Spiritual Attacks Quotes

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow. Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail. A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live. When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all. A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother. So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

You cannot love your partner one moment and attack him or her the next.

As long as a person is involved with warfare, trying to defend or attack, then his action is not sacred; it is mundane, dualistic, a battlefield situation.

You live in a world at war. Spiritual attack must be a category you think in or you will misunderstand more than half of what happens in your marriage.

We all become well-disguised mirror image of anything that we fight too long or too directly. That which we oppose determines the energy and frames the questions after a while. Most frontal attacks on evil just produce another kind of evil in yourself, along with a very inflated self-image to boot.

Are the great spiritual teachings really advocating that we fight evil because we are on the side of light, the side of peace? Are they telling us to fight against that other 'undesirable' side, the bad and the black. That is a big question. If there is wisdom in the sacred teachings, there should not be any war. As long as a person is involved with warfare, trying to defend or attack, then his action is not sacred; it is mundane, dualistic, a battlefield situation.

Every source of blessing is a point of attack.

Before you step into the realm of the spirit through spiritual warfare, and against any demonic attack against you, there is something you must do: You must establish a foundation in Christ.

We must stay tuned in to God’s voice because the enemy has a trick up his sleeves. He will send a counterfeit attack to see if you take the bait.

Why is sensitivity perceived as being dangerous? When we’re sensitive, we feel things we were taught not to feel. When we’re sensitive, we are completely open to attack. When we’re sensitive, we are awake and in touch with our hearts – and this can be very threatening to the status quo indeed.

Due to Mom’s condition, she would attack “The Walls” from sun-up to sun-down and day after day due to her mentalparanoia. With the death of her sister, no barrier, partition, fence, or any standing surface would’ve been safe. That kind of trauma would’ve created an endless loop of rages such as: “Oh no! Oh no! Not my sister, you Devil Ass Dawg! Oh Jesus, those Dead Dawg have come and taken my sister away! Help me Jesus! Help me get those Dawg out of my house! Lawd, I can’t take these Dawg howling anymore! Lawd Jesus, bring her back! Lawd, bring her back!

The acknowledgement of a single possibility can change everything.

You cannot simply read the Quran,not if you take it seriously.You either have surrendered to it already or you fight it. It attacks tenaciously,directly,personally; it debates,criticizes,shames and challenges. From the outset it draws the line of battle, and I was on other side.

I believe that the attacks on your life have much more to do with who you might be in the future than who you have been in the past.

There is no danger: he is suffering from drowsiness, that disease which attacks so many minds which have been deceived.

If you both agree that the relationship will be your spiritual practice, so much the better. You can then express your thoughts and feelings to each other as soon as they occur, or as soon as a reaction comes up, so that you do not create a time gap in which an unexpressed or unacknowledged emotion or grievance can fester and grow. Learn to give expression to what you feel without blaming. Learn to listen to your partner in an open, nondefensive way. Give your partner space for expressing himself or herself. Be present. Accusing, defending, attacking — all those patterns that are designed to strengthen or protect the ego or to get its needs met will then become redundant. Giving space to others — and to yourself — is vital. Love cannot flourish without it. When you have removed the two factors that are destructive to relationships — when the pain-body has been transmuted and you are no longer identified with mind and mental positions — and if your partner has done the same, you will experience the bliss of the flowering of relationship. Instead of mirroring to each other your pain and your unconsciousness, instead of satisfying your mutual addictive ego needs, you will reflect back to each other the love that you feel deep within, the love that comes with the realization of your oneness with all that is. This is the love that has no opposite.

Consider how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness, how we go down in the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist's arm-chair and confuse his "Rinse the mouth-rinse the mouth" with the greeting of the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us - when we think of this, as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature

Anxiety and depression, and the physical symptoms they cause, are merely distractions and smokescreens to “protect” you from dangers, which are usually, imaginary.

Never use the message of the cross to crucify those you don’t like, or the sword of the Spirit to attack other believers.

Any philosophy, whether of a religious or political nature - and sometimes the dividing line is hard to determine - fights less for the negative destruction of the opposing ideology than for the positive promotion of its own. Hence its struggle is less defensive than offensive. It therefore has the advantage even in determining the goal, since this goal represents the victory of its own idea, while, conversely,it is hard to determine when the negative aim of the destruction of a hostile doctrine may be regarded as achieved and assured. For this reason alone, the philosophy's offensive will be more systematic and also more powerful than the defensive against a philosophy, since here, too, as always, the attack and not the defence makes the decision. The fight against a spiritual power with methods of violence remains defensive, however, until the sword becomes the support,the herald and disseminator, of a new spiritual doctrine.

. . . most martial artists want to know how A technique is done, A seasoned Sensei will demonstrate why

The wise treat horniness like a hiccup; the foolish, like an asthma attack.

You have been adopted. You are God’s beloved sons and daughters. Do you really think God is waiting to attack you on a technicality? Do you really think God has a continuous chip on his shoulder?

