Relevant meanings of "litany":

1 : a prayer consisting of a series of invocations and supplications by the leader with alternate responses by the congregation
2a: a resonant or repetitive chant

The point of reciting this kind of litany is to calm yourself and remind yourself of the right way to approach things. This particular litany seems like it would be used in situations where you've learned something horrible and are thinking, "Oh god, why did I look there/why did he tell me? I regret learning this." It would be unfortunate if emotional reactions like that led people to punish themselves or other people for passing on true knowledge.

I would say that, in the worst case, if you think for a bit and can't figure out anything useful to do with the new knowledge, then you can just continue acting the same way you were before, and thus be no worse off.^[1] If you can gain control of yourself, that is. If you can control yourself, then you won't be worse off, and then the litany is true. In that sense, I think it's meant to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Compare:

I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

This portion of the "Litany Against Fear" is very obviously meant to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the process of reciting it helps make it true.

^{^}
Possible exception: if you have an honesty obligation to pass the information on to someone else, who you expect to then do something like break up a relationship. There are a few ways to approach this. One is to say, well, if you didn't know, then you'd be living a lie, and is that what you want? You think you wouldn't find out eventually? Another is to say, if the parties involved want to have honesty obligations, then might it also be reasonable to have "Try to reward me and not over-punish me when I tell you a difficult truth" as a principle? (It might not be enough in all cases to successfully incentivize truth-telling, but I suspect a lot of people could do with some steps in that direction.)

Litany of Gendlin

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Litany of Gendlin

See also

Blog posts