#self-gift

©️my photo ¡Hola, España!

HAPPY B-DAY TO MINE :D

Today, darlings, i’m becoming older :DDDDDDDDD

I’m, acualtly, so pourd of this gift i gived myself oWo

aaaaaaaaanyways, i can’t use my phone for... a lot. And I have a ... ‘‘limiteted’‘ time for the comuputer, so i will be more offline then i was :’D

BUT

I’M HAPPY UWU

AND I HOPE THAT YOU, DEARS, WILL BE HAPPY TOO

BUCASE IT ISN’T JUST MY HAPPY DAY

BUT YOURS TOO!

BUCASUSE EVERYONE DEVERSE HAPPINES, EVERYDAY OF THEIR LIFE, NOT, JUST, ON SPECIFICED DATES LIKE A BIRTDAY!

SOOOOOOO

As I recently found out to my immense satisfaction, Reylo was intentionally written and built off of the concept of self-gift. Their relationship is entirely founded upon the idea of “a sincere gift of self,” of existing mutually one for another, of learning to yield themselves totally to another in the form of a Dyadic Bond. So I wanted to go through their story and pick out examples of self-gift.

Self-Gift No. 1

I have discussed elsewhere the idea that Finn is a proto-Ben; the forerunner illustrating the concept of the “bad guy turned good.” In Rey’s first meeting with him, he takes her hand (which, as the amazing @allgirlsareprincesses points out here  https://magpie-trove.tumblr.com/post/191001707551/allgirlsareprincesses-magpie-trove-reys-main#notes ) is representative of her power/agency and, in broader terms, herself), and Rey vigorously resists him. However, she later gives him her hand

And it is a gift of herself. 

Self-gift No. 2

The first self-gift between Rey and Ben proper is actually from Ben. This is significant because Ben, starting out as a villain, initially takes Rey, and later insists in a childish bid to cover his insecurities, “You know I can take whatever I want.” It is doubly significant because in this very scene, Ben does not actually take anything from her, but instead demonstrates the first act of self-gift

Rey awakens in him the fundamental human need to give, to love something, and in his first step towards the light, he takes his mask off for her. It is a sincere gift of himself—of his identity, of the truth about who he is—and it is by merit of that gift that their bond is established. They share emotions. Rey finds she can take things from his mind—because in a sincere gift of self he has given himself to her for her to read. He has essentially made himself vulnerable before her. And so in that small instance of yielding of himself, their Dyadic bond is formed. (Because, as Campbell writes, marriage is a yielding of the self to the other part of this Dyad they are part of.)

Self-Gift No. 2

Rey was definitely taken aback and pulled in by Ben, but she continues to reject him for the remainder of TFA. That does not mean, however, there is no more “sincere gifts of self.” Ben is doing his best to stay in the desire of the dark, but he keeps finding his desires betray him—all he really wants suddenly is to give himself to this girl, to be part of building her up. So he backs her into a corner as she fights him, and—again instead of some evil speech about what he can get, he finds himself offering himself to her again instead.

What does she need? A teacher? Help with her growing powers? He can do that. But Rey won’t give or take. So Ben is left with a gaping wound—a wound of love—because he wants so badly to give but he cannot. He is wounded by love.

Self-gift No. 4

Once Rey faces herself in TLJ and in consequence can see Ben clearly for the first time, she makes her first tentative but fully sincere offering of self.

And Ben “unmasks” again in taking his glove off—he’s giving her his real self, Ben Solo, the boy who knows what it’s like to be scared and alone—and receives her gift, yielding himself in return. 

Self-gift No. 5

Now Rey is fully on board (in more ways than one) and she offers her grandest “sincere gift of self” to Ben in the form of her whole self. She gives herself to him, to his mercy, making herself vulnerable, risking her life, because she wants that life to belong to Ben.

But Ben is not prepared to receive it, and he must clear the way. But then they fail because they stop giving. Rey expects Ben to come, he expects Rey to stay, and that doesn’t work. He doesn’t believe she’ll take him if he offers himself. So here

Is the anti-thesis of what occurred earlier. In some ways—in terms of Ben’s desires—it remains a sincere gift of self. He’s offering his hand—himself—to her, but she won’t take it, because Rey has just learned how to give, but she cannot receive. She doesn’t know how to receive such a gift. But on another level, it is an insincere gift of something that is not himself—he’s trying to give her a kingdom and is hiding his true self, certain the latter is nothing she could want. And Rey I think is reacting to both levels of this. She knows he’s not quite offering himself and so she can’t accept him; but I think she also knows deep down what he means by it and can’t accept that either. In the first instance she is right; in the second she is wrong. Her journey in the next film in nothing but “an ordeal of acquiescing,” of learning to yield herself to receive another, of putting herself aside to accept the gift.

Self-Gift No. 6

Finally, Rey comes to a point where she can gift the one thing she’s been holding back—the truth of herself. (In the past, this is always something Ben drags out of her. Here, she finally gives it to him sincerely).