Cultural wisdom says 'Don't quit your day job.' Yet I think these desires represent our psyche's stretch toward wholeness. And to be whole, as many religious tranditions teach, is to make manifest a unique face of God in the world. We don't want to be irresponsible, yet for every accountant who deserts his family and sails for Tahiti, ten American men have heart attacks at their desks, after hours.

writing it down on paper or on a computer where you can see it is because the brain, unlikely as it may sound, is no place for serious thinking. Any time you have serious thinking to do, the first step is to get the whole shootin’ match out of your head and set it up someplace where you can walk around it and see it from all sides. Attack, switch sides and counter-attack. You can’t do that while it’s still in your head. Writing it out allows you to act as your own teacher, your own critic, your own opponent. By externalizing your thoughts, you can become your own guru; judging yourself, giving feedback, providing a more objective and elevated perspective.

I used to think, that when my old inner demons started creeping back into my life, that it was a sign of failure or moral weakness. But the saints have shown me that part of the human condition is to struggle with the same sins and suffering over and over again. Once I accepted the fact that I’d probably always have to be on guard against spiritual attacks related to food and my weight, I began to really recover.

Love and love alone dissolves all negativity, not by attacking it, but by bathing it in higher frequencies, much as light dissolves darkness by its mere presence.

Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness…it is strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.” from her essay, On Being Ill

Whenever i see someone fighting me for no reason, I'm always highly impressed that God has instigated his anger against me, just as he did to pharoah against the Israelites, so as to cast me away into my promise land of fulfilment.

This was the reason for the spiritual attacks Lilac had experienced throughout her life, and she instinctually knew she would continue to be a target for the sinister energy forces that had yet to fulfill their destructive mission.

From the heart arise unknowable impulses as well as conscious feelings, moods, and wishes. The heart, too, has its reasons and is the center of perception and understanding. Finally, the heart is the seat of the will: it makes plans and comes to good decisions. Thus the heart is the central and unifying organ of our personal life. Our heart determines our personality, and is therefore not only the place where God dwells but also the place to which Satan directs his fiercest attacks. It is this heart that is the place of prayer. The prayer of the heart is a prayer that directs itself to God from the center of the person and thus affects the whole of our humanness.

Negativity is a debilitating disease. It is a slow and painful way to experience life. It attacks the immune system, creates anxiety, and can lead to loneliness and depression. Finding your inner harmony is the quickest way to alleviate the methodical destruction of this dark energy

The Church combats the passions with excision in every sense of the word: its practice, its ‘cure’ is castration. It never asks: ‘How can one spiritualize, beautify, deify a desire?’ – it has at all times laid the emphasis of its discipline on extirpation (of sensuality, of pride, of lust for power, of avarice, of revengefulness). – But to attack the passions at their roots means to attack life at its roots: the practice of the Church is hostile to life…

I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movement exerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is neither morally nor mentally equal to such attacks; at a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down … This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty …

It's very painful... I see a lot of poverty. I see a lot of spiritual poverty. This is a nation that has been deceived and abused. And you can't be a happy people when your reality is based on deception... we're causing incredible harm to countries like Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan... but the other side of the sword is cutting us.

Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease. The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by “watching the thinker,” which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence. When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You’ll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.

The sixth sign that you are under spiritual attack is that old iniquities begin to resurface in your life. What is an iniquity? Some consider iniquities to be those old habits that your soul wants to fall back on when things don’t seem to be going your way—things like smoking, drug abuse, excessive drinking, visiting the bars or clubs, indulging the flesh.

Sustained negative flashbacks can stir a heart attack.

Spiritual armor is useful only if we put it on!

...This is the arena in which a spiritualized disobedience means most. It doesn't mean a second New Deal, another massive bureaucratic attack on our problems. It doesn't mean taking to the streets, throwing bricks through the window at the Bank of America, or driving a tractor through the local McDonald's. It means living differently. It means taking responsibility for the character of the human world. That's a real confrontation with the problem of value. In short, refusal of the present is a return to what Thoreau and Ruskin called "human fundamentals, valuable things," and it is a movement into the future. This movement into the future is also a powerful expression of that most human spiritual emotion, Hope. p.124

Arrested spiritual development, either in the initial or the more advanced stages, is always an exposed position. Spiritual immaturity always leaves us vulnerable to Satan’s attacks.

He criticized Christianity, but his objections were not so much intellectual as moral and aesthetic: he attacked the Christian religion because of its impact on the quality of life. Devaluing the natural world for the sake of a spiritual realm, Christianity could not be other than hostile to happiness: ‘man’, Leopardi wrote, ‘was happier before Christianity than after it.

Sukarno seorang diri, Gandhi seorang diri, bahkan para nabi seperti Isa dan Muhammad pun seorang diri. Para bijak seperti Lao Tze dan Siddharta juga seorang diri. Namun, merekalah yang mengubah dan membuat sejarah.

