Is Confession Good for the Soul?
by Julia Melges-Brenner. Copyright Sabrina Scott, Inc. All rights reserved. Written for and originally published in Kajama.
Dear Julia:
I was raised Catholic and
regularly attended church as well as confession while growing up. I am
now what you might call a recovering Catholic, as some years ago I
began to question the teachings of the Church and to explore my own
spiritual path. I'm at peace with this for the most part, but I've
found that I deeply miss the practice of confession. I feel like my
soul has become heavy and polluted without this regular cleansing, and
this feeling has me wondering if perhaps the Church was fulfilling a
true spiritual need that I won't be able to meet on my own. Do you have
any advice for me?
Bea
Dear Bea:
Confession as a rite of spiritual healing and purification is perhaps
universal. Certainly many religious and spiritual traditions
incorporate some form of confession as a path to metaphysical renewal.
When we are unable to face ourselves honestly and truly look at the
nature of our thoughts, feelings and actions, we distance ourselves
from our own higher selves. The more honest we are in our relationship
to our true self, the more at peace we feel and the more we can commune
with Source. When we face things as they happen, we process them and
move on from them. Whatever we can't face and work through at that
time, we carry with us until we find the courage and wisdom to deal
with it. This is the power of confession: it guides us in facing and
releasing things from the past that we've been consciously and
unconsciously lugging around with us.
It was once widely believed that if we died with unconfessed sins on
our souls, we wouldn't get into heaven. It's my understanding that
where we go when we leave this life is largely determined by our own
beliefs and expectations, so if we feel guilty about things we've done
that we haven't made peace with when we die, we could end up in some
sort of "purgatory" where we have to work through all the feelings and
issues we haven't consciously faced yet. Most of us are familiar with
the idea that when we die, we experience a life review, during which we
must relive all the joy and sorrow we caused other people. The more
we've made peace with the past while still living, the easier this life
review should be when we die, so there may be a sound metaphysical
basis for religious practices like confession.
Of course, we don't have to be Catholic or confess to a priest to
unburden ourselves of whatever may be weighing on our conscience; there
are all sorts of other ways people achieve the same sense of freedom
and release. Many people seek emotional peace in conventional
psychological counseling. Similarly, my clients often choose me as the
person to help them work through feelings of guilt or shame. From
pornography addictions to marital infidelity to "evil" thoughts and
feelings, I've heard it all over the years, and Spirit always has a
loving, healing perspective to help people realign with peace and
well-being.
So what makes us long for redemption? On some level we are all aware of
the karma we are carrying and how it will weigh us down and drag us
back into situations where it can be balanced and we can learn whatever
we need to learn. We don't need a priest or counselor to advise us,
however; we can meditate upon this ourselves and follow our own hearts
in determining how to make things right. In my view, this is truly
taking responsibility for our actions and will prove far more powerful
than having some appointed official intone words of blessings over our
heads. Besides, it's essential to determine and live by our own moral
code. When we try to follow rules set down by some outside authority
that don't resonate with our own inner truth, we just set ourselves up
for more angst and neuroses instead of peace and personal growth.
To balance karma, first we must face the truth about our actions.
Usually, it is feelings of guilt or shame that lead us to examine our
behavior and realize that we've acted against our own values. Then we
must admit our error to ourselves and whatever higher power we may be
calling upon in our quest for personal growth and healing. Sometimes,
admitting our error is simply a matter of apologizing to whomever we
feel we've wronged. Finally, we have to do what we can to make things
right. This is how we balance our karma and move toward a higher level
of experience.
When we open up and "get things off our chests," the energy in our
auras starts to move and locked up energy starts to dissipate.
Basically, when we hold things in, we create tension; when we speak
them out loud or open up about them, we get that energy moving again.
When the energy is moving, it can be healed, transformed and/or
released. Confessing in whatever way feels right and best to us can set
us free from karmic backlash because we no longer have the residual
energies of that experience acting like a magnet for further related
experiences. When we let go of feeling bad for something we did in the
past, we rise in vibration and can attract something better in the
future.
While all of this can be done internally, there is great power in
putting things into words. There is an intense process in yoga called
the maha vasana daha tantra
or "great purification of the subconscious by fire." It involves
writing down ten pages of memories for each year of one's life and then
burning those pages. It is said that this naturally sets us free from
the past and whatever issues may still be active for us on a
subconscious level. It's a bit like hypnotherapy in terms of the
instant healing that can happen when we bring things up into our
conscious awareness and relive them from a new perspective. Many say
that performing this ritual left them feeling profoundly clear, free,
joyful, unburdened, and at one with the Universe.
Of course, it's important to honor your needs as you have been doing
and to find whatever works best for you. If writing isn't appealing,
you might find a spiritual counselor you feel comfortable talking to or
come up with something else that feels right. For example, if you're
more tactile than verbal, you could create a meditation altar on which
you place symbolic tokens of your burdens to be healed and released.
I read somewhere that confession is a surrender of your past to God to
be dissolved in divine love. It's a way to start over from scratch and
realign with the divine perfection of your eternal soul. Through it,
you can be instantly freed and healed from the past and open to a
bright, fresh future. The method you choose isn't important; what's
important is to open your heart with complete honesty and commit to
becoming a better person.
If you can pour all of your soul into it, this simple ritual may suffice:
Sit quietly and allow anything that has been weighing on your
conscience to come to mind. Ask yourself what you have learned from
this experience and how you could do better in the future. Then simply
pray: Universe, please heal me
from the past. Cleanse and renew my spirit so that I may walk forward
embodying my higher nature and radiating love, wisdom, compassion,
courage and integrity in all I think, say and do. Visualize
divine love washing over and through you, cleansing your soul clean of
any guilt, remorse and negative karma. When you feel clear, let go of
worrying about the past, and focus on integrating what you've learned
by being a better person from that point forward.
- Julia
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