cognitive illusion
Calling pain a cognitive illusion doesn't make it go away. (I'm about to post about how Typical Mind Fallacy seems to be influencing this discussion, where I'll reply to this in more detail)
How does owning up to it make it worse?
Before, you trusted your wife, and your love for your child was untainted. Now it's not. Immediately after understanding the situation, (the affair was long ago, your child is still yours for all intents and purposes) you will (at least I would) want to forgive my wife and accept the child as my own. I want everything to continue exactly as it would have been continuing in ignorance.
Except now doing those things is HARDER, because evolutionary-adaptations that I assign low value to (primal desires to father your own children, etc) are causing me to feel distress, and possibly make bad decisions. I may find myself noticing traits of my child than remind me of the affair and cause me flickers of jealousy that compel me to reprimand the child when I should have given a gentle reminder. If my wife needs to be out of town for legitimate reasons, I'll be more quick to wonder if she's having another affair, and even I can rationally remind myself that the affair was long ago and she is still worthy of trust I will have to make that mental effort every single time.
It will be, at the very least, annoying, if not painful, with no benefits other than aesthetic preference for truth, and in this case, for me, that aesthetic preference is vastly outweighed by the emotional consequences.
Let me suggest that you're overweighing the long-term effects on your happiness of learning something painful (see Dan Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness for research on that), and underweighing (in fact neglecting) the benefits that would result from knowing the truth.
For instance, learning the truth has placed you in a situation of greater autonomy with respect to your child: you have a greater degree of control over the moment when he/she will learn that truth.
With respect to your spouse, you are no longer being a victim of deception with each passing mom...
I think I have problems with this:
Do you actually think that's true?
I honestly don't think I do. I think there are horrible truths that can wreck your life if you're not prepared to deal with them. I think it may *usually* be best if you self-modify to be able to handle them, so that you don't run into trouble later. But to say there's NO difference ignores the fact that your emotional reaction to things is ALSO part of reality.
I like the idea behind it but I don't think I can really endorse it. I'm struggling because I'd like to incorporate it into my project, but it feels too wrong. And while I'm okay with chopping up lengthy sequence posts to so they can be read out loud, rewriting this to match my beliefs... well, it's not exactly a crime against humanity but it's technically not the Litany of Gendlin anymore which ruins some ritual-oomph. (And the part that I'd most want to change is the last two lines, which are the most powerful part)
Ideally it would communicate: "Lying to yourself will eventually screw you up worse than getting hurt by a truth," instead of "learning new truths has no negative consequences."
This distinction is particularly important when the truth at hand is "the world is a fundamentally unfair place that will kill you without a second thought if you mess up, and possibly even if you don't."
EDIT TO CLARIFY: The person who goes about their life ignoring the universe's Absolute Neutrality is very fundamentally NOT already enduring this truth. They're enduring part of it (arguably most of it), but not all. Thinking about that truth is depressing for many people. That is not a meaningless cost. Telling people they should get over that depression and make good changes to fix the world is important. But saying that they are already enduring everything there was to endure, seems to me a patently false statement, and makes your argument weaker, not stronger.
Potential change I can think of that doesn't wreck it too much and keeps it similar enough that I don't feel too bad: "Not owning up to it will only make things worse." Artistically I think it might be better to change the wording to something like "Refusing to admit it will only make things worse," but then the change becomes big enough that I feel kinda wrong again.
Maybe refer to it as Litany of Gendlin', to distinguish it while staying classy.
SECOND EDIT: It's become pretty clear, looking a collection of comments, that Typical Mind Fallacy is at work here. Some people value truth and emotional response differently. My problem is that a) *I* value emotional response as the end, and my preference for truth, while extremely useful, is only there to facilitate emotional response in myself and others. b) I know there will be other people at the event in question who share my position.
In any case, I'd like advice from the people who believe the Litany is inaccurate (or at least are able to model people who believe that) on how to handle the situation.