The ancient systems of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Traditional Indian Medicine (TIM), or Ayurveda, tackle the whole human person. Key to both systems and their focus is the person and not the disease. Both systems begin with a model of all organic and inorganic matter, including the human person, as in a combination of the five elements. For humans, TCM describes the role of the four bodily humors (qi, moisture, essence, and blood) in maintaining homeostasis, the process of maintaining an internal steady state in living beings despite external disturbances. The Greek physician, Hippocrates,’ theory of humourism (elaborated by Galen), suggests that personality is influenced by four temperaments, each associated with a different bodily fluid (or humor), choleric (yellow bile), melancholic (black bile), sanguine (blood), and phlegmatic (phlegm). These temperaments were believed to affect an individual’s overall well-being and personality.
TIM, or Ayurveda, in a somewhat similar fashion theorizes that biological systems, including human beings, have elements coded into three forces, Kapha, Pitta, and Vata, which are known as the three doshas or simply the Tri-dosha, which govern all life processes. Even while some of these ancient systems of medicine remain in vogue, their underlying models have never held much sway with modern medicine and science.
Strangely, while the Vatican has no formal document on the four temperaments, Catholic Spirituality, in these modern times, does recognize that understanding one’s temperaments, has a trifold benefit towards personal growth, relationship building and spiritual progress. I guess there is something to those words carved in stone at the entrance to Apollo’s temple in Delphi, namely, Know thyself!
Temperament Quiz
I did not know any of this (except in some passing sense) until a group of friends came visiting last month. One of the topics under discussion was the temperaments quiz. Apparently, it is used as a teaching aid in pre-marriage counseling sessions for young couples. So, each of us decided to take the quiz just for kicks. I did, too. Based on the scores, it appears I am of Choleric temperament. Well then, I had to know what that meant.
After asking all kinds of naïve, newbie questions (everyone else seemed to know a lot more about this than I did, enough to make me feel like I had just emerged from Plato’s cave), all I had accomplished for myself was more confusion. So, I had to go back and take the quiz once more. Turns out I was still Choleric. But there was a sense of disquiet in me. The scores for the quiz depended on my answers to the questions in that quiz. Was I being honest when I answered those questions? Well, maybe the real question was, did I know myself well enough to answer them correctly?
The following week, we celebrated my daughter’s graduation ceremony. We were blessed to have lots of friends and relatives from near and far join us for the celebrations. Temperaments must be the topic du jour for parties these days – and yes, the topic of temperaments came up again. But this time we did have an expert in our midst. What I could gather from her explanations confirmed my earlier suspicions that I may not really know myself well enough to have answered those questions in the quiz correctly.
I went back again over the descriptions attributed to all four temperaments. I could recognize some of the traits from the other temperaments, besides Choleric, in me. By this point, I had learned enough to know that one could be a combination of one or more temperaments. Also, by this point in time, my curiosity about my actual temperament was replaced almost entirely with a deeper latent anxiety that I may know very little about myself. Who am I really?
True Self?
That same week, I was listening to one of Fr Mike Schmitz’s YouTube talks, entitled, “Do you present your true self to others?.” Now, that got me really thinking. The closest I think I have come to revealing my true self to another human being is in the anonymity of the confessional. I do not know about you, but there is a lot of hand wringing that goes along with my approach to the confessional. Fr Mike asks another question in that same talk (in relation to a dream he describes about being in a confessional), “Do we try to cling to innocence, while acknowledging our guilt?.” I realized that even in that moment of “nakedness” in the confessional, I am holding on to a vestige of clothing.
Maybe it is just being human. Maybe it is an act of desperation, an act of trying to survive. Obviously, I have no need to feel this way. There has never been a time when I have not come out of the confessional, infinitely lighter, at peace from having unloaded that burden of carrying my sin around. But that does not change the fact that each time I approach the confessional, especially when I have really messed up, I am guilty of trying to cling to my innocence (as Fr Schmitz put it). The big question is, how do I present my guilt in the best possible light? Where is this deep latent need to “look good to my confessor even as I am confessing my sins” coming from?
Detour
(I am going to go on a short tangent here, because I cannot help it and it is much too tempting. I promise to get back to the main story in a paragraph. If there is ever a repeating miracle that happens every day in my life, it is the little incidents that convince me that there is no such thing as a coincidence. Everything I have said above happened in the last two weeks. What I am about to write further below relates all of it to the readings I am supposed to reflect on in this post. I am sorry, but I just find this to be incredibly coincidental. Yet, I know there are no coincidences).
