Integral Flourishing
A theological & psychological anthropology
Introduction
As I have been considering my own experience alongside various theories related to human flourishing, a consistent theme has emerged — the concept of integration. According to Dan Siegel, the founder of Interpersonal Neurobiology, “integration is the fundamental mechanism of health” and can be defined as “maintaining differentiation while also achieving linkage, creating a synergy that enables the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts”. The correlation between integration and health can be observed from the macro to the micro — within ecological systems, socio-cultural systems, family systems, and within the dynamics of the individual mind. When integration is disrupted, systems move towards chaos or rigidity and health is stymied. However, when a system moves towards integration, an emergent phenomenon occurs, resulting in something new. The palaeontologist and Jesuit priest De Chardin explored this paradox, claiming that true union differentiates. The introduction to his seminal work claims that “a developed human being… has crossed the threshold of self-consciousness to a new mode of thought, and as a result has achieved some degree of conscious integration — integration of the self with the outer world of men and nature, integration of the separate elements of the self with each other.” This essay will use theological and psychological frameworks to examine how integration leads to human flourishing, beginning with humanity’s relationship to creation, then moving to cultural and inter-personal mechanisms, and finally to the intra-psychic dynamics of the individual. I will propose that humans are co-suffering and co-creative participants in a divinely infused cosmology, on an evolutionary trajectory towards greater integration and, ultimately, the renewal of all things.
The Divine Dance
I will begin with a proposal that humanity is a part of the divinely infused natural world. Unfortunately, a great many of us have become separated from both the divine and the natural world. As the Celtic spiritual teacher, John Philip Newell explains, “there are ways of perceiving that have been beaten out of us. Our inner ears have been silenced, either because of modern materialisms that have stripped matter of its ancient music or because of religious dualisms that have separated the spiritual from the material.” John claims that Christ, as the Logos, was with God, as God, since the beginning, and that through him “all things were made”. Irenaeus of Lyons, an early Christian teacher who studied under John’s disciple Polycarp, spoke of creation as “coming out of the very substance of God. ” The Franciscan friar Richard Rohr refers to this incarnational worldview as the “profound recognition of the presence of the divine in literally everything and everyone,” and claims that “it is the key to mental and spiritual health, as well as to a kind of basic contentment and happiness,” He goes on to claim that embracing this worldview will help to “reconcile our inner worlds with the outer one, unity with diversity, physical with spiritual, individual with corporate, and divine with human.” Essentially, an incarnational worldview is an integral worldview, modelled by the paradoxical nature of Jesus as fully God and fully man. This divine cosmology is revealed in Paul’s epistles through phrases such as “In Christ all things hold together”, “Christ is all and in all”, “In this one we live and move and have our being”, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God and God in them”. De Chardin agrees with Paul and described God’s love as the very physical structure of the universe, stating that “by means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and moulds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, when in fact we live steeped in its burning layers”. Unfortunately, rigid forms of materialism have attempted to strip the world of its sacredness and dualistic religious paradigms have indoctrinated people into belief systems that begin with original sin, promoting a narrative based around separateness and shame. A cosmology that brings greater awareness to God’s substance as the underlying physical structure of reality, promotes unity amongst humans and helps connect us to the natural world — counterbalancing the isolation and separateness that inflicts much of humanity.
I would also propose that embracing a divinely infused cosmology promotes an ecological worldview that is crucial for human flourishing. According to Newell, “if the world as we know it is not to collapse, we need to reawaken to the spirit shining in matter. We need not only to reawaken to this; we need also to live this awareness and serve it in one another and in the earth”. It can be argued that we currently sit on the precipice of a climate disaster because we have become deeply dis-integrated from our surrounding ecosystems. The botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer uses the term reciprocity to explain how healthy integration with the natural world demands “a pact of mutual responsibility to sustain those who sustain us.” She explains how humanity has objectified nature, relentlessly harvesting natural resources with a sense of blind entitlement. Kimmerer understands plants and animals to be sacred in and of themselves and clarifies our place as co-dependent siblings within a larger ecology. Kimmerer explains how indigenous wisdom traditions maintain a covenant of reciprocity that “establishes a particular relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, and to reciprocate.” An objectifying relationship with the natural world brings us out of alignment, tipping the scales of sustainability towards chaos, while an approach that recognizes the sacredness of nature can help us remember our deep interdependence as participants in a divine dance.