Mind-altering substances weaken you and make you vulnerable to spiritual attack. Remember 1 Peter 5:8: “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

I would make it a rule to eradicate from my patient any strong personal taste which is not actually a sin, even if it is something quite trivial such as a fondness for county cricket or collecting stamps or drinking cocoa. Such things, I grant you, have nothing of virtue in them; but there is a sort of innocence and humility and self-forgetfulness about them which I distrust. The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring twopence what other people say about it, is by that very fact fore-armed against some of our subtlest modes of attack. You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favour of the “best” people, the “right” food, the “important” books.

Millennials: We lost the genetic lottery. We graduated high school into terrorist attacks and wars. We graduated college into a recession and mounds of debt. We will never acquire the financial cushion, employment stability, and material possessions of our parents. We are often more educated, experienced, informed, and digitally fluent than prior generations, yet are constantly haunted by the trauma of coming of age during the detonation of the societal structure we were born into. But perhaps we are overlooking the silver lining. We will have less money to buy the material possessions that entrap us. We will have more compassion and empathy because our struggles have taught us that even the most privileged can fall from grace. We will have the courage to pursue our dreams because we have absolutely nothing to lose. We will experience the world through backpacking, couch surfing, and carrying on interesting conversations with adventurers in hostels because our bank accounts can't supply the Americanized resorts. Our hardships will obligate us to develop spiritual and intellectual substance. Maybe having roommates and buying our clothes at thrift stores isn't so horrible as long as we are making a point to pursue genuine happiness.

Today everybody admits that something is wrong with the world, and the critics of Christianity are the very people who feel this most. The most violent attacks on religion come from those who are most anxious to change the world, and they attack Christianity because they think that it is an obstructive force that stands in the way of a real reform of human life. There has seldom been a time in which men were more dissatisfied with life and the more conscious of the need for deliverance, and if they turn away from Christianity it is because they feel that Christianity is a servant of the established order and that it has no real power or will to change the world and to rescue man from his present difficulties. They have lost their faith in the old spiritual traditions that inspired civilization in the past, and they tend to look for a solution in some external practical remedy such as communism, or the scientific organisation of life; something definite and objective that can be applied to society as a whole.

Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or “mental movies.” Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person’s own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease.

I have always found that the Trough periods of the human undulation provide excellent opportunity for all sensual temptations, particularly those of sex. This may surprise you, because, of course, there is more physical energy, and therefore more potential appetite, at the Peak periods; but you must remember that the powers of resistance are then also at their highest. The health and spirits which you... use in producing lust can also... be very easily used for work or play or thought or innocuous merriment. The attack has a much better chance of success when the man's whole inner world is drab and cold and empty. And it is also to be noted that the Trough sexuality is subtly different in quality from that of the Peak - much less likely to lead to... "being in love," much more easily drawn into perversions, much less... generous and imaginative and even spiritual... It is the same with other desires of the flesh. You are much more likely to make [a] man a sound drunkard by pressing drink on him as an anodyne when he is dull and weary... than... when he is happy...

My name is CRPS, or so they say But I actually go by; a few different names. I was once called causalgia, nearly 150 years ago And then I had a new name It was RSD, apparently so. I went by that name because the burn lived inside of me. Now I am called CRPS, because I have so much to say I struggle to be free. I don't have one symptom and this is where I change, I attack the home of where I live; with shooting/burning pains. Depression fills the mind of the body I belong, it starts to speak harsh to self, negativity growing strong. Then I start to annoy them; with the issues with sensitivity, You'd think the pain enough; but no, it wants to make you aware of its trembling disability. I silently make my move; but the screams are loud and clear, Because I enter your physical reality and you can't disappear. I confuse your thoughts; I contain apart of your memory, I cover your perspective, the fog makes it sometimes unbearable to see. I play with your temperature levels, I make you nervous all the time - I take away your independance and take away your pride. I stay with you by the day & I remind you by the night, I am an awful journey and you will struggle with this fight. Then there's a side to me; not many understand, I have the ability to heal and you can be my friend. Help yourself find the strength to fight me with all you have, because eventually I'll get tired of making you grow mad. It will take some time; remember I mainly live inside your brain, Curing me is hard work but I promise you, You can beat me if you feed love to my pain. Find the strength to carry on and feed the fears with light; hold on to the seat because, like I said, it's going to be a fight. But I hope to meet you, when your healthy and healed, & you will silenty say to me - I did this, I am cured is this real? That day could possibly come; closer than I want- After all I am a disease and im fighting for my spot. I won't deny from my medical angle, I am close to losing the " incurable " battle.

The more we love ourselves, the less we project our pain onto the world. When we stop judging ourselves, we naturally judge others less. When we stop attacking ourselves, we don’t attack others. When we stop rejecting ourselves, we stop accusing others of hurting us. When we start loving ourselves more, we become happier, less defended, and more open. As we love ourselves, we naturally love others more. “Self-love is the greatest gift because what you give yourself is experienced by others,” says Louise.

They shift the blame rather than taking the responsibility for their wrongs. Those under witchcraft’s control think they never do anything wrong. When caught they say there is nothing for which to repent. They tell you directly, “I haven’t done anything wrong” or “I did what I thought was right. I don’t have anything to feel sorry about.” They never manifest any true repentance or humility.

