Mark - Shalom may I inject some thoughts here on sin - punishment - forgiveness.
Confession can be either oral or written, brief or extensive, group or individual. Why does one voluntarily confess? I believe they are prompted by a psychological aggravation, the result of a mental conflict. Knowledge which the person has concerning his conduct, relations, or the conduct of others is experienced as conflict with his own moral sense. The subject of the confession is, therefore, foreign to the psychic self of the individual.
It tends to produce anxiety and distress by its contrary nature. Relief seems only to be had by an avowal of sin. Since your own concept of sin is the reason for confession, your own conscious must violate your accepted religion, moral or social creed, for confession to be necessary. It must be an offense against self. They must create a psychic disturbance or they would never resort to confession. It is actually a purging of a distraction, so that, psychically and emotionally, purity of thought, and most of all peace of mind may be restored.
In almost all religions and occult organizations, the rite of
purification was related to confession. Almost all subscribe to a Deity - and his temporal representative - the faculty of perceiving mans sins directly. Thus he confesses not to inform his God of his evil acts, but wants to expiate them to avoid penalties imposed by his religion. Due to his fear if he fails to confess he is compounding his evil. He may pray that he believes himself to be weak , and asking for light and for divine intervention. The form of many prayers is of itself a confession, concluding with the appeal for absolution. Psychologically, the individual can derive satisfaction only if the confession is made to an authority with the power to forgive. The principle here is that his spiritual self has been impaired and
restitution must be made by him personally, or through an intermediary that will restore the original state within him.
As an analogy, a man discards the refuse from his mind, but it leaves scars and stains that are not normal, so must be removed in order to restore to its original state. This is attained in accordance with the rites and dogmas of his faith. Although popularized by Christianity, the act of confession appeared in the rituals and customs of antiquity which preceded it. There is no Babylonion or Assyrian word for confession, but there is evidence of the idea. In Babylonia it was a violation of the rituals that required acknowledgment. In cuneiform there has been found the Sumerian rites
of purification. "Uncleanliness has come against me, and to judge my cause - to decide my decision, have I fallen down before thee." This had to be by "pit pi" meaning by the mouth, a speaking of the truth. The liturgies of Egypt reveal a number of confessions though no particular except the confession to maat or truth. The book of the dead said the soul had to be weighed in judgment after death. For this they gave a negative confession stating innocence instead of admission to guilt. Hebrews have a word for the meaning of sin and confessing. Roman Catholics have made it an integral and necessary part of its faith. Perhaps Clement of Rome expressed the principle behind the Church belief of Divine Right, when he said, "it is better for a
man to confess his sins than to harden his heart."
The Church says a sinner must be absoluted before he is fit to return to spiritual society. The priest or clergy are called the instruments of the Church. They claim to absolve sin not of themselves but as an Agent of God. In fact one father-confessor advertised as a "private wire to God." From the point of view of the mystic, absolution is not necessary through another mortal. He believes purging individually necessary for purging that which conflicts with ones moral precepts and a needed requisite for peace of mind.
Our moral code , spiritual principles, are an integral part of self. We cannot find satisfaction in that which we realize abases self, namely sin or what we conceive to be sin. In other words we set them apart from that we consider to be good conduct. By prayer, by direct communion with the God of our Hearts, we acquire wisdom and strength by which to prevent a recurrence of that we acknowledge to be sin.
However, the true mystic knows contriteness and penance is not enough. Neither will completely remove the consequences of certain sins which may be contrary to natural or cosmic laws. We must at times suffer punishment for our evil deeds. Our acts and thoughts are causative. If they have set in motion natural laws as causes, we must sooner or later expect to experience the effects of such causes. God's laws are immutable and apply to all men equally. Only by counter acts, causes which we set in motion by deeds of righteousness, can we mitigate the adverse ones we have established. A man may find psychological consolation in thinking that a mere rite has absolved
the consequences of a hurt which he may have brought to others. Mystically, however, such forgiveness only robs him of the real determination to sacrifice to attain the good which will correct his nature and strengthen it.
EASY FORGIVENESS CULTIVATES NEGLIGENCE. (Ain't no such thing as a free
lunch.) Man in measure must experience the consequences of his wrong deeds or at least suffer by his own efforts to right them.
I would like to remove the idea that we are born into sin. The physical body is not capable of sin, nor is it capable of virtue, since it is incapable of independent, voluntary action. As a consequence, the "sinfulness" of the body must refer to some voluntary act on the part of man. Tradition relates that man is actually immortal, but suffers the sting of mortality by virtue of having assumed a physical body. This "assumption of the physical body" is usually interpreted as referring to an event which occurred in antiquity. The obvious corollary is the familiar notion that man's quest must be to struggle arduously in order to extricate himself
from matter, thereby regaining the right to dwell forever on the Cosmic or spiritual plane.
However, it is entirely possible that this assumption of a physical body refers equally to an event which occurs each time the soul personality chooses to incarnate. From this point of view of its mortality, the physical body, unlike the soul personality, may thus be regarded as corruptible, and void of virtue. What then is the role of the psychical self in human evolution. As the medium through which we normally attain self awareness, the physical self, with its sense organs, its needs and appetites, is a major source of impressions and urges arising within the consciousness of man.
Another source of impressions is that aspect of man which we know as the psychic or spiritual self.
The psychic self manifests in the outer consciousness as the "still small voice of conscience" or as the voice of the "Master within." Between the urges of these two parts of self, we normally live out our earthly lives. Although many try to follow one or the other of these two sets of urges, at the exclusion of the other, the student of mysticism attempts to harmonize the two sets of human imperative. In this way we travel the middle path of free will. To acquiesce or give in to any or all urges arising in the outer self in violation of those arising from the inner self, is to abdicate the
right to free will. In other words, to allow the outer self to dominate ones life completely is to sin from the mystics point of view. Thus, even though the body itself is not sinful, it may be regarded as the major source of "temptation."
Nevertheless, while the physical body may be the major source of human temptation, it is also the major source of redemption since, through its activities, needs, and functions, the body constantly tests our resolve to face the "Greater Light."
I believe with this point of view, it is impossible for one human to judge another fairly, since he cannot know another's conscience. It also precludes a human baby from being condemned in sin, necessitating redemption for some sin he has not committed. Until someone can prove that another has sinned against his conscious, he would be ill advised to make this judgment, just because his conscious says it would be a sin if he acted in this manner.
To say that his reading of holy writ and ideas conveyed by his interpretation of same, is the only way, can only be from ignorance, for an abstract cannot be proved. |
