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Transformation
Begins with Confession
By Leslie Reynolds-Benns,
www.lesliereynoldsbenns.com
Transformation begins with confession. The
need to confess has customarily been associated with
wrong-doing. But that association is
incomplete. Confession is good for more than
the soul. Confession is one of the most
life-affirming actions a human being can take, and
it can lead to the formation of a new and often
quite different personality.
The need for transformation is obvious. Our
country, its organizations and its people are in
need of an overhaul. Children are entering
kindergarten acting like three-year olds, with a
level of violence previously observed only in junior
high school. Over fifty percent of marriages
now fail, with many partners expecting a future
divorce on their wedding day. The gap between
the haves and have nots continues to widen.
Many are saying that our country has lost its
bearings and that our position on the world stage is
in jeopardy.
There's hope in transforming this dismal condition.
That hope is found first in personal confession -
owning or admitting material that was previously
hidden from sight, unburdening of our conscience or
a cleansing of our souls. When we've done
something that we are less than pleased with,
confession relieves us of the burden either
consciously or unconsciously carried. The
so-called guilty conscience has been rehabilitated.
When we've confessed to a person we may have harmed
or misled, and offer a remedy, our personal
integrity is reestablished.
However, confession does more than uncover incidents
about which we feel guilt. A complete
confession also reveals the sources of our actions
that may have become so automatic that we no longer
notice them. Uncovering and discarding the
origin of these actions sets us free to create our
life anew. Our psyches are like school
"blackboards" that collected chalk dust on
their surfaces from repeated erasures and can only
be read clearly after being wiped with a damp cloth.
Confession is the damp cloth for our psyches.
Confession is the first step in transforming
ourselves, our relationships and our society and is
often called by different names: gaining integrity,
becoming responsible, enlightenment.
At the level of organization and government taking a
group inventory and risking the implementation of
this confession may terrify those of us accustomed
to "covering our own asses." But
relax. While those may be beneficial, this
process does not offer a panacea for all the world's
ills, nor advocate stripping off our clothes and
running through the streets, shouting,
"Hallelujah, we're free." More
measured steps on each level will be required, and
they all begin with the personal.
A complete confession, one that looks inside at
depth and uncovers and discards previously
unconscious or un-addressed material, produces a
lasting change in our lives and our world, making us
available to possibilities in ourselves and our
lives that were not previously accessible. It
is a private in-depth confession - bringing all the
clutter in our psyches to the surface, owning it and
letting it go, sharing the distilled results of this
self-examination with another person and, with some
maintenance work, creating a clutter-free life and
then sharing the whole experience with our fellows.
Excerpted from Confession is Good for More than Soul
www.confessionisgood.com
Dr Leslie Reynolds-Benns, PhD, author,
most recently of Confession is Good for More
than the Soul. Speaker, trainer, workshop leader,
community activist and wedding officiator.
Sign up for a FR*E*E
4-part mini e-course - CREATING YOUR OWN REALITY
- at http://www.lesliereynoldsbenns.com
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