As explained in my last post The Psychological Practice of Confession I have committed to an annual public confession. My first such confession was made at the end of last year [1]. This is my second annual confession. However, there are a few issues I want to emphasise prior to the confession. This is done both for the purposes of providing an example of confession to students commencing on the Nigredo Programme and as an act of personal catharsis.
Your choice of master confessor who hears your confession and the forum and space in which you confess is as important as the confession itself.
I do not recommend wholesale, unconsidered confession, which can as easily cause harm to you and to those you confess to as do any good. This is an act of profound honesty and vulnerability and it is essential that it is done in a safe, contained, confidential and held space, to someone able to hear your confession with compassion and wisdom.
Not because these are secret, but simply because they would be too much of a digression from the focus of this post, my actual confession. One last, not unimportant, point to tackle before the confession is this, how do I expect you the reader to read and react to this post. Typically, this is not something I focus on in my writing, I write as I choose to, and you naturally respond in the same fashion.
However, I would be dishonest if I did not confess that it strikes me there may be something disingenuous in this act of confession. I am selling an idea: individuation. And not just any path to individuation, but one in which I have crafted much of the architecture. Why else, after all, would one embark on such a practice, if its ultimate destination is not a better life? If that is indeed your expectation, which I can only assume it is, reading this might give you pause.
