E10. Confession.

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It is very injurious both to mind and body to live with the knowledge of our sins, or rather our immature tendencies, confided to no one and locked up in our own breasts. These thoughts (or things) if not talked out to some trusted friend, in full sympathy with us and in our vein of thought, will remain and generate more evil. The mind then fastens itself steadily upon them. We might say that it endeavors to draw nutriment from a food which it has eaten over and over again. This will eventually bring some form of disease.

 

The real food for both spirit and body is new ideas, new and newer conceptions of life, new and newer interpretations and meanings for all material things about us. We shall see things with a new eye every day. The thought, the plan, the opinion, the view we had yesterday are to be succeeded the next day by the newer thought, plan, opinion. When the mind grows to this state it is receiving its “daily bread” of life, and this is new life for the body also. This constantly changing mental condition is constantly changing for the better the character and quality of the elements composing the body, and will prolong indefinitely the life of the body. In other words, when the ever‑growing, ever‑renewing spirit is able to give its life and idea to the physical organization and senses it will keep unbroken the link connecting it with the body, its physical instrument for expression.

 

“Old Age,” as it is called, sees things very much as it saw them fifty years before. Events, persons, objects, call up only the same train of association, the same old story told in connection with it hundreds of times. Such mind is fed with no new thought. It tries to live on the old. The result is the death of the body. Sometimes it dies suddenly—sometimes gradually. In other words, the spirit imbued by new idea has less and less power to sustain and keep its hold on the body. Failing memory, failing sight and hearing, tottering limbs and shrunken flesh are all signs that the spirit, starved from lack of its “daily bread” of new thought, is losing hold of the body.

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To live in reality—to increase with years both in physical and mental vigor—to enjoy every phase of life more and more as the years roll on—to overcome the last great enemy, “Death,” there must be a constant process of casting out the old thought when it has served its purpose in order to receive the new, even as your well to give the purest water must be cleansed of that which has long stood in it.

 

The old thought to be gotten out must be talked out, not to every one, but to the one person in whom we can put perfect trust and to whom we may tell every thought, every desire, every inclination, be it for right or wrong.

 

The only persons who can talk safely with each other and serve as mutual confessors each to the other, must be in the same current of thought. They must see things with the same eye. They must understand each other. They must divine or interpret each other’s motives and character through that intuition, or unspoken communion which always exists between kindred minds and by which a few words tell more than can be explained in an hour of spoken conversation.

 

The true husband and wife are the best confessors each to the other.

 

If we have a tendency to lie or steal or any other sin, there is lying and stealing element in flesh, blood and bone. When these thoughts are gotten out of the mind they will also leave the body, and the flesh and blood will be finer and better in their composition.

 

Any real sin held in the mind brings some form of disease or unrest to the body. All of us hold to‑day more or less to injurious beliefs, prejudice and moods of mind of which we may be unconscious. We cannot have all our false beliefs revealed to us at once. The revelation must be gradual from day to day, from year to year. Nor are these errors to be revealed to us by others. The knowledge of self defect must come from within. Then it is clearly seen. That is God’s revelation to us. It is the spirit of the Infinite Mind working through us. It is the Supreme opening our eyes to rents, stains and sores on the mind which must be seen to be removed. Instead of being discouraged at finding in ourselves faults of which we were unconscious, we need to be glad—as the sailor is glad when be finds the leak which, undetected, might sink the ship. Our errors are then self‑confessed. When we can confess to self and cease that foolish pride which refuses to see the leak or defect, we have made a great advance on the high road to eternal happiness. The Infinite Mind and Force will then send us the next vital need. That need is the proper person to whom we can confess.

 

That person will not be a babbler, and will be in communion with and a drawer of new thought and life from the Supreme. Such person will also stand in the same need of making confession of fault as ourselves.

 

It is not the confession of the actual lie or theft or other fault that is of the greatest importance. It is the confession of the continual temptation or tendency to commit the fault.

 

When we say, for instance, to the trusted friend, “I know I have a tendency to lie or exaggerate my statements about events or persons. I don’t wish to do so. I don’t intend on commencing my conversation to do so. But often in the excitement of a conversation these exaggerations and highly colored statements are on my tongue and uttered almost before I am aware of it. My higher self does not approve of it, and in my hours of reflection and quiet reminds me how I deviate from telling the truth.”