Death to Life
If the material of the universe comes out of the very substance of God, then it’s worth considering a question of trajectory — where are we headed? While science and religion have often been placed in opposition to each other, De Chardin asserts that “religion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge — the only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution so as to contemplate, measure, and fulfil them.” Evolutionary theory poses the most comprehensive model of our biological origins, revealing an integrative process through which greater forms of complexity emerge, eventually leading to a self-conscious humanity. This process involves cycles of life and death that are necessary for further evolution, meaning that we are embedded in a natural system with both creative and destructive forces. These creative forces invite us to participate in co-creation, from literature to science to raising children, our flourishing is inherently linked with our creativity. Unfortunately, these destructive forces point to the inevitability of human suffering as a reality we must endure. Given this condition, what does it mean for us to flourish as human beings? I believe that we must find a way to integrate life and death, flourishing and suffering, if we are to navigate a human life.
Rohr claims that the death and resurrection of Jesus points to the universal pattern at the heart of reality, the paradoxical integration of death and life. Christian faith reveals a God who demonstrated profound solidarity with human suffering, through the horrific events on Good Friday. From my own experience, accepting that suffering is a part of being human helps us integrate the darker parts of life. However, this is profoundly difficult to do by oneself. Embracing solidarity, by connecting our pain to the suffering of God and others, helps us integrate this pain, accepting our place as co-suffering participants in a larger story. If we are willing to take the leap of faith, Christianity also provides profound hope, by claiming that beyond suffering and death lies resurrection. According to De Chardin, God is both the alpha and the omega, the engine of evolution and the place to which we are ultimately being led. The Franciscan theologian, Bonaventure, discusses this cyclical dimension, stating that “the perfection of God and God’s creation is quite simply a full circle, and to be perfect the circle must and will complete itself…alpha and omega are finally the same, and the linchpin holding it all in unity is the Christ mystery, or the essential unity of matter and spirit, humanity and divinity. ” By integrating evolutionary biology and Christian theology, we can begin to accept the natural cycles of death and life in which we are enmeshed, with the hope that we are ultimately heading towards the renewal of all things.
Us vs. Them
While suffering is an inevitable part of being human, cultures have perpetuated a disproportionate amount of suffering — leading to serious forms of dis-integration. As humanity became self-conscious, we became aware of our own mortality and developed the capacity for, what theologian Ivone Gebara refers to as, ethical evil, the ability to knowingly inflict suffering upon others. I believe that much of our reason for doing so is linked to tribal psychology, under-developed social mechanisms for maintaining group cohesion. The Catholic philosopher and anthropologist Rene Girard proposed that beyond basic needs, most human desires stem from the imitation of others — essentially, we want what other people want. This mimetic desire leads to competition, which ultimately leads to violence. His theory goes on to reveal that while our desires are the result of triangulation, our mimetic rivalry can also be satiated through triangulation — by projecting our group rivalry onto a scapegoat. Historically, tribes would alleviate in-group tensions by placing the sins of the people onto an individual or a group and then casting them out or sacrificing them to the God(s). Girard claims that this was the psychological function of sacrificial systems throughout history. This scapegoat mechanism continues to divide us into tribes — where we bolster our groups through the opposition of enemies.
To make matters worse, we have an evolved tendency towards in-group bias, and while this was initially a survival mechanism, it has become maladaptive — leading us to discriminate against people we see as different from us. If humanity is to flourish, we must evolve past this proclivity. Liberation psychologists, Mary Watkins and Helene Shulman state that “when we look at the history of large groupings of people, we can see a constant recurrence of rigid boundary building: we people are like this, and you people are like that,” they go on to claim that “in order to break with this form of polarized thinking and the destructive actions it yields, we must create spaces for encountering difference without dominance.” They call us towards integration through a willingness to directly engage with difference — which I believe is necessary to dismantle the scapegoat mechanism.
Girard’s literary criticism revealed that the scapegoat mechanism was perpetuated through narratives of otherness — cultural mythology that framed scapegoats as guilty and deserving of their fate. Girard proposed that Christ’s death was a dramatic subversion of this myth of redemptive violence, revealing the victim of scapegoating to be innocent. While much of Christian theology after the Middle Ages has understood Christ’s death to be a transactional appeasement of a violent God, Girard’s atonement theory describes Christ’s death as salvific because it exposed the myth of redemptive violence for what it was. Rohr agrees, claiming that Christ “did not come to change God’s mind about us. It did not need changing. Jesus came to change our minds about God — and about ourselves — and about where goodness and evil really lie”. In this way, the cross is an integrative symbol, subverting our false narratives of otherness and redemptive violence and saving us from ourselves.
