WHAT’S THE POINT OF SECRECY?
Got any secrets?
Not the dirty kind, I mean the sacred kind.
How many things that we do are we allowing to stay secret? Plenty of spiritual teachers make the case that a lot of our practices need to remain in the quiet places, but why? It’s not like being seen is wrong, as if it hurts anyone. It’s not like we bring destruction on our communities when we publicize our lives. So what’s the point? Why keep it hidden?
As I’ve wrestled through this very set of questions, I’ve concluded (at least for now) that while attention seeking may not be sinful, it is certainly distracting.
I get it, it feels really good to be praised for our practices, especially the “more spiritual” ones. It feels so nice to be praised for how much we pray, how much we meditate, and how often we read our religious texts. Being praised as “devoted” is cool, if that’s what you're after. But the problem is, when we do our work out of attention-seeking desires, we reshape our metrics of success to be extrinsic, which simply means we judge the value of our practice by other people's impressions of it. And while that allows us to feel really good when people give us the attention we want, it will devastate us when they don’t, regardless of whether we are doing good work or not. The most sinister thing about it is that the constant evaluation of our public perception— which, good luck being accurate about— will distract us, and likely even rob us of the capacity to enjoy and experience the very things we’re setting out to do.
That’s why people like Jesus tell us to go into our rooms to pray or to not announce our personal generosity, or not announce to the world when we’re fasting. It’s not that it’s destructive behavior, it’s just that keeping these things a secret allows us to focus on the actual content of the practice, not what we think it’s doing to our public image.
Think about all of the time we waste doing things just for the sake of our public image. Think of all of the hobbies we take up, books we read, people we date, foods we eat, and the spiritual things we do, just to try and reinforce to the public this image of who we think we’re supposed to be. This is why wrapping our practices in secrecy can be so beneficial. Doing some things in secret allows us to remove the variable of impression from our experiences and evaluations.
It’s in secret that we get to do things for the pure reason of doing them, not for the motivation of being seen doing them. In secret, we get to observe our transformation, the real one, not the transformation of our image.
All of this sounds great, but then again, what exactly is worthy of secrecy? I mean if no one tells anyone anything, what grounds do we have for relationships? What I’m advocating for here is not isolation, it’s a shift in focus. I’m working on shifting my focus off of what things do to my image and onto what things are doing to my heart.
I don’t think this means we never do these things in public. After all, group generosity can be incredible for our transformation, and so can things like group prayer and fasting. It’s not that we shouldn’t do these things publicly, it’s just that we shouldn’t do these things only publicly. The practices we do in private to invest in our growth (meditation, journaling) are the ballast that will support our public life, but they are often best kept quiet for the sake of allowing them to do the true work of transformation in our being.
Put simply, there are some precious things that are worth our secrecy, not because attention-seeking is sinful, but because it is distracting.
Ultimately, you are responsible for keeping the things quiet that need to be quiet, and sharing what needs to be shared. We won’t do this flawlessly, but we should lean into doing it better day by day, practice by practice. Secrecy is an art, it’s hard to put firm rules around how to do it well. Rather, it requires practice, trial, error, and a willingness to be wrong and adjust. But it’s so worth it. In good secrecy, we restore the power back into our practices to do the transformational work they promise to do.
I’d challenge you to try it this week. Do something in private, just once. Read. Write. Maybe even pray. And then don’t tell anyone. Don’t let yourself be overcome by the need to be praised. Trust that your gift to yourself is enough. See what happens.