Victor Frankl

My mother is studying logotherapy, a science after Victor Frankl, who studied much and went through a lot in his life. His first book as a biography is very explanatory, as it speaks of his days in the concentration camp and the outline of his mission in life. I could not put it down until I finished it.

Some of his statements at the end of the book were striking to me, as things that have been spoken in many other books and especially relevant:

¨If man would do things in order to make his conscience quiet, he would turn into a pharisee, and in that instant, he would not be anymore a moral person. I think that even the saints try to serve exclusively God, forgetting the acts that bring them to their sanctity. If they would center themselves in the acts that bring them to sanctity they would end up with a perfectionist personality, but not saints.¨


This is something I face everyday, as I struggle to do what is right out of my heart and not out of duty...just recently my husband needed to leave at 3am in the morning to the airport. I struggled thinking if I should go with him and then back home....a part of me wanted to do that, out of love, yet when I looked better I realized it was out of my conscience more than out of love...so then, was it better not to go? the Bible tells us that acts of charity without love are nothing....worth than nothing!. I gave my burden up to God, and he gave an answer, as he does so often..my brother offered a ride to my husband the day prior to the departure. Meanwhile I am asking God to show me the way of Love.

¨To this characteristic of man I would call self-trascendence of the existence. To be a man means to go towards something or somebody different from himself, either to develop a noble trait, or to get a meaning in life, or to find another human being. The more man forgets about himself , to give himself up to a cause or to a loved one, more human he becomes and his qualities become more perfected. Indeed, the more man tries to gain his self realization the more it fades away, because the real self realization is only the profound effect of the completion of the meaning of life. In other words, self realization is not gained like a goal, but as a rightful fruit of the self-trascendence.¨

How much better we can talk to non-believers about doing the will of God and not our own? How much better to talk about dying to self and gaining life?

¨Love is the only way to arrive a the deepest part of the personality of a man. Nobody is able to know the essence of another human being if he does not love him. For the spiritual act of love we are able to contemplate the traits and characters of our loved one; even to contemplate the potentiality, of that which is still dormant and is to be awaken. Furthermore, it is through love, that the one who loves gives the possibility to the loved one to actualize his potentialities, bring them to life. The one who loves see further and urges the other to bring to life his dormant personal capacities.¨

I have been looked with those kind of eyes, it is so enlivening to have somebody who trusts so much in you, your better you. And I have also looked with those eyes, we all do when we fall in love, for example....yet how to do that continuously...Somebody that continuously looked this way was of course Jesus, but also many of the saints and contemporaries of us, they are persons you notice you long to be with them, they are so peaceful, inwardly peaceful and their gaze is so accepting.They themselves may be very strict and disciplined with their life, yet they embrace the other with such compassion.

One of the exercises that my mother has to do in the studies is about non judgmental attention, to embark in relationships with people in a very non judgmental thought process. That is very difficult, we are built to rapidly bring qualities and judgement to our thoughts, big/little, dark/light, etc...to bring the sense observation to our organized boxes of concepts, yet Goethean Observation, which is one way to practice this void of judgement, is the first step in retraining our minds. Goethean Observation builds the skills in observing the phenomena without making judgements, thus we could meet a person with a particular appearance without making inward judgements about them, or a person which we would normally dislike, without disliking them. This brings a very peaceful way of interacting. I personally have seen in my mom a change in her pattern of thoughts, it is so freeing to be with her without feeling the numbing presence of her judgmental thoughts upon me ( we all do that and is especially intense in closer relationships), I am just asking to be able to do the same with every body I encounter, to be free of my own judgements and to react accordingly.  For the people who have faith, this is mainly following the principle of seeing Christ in every human being.