Being is the ontological gift of existence. Eternal well-being is the telos, destiny, and end of our existence. Well-being is the middle term and is the domain of human drama.
For Maximus, the goal of human life is to achieve synchrony across these three domains. Being connected to well-being connected to eternal well-being. As Maximus writes:
If then rational beings come into being, surely they are also so moved, since they move from a natural beginning in "being" toward a voluntary end in "well-being." For the end of the movement of those who are moved is "eternal well-being" itself, just as its beginning is being itself which is God who is the giver of being as well as of well-being. For God is the beginning and the end.
The vision here is the one I described in the last post. Our flourishing depends upon bringing life into agreement with both our Beginning (being) and our End (eternal well-being). We achieve well-being through this ontological attunement.
It was this triadic structure of Maximus' that got me considering the relationship between ontology and mental health, how well-being is related to being, our flourishing to ontology.
For me, the crux of this notion is that well-being is pursued in relation to a reference, achieved via contact with a ground. A steadiness through connection with stability.
Borrowing from Object-Relations Theory, identity is achieved via relation. Without relation, the self has nothing by which to orient itself. The self needs something to push against. Contact with Being provides an ontological "sounding" that gives the self navigational coordinates.
Even more simply, as Julian of Norwich put it, if you want to know yourself you need to know God first. One must know being to achieve well-being. Here's Julian making the point:
Thus I saw most surely that it is easier for us to come to the knowledge of God than to know our own soul, for our soul is so profoundly based in God, and so endlessly treasured, that we may not come to the knowledge of it until we first have knowledge of God, who is the Creator to whom our soul is one-ed...
God is nearer to us than our own soul, because He is the foundation on which our soul stands...And therefore if we wish to have knowledge of our soul and communion and conversation with it, it behooves us that we search into our Lord God, in whom it is enclosed.
Julian provides here a concise statement of the thesis: We cannot come to the knowledge of our own soul until we first have knowledge of God.
Our well-being flows from our encounter with the Real.
