I got chatting to the ex-nun that lives next door (as you do) about the benefits of going to confession. And although I’m not Catholic by any stretch of the cosmic canvas (not even in previous incarnations it seems) I was still attracted to the idea of coming clean about who you really are, exposing your darkest and deepest thoughts and issues, to someone that isn’t gonna tell your mum or dad, or broadcast it on national TV.
That’s probably why counselling and psychotherapy was invented, to give us non-Catholics a little bit of a chance of getting into heaven, or at least sorting our own shite out before we die?
And it got me thinking about how we all see ourselves, am I a sinner or am I righteous?
I know that for the most part, most people think that they are right, correct and that everything they do, everything that we do is justified.
However, on a deeper level many people don’t seem to be truly happy, deep down they don’t feel righteous, but probably consider themselves bad, wrong, stupid, dumb, fat, ugly, sinners.
Not that everyone has a Catholic soul and should feel like a big bad sinner, but from a more humanistic perspective each of us is in some way guilty of at least one sin, the sin of not truly fulfilling our innate divine potential. We are guilty of not living our dreams, of not trusting life, of ultimately letting ourselves down.
The bible says that Noah, (the guy with the boat and the animals, “2 by 2”) was ‘righteous in his own generation’, (cite) which seems to imply that his ‘righteousness’ was a ‘relative’ rather than an ‘absolute’, righteous-dudeness.
Which leads me to this; most people’s conscious mind, for the most part, thinks they’re right and justified. Their unconscious mind however knows the truth.
Heartfelt confession or being truly honest with yourself brings the two minds together, the unconscious mind teaches the conscious mind what the true situation is.
As my spiritual teacher once wrote, ‘the heart is the portal to the transcendent’ it is through our heart, that we are able to be honest, to marry our deepest part of ourselves with our everyday state of mind.
And it is in that union that we learn that, if we listened more closely to our true inner voice, we would make better choices in our lives, we would become righteous in the deepest resources of our very being.
So that unlike Noah we can strive to become more than just righteous in comparison to the generation, culture and society we live in, that is ‘righteous in his generation’ but on some much more profound and substantial level that we actually become beautiful through and through.
It is my wish that this inner beauty and righteousness become manifest within you, because it is who you are already righteous and beautiful, but nobody told you.
This post was written by Urban Guru on February 9, 2008
