Holiness is a big deal. It is the purpose of the Christian spiritual path. For some the word means sin-free for others it means living according to specific rules and having ordered your life in a specific way. For me Holiness means coming home. To be united with the divine spirit of love and to truly be myself, my true self.
“For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self … Therefore there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him.” (Thomas Merton, *New seeds of contemplation*)
The problem with being your true self is to realise which self to be. In each of our personalities we have these sub-personalities that constantly work to be realised and made manifest in your life.
Some of these personalities are simply masks or hats that we wear, roles that we play to fit into society. But among this inner family there are also some very real parts of our self that can’t be shed and that instead of being repressed, ignored or killed of needs to be accepted acknowledged and reintegrated.
This is the inner family of you. Your inner masculine and feminine, your inner child among others. To start the path towards holiness we need to embark on a mission to reintegrate our inner family this is at the same time the road to wholeness. It is the process of recognising these sub personalities, accepting and acknowledging them and allowing them to be a part of who you are. Once integrated they won’t go away but rather become a living part of you. These sub personalities have strengths and traits that you as a person need and will be a vibrant and vital part of your life. What will happen is that these sub personalities once out of the shadow, out of the closet, out of hiding will stop rebelling and working against you. The effect of a harmonious integrated inner family is ease.
And before you rush of and get working on that, let me quote my good friend Andrew Barnes:
“The time for work is over, now is the time for love”
So don’t see the reintegration process as work, it is a process off loving yourself back to wholeness. It is not a tick on your spiritual to-do list it’s a life of loving and honouring yourself, all of yourself.
