So I Confessed Everything - Did Not Feel Better!

[njguy58]

Well, recently, I made a list of like 20 sins or something, some of which I’ve never confessed before, some of which I don’t even know if they are sins. and confession was like 3 weeks ago… but
some of the possible more major ones are

1- Viewing Pornography
2- Masturbating
3- Accidently Astral Projecting?

After confession, I did not feel better, I felt so much worse. I mean I just talked to someone I don’t know about some of my most personal stuff. I was trying to feel good, but I couldn’t. WHY do I have to confess to a priest this kind of stuff? WHY doesn’t a 1 on 1 prayer wit h God work? He knows if you really mean what you say.

1- I’ve been able to avoid

2- I can’t stop. I’m 19 years old, I’m in no relationship right now, I can’t help it, and considering 90% of the race does this, as do animals, why would something that seems natural be a sin? Yeah there’s lustful thoughts, but I can have one without doing this. Ok so I’m using something God given for pleasure and not purpose, but that’s like saying eating a bowl of icecream is a sin because it’s for pleasure and not for purpose since our bodies do not really benefit from eating bowls of icecream. And if I don’t relieve myself, I can go for maybe a week before it really starts to interfere with my life. When I go to class lectures, lustful thoughts all over the place - supress them - ok, but then I use all my focus to supress these thoughts, so it still interferes.

3- I like to lucid dream. I want to make contact with my subconscience so I can learn more about myself, and also access memories deeply hidden not available to me right now. Sometimes, when I WILD, I seem to get “symtoms” or Astral Projection, only about 30% of the time - I get strong vibrations and it seriously feels like I leave my body. Though I don’t know if this a dream or if it’s the real deal. Though my WILDs always start with me in my room, is it safe to say I’m not on the “Astral Plane”?

That’s all.

 

[batteddy]

I like to lucid dream. I want to make contact with my subconscience so I can learn more about myself, and also access memories deeply hidden not available to me right now. Sometimes, when I WILD, I seem to get “symtoms” or Astral Projection, only about 30% of the time - I get strong vibrations and it seriously feels like I leave my body. Though I don’t know if this a dream or if it’s the real deal. Though my WILDs always start with me in my room, is it safe to say I’m not on the “Astral Plane”?

There is no such thing as an “astral plane”. It’s all in the dream, all in your mind. Any “OBE” is actually a DREAM ABOUT an OBE.

Lucid dreaming is fine, and can help you learn about yourself and problem solve (and can be good fun) but just watch out. Be careful not to delibrately harbor or act on sinful passions in a lucid dream (lust-sex acts, anger-murder, etc). Also, when practicing Lucid Dreaming…don’t get involved in a lot of the superstious and “new age” junk that is often advertised along with it (like “astral projection,” OBE’s, and Reiki, etc)

 

[The_Augustinian]

I think the reason that Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Penance is to have the kind of objectivity that simply saying a prayer to God would lack. Instead of agonizing over your feelings, you should know that your sins are forgiven, if you sincerely intend to avoid sins in the future.

As for masturbation being “natural” – the pathetic, lonely sight of a middle-aged man abusing himself should dispel you of this so-called “naturalness”. First of all, I’m not sure where this 90% statistic comes from, nor whether it means regularly committing the sin, or just once in a while. Secondly, although practically 100% of people over the age of reason sin, it certainly doesn’t make sin “natural” nor excuse it.

Finally, you shouldn’t worry about so-called “accidental” astral projection, which is nonsense at best and devilish at worst. An accident is not a sin. Don’t focus on that sort of thing in the first place. Get off the internet and go read a book or something, it staves off temptations.

 

[puzzleannie]

Well
After confession, I did not feel better, I felt so much worse. I mean I just talked to someone I don’t know about some of my most personal stuff. I was trying to feel good, but I couldn’t. WHY do I have to confess to a priest this kind of stuff? WHY doesn’t a 1 on 1 prayer wit h God work? He knows if you really mean what you say.
.

you have a hang-up with confessing your most personal stuff with a priest privately in confession, a priest moreover who has been ordained with the power of Christ Himself to forgive sin, but you have absolutely no trouble giving intimate details of your spiritual struggles with millions of strangers on the internet–stangers who have no interest whatever in the details of that struggle, no right to hear it, and no ability to do anything whatever to help you… Does that not strike you as absurd?

 

[carol_marie]

you have a hang-up with confessing your most personal stuff with a priest privately in confession, a priest moreover who has been ordained with the power of Christ Himself to forgive sin, but you have absolutely no trouble giving intimate details of your spiritual struggles with millions of strangers on the internet–stangers who have no interest whatever in the details of that struggle, no right to hear it, and no ability to do anything whatever to help you… Does that not strike you as absurd?

I’m sorry. I don’t mean to laugh.

