the human personality shows us that each value refers to another, so that as a person evolves normally he or she shapes a supporting structure of values. To determine which of these values is the higher and deserves priority, one can note the way in which some values make claims on others and serve as a means of expression.

For example, a young man and woman live singly and intensely; they enjoy the freedom of movement their state allows, take full advantage of their incomes to travel, develop their studies, and enjoy a multitude of enriching experiences. One day they fall in love and decide to marry because they foresee in marriage a value which is new and doubtless higher in many aspects than the state they must forsake. The new obligations will limit considerably their capacity to take initiatives. More than once when they feel tempted to think they have lost their "freedom" they must meditate upon the following: the freedom they enjoyed in their single state signified a value, but this referred to higher specific form of freedom achieved in married life. As a more valuable form of freedom it is, therefore, more difficult to acquire. It is not simple freedom from ties, but capacity to establish fruitful ties. This is another type of freedom, much closer to the fulfillment of the human being. It does not leave the way clear to do whatever we fancy at any time and greatly reduces the sphere of our possibilities. But it lifts us to a far more mature level of activity; it teaches us to choose not in virtue of our fancy, but of our highest duty, namely, that of establishing a high level of union with another.

If we discover the richness of such union, it does not matter what experiences we have to relinquish in order to carry it out! Our fulfillment as persons is not achieved by simply accumulating experiences, but by our dedication to essential tasks. And the most essential task in life is to establish the highest unions, which include marital union.

Nowadays it is often said that we want to "realize ourselves". Nothing is more correct, on condition that we know how to achieve this along the proper path for realizing ourselves as persons. Human beings realize themselves properly when they engage all their faculties in realizing the most valuable possibilities. If I exercise my faculties – corporal and spiritual – simply in order to obtain the satisfactions of a game, and do not heed the call of values actively to assume them in my life, I do not realize myself or advance along the road towards my fulfillment; I remain stuck in the phases of infancy centered upon myself.

Listening to the call of the values and responding renders one responsible: one who responds to values becomes responsible for what happens in virtue of such a response. This double form of responsibility is the essence of creativity. One responds to the call of the value implied by marital love, and is responsible for the fruit of such a response, which is one’s home. Such creative responsibility lifts one to a high degree of human maturity, and places one on the path to fulfillment and contentment.

Obtaining this contentment is the goal of ethics. When this demands a certain ascetic element in one’s behavior and channels one’s life towards accomplishing ever higher values, it does not attempt to restrain vitality or demolish yearnings for happiness and enthusiasm, but simply makes it possible for them to accumulate to the maximum.

One cannot be happy when one only half realizes oneself, when one begins the journey towards maturity but stops half way, captured by passing attractions. True contentment is a feeling which comes from knowing that one is fulfilling one’s true vocation and mission and developing one’s being. This is exactly what ethics proposes and demands: to develop fully and obtain contentment that is not illusory, but realistic.

The tension between instinct and reason has been a theme since ancient times; it reflects the spontaneous, multicolored, fruitful life which questions and constrains everything. All human problems seem to consist in ridding oneself of the ties placed by the spirit upon life, by reason on instinct, and by norms on liberty. Let us do away – we are told – with norms, precepts, spiritual ideals and any reflection upon the meaning of our actions, and we will have absolute freedom to live life to the full!

This interpretation is too simplistic because it tries to choose the forces nourished from within the human being, when what is decisive is to integrate them, and therefore to enrich them all. Instinct is a magnificent reality, as are the body and sensitivity, because, along with being a source of satisfaction, they are destined to be a means for expressing and realizing the whole human person. What is dangerous and to be avoided is taking sensitivity, body and instincts alone. By themselves they produce only a fleeting flame which burns suddenly but disappoints man and plunges him into anguish and non-sense.

It is extremely important not to seize upon the first value we discover as the summit of all value. This misunderstanding leaves millions of people embedded in a primitive state. Let us suppose a young man and woman begin to associate with each other and immediately surrender to erotic satisfaction. The discovery of this field of gratification enflames and dazzles them. They believe there is nothing more colorful, fascinating and attractive; they are intoxicated with pleasurable feelings, joining one another in exaltation, and thereby feeling moved and transported. This deep sentimental upheaval leads them to believe that everything they experience is the quintessence of love and that their amorous enthusiasm entails real personal transformation.

They hold to this conviction with all the weight of experience which, by being so intense, appears to them to be perfect and definitive. However, a person with some experience can see in this a double error. Mere sexual practice exalts because it constitutes a form of fascination that produces vertigo; it arouses spiritual emotion because it enters the sphere of love, but it does not yet constitute a genuine experience of personal love.

What is serious is that the two do not notice that the great value they have discovered is not a definitive value, but only a first indication of a higher value. By not observing this, at mid point along the path to constructing a sphere of love they will plunge down the path to vertigo instead of ascending the path of ecstasy. Vertigo erases the personal encounter and reduces human creativity to a minimum. It does not allow high and lasting forms of unity to be created, but lives in terms of impressions which need ever greater stimuli.

