Sublimation

sublimation
1390, "process of purifying by heating into a vapor," from M.L. sublimationem (nom. sublimatio) "refinement," lit. "a lifting up, deliverance," from L. sublimare "to raise, elevate," from sublimis "lofty" (see sublime). Psychological sense is first recorded 1910, probably influenced by subliminal.
I'm writing a paper about differences between 17th and 18th C. ideas of God and our perception of reality, and it has only really just occurred to me that the propositions of psychology are only really possible if we accept the proposition that our mind is divorced from our body/world/life. Not in a truly Cartesian way, but in a way that makes Descartes make some sense. The mind is, in some way, on a different plain of existence than the body; that much we must admit.
The author I'm studying thought believed that all "reason" was knowledge of God, and that our understanding of the world around us was a "lower" form of knowledge that wasn't really important for very much. Reason makes you good, because it's a direct "knowledge" of God and his nature, but the five senses get you by in the world or (more often than not) make you into a bad person.

I don't want to go that far, but to go too far in the opposite direction is just as absurd. If we can have a real knowledge of the world around us, then it doesn't make sense that we would ever use deception (of ourselves or others), or understand things wrongly, or have any sort of hope, or feel any kind of pain. We would be animals, at best. I think even animals have a more complicated way of understanding the world than that, but that's a different question... Anyway, the mind is something different than a collection of the five senses.

So instead, we understand (or, cognitive psychology proposes) that all of our sensation is filtered by the mind, and all of our thoughts are an abstraction/extraction from an overwhelming amount of data. Our thoughts are more than just sensation, but not by much.

Now, cf. St Paul: "When I was a child, I spoke with childish words..." "Now we see in a mirror dimly; then, we shall see face to face."
My question is, when is then?
Is Paul saying that there is another way of seeing the world? Of seeing the "really real"? What makes that "really real"?

And thus, I wonder if it would be helpful to return to an almost pre-17th C. way of thinking; not to say that we "see all things in/through God" but that "we can (or might) see all things as in/through God."
Is Paul's "face-to-face" a place where we can see all things in God, and God in all things? Where we stop looking with our own eyes and see through God's eyes?
Could I say that our understanding of the world and our perception of it is divorced from our understanding of God, and that this is the root of Sin? We are separated from God by a rift, a distance of thought/reason/perception, and that rift allows for our destructive tendencies and pain, but is also a prerequisite for our hopes and faith and Love.
The conditions required for sin must also be the conditions required for love. We could not be said to love, not in the way that I hold most dear, unless we were unable to truly understand what's going on in the mind/spirit of the beloved. Without that rift, Love is effortless.

...

And so, I go through my life trying to see things in/through God, trying to make sense of the messed up ways I've always tried to understand things directly. Sensation works just fine for keeping me from bumping into things and helping me put my food in my mouth instead of my nose, but it isn't an especially helpful way to understand people--not for any definition of "understand" that I'm interested in. I can't see pain. I can't see anger. I can't see joy. I can see signs of these things, but the signs are... confusing, at best.
So I listen to what God tells me. I perceive a different world through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I see pain when He shows me pain, I see Joy when he shows me Joy.
(at least, I try... in theory...)
(Lord, grant me grace and mercy.)

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