posted January 16, 2014 06:43 PM            

As a young girl growing up in the Catholic church, going to the confessional was traumatic for me, since I had been brainwashed into thinking that if I got it wrong, I was risking going to hell. It was never effective, it was always bad.

Then, when I was a Protestant, I accepted the Biblical precept that confession is good for the soul. So, those days, I was the kind of person who would tell people things just to get them off my chest, even though I don't think I gained anything by it except needless trouble and drama.

In both situations I was motivated by an honest desire to just be honest and follow the rules of my religion. My participation was motivated more by fear than anything, and I'm pretty sure my overall results were not positive.

But I'm still intrigued with how confession rituals might be worthwhile.

I hear that the Navajo and other Native American tribes incorporated public confessions into their healing rituals. The patient might have to confess things like chopping down the tree of an owl, or other Navajo sins. The premise was that guilt was like a splinter in the soul, and drawing out a confession drew out the spiritual component of the malady.

What do you think?

Is there any really accessible venue for secular people to undergo some kind of confession ritual? All I can think of is therapy, which I have mixed feelings about. Paying for "acceptance" seems like paying for real estate on the moon...you'll never know if what you got is real or not.

posted January 16, 2014 08:13 PM            

How could it be incorrect? It could lead to shame over stuff that isn't wrong just because a religion says it is, for example, or it can encourage people to confess to things that make things worse instead of better. I think the worst is that it leads some people into something like a "Jesus paid for my sins so I'm getting my money's worth!" I'm convinced a great many Christians have that attitude and are therefore terrible people (and some even sport stickers that say things like, "Not perfect, just forgiven").

As for done correctly it can help connect people to each other as well as becoming more lucid in one's thoughts and actions and therefore a stronger person as a result. And all sorts of support groups include "confession" elements. For example, cyberbullying support groups often (and I think always) get people to pay attention to when they can play the cyberbully themselves (and thus feed into what they have to put up with), and it's not "see, you deserve it," but rather to learn to rise above it as well as become lucid to the entire destructive process (and if you give back what you get then it becomes much harder to go to an outside source for help, or to get the help you need even if you do). And that can help change the direction of the wheel of karma.

Confession of a sort can also help one forgive one's self which also helps in forgiving others by realizing people are not perfect, we're not and they're not. And that's important because hating others or holding intense grudges gives the other person power even if they never intentionally exercise it, it will reverberate into future relationships (by causing everything from hypervigilance to misdirected anger) and create depression from too many toxins put in the system through constant anger or bitterness. That said, it is IMPORTANT to note that forgiveness in this case doesn't mean pardoning or letting someone kick you over and over, it doesn't absolve the other person of consequences or need to make up for what they did or that all is forgotten which is enabling more than forgiving. Forgiveness is more for the self than for other people, those who preach it's for others often have ulterior motives for doing so (and you'll find more often than not that such people expect to be forgiven while not being very forgiving themselves). Furthermore, anger exists for a good reason, too, though it also has to be used as wisely as possible so it doesn't do more harm than good, and forgiveness is more of a long term thing rather than trying to "let it go" instantly.

posted January 16, 2014 08:38 PM            

Of course the most important thing is to learn what NOT to do next time, if it hurt so much in the first place.

I'm certainly not perfect, and Heaven Knows we have all made mistakes, but I sometimes think negative things happen to us so that we have a deeper Understanding of what sorrow means.

If we know that, we are more compassionate towards others, and less likely to judge.