Secret, Sacred and Sharing Spiritual Knowledge

A few months ago, I finished a book where the author quoted someone as saying that we shouldn’t share our relationship with God with others, and that “the more secret and sacred we keep our relationship with God…the more power there is in it.”.

Now, I haven’t read the author of this quote, so I don’t know the exact context of these words, but the book that did the quoting then stated: “It seems that the more we talk about our own experiences, the more we siphon off the very energy we need to build our relationship with God.”

Hmmm….

I understand the importance of quietly building a relationship with God in private. That experience is personal and the way we experience that divine connection is unique, and often difficult to adequately convey to others. However, this idea that we should keep our experiences and relationship with Him private feels off to me.

Although we each have to find our unique way of connecting with God, hearing other people share how they do it can give us a starting point, and hope for success. When Lehi partook of the fruit, and had an experience with God, he was overwhelmed with the desire to share it—it expanded his soul and filled him with happiness. Sharing is the natural outgrowth of spiritual experience, and it’s meant to be that way.

I have been greatly blessed by people sharing their personal spiritual experiences with me. Those experiences have helped me reframe my own challenges, given me hope to continue on, testified of the reality of the Savior, or given me a missing piece of knowledge on my own journey. There’s a reason personal stories grab us and pull us in. They speak the language of the heart. Personal truth is a compelling medium. People generally gravitate toward personal truth over academic truth when it comes to matters of life and heart because lived experience is powerful and transformative, and it sinks in where statistics and theories fall flat.

On the flipside, sharing my own personal experiences with others has solidified truth within me–because speaking aloud what’s heretofore only been internal energy, solidifies vibration into matter. In other words, speaking and sharing makes thought-energy real and concrete. To speak it, is to validate it.

The most sacred experience ever to occur on this planet was the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and yet it can be read about in millions of scriptures and books. It has been shared extensively. This private moment of prayer with His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, and subsequent death on the cross, were recorded for public perusal, and can be read thousands of years later by anyone with a desire. Public accounts of faith as proof of privately cultivated relationship builds belief.

I don’t think God meant for us to keep our relationship with Him private. Spreading the gospel cannot be done in silence. Again, silence, or stillness in private, may be the means or mode through which we foster our relationship with God, but that’s not the end game.

The scriptures are absolutely filled with men and women who did not keep their relationship with God secret. In fact, it seems they were required to broadcast that relationship through bold, and sometimes seemingly crazy acts that made them vulnerable to all kinds of public scrutiny, and sometimes even death. They may have nurtured relationship in private, and received direction in private, but the knowledge of their relationship with God and what he wanted them to do was ultimately made public by their actions and words to others.

Esther fasted and prayed in her chamber, but went before the king in public, ultimately revealing her identity as a Jew, and her close relationship with God, which ended up preserving her people from death. Moses was tutored by God in private, but then publicly led the freeing of the Israelites from bondage amidst threats and pursuit from Pharoah. Noah, personally instructed by God, publicly built an ark whereby his family was preserved from the deluge. Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ and told the world. And Jesus, nurtured his relationship with Father God alone in quiet moments, but was publicly mocked and put to death as he revealed that relationship.

The word sacred doesn’t actually appear in the bible, but the word holy appears hundreds of times, and it carries the concept of the sacred.

Holy = H6944 קֹדֶשׁ qôdesh, ko’-desh; from H6942; a sacred place or thing; rarely abstract, sanctity:—consecrated (thing), dedicated (thing), hallowed (thing), holiness, (× most) holy (× day, portion, thing), saint, sanctuary.

According to the Hebrew, something holy is made that way by consecration, or dedication to a specific purpose. To me, sharing feels like a form of dedication, or consecration whereby we transmit spiritual knowledge and experience to others with the intent to point them toward God. How does that desecrate or diminish something sacred?

Let’s look for a moment at the history of keeping spiritual knowledge secret.

[The following is AI research]:

The idea that sacred or spiritual knowledge should be kept secret appears independently in multiple cultures. It is not traceable to a single origin; rather, it emerges wherever religious systems distinguish between ordinary knowledge and transformative or “dangerous” knowledge. Below are major early sources and patterns.