The demands becoming ever higher, one who surrenders to vertigo finds oneself drawn closer to all types of extremes which destroy psychic balance. In this obsessive search for individual satisfactions, no true happiness and enthusiasm can be found.

There can be no enthusiasm and happiness because these sexual experiences are not yet experiences of love. In order for there to be love there must be creativity. But creativity or ecstasy is experienced only through fulfilling such demands as the generous opening of the spirit, availability, the wish to create together a valuable ambit or sphere of co-existence, readiness to intermingle the two ambits of life, etc. These demands are not fulfilled by the mere fact of surrendering oneself to the sentimental effusion implied in sexual relations. However moving, that statement of affection does not arouse a real wish to create. This wish moves on a different level from feelings.

A form of very intense union, unsurpassable in quality, would appear to be achieved in sexual activity, but when this responds to mere erotic greed it does not create a genuine unity of wills, interests, ideals and motives. Such an eminent unity is possible only between persons who put their whole being, energies, and desires, including their appetites, into the task of establishing a high personal union. This coordination of all one’s energies into establishing personal unity implies overcoming the selfish attempt to possess and obsession with satisfying one’s instincts. Such purification is in no way achieved through erotic surrender.

The sexual relationship has an inherent tendency towards a fascinating vertigo due to its "passionate" nature. It brings into play bodily forces which drag one along because they follow their course irresistibly as soon as they are put into play. Conscious of this risk, those who wish to confer a creative meaning on all their personal relationships strive calmly to integrate these instinctive energies into an over-all personal plan. Some married people before the marriage act have some purely personal communion, like a reading or a prayer. It has been said that such practice is counterproductive because it reflects a negative sense of the meaning of sexual experience. Western culture certainly entails manipulative prejudices concerning the meaning of what is bodily and it is time to develop a realistic idea of the value of each aspect of being human. The marital act has positive ethical value, but does not eliminate the danger of drawing the married couple into attitudes which are more fusional than strictly personal. Hence the appropriateness of highlighting their ethical meaning with acts that signify forms of union at a distance, of presence of calm and reflected collaboration, in order to compensate for the strong propensity towards fusion involved in corporal joining.

So-called "marital chastity" consists in never surrendering to the dream of absolute intoxication, but in striving that every action, however impulsive and binding it may be, contribute in a specific way to establishing between the married couple a genuinely personal community which is not something given, but always an open task.

In order to have full meaning, the human sexual relationship must be inspired by, and give birth to, new and more valued personal relationships. It is, therefore, foolish to neglect the personal bond with a spouse throughout the day, and then hope, at a certain moment, to have sexual relations. Such incoherence leads them to feel that they are being reduced to a means and that they are not considered a real companion.

To confer a fully human character to the sex relationship, it is important to cultivate a personal union at all times, so that this is what is expressed in physical sexual form. This elevates to a creative level all the energies generated by the appetite.

Sometimes erotic relations are maintained under the pretext of working under the impulse of real love, though aware of not having established a true personal relationship with the other person. Such love is reduced to mere passion or erotic frenzy. True love implies recognition and esteem of the values within the other person as a person, beyond the pleasure which certain of their qualities might produce. The process of falling in love begins with the feeling of pleasure produced by some quality in a person, but the process does not become true love until the person is loved unconditionally, in happiness and sadness, in health and in sickness, that is, in every circumstance. The person who satisfies an erotic desire promises eternal love, but this is conditioned to obtaining benefit from the enjoyment of that moment. But love with conditions is not true love; rather it is a quenching of instincts which are essentially selfish or wrapped up in themselves.

To really love someone as G. Marcel noted, means telling them: "You will never die". Life calls for perpetuity, eternity. Is there any sense in telling someone: "I’ll love you this summer?" This is ridiculous because of the sharp drop from one level to another. Real love is on a personal, creative level where some are startled by the absolute value of others which they respect and encourage. Such absolute value surpasses the limits of space and time.

In view of this elevated condition of human love, we can understand that in order to love truly the spell of the sexual union must be overcome, and all that is passionate, fascinating and thoughtless must be assumed in order to be transformed into a means of expressing personal union. When the sexual union is carried out under the impulse of a sincere wish to stimulate personal, sacrificing love, its power for moving the human being is transfigured. It loses much of its power of seduction in order to become a calm expression of a personal response, an eloquent statement of a deeply moving renewal and growth of the most intimate union of two beings.

This is transfigured and assumes a new direction. It is not extinguished, nor is its attraction lessened. On the contrary, it takes on a new and higher scope more suited to the whole human being than is the frenzy of passion.

The transformation of the first or so-called impulsive "romantic love" takes place when one stops searching for oneself in the interpersonal union in order to give oneself up to the creation of something new: this is a dual relationship, a nosotros. Such relationship is created when the other person is not reduced to a means for one’s own ends. First they are taken as an absolute unchanging and irreplaceable center of initiative.

Though it may be intense, this class of love does not free one from seclusion in oneself, but intensifies one’s egocentrism. This is a narcissistic love which sees in the surroundings only a reflection of its own figure, with which it is in love in a self-interested way and therefore wishes to possess.

A series of attitudes derives from this narcissistic attitude which shrinks true love into bitterness: suspicion, lack of confidence, mistrust, capriciousness, irritability, resentment, haughtiness, and the like.

