Freedom From Keeping Secrets with Michelle Medrano

[00:00:00] I'd like to talk about secrets today, your secrets, my secrets, secrets. I remember that when I worked at the Huntington Beach Church, the late great Dr. Peggy Bass that used to say Frequently, we're only a sick as our secrets. And it really caused me to think.

[00:00:22] It started me contemplating what it was that I was keeping secret in my life and what was I gaining by keeping those secrets or what was I thinking that I was gaining by keeping those secrets.

[00:00:37] And it harkin' me back to my young life for a little while in my younger life, my family and I participated in the Catholic Church and of course in the Catholic Church they have confessional.

[00:00:48] So I learned that I could go to a priest in this little booth and the priest would be in another little part of the booth and I could go in and I could confess my sins to

[00:01:00] him and he would always give me a prayer to do or some consequence that I had to take for the injustices that I had committed or the things that I had done that were bad or were sins.

[00:01:13] And I would walk away at feeling a sense of relief that I was forgiven. And eventually I came to realize as I reflected back on this that I don't know that I had so much faith in the priest's ability to extend forgiveness on behalf of God to

[00:01:35] maybe because I believed he was just human like I was, maybe even no more special than I was. But I did notice even as a small child that there was something that freed me when I went to confessional.

[00:01:49] Eventually I left the Catholic Church, that's a whole other story altogether and found myself in science of mine and spirit. And when I started working for the church a number of years later our Minister Emeritus

[00:02:01] and Memoriam, Dr. Fred Vodanai used to spend time laughing and talking about how healthy we thought it would be if we set up a pop-up in the parking lot here at the church, a pop-up where we could have ministers and practitioner prayer partners available for drive through confessions.

[00:02:19] We thought that this would be really healthy and helpful to people because we would theorize that what people needed to be free of their secrets and the angst that those secrets were causing the shame, the guilt, the remorse, the energy that was not serving them was a

[00:02:41] place they could go to express and share those secrets lovingly where they could be accepted. Not necessarily punished or made to feel more guilty, more remorseful, more shameful for what they'd done but rather a person who could look them in the eyes and say,

[00:03:00] I hear you, I understand what you've done, thank you for letting me know. And so we talked about this frequently. We thought this would be a great idea. We never did it, unfortunately. Maybe we still should.

[00:03:14] But all of this has caused me over the years to evolve my life around secrets with questions about really deep reflection on when I hang onto a secret. What comes with that hanging on is like a planting of a seed in the rich soil of my being

[00:03:37] that is rooted in shame and guilt and a feeling of remorse, a lack of self-love. I know that in the 12 step programs, one of the steps towards the healing journey of being free of addiction is to share one's secrets. And it's for the purpose of freedom.

[00:04:00] It's for the purpose of letting go of the shame, of letting go of all of that stuff that no longer serves us and being willing to be free of our secrets.

[00:04:11] And so today I invite us as we contemplate all of this to consider what might be a benefit of letting go of our secrets. It was a very freeing day when I realized a number of years ago that all the things that

[00:04:27] I had done in my younger years, or that I was ashamed of, or that I'd kept to myself, or that I was afraid someone might find out about me, along the way between having practitioners really good friends, an amazing mother, a wonderful therapist being in classes, having

[00:04:47] places that I could feel free to be my authentic self that I had no more secrets. That everything that I had thought was wrong that I had told someone along the way and the freedom of that was enormous.

[00:05:02] And the feeling of, wow, I don't have any more secrets. It was powerful. And the noticing on an ongoing basis if I'm about to do something or about to extend myself in some way that I would be ashamed if anyone found out about it, questioning myself

[00:05:20] and saying, do I want to create and harbor a new secret? And I don't. I want the freedom, more than I want, all that came with the secrets, all the fear that came with, what if I tell you my secrets and you don't accept me?

[00:05:36] You don't love me. What if there's a consequence for my secrets? And so that's what I want to invite us into today. What would it be like to be free of your secrets? And how can you get free of your secrets?

