4-      Integration Model

A clear overcoming of the concept and practice of self-acceptance, as also of the other two models, is constituted by the idea of integration. On the one hand, that concept expresses further progress in human sciences and psychotherapy, especially in that it discovers more and more the solely instrumental and not end-function of self-acceptance ; on the other it also manifests an ever better understanding between these sciences and the classic disciplines of spiritual formation, this being the theological and psychological idea together.

The image that in some way could describe the idea of integration is that of a circle or a concentric movement that encloses and integrates the real around a central point. The strategy, therefore, of integration follows a very different route from that of perfection, and at the same time. goes well beyond the objectives of both self-fulfillment and of self-acceptance: it is the strategy of enucleation, which implies the presence of a center capable of gathering the surrounding reality around it, attracting it and giving it meaning, purifying it and enriching it, giving it new direction and valuing it to the maximum.  Integrating is a complex phenomenon, which means a certain variety of operations: to complete and fulfill, to attract, perfect, create unity around a center, gather and put together, correct and re-direct…, but also to enlighten, signify, vitalize, warm, strength and heal…

In the case of a person in formation that central nucleus tries to take on all the complexity of the logos, the eros and the pathos. The person journeying toward integration tries to enucleate, starting off from a live center, from a basic intuition, from a value – in last analysis – in which he recognizes his ego and that which he is called to be, all the other forces of human passion. He does not start off with the idea to abolish anything of his humanity; if anything he proposes to make all his life impulses turn around this living center like satellites around a planet.

His effort, and naturally it is a question of effort, with the renunciation and toil that it implies, lies precisely in balancing these impulses among themselves and redirecting them, always measuring them in view of the central and end objective, progressively removing from them what is not in line with that objective. He does not have a preconceived fear of passions; he faces them, or learns to face them, naturally, if possible, as a part of his nature. It is as though he works on two fronts, at the center and at the periphery: at the center always to find his identity in that vital point that has the power to attract and give meaning to everything; at the periphery, in order to draw every fragment ever nearer to his being and living at that vital center.

Therefore, he does not expect to eliminate anything nor does he fool himself into thinking he can; rather, he has reason to hope that, a little at a time, the negativity, accepted and provoked as such, confronted and filtered, will lose its virulence and behave like a tamed beast.

On the other hand, he also knows that he cannot leave things as they are, being satisfied with noting what he is and what his evils are. He works on them, in two phases, one negative and purifying, the other positive and of discovery of its deep meaning.