In the ancient Mediterranean, secrecy was formalized in mystery religions. The Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece required initiates to swear oaths never to reveal the rituals associated with the gods Demeter and Persephone. Similarly, the Orphism preserved teachings about the soul and afterlife that were reserved for initiates. In these traditions, secrecy marked spiritual status and protected the sanctity of transformative rites.
In ancient Judaism, strands of mystical interpretation were restricted. Early forms of what later became Kabbalah limited esoteric teachings (such as speculation about creation and divine chariots) to mature, learned scholars. The concern was that unprepared individuals could misunderstand or be harmed by powerful metaphysical ideas.
In South Asia, esoteric transmission appears in Vedic and later Tantric traditions. Certain teachings within the Upanishadic tradition were passed from teacher to student privately. Later Tantra systems explicitly required initiation, holding that mantras and ritual practices lose potency or become spiritually dangerous if shared improperly.
In early Christianity, there was a distinction between public teaching and deeper instruction. The concept of “disciplina arcani” (discipline of the secret) meant that certain doctrines and liturgical practices were not explained to non-initiates.
In East Asia, Daoist and Buddhist esoteric schools also guarded teachings. In Japan, Shingon Buddhism maintained secret ritual knowledge transmitted through lineage. Esoteric diagrams, mantras, and mudras were not publicly disclosed.
Anthropologically, several recurring reasons explain the origin of sacred secrecy. First, power. Many societies treat sacred knowledge as potent, capable of transforming or destabilizing individuals. Secrecy protects both the knowledge and the unprepared. Second, hierarchy and initiation. Secret knowledge creates structured progression. Access marks spiritual maturity and reinforces authority within priesthoods or initiatory groups. Third, boundary maintenance. Secrecy distinguishes insiders from outsiders, strengthening group cohesion. Fourth, preservation of meaning. Some traditions hold that sacred truths can only be understood experientially; public explanation would distort or trivialize them.

[end of AI research]

It seems, historically, there have been a number of reasons why secrecy has been practiced by religions, mostly as a means of information control, or to protect information that might otherwise be trivialized or misunderstood. We don’t need to “cast our pearls before swine”, and I’m not suggesting we do so. But I grew up believing I couldn’t talk about the expansive things of the spirit because they were “too sacred” to share. I’m starting to think we use vernacular like “sacred” to repress fear, to avoid raised eyebrows, sideways glances, or worse, a reckoning with our Bishop or Stake President.

Obviously, judgement needs to be used when we share, and where covenants are involved, care should be taken to uphold our word to not reveal certain things, but we’re talking about spiritual knowledge and practices here. Why is that so taboo? Nowadays, everything is on the internet, so really nothing is secret anymore. Honest discussion can often mitigate assumption, judgment and misunderstandings that arise from secrecy and a lack of transparency.

Jesus’ parable about the seed falling on various types of ground, in Matthew 13, illustrates how when knowledge, even sacred knowledge is shared, it will be received according to the preparation of the ground. What’s so dangerous about that? If someone is unprepared to hear something, it simply won’t be understood, as we see in much of the New Testament gospels.

This idea that we cheapen sacred things by discussing them seems archaic and culture-based rather than doctrinal and theological. All is sacred to God. Should we then tiptoe amidst truth? Diminish its light? Bury it beneath a bushel? Or should we let it give light to all that are in the house—by sharing it? What are we afraid is going to happen if we express, or heaven forbid, hear an idea that challenges our current paradigm? Might we struggle to define truth anew? And grow in the process?! Are we so protective of the current condition of our “faith” that we metaphorically place it in a glass display case so as not to be touched, tarnished, or broken by outside influences? And how does that build Zion? How do we strengthen one another? How do we grow? How does faith compound if so many things are too sacred to discuss?

To conclude, I’ll reiterate that private moments that cultivate relationship are essential, they are indeed how our relationship with God unfolds within us, but public moments of exposure are what test that relationship—they are what try it and prove it and strengthen it. Strength is not given to those who sit forever safely in their meditative pose, or pew, or closet, and never prove their allegiance through vulnerable and daring action. And daring doesn’t mean reckless. It simply means faithful…to whatever God requires of that individual, at the appointed time, on their personal journey. We can forever worship with our lips and not our hearts, if we’re not careful.

Don’t get me wrong, the meditation cushion, the pew, the prayer closet all have their place and cultivate relationship and connection, which is prerequisite to faithful action. But if worship never travels from our lips to our hearts and then manifests in concrete ways that help fellow travelers along the path, godly character remains dormant and power remains a shadow of potential.

So, meditate, pray, nurture a relationship with God in private. Orient your life to Him in a way that works for you. But consider that public sharing of spiritual experience isn’t necessarily a dilution of one’s sacred relationship with God or the knowledge one receives, but rather a tangible manifestation of devotion, of faith—a steadfastness that steps beyond belief and into proof. Secrets hide in darkness. Faith is revealed in the light. And light never dilutes the sacred; it only emphasizes it. And maybe that’s what we’re afraid of.

So, next time you question whether knowledge is sacred and should be kept secret, consider the pattern and example from scripture. And maybe even ask: Is secrecy a road to safety? Or is what you’re “protecting” a fruit that should be shared to make others happy?

Only you can know, but the questions are worth asking.

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