When you live in complete acceptance of what is, that is the end of all drama in your life. Nobody can even have an argument with you, no matter how hard he or she tries. You cannot have an argument with a fully conscious person. An argument implies identification with your mind and a mental position, as well as resistance and reaction to the other person’s position. The result is that the polar opposites become mutually energized. These are the mechanics of unconsciousness. You can still make your point clearly and firmly, but there will be no reactive force behind it, no defense or attack. So it won’t turn into drama. When you are fully conscious, you cease to be in conflict. “No one who is at one with himself can even conceive of conflict,” states A Course in Miracles. This refers not only to conflict with other people but more fundamentally to conflict within you, which ceases when there is no longer any clash between the demands and expectations of your mind and what is.

When those who have been placed in my life to lead me and train me betray me and turn against me, as Saul turned against David, I will follow the example of David and refuse to let hope die in my heart. Holy Spirit, empower me to be a spiritual father or mother to those who need me to disciple, love, support, and encourage them. Father, raise up spiritual leaders in our land who can lead others with justice, mercy, integrity, and love. Allow me to be one of these leaders. When I am cut off from my father [physical or spiritual] through his insecurity, jealousy, or pride, cause me to recognize that as You did with David, You want to complete Your work in my life. Holy Spirit, release me from tormenting thoughts or self-blame and striving for acceptance. Cause me to seek only Your acceptance and restoration. I refuse to allow the enemy to cause me to seek revenge against those who have wronged me. I will not raise my hand against the Lord’s anointed or seek to avenge myself. I will leave justice to You. Father, cause my heart to be pure as David’s was pure. Through Your power, O Lord, I will refuse to attack my enemies with my tongue, for I will never forget that both death and life are in the power of the tongue (Prov. 18:21). I will never seek to sow discord or separation between myself and my Christian brothers and sisters, for it is an abomination to my Lord. I will remain loyal to my spiritual leaders even when they have rejected me or wronged me. I choose to be a man [or woman] after the heart of God, not one who seeks to avenge myself. Holy Spirit, like David I will lead my Christian brother and sister to honor our spiritual leaders even in the face of betrayal. I refuse to sow discord among brethren. I will show kindness to others who are in relationship with the ones who have wronged me. Like David I will find ways to honor them and will not allow offense to cause me to disrespect them. Father, only You are worthy to judge the intents and actions of myself or of those around me. I praise You for Your wisdom, and I submit to Your leading. Lord, I choose to remain loyal to those in a position of authority over me. I choose to focus on the calling You have placed on my life and to refuse to be diverted by the actions of others, even when they have treated me wrongly. Father, may You be able to examine my life and know and see that there is neither evil nor rebellion in my heart toward others (1 Sam.24:11).

There are many themes found in the Book of Psalms that are generally not found in modern music. These include the fear of God, the righteousness and justice of God, the sovereignty of God, the judgement of God, the evil of sin, spiritual and physical warfare, the arch enemies of the Christian, the destruction of the wicked, the reality of hell, the blessedness of the church, the vicious attacks upon the church, the commandments of God, the dominion of David’s son, and so on. Without the backdrop of these truths, the themes of love, mercy, faith, and salvation become largely meaningless.

understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movement exerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is neither morally nor mentally equal to such attacks; at a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down… This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty… I achieved an equal understanding of the importance of physical terror toward the individual and the masses… For while in the ranks of their supporters the victory achieved seems a triumph of the justice of their own cause, the defeated adversary in most cases despairs of the success of any further resistance.49 No more precise analysis of Nazi tactics, as Hitler was eventually to develop them, was ever written.

On the positive side, you are “in love” with your partner. This is at first a deeply satisfying state. You feel intensely alive. Your existence has suddenly become meaningful because someone needs you, wants you, and makes you feel special, and you do the same for him or her. When you are together, you feel whole. The feeling can become so intense that the rest of the world fades into insignificance. However, you may also have noticed that there is a neediness and a clinging quality to that intensity. You become addicted to the other person. He or she acts on you like a drug. You are on a high when the drug is available, but even the possibility or the thought that he or she might no longer be there for you can lead to jealousy, possessiveness, attempts at manipulation through emotional blackmail, blaming and accusing — fear of loss. If the other person does leave you, this can give rise to the most intense hostility or the most profound grief and despair. In an instant, loving tenderness can turn into a savage attack or dreadful grief. Where is the love now? Can love change into its opposite in an instant? Was it love in the first place, or just an addictive grasping and clinging?

More enslaving than our occupations, however, are our preoccupations. To be pre-occupied means to fill our time and place long before we are there. This is worrying in the more specific sense of the word. It is a mind filled with “ifs.” We say to ourselves, “What if I get the flu? What if I lose my job? What if my child is not home on time? What if there is not enough food tomorrow? What if I am attacked? What if a war starts? What if the world comes to an end? What if . . . ?

