Taking Things to the Grave...

Taking things to the grave

I had a few secrets I wanted to take to the grave.

A very big one was that I stole at work. 

At age 18, I did my social service. That summer, I worked as a guardian in a full-time school. One day, I walked down the hallway. I saw a black Playstation Portable sticking out of a backpack. I grabbed it and stuffed it into my jeans. Then I walked to my car and put it in the trunk.

My heart pounded and in my mind I justified this to be a right action somehow.

As you can probably guess, I had some really serious issues in my teenage years.  

I went back to the school and walked into a turmoil.

“Kevin’s playstation is missing,” said the head teacher. 

“Really?” I asked.

“We need to find it. Will you take charge of that?”

“Sure,” I said. 

The culprit was never found.

To shorten this story, I sold the playstation on eBay to buy myself new Nike shoes. And I lied to my parents about the whole thing. At that time I had a collection of 35 pairs. I did not wear most of them.

They gave me some sense of self-worth and boosted my “gangster ego.”

The weight of keeping secrets

Years went by and I was committed to taking this situation to the grave at all cost. 

Taking things to the grave seemed to be a good option.

I had buried this memory deep down and kept myself busy. 

I now worked in auditing for investment banks in New York City.

How ironic.

Somehow, I never trusted myself. I also never had money. The shadows of my past kept haunting me.
Like boogeyman, they were there but never in plain sight. I tried all sorts of self-help. I donated money. I watched a lot of Tony Robbins. I woke up at 5AM. I talked to women on the streets. I tried to reprogram my mind. And did forgiveness meditations.

Nothing really helped in the long run.

One day in New York, I was severely depressed and saw no way out.

That night, I lay awake in some sort of half dream-state. Suddenly, I remembered all the situations in my life where I had stolen, cheated on girlfriends, lied, etc. I was not looking for them on purpose. These memories just came to my conscious attention. 

That was before I had ever been to any Radical Honesty workshop.

If you ever wanted to know why I got into this work, this is the reason. 

I jumped up and grabbed a notepad. I wrote these memories down. That was seven years after I had stolen the Playstation at work. I knew that I had to confront this situation and tell the truth about the theft. I did not yet know how. But one thing was clear to me right there:

Energetically, I was already half in the grave due to the weight of my secrets.

And if I wanted to be happy, I had some serious cleaning up to do. 

Fast Forward

Roughly a year later, after my first Radical Honesty workshop with Brad Blanton, I found myself sitting in the car in front of the school. I was so scared, I could not move for minutes. On my first attempt, I just drove to the school and circled around, feeling all my feelings. Heavy stuff.

This time, I was committed to coming clean. I knew that this fear pointed towards the path.

I counted down from 10, got out the car, and walked towards the entrance of the school. 

That was the most scared I had ever been in my life up to that point. 

I went to the principal’s office. She remembered me. I told her the whole story. The words just came out of my mouth somehow. My senses got shaper. To my shock, she actually was encouraging and nice. I cried.

That was the last thing I expected. 

In my mind, I thought I would be expelled from society, or worse. 

She said: “Of course what you did is shitty, and I am happy you are telling me.”

That night I slept like a baby. 

Later on I talked to the mother of the child whose playstation I had stolen. The principal gave her my number and she was kind enough to actually call me. I’m getting sad writing this now. She said that I can forgive myself and stop carrying that load around. Something shifted for good in my system.

Those two talks transformed my life and especially my relationship to money.

I had dug myself out of the grave I had been in for years, one truth at a time.