A negative spirituality, of course, is counter-productive. It tells us that we are sinful, we have an inbuilt, innate tendency to sin, that it is our deepest identity, and we must resist it and overcome it. That we are full of ego and that we must destroy the ego. But a negative spirituality of that kind tends only to reinforce the ego, to push it deeper down, to reinforce it with complex dynamics, to reinforce it with its own fears, its own guilts, its own shame. Then, of course, wherever you have these guilt, shame and fears in the ego, you get rebellion. You get the ego involved in self-contradictory dynamics: conflicts and tensions within ourselves, perplexing us, making us feel that we don’t understand ourselves, we don’t know why we’re acting in the way we do. We feel overwhelmed by negative feelings and controlled by negative impulses. We find ourselves fixed, so often, in patterns of life that seem to hold us and grip us with their negative forces, full of tricks of the mind, very much as people struggling with addiction face – all the tricks of the mind which will keep us trapped in addictions.
(Aspects of Love 2 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