When the farmer arises in the morning unreconciled to get out of bed, he feels no anxiety that he has wasted time through his sleep; au contraire, he is confident that the seed has continued to grow during the night. So, too, the spiritual woman does not fret and flap over opportunities missed, does not hammer herself for not working hard enough, and does not have a panic attack wondering whether she has received grace in vain. She lives in quiet confidence that God is working in her by day and by night. Like the farmer, she is not totally passive or presumptuous. The woman knows that she has her full measure of work to do, but she realizes that the outcome rests with God and that the decisive factor is unearned grace. Thus, she works as if everything depends on God and prays as if everything depends on her.

In this battle, there is no room for turning back. You have to be on the offensive. You have to keep attacking the Enemy; and on account of this, your back is left bare. You cannot afford to turn back once you have put your hand to the plow and agreed to follow Jesus! To do otherwise is to leave yourself open to the Enemy’s attack.

It is not many things that modern psychology agress upon, but all the different approaches of psychology agrees on one thing: that people in groups become more stupid. Individually people are more intelligent, because they have to take their own responsibility, but in a group they do not have to take the same responsibility. The two basic power strategies to try to manipulate and gain control over another person are: silencing and attacking. Silencing means to not listen to, to exclude or ignore and not respect a person. Attack can both mean to attack a person directly or to try to discredit a person through lies, to ridicule a person or by spreading malicious rumours. All organizations are more or less dysfunctional. In a dysfunctional group, the members of the group play three different roles: agressor, denier and victim. The agressor is the role that attack and ridicule people, the denier never knows what is going on, there is “no body at home”, and the victim is the resultat of these two roles. It is always easier to follow a group without awareness, than to follow your own heart, to trust your own intelligence, love, truth, silence and creativity.

The mind is essentially a survival machine. Attack and defense against other minds, gathering, storing, and analyzing information — this is what it is good at, but it is not at all creative. All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness. The mind then gives form to the creative impulse or insight. Even the great scientists have reported that their creative breakthroughs came at a time of mental quietude. The surprising result of a nationwide inquiry among America’s most eminent mathematicians, including Einstein, to find out their working methods, was that thinking “plays only a subordinate part in the brief, decisive phase of the creative act itself.”1 So I would say that the simple reason why the majority of scientists are not creative is not because they don’t know how to think but

Furthermore, any teaching that puts the spotlight of attention on the workings of the ego will necessarily provoke egoic reaction, resistance, and attack.

Everything in life will attack you if it senses your fear; animals, people — but faithful confidence wards off all manner of evil.

This is no accident. Satan’s attack on marriages and the family is real and relentless. As someone has said, “When you get married, that’s when the war begins.

That said, I was under heavy scrutiny and attack for my views and my “religion” (which I call more spirituality than religion).

another principle demons use in spiritual warfare: multiple attacks, from many directions at once, or with many different weapons at once.

Before Marriage opposite attracts, after marriage opposite attacks☺. Just telling you the truth.

Whenever someone is a threat to the enemy there will be an attack dispatched against that person to try to minimise their effectiveness.

conditioned responses aimed at deflecting the opponent’s attacks.

People may not always live what they profess, but they will always live what they believe.

One of the enemy's sneaky attacks against the joy of our salvation is to put us in the spiral of self-condemnation.

Demonic spirits never sleep or take a vacation, always plotting and waiting for the next offensive.

Before we can pray, ‘Thy Kingdom come,’ we must be willing to pray—‘My kingdom go!

Prayer and warfare are two separate and distinct activities. Prayer is toward God and warfare is toward the enemy.

No one likes to be afraid. Fear is the enemy of love & faith & it robs us of our sleep & our sunrise & makes us treacherous & venal& fills our glands with toxins & effaces our identity & gives flight to any vestige of self respect. If you have ever been afraid, truly afraid, in a way that makes your hair soggy with sweat & turns your skin gray & fouls your blood & spiritually eviscerates you to the point you cannot pray, lest your prayers be a concession to your conviction that you're about to die, you know what I am talking about. If you do not have the option of either fleeing or attacking your adversary, your level of fear will grow to the point where you feel like your skin is being stripped from your bones.

