The Confession

Trigger warning: Sexual violence, mental health

I tried it all. First it was yoga– ashtanga, kundalini, iyengar, bikram. I even got my teacher training in kundalini yoga and taught for a few years. But I gradually lost interest in yoga after figuring out most of the gurus I idolized were accused of sexual misconduct with their followers. I guess I could have just done the yoga without idolizing the gurus, but one meant nothing without the other. It wasn’t about the postures, it was about the community, and that community had a definite leader– even if that leader was long dead, he was the guiding light of all our practice. The revelation that Yogi Bhajan was most likely a rapist not only divided the kundalini community between those who stuck by their guru and defended him to the end, and those who attempted to reinvent kundalini as a discipline independent of its origins, a guruless guru movement. It also revealed our spiritual leader as nothing but a man, a man guilty of the sins of the flesh no less than any other man– more guilty, in fact, than the vast majority of men, wielding the power he amassed not to enlighten and guide, but to exploit. Or maybe both, which was even scarier somehow. He meant to bring enlightenment to humanity, but that noble message did nothing to stop him from pursuing his most grotesque desires to subjugate others to his will. Instead it was his vehicle to doing so and getting away with it until years after he died (of heart failure at age 75 in 2004) he was posthumously “canceled” over social media. 

Disillusioned with yoga, I pursued Zen meditation on my own. I read a few books on Zen Buddhism and found it much more grounded in reality and what I like to call the dirt and flour of life. But to be frank, I found meditation boring and also nearly impossible. I tried to get into it, I really did, but my thoughts came pouring in a continuous stream of consciousness. And I know you’re supposed to take notice of your thoughts, accept them, and move on, and that you don’t have to be born with a thoughtless, empty mind to be good at Zen meditation, and that being “good” isn’t even a concept in Zen meditation (or maybe it is, I didn’t study it thoroughly enough to know for sure). But I had an abnormally large amount of thoughts, and I don’t mean by this that I’m smart, because they were always an immensely large volume of absolutely nonsensical, meaningless, and/or crassly sexual thoughts. Either that, or I would just keep thinking, “I’m going to die someday, I’m going to die someday, everyone I love is going to die someday, I’m going to die someday.” And it was so boring just sitting there doing nothing that I actually began to enjoy my death anxiety because at least it was something to think about. I think the longest I ever meditated continuously was about 25 minutes, and I felt like I deserved a medal of some kind for going through that. No, meditation isn’t for me. 

The one time I actually enjoyed meditation was in a mindfulness meditation workshop where the theme was “mindfulness as it relates to food and eating.” The instructor passed out raisins to everyone in the class– just a single raisin for each student– and told us to really experience the raisin, to suck on it and feel its texture and slowly pull it apart with our teeth and taste it and swallow it over the course of 15 minutes. I thought I didn’t like raisins, but it turns out I just ate them too quickly to actually taste them. The actual taste and texture of a raisin were amazing, and I don’t use that word lightly. Ever since then, I’ve loved raisins. So maybe I shouldn’t give up on meditation completely. But for now, I have. 

So what is there? I was raised Jewish, but I don’t feel any particular connection to Judaism as a religion. OK, the songs make me a little emotional when I think about going to temple as a kid with my grandma, and I’ll happily go to a Passover seder if I’m invited. I have warm feelings about Judaism and its rituals, but it doesn’t feel like real religion to me, much less spirituality. It just feels like childhood, like a regression to childish thoughts and feelings. Judaism for me is like the stuffed bear my grandma gave me when I was 11 and I can’t sleep without even today. But it isn’t “religious” enough for me, because with Judaism, you either go all out and are Orthodox, which I don’t really have time for, or you’re just vaguely Jewish while being basically an atheist, which is what I have been for most of my life. 

There’s also Islam, which I considered converting to for a few months. I read the Quran, and found it interesting learning about the different schools of jurisprudence, Sufism, the daily prayers, and the fasting during Ramadan. After a few months I also lost interest in Islam though, I can’t say exactly why. That was back in high school, and I started my first semester of college at the peak of my interest in Islam. I think I just got distracted by school, and on top of that, I don’t think I could live without alcohol. Not that I’m an alcoholic or anything, I just like a margarita or a glass of wine now and then. I don’t think that’s so bad. Also, my parents wouldn’t be too happy about me converting to Islam. They wouldn’t say anything overtly against it because they’re liberal and have to at least pretend to be tolerant of all religions, but if they were honest, they would admit that it would drive them crazy. 

