I confess that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts, in my words and in my deeds.
I.
The horror of genuine conscience: Where may I seek respite? Nowhere, for my Conscience shall be there anyway. Only in Death may I rest, if even then.
I have sinned in Thought, and the torment of Sin relinquishes not. Rather, it manifests itself only further. In repeated thoughts which reject Myself and My Flesh; in those words which I speak to those I hold close, having them now victim too of my Sin; in that disembodied feeling that comes with the projected rejection of One's Own Flesh. There is no escape.
Mea Culpa.
II.
I have sinned in Thought that I desired to do In The Flesh what I ought not do. The difficulty lies in the knowledge of Causes. For wherein does the Sin lie?
I have sinned in Thought that I desired to do In The Flesh what I had promised not to do. Does now the Thought of the breach of a promise provide the necessary account that we may say in What I have sinned? Surely it cannot be left out of account, but it also cannot provide the account itself. I have sinned in Thought in that I desired to do In The Flesh what I had promised not to do. But I have not sinned only in the thought of the breach of the promise. Indeed, if the thought of the Breach of a Promise were the greatest issue, then that would be another story. But I have not sinned only in the Thought of a Breach.
I have sinned in Thought in That which I desired to do In The Flesh. And it is in this That, that which I desired to do In The Flesh, that I have sinned most greatly. It seems odd to claim that I should hate my own flesh; indeed, I hardly believe such a statement to make any sense. How could one hate oneself? I dare say you couldn't. One can, however, despise oneself - and I despise my Flesh.
It would've been easier if I despised only my Desire. For I have sinned in Thought exactly in that Desire which I desired to carry out In The Flesh. Does that make the Desire itself sinful? Or is it the thought to carry it out? If, that is, the two can be spoken of separately. The Desire itself is however not at fault. For this reason, I hardly think it can be blamed, hardly think that we can rightfully call it sinful. Rather, I despise that from which the Desire stems, that place in which my Desire lies, rests, lives - my Flesh. I should wish, and often do wish, that my Flesh were without Desire. Not for that Desire must always be Evil or Sinful, but for that my Desires are in the way that they are. In truth, my Desires are not my own. I know not how to Desire.
Mea Culpa.
III.
Desire appears a Habit; my Habit, then, is Sinful, not for that Desire itself is Sinful, but for that I, out of Sin, have brought about said Desire. It is thus that I despise not my Desire for the specifics of its Desire, but despise my Desire for being Mine yet also Not-Mine. And so, I despise my Flesh, not for being Flesh, but for Desiring at all. I desire Desire, and in doing so, I sin in thought. Yet I desire Desire such that the Desire is My Desire, and not a Desire disembodied. It is through my fault, my habit, that my Desire has become disembodied in that its natural-being in the Flesh has come to be foreign. I have sinned in Desiring for that the Desire of my Flesh was not a Desire which I thought to call my own, simply for that I could not Desire on my own. Forgive me, for I know not just not what I have done; I do not even know how to Do, I do not know how to Desire. This, in truth, must be my great sin.
I despise not only that I have desired, that my Flesh has Desired, that I have had Desire. I despise not only that I have desired to Desire, too. I despise not my Flesh for that it has Desired. I despise my Flesh for that it has Desired poorly, and I despise my Flesh where I ought despise myself, for that I have become disembodied, unable to speak to mine own Flesh, except to speak to it as I have done in teaching it not only to Desire, but to Desire autonomously. And I despise thus myself and my flesh for what it has come to Desire, for that this Desire has become my Desire of its own accord. How I wish I had taught myself otherwise, that I had taught myself not simply to Desire, but that I had learnt how to Desire in the first place, that I might commune with myself, that I might understand my Desire as my own Desire and not that untrustworthy Beast which I now face.
I carry my Desire as the burden that it is. I have sinned in my Thoughts. But I have sinned first and foremost in my Deeds that they shaped now my Desire such that it has become the cause of my Despair, the object of my Contempt. And so I cannot hold only my Flesh in Contempt, not only despise by Desire. For it is through the fault of none but myself that this has come to pass.
Mea Maxima Culpa.
IV.
Dark skies lie ahead, my hope opaqued. How I wish they might still come to clear.