With perfect logic, the "Narcissus myth" depicts this person as obsessed with admiring his own figure and catching it in the rippling water. The obsession prevents him from taking into account other beings with their special conditions, so that he drowns in the water. Doubtless Narcissus experienced an acute emotion on throwing himself into the waters, fascinated by the prospect of catching his own shape and enjoying its attractiveness. But this exuberance does not save him from destruction. Note well: the emotional intensity which accompanies a desire or a project is not the measure of its perfection.

One achieves perfection when one creates something of value, not by surrendering to a series of pleasant feelings. We must not forget that creativity depends on the will, which is a capability for deciding in the light of understanding. Sentiment has an important role in human life, but it is neither the only, nor the primary one.

THE NEED FOR KNOWLEDGE OF TRUE SELVES

If we wish to live our human lives with a minimum of dignity, we need to know its basic components. At the dawn of intellectual life in the West, with good reason Plato exhorted us to study the essences so as to distinguish between just and injust, noble and plebeian, great and mean. This power of discernment is more necessary today than ever, owing to the avalanche of sophism. The Sophist is one who searches not for truth, but for the opinion of the majority in order to navigate with the current and gain easy popularity.

By searching not for truth, but for popularity one is in danger of not taking the right path to authentic personal development. If we do not know the meaning of each element constituting human love, we undoubtedly will tend to give preference to what is most exciting and impulsive and to leave aside what offers a higher value. With this we remain half way along the road towards maturity. And since one acquires right balance only when one tends towards what is most valuable, interrupting one’s ascent exposes one to every kind of extremism.

It is a law of life that young people begin relationships, form friendships, and live the first experiences of love under the emotion of discovery, and quite rightly so, because such experiences do hold important value and lead to much greater values. But they should not be content with the first values presented and the accumulation of sensations of novelty, surprise, pleasure, etc., but be sure that these first values lead to higher ones without which our growth is cut short.

One could say: "The pleasure, excitement and adventure in love is enough for me. I do not want anything that deprives me in any way of the freshness, which embellishes my life with a special charm." But though one may choose from many possibilities, one does not have the authority to impoverish one’s life. At the start of love life, one is immersed in a field of reality with its laws, requirements and goals. There is no sense in evoking the forces and energies of love only to lower them injustly. All injustice against reality is paid for dearly because it always seeks its revenge by reducing man to levels lower than animals. An animal’s life is regulated and cannot make any detours, whereas the human person must regulate one’s life. If one does not, one risks inverting the correct order and putting one’s life style out of orbit.

In order properly to regulate life requires training suited to the complexity of the being itself. This means full preparation for love. To surrender to eroticism it is sufficient to surrender to the force of instinct. But eroticism, though having the value of pleasure, is not sufficient to found a life of human relationships. The columns which serve as the base of a building also have a value, but if their capacity for resistance is not sufficient the building tumbles down.

The dynamism of personal love is the only sufficient energy for maintaining human life at a proper level. A heavy airplane requires corresponding power in order to stay in the air. Remove the energy and it falls; without the energy beforehand it does not take off.

To attain the high energy involved in true love, one must shape one’s capacity to choose not what is most appealing at the moment, but what is most suited to one’s personal development. Such choosing implies breaking away from the interests nearest to hand, that is, it implies inner freedom.

This high form of freedom is reached only through training and exercise. How such a process should be conceived and carried out will be the subject of the next chapter.

To give our life its full meaning and scope, we must put into play all the energies within us, and not give priority to spontaneous impulses. The following texts are an example, by Luis Cencillo, who directed his psychotherapeutic practice towards the proper development of personality:

Gustav Thibon proposes a balanced concept of love, equidistant from angelicism and materialism, pointing out the way the human person is diminished by sexual obsession:

To proceed in love with inner freedom, we must raise our instincts and appetites. Energies assumed in a creative task moderate their anarchic impulsiveness and propensity to extremes, but do not by this lose energy and quality. Rather, they gain in meaning and become a source of deep contentment. Kierkegaard shows this with subtle wit:

Kierkegaard commented:

A good way of prevent greed from being our downfall is to stop and do something creative. This may be greater or lesser, but in any case it will put one on the road to ecstasy, give one freedom and majesty of spirit and save one from the spiral path downward into vertigo, which sucks one in and drags one along.

1. Cf. J. Guitton, La existencia temporal (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1956).

2. Cf. Sobre el amor humano (Madrid: Rialp, 1981), p. 172.

3. Cf. Obras completas (Madrid: Rev. de Occidente, 1961), vol. V, p. 573.

4. Cf. "El hombre y la adversidad," in Hombre y culture en el siglo XX (Madrid: Guadarrama, 1957), p. 119.

5. Cf. Líbido, terapia y ética (Estella: Verbo Divino, 1974), p. 277.

6. Cf. Sobre el amor humano (Madrid: Rialp, 1961), pp. 196-197.

7. Cf. Diálogos sobre el primer amor y el matrimonio (Madrid: Guadarrama, 1961), pp. 247-248.

8. Ibid.