Devaluation of the Earth, hostility towards the Earth, fear of the Earth: these are all from the psychological point of view the expression of a weak patriarchal consciousness that knows no other way to help itself than to withdraw violently from the fascinating and overwhelming domain of the Earthly. For we know that the archetypal projection of the Masculine experiences, not without justice, the Earth as the unconscious-making, instinct-entangling, and therefore dangerous Feminine. At the same time the projection of the masculine anima is mingled with the living image of the Earth archetype in the unconscious of man; and the more one-sidedly masculine man's conscious mind is the more primitive, unreliable, and therefore dangerous his anima will be. However, the Earth archetype, in compensation to the divinity of the archetype of Heaven and the Father, that determined the consciousness of medieval man, is fused together with the archaic image of the Mother Goddess. Yet in its struggle against this Mother Goddess, the conscious mind, in its historical development, has had great difficulty in asserting itself so as to reach its – patriarchal - independence. The insecurity of this conscious mind-and we have profound experience of how insecure the position of the conscious mind still is in modern man-is always bound up with fear of the unconscious, and no well-meaning theory "against fear" will be able to rid the world of this deeply rooted anxiety, which at different times has been projected on different objects. Whether this anxiety expresses itself in a religious form as the medieval fear of demons or witches, or politically as the modern fear of war with the State beyond the Iron Curtain, in every case we are dealing with a projection, though at the same time the anxiety is justified. In reality, our small ego-consciousness is justifiably afraid of the superior power of the collective forces, both without and within. In the history of the development of the conscious mind, for reasons which we cannot pursue here, the archetype of the Masculine Heaven is connected positively with the conscious mind, and the collective powers that threaten and devour the conscious mind both from without and within, are regarded as Feminine. A negative evaluation of the Earth archetype is therefore necessary and inevitable for a masculine, patriarchal conscious mind that is still weak. But this validity only applies in relation to a specific type of conscious mind; it alters as the integration of the human personality advances, and the conscious mind is strengthened and extended. A one-sided conscious mind, such as prevailed in the medieval patriarchal order, is certainly radical, even fanatical, but in a psychological sense it is by no means strong. As a result of the one-sidedness of the conscious mind, the human personality becomes involved in an equally one-sided opposition to its own unconscious, so that actually a split occurs. Even if, for example, the Masculine principle identifies itself with the world of Heaven, and projects the evil world of Earth outwards on the alien Feminine principle, both worlds are still parts of the personality, and the repressing masculine spiritual world of Heaven and of the values of the conscious mind is continually undermined and threatened by the repressed but constantly attacking opposite side. That is why the religious fanaticism of the representatives of the patriarchal World of Heaven reached its climax in the Inquisition and the witch trials, at the very moment when the influence of the archetype of Heaven, which had ruled the Middle Ages and the previous period, began to wane, and the opposite image of the Feminine Earth archetype began to emerge.

Mind, in the way I use the word, is not just thought. It includes your emotions as well as all unconscious mental-emotional reactive patterns. Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body’s reaction to your mind — or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body. For example, an attack thought or a hostile thought will create a buildup of energy in the body that we call anger. The body is getting ready to fight. The thought that you are being threatened, physically or psychologically, causes the body to contract, and this is the physical side of what we call fear. Research has shown that strong emotions even cause changes in the biochemistry of the body. These biochemical changes represent the physical or material aspect of the emotion. Of course, you are not usually conscious of all your thought patterns, and it is often only through watching your emotions that you can bring them into awareness.

Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease.

There is a dark side to religious devotion that is too often ignored or denied. As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane -- as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout -- there may be no more potent force than religion. When the subject of religiously inspired bloodshed comes up, many Americans immediately think of Islamic fundamentalism, which is to be expected in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. But men have been committing heinous acts in the name of God ever since mankind began believing in deities, and extremists exist within all religions. Muhammad is not the only prophet whose words have been used to sanction barbarism; history has not lacked for Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and even Buddhists who have been motivated by scripture to butcher innocents. Plenty of these religious extremists have been homegrown, corn-fed Americans. Faith-based violence was present long before Osama bin Laden, and it ill be with us long after his demise. Religious zealots like bin Laden, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Shoko Asahara, and Dan Lafferty are common to every age, just as zealots of other stripes are. In any human endeavor, some fraction of its practitioners will be motivated to pursue that activity with such concentrated focus and unalloyed passion that it will consume them utterly. One has to look no further than individuals who feel compelled to devote their lives to becoming concert pianists, say, or climbing Mount Everest. For some, the province of the extreme holds an allure that's irresistible. And a certain percentage of such fanatics will inevitably fixate on the matters of the spirit. The zealot may be outwardly motivated by the anticipation of a great reward at the other end -- wealth, fame, eternal salvation -- but the real recompense is probably the obsession itself. This is no less true for the religious fanatic than for the fanatical pianist or fanatical mountain climber. As a result of his (or her) infatuation, existence overflows with purpose. Ambiguity vanishes from the fanatic's worldview; a narcissistic sense of self-assurance displaces all doubt. A delicious rage quickens his pulse, fueled by the sins and shortcomings of lesser mortals, who are soiling the world wherever he looks. His perspective narrows until the last remnants of proportion are shed from his life. Through immoderation, he experiences something akin to rapture. Although the far territory of the extreme can exert an intoxicating pull on susceptible individuals of all bents, extremism seems to be especially prevalent among those inclined by temperament or upbringing toward religious pursuits. Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off. Anything can happen. Absolutely anything. Common sense is no match for the voice of God...

Our interpretations reveal less about God or the Bible than they do about ourselves. They reveal what we want to defend, what we want to attack, what we want to ignore, what we’re unwilling to question.

This is a fact. But Satan does not attack just prayer; he also attacks the praise of God’s children. The ultimate goal of Satan is to stop all praises to God. Prayer is a warfare, but praise is a victory. Prayer signifies spiritual warfare, but praise signifies spiritual victory. Whenever we praise, Satan flees. Therefore, Satan hates our praising the most. He will use all his strength to stop our praising.