 

Or one might say: “I have a tendency to steal. I am not exactly a common thief, for there are other ways for stealing than open theft. But my higher conscience does not sustain me in these acts. I want to be rid of these tendencies.”

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Or, “I have feelings of envy and jealousy at sight of certain persons. Even the mere mention of their names brings a thought of hatred and antagonism.”

 

Or, “I hate the rich. I hate them as they roll past me in their carriages.”

 

Thoughts and minds like these injure the body and bring disease as surely as fire destroys wood. We are not rid of them when we try to feel differently. That is only hypocrisy to self. Of ourselves we cannot free ourselves from such mind. The better way is to look straight into self, acknowledge what we find there, and say, “Yes, I do hate; I am envious.”

 

When thoughts like these are spoken out to the trusted friend in the earnest desire to be free from them and the acts they cause us to commit, they are literally made more physical than when held in the mind. Becoming more physical they are put into a shape, by means we cannot explain, to throw or cast them from us.

 

To have no one to talk to freely—to keep all our defects and secret errors to ourselves—tends to beget first lack of courage to own them to ourselves. It begets that false pride which is content to “assume a value, though it has it not,” and is satisfied to seem to be rather than to be. Such a mind becomes at last totally unable to say to anyone that it has any fault. At last it becomes totally blind to all defects of its own. It holds often unconsciously to the idea that it is perfection. It becomes supercilious, domineering, and ever dealing out judgment on others. It is fossilized in its own material belief.

 

The relief given by confession is working constantly in the every day life of men and women. We experience a sense of relief as if a burthen had been thrown off when we tell our troubles to a sympathizing friend. Because on so talking them out to that friend the thought which did literally “weigh on the mind,” is cast out. In giving you sympathy, the friend takes literally a part of your burthen. If you are the one so confessed to, you may afterward feel depressed and gloomy. Because you have absorbed the other’s troubled thought, and it is acting on you. You are bearing the other’s burthen.

 

We need to be very careful how we take these burthens of others’ troubles on ourselves. If we allow ourselves to become the recipients of many people’s troubles we shall eventually be borne down by the accumulation of their troubled mental conditions on our minds. We shall carry their depressions, their gloom, and even their physical sickness. We shall be swept into their troubled current of thought. The more people from whom we take these loads, the stronger will be that current. Your mind then is not your own. Your mind is at the mercy and is swayed and influenced by the depressed and unhealthy thought of those whose moods you have allowed to be poured into you. You may from these causes act differently in your business, and act injuriously to your interests, because in absorbing promiscuously the thoughts of others you may absorb also their lack of judgment. Many are damaged in health and fortune from this cause.

 

When you give your sympathy to another you give your force with it. You receive in return the thought and quality of the others’ mind. If their thought is inferior to yours—if their judgment is weak—if they are reckless, hasty and imprudent if they lack energy—indeed, whatever may be their defects, you will absorb and for a time take on those defects. If you so take them on you will also act them out. When you give sympathy to another you graft that other person’s mind on yours.

 

You will not when daily demanding wisdom and guidance of the Infinite allow yourself to be confessed to by everyone or give your sympathy indiscriminately to those who ask it. Your sympathy is literally your life, your vitality, your vital force that keeps body and spirit together. The Supreme Wisdom will prompt you to put your hand up and restrain its flow to everyone that appeals for it. It will make it clear to you that in letting it go out to everyone whenever it is called for, you are draining yourself of your very life.

 

Confession has a far wider range than the telling our faults to another. All Nature confesses by outward signs its sensations of pleasure or pain.

 

The cry of agony extorted by physical pain is a confession of pain. It had better be uttered than repressed. Its utterance does give a certain relief, a fact to which many physicians have testified.

 

The exclamation of delight and the merry laugh is an external confession of receiving pleasure. Would not a great deal of happiness be prevented were we not allowed to give way to such expressions. They are necessary and vital to health and happiness. A household where these joyous confessions are repressed—where master or mistress frowns or sneers at what he or she may call frivolous, is not a happy household nor even a healthy one.

