Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [107]
But even so, our freely posited intention as such is a mere skeleton of the full-fledged affective attitude, be it that of love, joy, compassion or contrition.
We must avoid artificial efforts to awaken good responses
Our range of direct power, then, as far as our affective attitudes are concerned, only extends to the possibility of a free sanction or disavowal; in an indirect sense, however, much more can be done to influence them. We can consciously create space in ourselves for the right affective responses and remove such factors as are apt to thwart their unfolding. Yet, there is a certain kind of misdirected effort from which we must rigorously abstain. We should never try artificially to conjure up a noble mood as such—to emotionally implement our free intentional act by any direct effort in the deceptive hope of forcing it thereby into full affective growth. Such cramped efforts are doomed to sterility; but more disastrous is their effect in turning our glance away from the intentional object in question (which alone, if anything, may kindle in us an adequate emotional response) and fixing it upon our own behavior. An unhealthy self-reflectiveness is thus fostered which, far from any likelihood of completing the reality of our affective attitude, is almost certain to stifle it.
Above all, we should never stoop to the method of trying to lend body to the thin ghost of our intentional attitude by drawing on the fund of cheap general emotionalism which every one of us carries in him as a mechanical potentiality. Thus, let us never seek to awaken true compassion in our souls by setting in motion the machinery of sentimental associations, nor to flog ourselves into enthusiasm by willfully heaping up in our minds a succession of turbulent imagery, a crude artifice reminiscent of the unclean fire we see flare up in cases of mass suggestion and mental epidemics.
Genuine affective responses cannot be commanded
Our genuine and complete responses to value, with the personal uniqueness and weight proper to them, grow organically from seeds implanted in the secret depths of our personality; it is only by indirect ways that we can contribute to their arising in us. This precisely is inherent in their nobility, that they have the character of gifts as opposed to things that can be commanded or made to order. What should properly preoccupy us is merely our adequate attention to the object, not the full flowering of our attitude as such. For it is precisely the distinctive mark of a genuine attitude of response that the object alone—and by no means the attitude itself—constitutes its theme.
But we can, by virtue of our free will, provide (for instance) against being absorbed by the rhythm of incessant highly-strung activity or dominated by the machinery of our concrete aims: the exclusive prevalence of pursuits and efforts which is apt to stifle our deeper psychic life and with it any fully experienced response to values.
We may free ourselves from the false attitude of always asking, “What can I do in this matter? How can I change this?”—the attitude underlain by the disastrous error that it is pointless to take an interest in any object unless we can do something about it. By recollection and a contemplative approach to God, we may again and again seek to reach spiritual depths. By ascetical practice we may seek gradually to clear away the obstacles which pride and concupiscence oppose to our adequate response to values. Finally, we may beseech God in prayer to accord us love, holy joy, and deep contrition.
Transformation of our moral character is not directly under our control
Yet, the path of the indirect education of all these concrete attitudes lies along our transformation as a whole—that of our habitual being. Even though we take our departure from the problem of our single acts and attitudes, the consideration of