There are three questions God asks Adam in Genesis 3. The first in Genesis 3:9 is, “Where are you?.” Adam and Eve, after having eaten of the Apple, “hid themselves from the LORD God among the trees of the garden” (Genesis 3:8). So, it is God who seeks them out, not the other way around. And just before Adam & Eve hid, “they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves” (Genesis 3:7). Why did they do this? Genesis says that they were “afraid … and … realized they were naked … and so they hid.” It is here that, God asks them the second question, “who told you that you were naked?”, followed immediately by one last question, “Have you eaten from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat?”.
Just this morning, I was putting off writing this post (yes, yet again), I had this sudden realization about the simple truth of an activity we all (I hope all) do every single day. It is the simple act of taking a bath. Taking a bath is a strange affair. Most of us spend our waking adult lives clothed. We present ourselves to the world well groomed, coiffured, our “best possible selves.” Yet to become clean, we must remove all those accoutrements, step into a shower and wash ourselves clean. Any vestige of cloth on our body at the time of entering the shower is but an obstacle to becoming wholly clean.
It is a simple truth, but, unless you live in a nudist colony, each of us does this in the privacy of a closed room. It is as if, even in that moment of preparing to get clean, we must protect our nakedness from the world. Adam and Eve felt the same, the sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves and hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. They had an innate need to become clean (healed). Yet, they chose to hide.
Covering Nakedness
Is it really that strange that the descendants of Adam and Eve instinctively clutch their fig leaves? What are my fig leaves? I can no more get clean in the shower with fig leaves or clothing on, than I can get that sacramental cleansing and healing in the confessional without shedding every false appurtenance I have managed to cover my nakedness, my true self, with over my many years.
In that confessional, I need to get just as naked as the day I was born, or even, the day I was conceived. In my mother’s womb, I had no resume, I had no three-piece suits, I had no money, no fancy car or fancy job. No, none of those crutches existed. Until I can present myself to my confessor in my birthday suit (and just to be clear, I do not mean that literally), what hope do I have that I will be cleaned and healed.
Trying to Maintain My Innocence While I Know I am Guilty
Yet, the Lord is generous. It is He who asks me “Where are you?.” Right there in the confessional line, He is asking me that question, “Where are you?.” But, what is even more profound and reflective of his generosity is His second question, “Who told you that you were naked?.” I am standing there with that bivalent feeling that Fr Schmitz describes as, trying to maintain my innocence while I know I am guilty.
And yet, the Lord is asking me “who told you that you were naked?.” He and I just have completely different ideas about the emotion to associate with nakedness. To me it is guilt. To Him, it is the same innocence he conceived me with, in his mind, for his purpose. I am standing there before Him, like Adam did, yes, naked, but already enveloped in his mercy. He is seeking me out. He is ready to forgive. But I am the one who must take the next step, namely, the action of shedding every fig leaf I have sewn over my lifetime.
Only then can I claim that love he is generously pouring out towards me. To reclaim the innocence he created me with. I must make that final gesture freely, and that is all I need to do. That question the Lord is asking, “who told you …,” is really an affirmation of His love. The question is rhetorical. That is why the Lord does not wait for an answer from Adam. He immediately follows it up with that third question, “Did you sin?” (well, that is not what he asked, but you know what I mean). It is in the response to that final, third question, that I must be willing to let go of my fig leaf. I must choose to become clean and healed again. That is the precise moment where I present my true self to my confessor and gain absolution.
Christ Lives in Me
As with those ancient systems of medicine, it is impossible to heal myself without knowing myself. However, I do not think I will ever know myself well enough to heal myself by my own efforts. Those temperament quizzes may be helpful to revealing me to myself. However, I will never know myself well enough as the Lord already knows me.
What I do know is that He created me with those temperaments, whatever they may be, and by grace he offers me opportunity every day to become more like Him, not so much by some effort of mine, not by some profound self-knowledge of myself, but as St Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me”. I will always default to that temperament that I was created with. But, only in Christ and with Christ in me do I gain a sort of homeostasis of temperament. It is Christ who is that perfect balance of the virtues that each temperament possesses, with none of its weaknesses. So, to be Christ-like, “He must increase, I must decrease” (John 3:30). Amen.
