Grace As Honesty: The Confessional’s Value
I can never become genuinely honest with others until I first become honest with myself about how I operate. My need to blame has been based on my Self’s inability to accept responsibility for my life’s resulting darkness. Rather than examining the truth, my Self hides it, keeping previous transgressions under lock and key. My Self insists that revealing my darkest secrets will invite condemnation.
Upon entering the world of recovery many years ago, I took a two-pronged approach. The Twelve Steps would address my substance abuse issues while psychotherapy would help me look at my Self. Early on, Twelve Step reliance provided better course navigation. At such an initial stage, I possessed little ability to see the truth of my life, much less question it. Because I fall into the “sometimes slowly” category of Twelve Step recovery, I required force feeding, precisely the approach an effective Program sponsor knows how to take. I would learn self-honesty by taking the 4th and 5th Steps, which I consider the Program’s version of entering the confessional.
Overcoming substance abuse issues along with addictive behavior demands serious housecleaning. Unfortunately, human misery manifests itself in a variety of elusive ways beyond the obvious symptoms. As far as I am concerned, keeping secrets is humanity’s common ailment, the plug stuck in our collective jug. I have yet to meet a person who is not hiding something which is as often as not, covering up a past action that significantly harmed another. Each of us must live inside our own haunted house.
Based on my seventy years of observation, keeping such secrets is a cancerous impediment to internal serenity. The sickness caused by one’s secrets always finds a self-destructive way to leak out. If you know someone who has somehow avoided such a trap, I’ll bet he or she arrives at work each day riding a flying pony.
That’s why I consider the confessional of such value. With assistance, I could finally begin clearing away the historical baggage that had been weighing me down. Working through the Program’s 4th and 5th Steps opened a series of locked doors. Years in therapy then provided a clearer understanding of how my internal forces work. There is a therapeutic reason my darkest secrets remained hidden: Shame. My Self demands I avoid shame at all costs.
Therapy helped me better understand the nature of shame, including its healthier version I experience when my conscience flashes a wrong turn. Chastened by that form of shame, I strive to avoid making the same mistake. But what if the shame I feel is not so much about what I do but instead about who I am ? That kind of shame my Self has used to advantage since childhood as illustrated by my early struggles with obesity.
The Self’s version of shame demonizes my personhood rather than helping to identify a misstep, insisting my bad behavior expresses the real me. Given such toxic reinforcement, I felt compelled to keep my darkest secrets hidden, leading to deepening shame along with increasing despair. There is a reason for the old saying, “We are as sick as our secrets.” It’s true.
To override my Self’s use of shame to control me, my hidden darkness must be dragged out into the glare of honesty’s light. Without such a Self-cleansing effort, I would continue to rot. Accomplishing the exorcism of shame requires bearing witness to the truth while facing another person. Only then can the sun’s warming rays burn off shame’s accumulated decay.
Many religions insist one’s only escape from shame is through repentance. To repent, one must express sincere regret or remorse about a wrongdoing or sin. The operative words, “express sincere regret” requires someone to hear one’s expression of remorse. The key is selecting a person who will listen objectively while being free of personal judgment.
Good Catholics know of such benefits through regularly entering the confessional across from a priest. Its seal of confidentiality provides a safe place to reveal whatever darkness one carries. The more thoroughly such secret misbehavior is revealed, the more the confessor feels unburdened and emotionally relieved. With the release of trapped human darkness, one is freed of the Self’s grip.
Not being Catholic, my first introduction to the confessional came via the Twelve Steps. Confessing one’s sins offered a bridge to recovery every Program member must eventually cross. The Steps required unearthing the darkness I kept locked away. Until my hidden secrets were fully revealed, I would remain my Self’s minion.
For my money, part of the AA program’s success lay in Step 4 and 5’s user-friendliness. Its process facilitates an ease of communication without the requirement of a church official’s presence to grant absolution. In fact, confessing need not be religious nor linked to a God-based recovery program. Various permutations of the confessional today exist in a variety of formats. Legions of psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists have ben professionally trained for just that purpose. They can facilitate a purge of the self-induced poison that keeping secrets creates.
One of the first ways I experienced Grace was sitting in the 5th Step confessional. Offloading the most hidden parts of my Self to another person provided my first taste of what spiritual freedom feels like. By admitting to past errors, I honor my conscience. Through self-revelation, the facility to transcend my Self’s demonic control allows me to regain some measure of internal dominion.
As will be explained in the next lesson, I could not become known as the real me until I stopped projecting Self-created images. The key to unlocking that prison door began by admitting to my authorship of previously told fiction. Honesty begins with the cessation of lies. Left to my Self alone, it is impossible for me to come clean. Facing my Self squarely can only be accomplished with another person present and listening. When I have chosen well, my listener is an Eskimo who is already operating according to those truths I seek. Such an individual has the capacity to hear my confession in the light of either shared experience or wisdom. Those familiar with the confessional know of the resulting freedom such internal house cleaning can bring.
Surprisingly, once I exposed a secret, it appeared ten times smaller than it had felt. Contrition then washed away the residual dirt. By personally apologizing as well as humbly offering restitution as required, I found release. Through time spent in the confessional, I finally recognized my gravest sin of all: the undeserved havoc my Self brought upon me. The person to whom I owe the greatest apology turns out to be me. I deserved a better life than the one my Self insisted I live.
What the confessional is not about is self-condemnation, which leads to further imprisonment. The confessional holds the keys to my jail cell not the reverse. Confessing frees me from a Self-induced coma of damnation.
Holding onto my shame fans the flames of that personally created hell. So long as I kept my life’s transgressions hidden, my conscience would never find peace. Until I learned how to let go of that shame, my path to Grace would remain shrouded in the fog of internal loathing. Honesty requires fully admitting my failings. The conscientious pursuit of Grace then assures my transcendence over such darkness, transporting me into the light of each new day.