It’s just that she’s right.

 

[njguy58]

you have a hang-up with confessing your most personal stuff with a priest privately in confession, a priest moreover who has been ordained with the power of Christ Himself to forgive sin, but you have absolutely no trouble giving intimate details of your spiritual struggles with millions of strangers on the internet–stangers who have no interest whatever in the details of that struggle, no right to hear it, and no ability to do anything whatever to help you… Does that not strike you as absurd?

No it doesn’t - none of you know me personally. There’s a huge difference between typing something up on a messageboard with a hidden identity then saying this face to face to someone else.

 

[Thal59]

You did not feel better because such spirituality takes time. I could “guess” at reasons for your feelings, but that would be pointless. But I will look at your own expressions…

After confession, I did not feel better, I felt so much worse.<<<

This should be a priceless lesson regarding the seriousness of sin. When you keep it inside, it is manageable. When you expose it, its severity is unavoidable. Once one learns this lesson, one is a little more apt not to commit the same sin again because he has a deeper understanding as to how serious a sin it is. The feeling of guilt or shame can become a valuable incentive to avoid the occasion of sin in the future.

I mean I just talked to someone I don’t know about some of my most personal stuff. I was trying to feel good, but I couldn’t. WHY do I have to confess to a priest this kind of stuff? WHY doesn’t a 1 on 1 prayer with God work? He knows if you really mean what you say.<<<

Whenever a Protestant asks me why he should go to a priest when he can go directly to God, I ask him to explain the process. He will usually tell me that he will confess his sins to the Lord with sincerity; the Lord will look into his heart and know he is sincerely sorry - and then forgive him. At this point I like to ask them… “Why can’t the Lord look into your heart and know you are a liar?”

This is the problem with the theory you just posted. In the end it is the sinner who presumes that the Lord will always judge him in his favor. Confession to a priest requires obedience to the ways of the church, humility which is a virtue, and the acceptance of a penance for one’s transgressions. If one would avoid all of this by reassuring himself that a one-on-one session with God is good enough, he may be confessing that he is not really sorry for his sins; that he has no intention of enduring any sort of penance for his sins. He may therefore be looking upon the Lord as a scapegoat.

Now if a person will heap all of his sins upon the Lord’s shoulders while avoiding any physical or tangible responsibility himself, then how can this person be certain he is truly repentant? You went through the difficulty of confession, and this speaks well for you. But now you need to apply the priest’s penance and advice to better yourself so that you will do better in the lifelong struggle against sin.

Presume the Lord will look into your heart and always forgive you, and you will never grow stronger against sin. It will then become possible to presume you have become a slave to sin.

Thal59

 

[ChristIsTheWay]

1- Viewing Pornography

Keep up the good work on avoiding it.

2- Masturbating

As a 20 year old male, I understand your problem. However, the attitude you have taken is only making it worse. The “everyone is doing” attitude doesn’t make it okay. Like Augustinian, all people, 100%, sin. That doesn’t make it okay. I recommend praying the Rosary as often as possible. That is how I best resist this sin and it works very well. Also, select some Saints who struggled with sexual sins and ask them to pray for you.

3- Accidently Astral Projecting?

Don’t worry about it. For one, I don’t really buy into the New Age “astral projection” stuff. Second, even if it is real, an accident is not a sin. Don’t sweat it. Pray if you are really concerned about it.

After confession, I did not feel better, I felt so much worse. I mean I just talked to someone I don’t know about some of my most personal stuff. I was trying to feel good, but I couldn’t. WHY do I have to confess to a priest this kind of stuff? WHY doesn’t a 1 on 1 prayer wit h God work? He knows if you really mean what you say.

We confess our sins because God has told us to. I enjoy confession. A private little pray does nothing. I say I am sorry and that is it. With confession, I have a learned man of God there to advise me and help with my struggles. It also humbles you, I feel.

 

[LilyM]

90% of people lie cheat and steal as well - does that mean we all should? Animals eat feces and their own young sometimes - it’s perfectly natural, but does that mean it’s the right thing for us to do? For that matter why not live in caves rather than houses, they’re natural.

As for why confession - do you accept that we need to go to church on Sundays even if the prospect doesn’t wildly thrill you? Do you accept the need to study? To work? Eat vegetables? Go to the dentist? Get flu shots or other vaccinations when needed? All these things can be unpleasant, or difficult, even painful sometimes - but all are necessary.

And in the end the consequences of not disciplining yourself to do them are really bad. In this case you’re risking ruining your future relationships with women because you’re getting a false picture not just of women but of the sexual act itself - you warp it from what it’s supposed to be.

Clearly God, who designed sex, and gave us guidelines as to how and when to appropriately use it, knows what’s best for us. Just take your situation to him in prayer, remember that your body is designed for his purposes rather than your own, and do everything humanly possible to avoid pornography and situations that tempt you to sin.