If human cultures evolved tribal mechanisms that led to violence, where do we currently sit on the evolutionary tree? The evolution of human cultures has been charted by various theorists and one of the most comprehensive models is philosopher Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory. The theory reveals how human cultures have evolved from egocentric (concern for the individual), to ethnocentric (concern for a special group), to world centric (concern for everyone) stages of development. In his latest book, Wilber outlines the current culture wars as a competition between the traditional, modern, and post-modern stages. Traditional consciousness is ethnocentric, focused on ‘my special group’, values structure, discipline, loyalty, and taking care of the community. Modern consciousness is world-centric, values rationality, science, progress, individual freedom, and democracy. Post-modern consciousness is world-centric and relativistic, valuing pluralism, subjectivity, and sustainability. Wilber reveals an evolutionary hurdle: “each major stage to date has had a common characteristic: each one thought that its truth and values were the only real truth and values in existence — all the others were misguided, infantile, goofy, or just plain wrong.” Today, we are seeing dangerous levels of polarization in the West, spurred on by social media algorithms that promote outrage. The shadow sides of each stage are on full display — and it seems like all three stages are falling back to ethnocentrism, viewing humans outside of our special groups as the enemy.
Fortunately, Wilber suggests we are nearing the precipice of a cataclysmic shift from these 1st tier stages, that attack each other, to 2nd tier ‘integral’ stages, which “believe that all the previous stages have some sort of significance, that they were all important, and that they must be included in any approach that hopes to be comprehensive, inclusive, and truly integrated.” The integral stages honour and critically evaluate the previous stages, integrating their truths and rejecting their errors. According to Smith, the integral stages take both science and spirituality seriously, are marked by selfless service, authentic joy, and provide people with spiritual experiences that may lead to world peace. In his book Integral Christianity, he articulates how Christianity is evolving through the various stages, with Christ’s teachings playing a role in moving us forward. If we are to promote human flourishing, we must learn to integrate the strengths of each stage, tilting the scales towards integral consciousness. If not, the partial truths of the traditional, modern, and post-modern stages will continue to masquerade as full truths, which is a recipe for disaster.
Belonging
If we are to move humanity towards greater integration, we must also look at the dynamics involved with closer inter-personal relationships. Humans maintain a primary need for belonging to close-knit relationships, for early survival, ongoing development, and the maintenance of health across a lifetime. Close relationships are integrative, providing a felt sense of loving union that promotes greater differentiation. The philosopher and poet John O’Donohue describes this as “a force of light and nurture that liberates you to inhabit to the full your own difference.” He goes on to describe the Celtic notion of a soul friend, or anam cara, as one who “brings epistemological integration and healing.” The importance of loving parents in early life has been studied extensively by the object relations theorists and within the field of Attachment Theory. Siegel explains the importance of early attachment relationships, stating that “at the level of the embodied and relational aspects of the mind, attachment establishes an interpersonal relationship that helps the immature embodied brain to use the mature functions of the parent’s body and brain to organize its own processes.” He goes on to explain how repeated experiences of regulation by attachment figures become internalized and encoded in implicit memory, providing children with the mental models required for self-regulation.
In contrast to Freud’s strict materialism, Hoffman explores how Judeo-Christian thought influenced the relational turn in psychoanalysis. I am personally compelled by the object relations theorist Donald Winnicott and his Methodist influence, as marked by the centrality of God’s love and God’s immanence. Winnicott believed that a ‘good enough mother’ became an internal source of stability for a child, mirroring God’s immanent presence within us. While parental attachment figures are incredibly important, the family therapist, Sue Johnson, extended the concept of attachment to romantic relationships, claiming that our romantic relationships can serve as healing relationships, where old patterns of relating can be replaced with healthier patterns. Winnicott believed that one of the primary purposes of therapy was to provide ‘holding’ relationships that enable healing from earlier developmental deficits. In recent years, it has been proven that the therapeutic relationship is the primary healing agent, over and above any theoretical interventions. Our flourishing is profoundly impacted by the influence of early attachment figures as well as other inter-personal relationships. Healthy relationships provide an integrative foundation while dysfunctional relationships set us up for difficulty. The good news is that our minds are malleable, and we can find healing within the presence of new relationships.
Individuation
The importance of close relationships can hardly be overstated. However, if close relationships represent linkage, according to Seigel, proper integration also points to the necessity of differentiation. According to Bowen Family Systems Therapy, emotional fusion between family members leads to significant psychological problems. Nichols reveals that undifferentiated people are ruled by their reactivity to others and that “the greater the fusion, the more one is programmed to primitive emotional forces, and the more vulnerable to the emotionality of others. ” Nichols defines differentiation of self as the “capacity to think and reflect, to not respond automatically to emotional pressures. It is the ability to be flexible and act wisely, even in the face of anxiety.” Siegel states that the biological capacity to simultaneously manage differentiation and linkage is correlated with the development of the integrating structures within the brain itself. He explains how an integrated mind is able to balance the flow of energy, becoming flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable without falling into chaos or rigidity.
