Is it okay to keep my sins to myself, God and a priest?

[Śrī Anil asked: Do I have to tell other people my sins other than those three? It's not about them. So what do you think?]

Swāmi replied:- You must keep your sins within yourself since God is omniscient. Every human being including the priest is a sinner in one way or other differing qualitatively and quantitatively from each other. The main point is that you shall realize (Jñāna yoga), repent (Bhakti Yoga) and not repeat (karma yoga) the sin practically again. This is the path of the reformation with three stages and the third stage is the most important step for which the preliminary two stages are expected to help the soul. In realization you must identify the sin as the sin in true sense for which intelligence helps with sharp logic. For this first step you can take the help of scholars and devotees if Satguru is not available. You can discuss about this praying God to help you and God will certainly speak the right judgement in your consciousness, which must be attentively accepted by you by raising above your ego and worldly fascinations. Then you must repent by confessing the sin before the unimaginable God or human mediated God or imaginary energetic mediated God or a representative model (photo or statue) of God. You must develop sufficient inspiration force by this process of repeated confessing repentance, which will be capable to help you in implementing the third most important step of non repetition of sin in practice.

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