As for saying ‘I can’t stop’ - who exactly is standing next to you holding a gun to your head and forcing you? And if your father or mother walked in on you mid-act would you keep going because you simply ‘can’t stop’? Of course not. And that fact by itself tells you that you can indeed stop. You’ve just talked yourself into believing that you can’t.

The problem with astral projection and ‘making contact with your subconscious’, as you put it, is that it opens you up to demonic influences or to developing mental illness.

What makes you think all of these ‘deeply hidden memories’ are real? I’ve studied psychology, and studied memory itself - what we think are memories can be manufactured by ourselves or implanted by others. Remember all the stink a couple of years ago of false ‘repressed memories’ of child abuse? That’s what makes it dangerous.

Hope some of this helps. I’m not trying to dump on you - I’ve been a teenager too, and an incredibly hormonal one at that. I’m only 33, so it wasn’t too long ago to remember either Just trust me that you can and will come out the other end of this.

 

[Sailboat]

I don’t think millions of people are reading this thread, and this is a totally anonymous forum. Also, as someone who was once a 19 year old guy with a high sex drive, I have a lot of sympathy. Remember, back in the olden days, society was set up to teach a boy a trade young, and prepare him for adulthood so that he could marry when his body was mature and ready.

Our modern life is seriously out of sync with the bodies that God created. We spend years in school, mostly learning alot of useless stuff, then we expect young people to go to college, and certainly not get married before finishing graduate school! How irresponsible.

I’m not saying not to fight the good fight. Try your best, and for the love of Jesus, stay away from pornography! That stuff is poison. Try and stay pure, I don’t think it’s usually a mortal sin for someone like this poster, but do go to confession and mention it, it’ll help you to at least curtail this habit in order to prepare you for a healthy marriage. If you have to, go to a priest in another parish, and stay behind the screen! No need to go face to face!

 

[njguy58]

The suffering idea makes sense, might as well suffer then instead of an entire eternity.

As for saying ‘I can’t stop’ - who exactly is standing next to you holding a gun to you forcing you? And if your father or mother walked in on you mid-act would you keep going because you simply ‘can’t stop’? Of course not. And that fact by itself tells you that you can indeed stop. You’ve just talked yourself into believing that you can’t.

It’s like this tension that builds up in me, and gets really distracting at certain times of the day (when I’m bored, or tend to zone out occasionally - like in my classes), then all these lustful thoughts can really almost drive me insane when I try to suppress them.

Thanks for the replies so far, I really appreciate them.

I have one more question that I forgot to mention: It’s about fornication. How do you people manage to get into a meaningful relationship that lasts without having sex before you get married. It doesn’t seem like a lot of girls these days go for this…

Oh and I took a class called “Abnormal Psycology” last year. I doubt I have any memories that will cause me to go mentally ill, I had an awesome childhood, I wish I could go back to those days, and also, the people who go mentally ill, have no recall of the memory. If I uncovered a possible bad memory, I actually now have much better mental capacity to deal with situation then I did at the time of storing and blocking the memory. Continually trying to block it out is the worst thing that a mentally ill patient could do. But I will give it second thought now that you mentioned it.

 

[Sailboat]

gets really distracting at certain times of the day (when I’m bored, or tend to zone out occasionally - like in my classes), then all these lustful thoughts can really almost drive me insane when I try to suppress them.

Thanks for the replies so far, I really appreciate them.

I have one more question that I forgot to mention: It’s about fornication. How do you people manage to get into a meaningful relationship that lasts without having sex before you get married. It doesn’t seem like a lot of girls these days go for this…

Oh and I took a class called “Abnormal Psycology” last year. I doubt I have any memories that will cause me to go mentally ill, I had an awesome childhood, I wish I could go back to those days, and also, the people who go mentally ill, have no recall of the memory. If I uncovered the memory, I actually now have much better mental capacity to deal with situation.

(Edited as irrelevent)

Well, I had a couple of girlfriends and fornicated and took LSD, smoked pot, and did a few other drugs too, how’s that for the truth? And then I met my wonderful wife, and yes we fornicated, she got pregnant, we married and now we have been a good Catholic couple and we have 5 kids. I straightened up and finding a good woman did help. Also, getting married was a good thing to do, I am so glad I did!

Yes, society isn’t the same and it doesn’t help us much now that women are liberated and on the loose, instead of the olden days when society collectively protected their virtue. Do you think God doesn’t know about this? he certainly understands our struggles.

God Bless you young man!

 

[LilyM]

Well of course no human being has perfect control over all of their thoughts. It’s not so much about consciously suppressing the thoughts. The thing is not to linger on them, and then to turn your thoughts around to something better.