The truth about Rey, about her core, her true self she’s been running from, is that “I wanted to take your hand. Ben’s hand.” She is admitting she wanted to receive him (and only him alone). And by gifting the truth about herself, she opens herself up to finally and fully yield herself to him

In taking his hand, allowing herself (yielding herself) to receive. And Ben fully and totally yields himself to her in turn.

In essence, their arcs run in reverse. It is begun when Ben offers the truth of himself to her and takes her hand, and it is finished when Rey offers the truth of herself to him and takes his hand. Only then can they meet in the middle fully as a Dyad, both giving and receiving, in the form of a kiss.

Many of the creatives involved with Star Wars have talked at length about the “Joseph Campbell Boot Camp” they had to complete in order to be considered qualified to tell a story in the galaxy far far away. The works of Campbell, a scholar and mythologist, have always been the heart and baseline and substance of Star Wars—all its weird ideas tend to originate with him. So when Ben Solo declares himself to be part of something called “a Dyad” with Rey, we can bet our bottom dollar that whatever that meant, it was from Campbell.

And we would be right. Campbell used the unusual term in a self-reflective discussion turned book entitled The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work. 

“It’s an extremely important decision, that of marriage, because it does amount to & require a yielding & the yielding has to be total to now being a member of a dyad & acting in relation to that twoness.”

This is a revelatory quote, because it reveals not only that the term “Dyad” is intended to define Rey and Ben as married, but that the concept and intentions built into their relationship are intentionally and fundamentally ones that set it in the same light as Pope St. John Paul II’s view of marriage as self-gift, or what the Second Vatican Council called “a sincere gift of self.”

“Moreover, we read that man cannot exist "alone" (cf. Gen 2:18); he can exist only as a "unity of the two", and therefore in relation to another human person. It is a question here of a mutual relationship: man to woman and woman to man. Being a person in the image and likeness of God thus also involves existing in a relationship, in relation to the other "I".”

 In the "unity of the two", man and woman are called from the beginning not only to exist "side by side" or "together", but they are also called to exist mutually "one for the other".

Campbell later elaborates in his book,

“ I think the problem today is that. . .we’re given to think, that marriage is going to be a long love affair and that you’re going to have a lot of fun with the anima [or the animus, the idealized picture of the feminine or masculine that you think the other is]. The fact is you’re not having fun after the first ten minutes. You’re in confrontation with a problem and it turns into an ordeal. The ordeal is of acquiescing.”

This perfectly encapsulates the progression of Rey and Ben’s relationship. For the first ten minutes in the throne room they are having fun. But after that it is a problem; first because they stop yielding/gifting themselves to each other (Ben tries to gift something other than himself and Rey stops gifting herself and tries to take the lightsaber instead); and next because they are confronted with the problem of each other. Their idealized versions of each other (a Ben who is ready to go home and a Rey who is willing to embrace the dark) are only projections, and they fall away. Their journey reflects Campbell’s description of marriage involving accepting the real person seeping through the projection. It involves accepting each other for who they are (which is solved relatively early in TLJ), and then being willing to both give themselves to and receive the other. It becomes, in TROS, an ordeal of acquiescing—Rey must yield herself in total self-gift to Ben, and be willing to receive him, his whole and true self, in return, acquiescing to him in both kinds; and Ben must yield himself in total self-gift to Rey, and be willing to receive her whole and true self (rather than his projected idea of her). This is difficult for both of them, as Ben hides behind desire and so can’t fully give, and Rey hides her desires, and so will not receive or accept. This puts them in conflict—an ordeal of acquiescing, until they can be “mutually one for the other.” And in doing that—when Rey is willing to receive and Ben unhindered in his drive to give, when both yield themselves fully to the other—they reach the culmination point of their marriage, the fairy tale consummation of the kiss. 

John Paul II explains that a “sincere gift of self” is the means of every human being to attain full self-realization, to become fully what they were made to be, to reach full man-or-womanhood; and that this can only be done in relation to the other, by a unity of two.  

In this history, on the basis of the principle of mutually being "for" the other, in interpersonal "communion", there develops in humanity itself, in accordance with God's will, the integration of what is "masculine" and what is "feminine".

In other words, in self-gift, the masculine and feminine make a whole. Campbell likewise writes

“The relationship is the sacrificial field, where both of you are relating to the relationship and then you are, as it were, two together. Really like that yin-yang thing. (If you hang on to being the yin or. . .the yang in this thing, as a separate unit, you don’t have a marriage).”

It is necessary for a man and woman to both fully give themselves to the other, accomplishing the “integration of what is ‘masculine’ and what is ‘feminine’” and in this giving and yielding yourself to receive—both sincere gifts of self—you attain full manhood or womanhood, full humanity. This is what Rey and Ben discover. Their total self-gifts to each other integrate the masculine and feminine sides of themselves, so that they can finally reach full adulthood and culminate in the kiss.