Consider the great Samuel Clemens. Huckleberry Finn is one of the few books that all American children are mandated to read: Jonathan Arac, in his brilliant new study of the teaching of Huck, is quite right to term it 'hyper-canonical.' And Twain is a figure in American history as well as in American letters. The only objectors to his presence in the schoolroom are mediocre or fanatical racial nationalists or 'inclusivists,' like Julius Lester or the Chicago-based Dr John Wallace, who object to Twain's use—in or out of 'context'—of the expression 'nigger.' An empty and formal 'debate' on this has dragged on for decades and flares up every now and again to bore us. But what if Twain were taught as a whole? He served briefly as a Confederate soldier, and wrote a hilarious and melancholy account, The Private History of a Campaign That Failed. He went on to make a fortune by publishing the memoirs of Ulysses Grant. He composed a caustic and brilliant report on the treatment of the Congolese by King Leopold of the Belgians. With William Dean Howells he led the Anti-Imperialist League, to oppose McKinley's and Roosevelt's pious and sanguinary war in the Philippines. Some of the pamphlets he wrote for the league can be set alongside those of Swift and Defoe for their sheer polemical artistry. In 1900 he had a public exchange with Winston Churchill in New York City, in which he attacked American support for the British war in South Africa and British support for the American war in Cuba. Does this count as history? Just try and find any reference to it, not just in textbooks but in more general histories and biographies. The Anti-Imperialist League has gone down the Orwellian memory hole, taking with it a great swirl of truly American passion and intellect, and the grand figure of Twain has become reduced—in part because he upended the vials of ridicule over the national tendency to religious and spiritual quackery, where he discerned what Tocqueville had missed and far anticipated Mencken—to that of a drawling, avuncular fabulist.

The Beats are crucial to an understanding of America's cultural revolution not least because in their lives, their proclamations, and (for lack of a more accurate term) their 'work' they anticipated so many of the pathologies of the Sixties and Seventies. Their programmatic anti-Americanism, their avid celebration of drug abuse, their squalid, promiscuous sex lives, their pseudo-spirituality, their attack on rationality and their degradation of intellectual standards, their aggressive narcissism and juvenile political posturing: in all this and more, the Beats were every bit as 'advanced' as any Sixties radical.

The next symptoms that may appear are: •   Panic attacks, anxiety, and phobias •   Mental “blankness” or spaced-out feelings •   Avoidance behavior (avoiding places, activities, movements, memories, or people) •   Attraction to dangerous situations •   Addictive behaviors (overeating, drinking, smoking, etc.) •   Exaggerated or diminished sexual activity •   Amnesia and forgetfulness •   Inability to love, nurture, or bond with other individuals •   Fear of dying or having a shortened life •   Self-mutilation (severe abuse, self-inflicted cutting, etc.) •   Loss of sustaining beliefs (spiritual, religious, interpersonal)

Be specific in your prayers. Carefully craft what you speak. What you say should be in accordance with the word of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. You will find that this will resolve attacks or issues that arise.

Meanwhile, Mme Mao and her cohorts were renewing their efforts to prevent the country from working. In industry, their slogan was: "To stop production is revolution itself." In agriculture, in which they now began to meddle seriously: "We would rather have socialist weeds than capitalist crops." Acquiring foreign technology became "sniffing after foreigners' farts and calling them sweet." In education: "We want illiterate working people, not educated spiritual aristocrats." They called for schoolchildren to rebel against their teachers again; in January 1974, classroom windows, tables, and chairs in schools in Peking were smashed, as in 1966. Mme Mao claimed this was like "the revolutionary action of English workers destroying machines in the eighteenth century." Mme Mao launched a fresh attack on foreign culture. In early 1974 there was a big media campaign denouncing the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni for a film he had made about China, although no one in China had seen the film, and few had even heard of it or of Antonioni. This xenophobia was extended to Beethoven after a visit by the Philadelphia Orchestra.

It is not true that Islam makes it impossible for Muslims to create a modern secular society, as Westerners sometimes imagine. But it is true that secularization has been very different in the Muslim world. In the West, it has usually been experienced as benign. In the early days, it was conceived by such philosophers as John Locke (1632–1704) as a new and better way of being religious, since it freed religion from coercive state control and enabled it to be more true to its spiritual ideals. But in the Muslim world, secularism has often consisted of a brutal attack upon religion and the religious. Atatürk, for example, closed down all the madrasahs, suppressed the Sufi orders and forced men and women to wear modern Western dress. Such coercion is always counterproductive. Islam in Turkey did not disappear, it simply went underground. Muhammad Ali had also despoiled the Egyptian ulama, appropriated their endowments and deprived them of influence.