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There is for us imperative need of an associate with whom we can be natural. We need at least one person with whom we can talk out and act out our moods—before whom we can take off our armor and not be continually on guard. We do not want to be always weighing our sentences so as to say the wisest and most correct thing. That is keeping the mental bow continually on a tension. It needs to be unstrung and often unstrung. We need at times the privilege and freedom of saying trivial things and possibly silly things without fear of being snubbed or criticized. We need privilege and freedom to act out the playful spirit. If it is always repressed, the capacity for expressing it will eventually be lost altogether. The body loses power to express it as in youth, and when this power is lost, health, vigor and elasticity of muscle are soon lost also.

 

We cannot get foolishness really out of us either unless it is talked out before some trusted companion. When we put out a thought in words we often see the error in that thought. Before being spoken we did not see that error. Why is it that when feeling irritable or peevish we make the tart or satirical reply we may have long had in mind to our friend, that so soon after being spoken we wish we could recall it. Why is it that when we discuss a matter with others in the friendly spirit, we see immediately on expressing an opinion of our own the error or defect in that opinion?

 

We have unconsciously confessed that attitude. We have put the error into words. In putting the thought into words it is literally made more physical. Being more physical, our physical senses see its nature more clearly. An unspoken thought belongs to the domain of spirit. The spoken thought is so much spirit materialized or put into a certain physical organization.

 

Success in business is furthered through the principle of confession. Where two or more persons having a mutual interest in any undertaking talk out freely their views regarding it, and where each one is willing to acknowledge an error in judgment on seeing it, as one often will far quicker and more clearly on talking out in the spirit of concord, there is created a great force for success. Each one confesses his view of the matter. That is, each one in talking out his plan takes it out literally of the spiritual part of his being, and by putting it in words, that plan or thought is made more physical than when unspoken, and being more physical, whatever of it is defective or advantageous, is more clearly seen than before.

 

On the contrary, if at such a conference one or more of the parties do not talk out their views—if one of the partners pretends to agree with the others, and then when alone antagonize and put out thought of dissatisfaction with the plan agreed upon, there is a weakening of the force necessary to carry out that plan. Nothing is more injurious to the body, or retards more the growth of our powers, than carrying about dissatisfaction, which is never revealed to any one.

 

Thousands carry these thought burthens. They are in the heart of family circles.

 

Every thought demands its physical expression. That is, it demands to be talked out where we can safely talk. If thoughts are kept in we become shut up. We lose ability to open ourselves to others. This is an unnatural condition. It is analogous to a tree on which some power should be brought to prevent the growth of blossom buds and fruit. These blossom buds and fruit are the expressions of that tree. If they are checked the tree will die. The buds and fruit have also a spiritual origin. They are the materializations of the mind existent in that tree. The spirit of that tree demands that all its spiritual part be expressed in some physical form. Exactly so do our spirits demand that all our spiritual selves be expressed or confessed in some physical form. Our thoughts are our spiritual part, and when put out in words or sounds they are expressed in physical form. They become then parts of the physical world around us, and act for good or ill more directly on the physical world than when repressed.

 

For this reason it is better if you have no one to talk to whom you can trust or before whom you dare say many secret things, to go to some retired place and talk them out in words. Say you are grieved or sick or lonely. Or you writhe in the grasp of some secret sin or habit. Or you suffer from envy or jealousy, or lack of system or order. Or you feel yourself a coward morally or physically. Talk it all out. Say what comes to your tongue to say. Get yourself accustomed to express your secret thoughts to yourself. You put your thoughts then into physical forms. You cannot get those thoughts out of you unless they are first put into physical forms. Then in such form they will go from you literally. They will be attracted to and assimilate with physical form or materialized thoughts of like order with themselves.

 

Every animal, every tree, every thing physical that exists is an expression of some kind of thought. Thought of like quality is attracted to its like. The current from the lunatic was attracted to the swine. They served as magnets to attract it.

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Q's note:

 

Today, July 10, 2021, It's 112 Degree F.  It's damn Hot! Just like You ;)

 

I'm sitting in a Starbuck's working on these last readings for you.  I'm thinking if you randomly show up, you would see me.  Heheh!  But I know that's not gonna happen so Somebody (You) won't have that chance to see who "the hell" Q. is and how she looks like in person.  Aww... Poor You!! omg :)