Catch yourself when you’re drifting into boredom/fantasy and then find something else better to think about. If you’re fantasizing about particular people, switch by saying a short prayer for them. Or else just pray for all the poor sad misguided men and women who have so abused their God-given gifts by producing the pornography that you’ve watched.

Think of the good and useful things they could otherwise have been doing with the time and money they wasted on that crud. Think of some specific good and useful thing that you could do with the time and/or money you waste on these useless self-indulgent pursuits. Then go DO that thing instead, whenever you’re tempted

Don’t worry about women … in my own experience an awful lot of them put out because they’ve been brainwashed into thinking that it’s the only thing guys want from them and that it’s the one definining feature of an adult relationship. You sound intelligent enough to figure out ways to convince them otherwise

 

[atsheeran]

=

2- I can’t stop. I’m 19 years old, I’m in no relationship right now, I can’t help it, and considering 90% of the race does this, as do animals, why would something that seems natural be a sin? Yeah there’s lustful thoughts, but I can have one without doing this. Ok so I’m using something God given for pleasure and not purpose, but that’s like saying eating a bowl of icecream is a sin because it’s for pleasure and not for purpose since our bodies do not really benefit from eating bowls of icecream. And if I don’t relieve myself, I can go for maybe a week before it really starts to interfere with my life. When I go to class lectures, lustful thoughts all over the place - supress them - ok, but then I use all my focus to supress these thoughts, so it still interferes.

Look, maybe this is why you don’t have peace after confession. In order to validly receive absolution one must be properly disposed. One cannot be properly disposed if one is not contrite. One cannot be contrite without a firm resolution to avoid sin in the future. Of course, there is a fine line between intending to commit a sin in the future and simply fearing that you will while having the intention to avoid it. But which side of this line you fall on makes all the difference.

Work to engender that firm resolution to avoid sin in the future and see if you don’t feel better after confession.

 

[Ave_Maria_1]

Our faith is not about ‘feeling’. You say you do not ‘feel’ any better. But what is important is not how you ‘feel’ but that you trust in the mercy of God to absolve and forgive you of your sins!
You have been forgiven! Now accept that.

The sins you describe are addicting. You m ust work on them continually and not excuse them. Continue to come to regular confession so that you can continually arm yourself with the graces to fight temptations. Do not justify the sins but seek to uproot them from your soul for them stand as a block to your unin with Christ.

Ave Maria!

 

[carol_marie]

No it doesn’t - none of you know me personally. There’s a huge difference between typing something up on a messageboard with a hidden identity then saying this face to face to someone else.

You are right njguy. I am sorry for laughing at the post.

Sailboat is also right… when you’re old (er) and married, you tend to forget what it was like to be young and to struggle with these sorts of things. Everyone of us has been there…

just keep trying. And don’t let Satan try to convice you that just because you don’t “feel” any differently, you haven’t been forgiven. If you repent & confess, you are forgiven. God is so merciful. Don’t give up on your faith !!!

 

[Mickey]

It’s like this tension that builds up in me, and gets really distracting at certain times of the day (when I’m bored, or tend to zone out occasionally - like in my classes), then all these lustful thoughts can really almost drive me insane when I try to suppress them.

The war which the demons wage against us by means of thoughts is more severe than the war they wage by means of material things.
St. Maximos the Confessor (First Century on Love no. 91)

 

[Orionthehunter]

Components necessary for absolution are to:

1. Tell your serious sins frankly and honestly to a Priest.
2. Have contrition
3. Have resolve not to commit them again.

Could it be that the reason you don’t feel good afterwards is that you don’t sincerely have a contrite heart and that you are willing to dedicate the best of your mind and will to not commit them again?

 

[fineca]

Firstly it should be pointed out that confession wasn’t instituted to make Christians feel better but to grant them a chance to come back to supernatural and eternal life through repentance of committed mortal sins.
Secondly we should remember that repentance includes a resolution not to sin again, which doesn’t seem to be the case at least in number 2). Perhaps that’s also why you don’t feel better - forgiveness requires repentance, if the latter was absent, the former was, too, and thus it isn’t a surprise you don’t feel the joy of the resurrection. Perhaps half an hour in a silent chapel together with Jesus in the Eucharist, eyes fixed on a Crucifix (and heart fixed on how it felt to pay for the forgiveness that is now free for you in confession), could help you…
Peace in Christ
E

 

[Sailboat]

The war which the demons wage against us by means of thoughts is more severe than the war they wage by means of material things.
St. Maximos the Confessor (First Century on Love no. 91)

This sort of post is what turns me off about this site. Geez, have a reality check, this guy has alot of hormones raging and is living in a sex saturated society. He’s a healthy red-blodded guy with a normal physiological reaction to seeing a sexy girl with her midriff showing and a sway to her hips. Give him a break, he’s doing the best he can!

To the OP, keep up the fight man, you’re doing great.