The pioneering psychologist Carl Jung discusses another harmful side effect of remaining undifferentiated: the susceptibility to falling into groupthink, or mass mindedness. He discusses how individuals are co-opted by collective social forces, giving up their autonomy for group identification, which typically results in the consolidation of power within a fundamentalist church or authoritarian state. According to Jung “resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself. ” Jung developed a comprehensive model for self-organization, which I find particularly compelling. Psychoanalysis, from which Jung’s theory emerged, is built around the concept that we repress aspects of ourselves into the unconscious and that growth involves integrating unconscious elements back into consciousness. Jung’s model reveals a compensatory relationship between two parts of the psyche called the persona and the shadow. The persona is the outward facing mask of the personality, an adapted “bridge of identity between one’s private experience and public performance. It is one’s part in the social drama which meets the demands of convention and tradition, while protecting and preserving that which is unique and hence subject to collective misunderstanding and judgement.” The persona necessarily performs in ways that provide the assurance of group belonging, which we desperately need. However, this performance requires the capacity to hide aspects of the personality which are deemed shameful or work in opposition to our idealized self-image. These aspects of ourselves are repressed into a part of the unconscious called the shadow. According to Jung, the path of individuation involves making contact with those shadow parts, some of which hold tremendous creative potential, and integrating back them into the consciousness. Otherwise, we risk perpetuating relational dis-integration because “whatever we cannot discern or confront within ourselves inevitably projects itself onto others since the energy in the shadow refuses to lie dormant for long.” The difficult work of shadow integration coincides with the process of learning to identify with our deeper self, rather than with our fabricated persona. Jung believed that this deeper self is naturally inclined towards individuation and moves us towards a meaningful life.
I understand Jung’s inner self to be the immanent reflection of the divine within every person, referred to by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton as the true self. The path towards flourishing involves learning to integrate this divine indwelling as our real identity, which remains unconditionally loved and accepted by God. Merton articulates that “at the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark with belongs entirely to God…it is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.” We can begin to contact this diamond by learning to quiet our conscious minds, embracing symbolic expression from the unconscious, and participating in mindful awareness practices such as centering prayer, yoga, or meditation, which Seigel claims can alter the physical structure of the mind and “evoke this sense of joy, love, and awe, of being with something that is initially beyond understanding, something ‘larger than the self’.”
Conclusion
I have come to believe that flourishing is synonymous with integration. When humans experience unity, while maintaining their distinctiveness, they become greater than the sum of their parts. Embracing a worldview that places us within a tapestry of divine love, moves us from separateness to acceptance, fostering sustainable relationships with nature, which is vital for our flourishing. Accepting the inevitability of suffering, through a posture of solidarity, allows us to integrate our pain and hold it alongside our joy. Pursuing unity amidst difference helps us to move past divisive social mechanisms and tilt human evolution towards more inclusive stages of development. Belonging to generative relationships provides us with the ability to become healthy individuals. Accepting the difficult task of individuation and working to integrate our exiled parts allows us to become more truly who were really are. Taking the time to enter stillness allows us to identify with our true self, where we will find “a kind of mirror in which God not only sees Himself but reveals Himself to the mirror in which he is reflected.” We are a part of circle that is seeking full integration, one whose beginning, and end is held by the creator — in whom we live and move and have our being.
References
Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de. The Phenomenon of Man. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2008.
Gebara, Ivone. Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation. Minneapolis: Fortress Pr., 2001.
Girard René, and James G. Williams. The Girard Reader. New York: Crossroad, 2015.
Hoffman, Marie. “From Enemy Combatant to Strange Bedfellow the Role of Religious Narratives in the Work of W. R. D. Fairbairn and D. W. Winnicott.” Psychoanalytic Dialogues 14, no. 6 (2004): 769–804. https://doi.org/10.1080/10481881409348806.
Integral Christianity. Bloomsbury Pub Plc USA, 2012.
Jung, Carl G. The Undiscovered Self. London: Routledge, 1958.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass. Tantor Media, Inc., 2016.
Merton, Thomas. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. Garden City, NY: Image Books, 2014.
Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience. New York: Harper One, 2003.
Moore, Robert L. Carl Jung and Christian Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1988.
Newell, J. Philip. Christ of the Celts: The Healing of Creation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008.
Newell, J. Philip. Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul: Celtic Wisdom for Reawakening to What Our Souls Know and Healing the World. New York, NY: Harper One, 2021.
Nichols, Michael P., and Sean D. Davis. Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods. Hoboken: Pearson, 2019.
NIV Archaeological Study Bible: An Illustrated Walk through Biblical History and Culture. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005.
O’Donohue, John. Anam Cara. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.
Rohr, Richard. Eager to Love the Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi. Cincinnati: Franciscan Media, 2020.
Rohr, Richard. The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope for, and Believe. New York: Convergent, 2021.
Siegel, Daniel J. The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. New York: Guilford Press, 2020.
Smith, Paul R. Integral Christianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve. New York: Paragon House, 2012.
Watkins, Mary, and Helene Shulman. Toward Psychologies of Liberation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Wilber, Ken. Trump and a Post-Truth World. Boulder: Shambhala, 2017.