Why do I need religion? Why do I have such a strong drive to seek out spiritual experiences, and yet such a limited ability to follow through on commitment to any particular spiritual/religious discipline? It could just be a symptom of my loneliness. I’m a 35-year-old, unmarried woman, with several cats. I suppose I am a walking stereotype of loneliness. But that would be too cliche. I have a wide circle of friends. I find my work fulfilling and interesting. And believe it or not, I have a boyfriend, and he’s 5 years younger than me! We might even get married and have a couple of kids before I’m 40. On top of that, my parents are still alive and if everything else went to shit, I could always go back to their house and be a kid again until I got back on my feet. I don’t feel unfulfilled socially. But this loneliness hypothesis isn’t all nonsense. There is something missing from my otherwise lively social circle. Are we an actual community, or just a group of people who know each other, who like the same music, who drink the same coffee from the same coffee shops and the same alcohol from the same bars, who work in the same office? They like my good qualities, but will they listen to my sins and forgive me, and love me not less but even more? 

All of this long preface is to explain why I, as someone who had never before stepped foot in a Christian church service of any kind, decided last week to confess to a priest at Shrine of Saint Joseph Catholic Church. I know it’s a little hypocritical that I abandoned yoga because of sexual scandals and then sought out the Catholic Church, but I justified it to myself because the yoga community was centered heavily on individual gurus, so if one turned out to be guilty of something the whole community was tarnished, whereas the Catholic Church couldn’t be reduced to the priests that abused children. And anyway, I wasn’t going to become Catholic. I went to Mass to be respectful, but all I really wanted was to go to confession, because maybe what kept me up at night wasn’t loneliness but guilt, an overwhelming guilt for what I’ve done, what I haven’t done, what I’ve failed to do. If I were an alcoholic, I could confess my sins to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, or a Narcotics Anonymous meeting if I were a drug addict. Even if my sins weren’t directly related to drugs or alcohol, those meetings would be a place for me to confess them and gain forgiveness from my peers. I even thought about drinking excessively or starting a drug habit so I could be part of those communities because they seem like the only place besides therapy, which is expensive and where the therapist helps you work on yourself and gives you advice instead of just saying, “I forgive you, I still love you, I love you even more because of your sins.” But then I remembered that there was a form of confession for people who weren’t necessarily alcoholics, drug addicts, or any specific kind of failure, but failures nonetheless. And that was the old school, Catholic confession to a priest. 

So I went to the mass, and it was beautiful. I’m usually cynical and unintentionally at least a little insincere, so I don’t use words like beautiful lightly. The choir sang beautiful songs in Latin, the place was full of lit candles, statues of saints, and stained-glass windows. The priest even had a machine that made some kind of smoke. I could only see myself being Catholic as a passing fantasy. But nonetheless I enjoyed the mass. 

After mass I waited about an hour to confess to the priest. There was a long line of people waiting to confess. One thing I noticed was that it was almost all women, with only a handful of men. I guessed that either women felt guiltier in general simply because they were women, or were actually guilty of more sins than men were. Or maybe women just felt less ashamed to talk about their guilt, even with a priest, than men did. Or maybe the men were worried that if their wives saw them suddenly going to confession, they would assume they were going to talk about their marital infidelity. Or it was because women were more religious in general. Now that I think about it, there were definitely more women than men in the church as a whole, not just waiting for confession.

Anyway, it took a while because only one priest was doing confession for almost a hundred people. When it was finally my turn, I walked into the box and knelt on the step, where I could see the priest dimly through a latticed opening. I was a little surprised, because I thought I wouldn’t be able to see him at all, and that he wouldn’t be able to see me at all. 

The first thing he asked me was, “Why are you confessing today?” I think he could tell I was nervous.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s my first time going to confession.” 

“Are you a Catholic?” he asked. 

“No,” I said. “Well, I’m interested in Catholicism. But I’m not exactly a Catholic.” 

“Are you baptized?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “But I might get baptized someday.” 

“You can’t confess if you aren’t baptized,” he said. “I can listen to your sins, but it won’t count as a confession in the eyes of God.”

“Well, I can still tell you my sins. I don’t mind.”

“Can I ask you why you want to confess if you aren’t Catholic?” he asked.

“Well,” I said. “I’m converting to Catholicism.” I lied out of panic, adding another sin to my collection. 

“But you didn’t even know that you can’t confess without being baptized. Why convert to a religion you know nothing about?” he asked. 

“I don’t know… I’m trying to learn more about it,” I said. “I thought I would go to confession to learn more. But there are a lot of people waiting. I’ll come back when I learn more and get baptized.” And I left.

So my attempt at confession went about as well as my previous attempts at finding spirituality, religion, or even community. 

That night I called my best friend. I told her about what happened, about my disappointment in confession. She said she grew up Catholic and always hated confession. But she said I could confess to her if I wanted to. So I tried to tell her all my sins, but just ended up crying over the phone. I couldn’t name them, but I suffered from them no less than if I were a murderer. And I’m not sure I’ll ever be forgiven.