[00:05:49] So in the 12-step programs, here's the thing that they invite people to do. It's kind of an inventory. It's to find a person that we trust. I believe in that program. It's often a sponsor or someone in one's life that you can feel comfortable to sit down

[00:06:05] and say, here's the list of all the things that I have done that have been my secrets that if someone knew this about me, they might love me. And we go through those secrets as an inventory and speak them out loud to that person,

[00:06:22] look them in the eye and tell them when I was 10 years old. I took a comb from the grocery store and I shop lifted or whatever it might be. And that person's job isn't to forgive us or make us feel better. That person's job is merely to witness.

[00:06:41] So one way to be free is to be willing to tell someone our secrets. And this freedom, what comes with it, is free of freedom of being ourselves, of living a life, of obliterating our shame. And so this is one way that we can do that.

[00:06:59] Another way that we can be free of our secrets is to write our secrets down in a journal and burn them in a fireplace or in a fire pit and be free of them forever.

[00:07:12] However I do think it is extremely powerful to be witnessed by another human being. I also think one way to be free of our secrets is to be willing to be accountable. If we have things we've done that harmed other people and were afraid of the consequence,

[00:07:29] that's often one of the reasons people keep secrets. Is there a frame of the consequence? And yet I can say now looking back that the freedom that I have even though I had to pay some consequences with some of my secrets, the freedom that I have.

[00:07:48] That's why I'm not a person who is worth it. And the consequence, I was willing to pay it because I think people are happiest when we're accountable. So I had some things that I had done that were not so great around my sister.

[00:08:01] And I remember the day that I sat down in front of her and said, I need to tell you about some of the things that I did that I'm ashamed of that impacted you in your life. And she listened and she wasn't happy. And there was a consequence.

[00:08:14] She was angry. She was angry at me. And for a while, she was kind of angry with me. You know what? She had a right to be. But we patched it up and we kept talking and we kept working on our relationship.

[00:08:27] And there was a piece that came over us. You can be free of your secrets. That right now. If you're watching this video, if you're all by yourself, no one's around. Tell me a secret. I'm listening. I'm crying. Feel the freedom of just saying it out loud.

[00:08:51] Be free of your secrets. It's worth it. Thanks for tuning in. Let's do a prayer together. Ah, let's take a moment right now and just allow ourselves to feel the feeling of divine love, divine light that flows through this universe in through and as all of creation.

[00:09:13] Feel that flowing energy of beingness, that expresses itself in all things and all people in all conditions and all situations and all relationships in all activities. What a joy it is to recognize that.

[00:09:28] For in that moment that I recognize that I feel that energy flowing in through and as me and as every person who is tuning in to this video right here and right now. I accept an affirm that life that God is is ours.

[00:09:44] That life that God is is fully expressing in and through us and it is unconditional love. It is freedom. So we at all times are in the midst of it and it is in the midst of us.

[00:09:57] And in this conversation we're having about freeing ourselves from our secrets. We're really talking about freeing ourselves from shame, from guilt, from remorse, freeing ourselves to be more fully who we are and who we've come to be, allowing ourselves

[00:10:14] to let go of anything that would hold us back from that full out expression. So I affirm an accept that right now this unconditioned presence of the divine accepts and loves and is willing to be fully expressed in us no matter what our secrets might

[00:10:33] be and I accept an affirm that each one of us walks forward from this moment, from this place with greater guidance than ever about what it is that will most serve us in being free from any shame or guilt or remorse.

[00:10:48] That if there's a secret we've been keeping that we find a safe space to share it, to be free of it, to speak it aloud, to let it go, to be fully free of that energy and fly forward

[00:11:04] in our life with the greatest freedom of all, the freedom of being ourselves, the freedom of letting go of the past, the freedom of feeling loved accepted and fully in our life and habitting our life and habitting our body and habitting who we are.

[00:11:25] And I'm so grateful that this is the truth of us right here and right now, this is what is expressing itself fully and completely as our life and in this recognition of this truth and

[00:11:38] in this gratitude, I simply release this prayer now into the action of that universal law that makes it so. It is done as it has been spoken, it is complete, it is let go, it is so. And so it is.