Meanwhile, Mme Mao and her cohorts were renewing their efforts to prevent the country from working. In industry, their slogan was: "To stop production is revolution itself." In agriculture, in which they now began to meddle seriously: "We would rather have socialist weeds than capitalist crops." Acquiring foreign technology became "sniffing after foreigners' farts and calling them sweet." In education: "We want illiterate working people, not educated spiritual aristocrats." They called for schoolchildren to rebel against their teachers again; in January 1974, classroom windows, tables, and chairs in schools in Peking were smashed, as in 1966. Mme Mao claimed this was like "the revolutionary action of English workers destroying machines in the eighteenth century." All this demagoguery' had one purpose: to create trouble for Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiao-ping and generate chaos. It was only in persecuting people and in destruction that Mme Mao and the other luminaries of the Cultural Revolution had a chance to "shine." In construction they had no place. Zhou and Deng had been making tentative efforts to open the country up, so Mme Mao launched a fresh attack on foreign culture. In early 1974 there was a big media campaign denouncing the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni for a film he had made about China, although no one in China had seen the film, and few had even heard of it or of Antonioni. This xenophobia was extended to Beethoven after a visit by the Philadelphia Orchestra. In the two years since the fall of Lin Biao, my mood had changed from hope to despair and fury. The only source of comfort was that there was a fight going on at all, and that the lunacy was not reigning supreme, as it had in the earlier years of the Cultural Revolution. During this period, Mao was not giving his full backing to either side. He hated the efforts of Zhou and Deng to reverse the Cultural Revolution, but he knew that his wife and her acolytes could not make the country work. Mao let Zhou carry on with the administration of the country, but set his wife upon Zhou, particularly in a new campaign to 'criticize Confucius." The slogans ostensibly denounced Lin Biao, but were really aimed at Zhou, who, it was widely held, epitomized the virtues advocated by the ancient sage. Even though Zhou had been unwaveringly loyal, Mao still could not leave him alone. Not even now, when Zhou was fatally ill with advanced cancer of the bladder.

Our ordinary method of dealing with ingrained sin is to launch a frontal attack. We rely on our willpower and determination. Whatever may be the issue for us--anger, fear, bitterness, gluttony, pride, lust, substance abuse--we determine never to do it again; we pray against it, fight against it, set our will against it. But the struggle is all in vain, and we find ourselves once again morally bankrupt or, worse yet, so proud of our external righteousness that "whitened sepulchers" is a mild description of our condition.

The flesh resists this daily humiliation, first by a frontal attack, and later by hiding itself under the words of the spirit (i.e. in the name of 'evangelical liberty'). We claim liberty from all legal compulsion, from self-martyrdom and mortification, and play this off against the proper evangelical use of discipline and asceticism; we thus excuse our self-indulgence and irregularity in prayer, in meditation and in our bodily life. But the contrast between our behavior and the word of Jesus is all too painfully evident. We forget that discipleship means estrangement from the world, and we forget the real joy and freedom which are the outcome of a devout rule of life. As soon as a Christian recognizes that he has failed in his service, that his readiness has become feeble, and that he has sinned against another's life and become guilty of another's guilt, that all his joy in God has vanished and that his capacity for prayer has quite gone, it is high time for him to launch an assault upon the flesh, and prepare for better service by fasting and prayer (Luke 2:37; 4:2: Mark 9:29; 1 Cor. 7:5).

Beware of making it your mission to 'eradicate evil,' as you are likely to turn into the very thing you are fighting against. Fighting unconsciousness will draw you into unconsciousness yourself. Unconsciousness, dysfunctional ego behavior, can never be defeated by attacking it.

In order to fight the good fight of faith, you must learn how to use the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Fighting the good fight of faith is speaking the Word out of your mouth that you believe in your heart or your spirit. That’s why it’s important to hide the Word of God in your heart and be ready to use scriptures against demons when they try to attack you and try to make you doubt God’s Word. Be ready to say to Satan, “It is written” and to quote God’s Word, which is God’s will, about the situation. There will be many who will side in with the devil and believe his lies over God’s Word. And there are also folks who, in the natural, will unconsciously side in with the devil to try to discourage you in spiritual things, in your faith. But stand your ground on God’s Word if the enemy attacks you in spirit, soul, or body.

When you have sexual relations with someone, for example, there is a soul tie (emotional bonding) that generates because two fleshes become one (Genesis 2:24). Sexual relations in marriage generate a healthy soul tie while sexual relations outside of marriage create unhealthy soul ties.

MAY 6 I HAVE BROKEN LEVIATHAN’S POWER FROM YOUR LIFE MY CHILD, I have broken the demonic power of the sea serpent from your life. I have caused all his demonic little demon fish to stick to his scales as I brought him up out of the midst of the sea and cast him into the wilderness to lie on the open field as food for all the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens. The rivers and seas belong to Me, and I will make utterly waste and desolate the places where his evil power has dwelt. I am the one who commands the sea and its streams to run dry, and I have broken the power of the evils of the sea from bringing destruction to your life. EZEKIEL 29:3–5; ISAIAH 44:27 Prayer Declaration Father, in the name of Jesus I bind every sea monster that would attack my life or region. You have raised a watch against Leviathan, and You will not let the demonic powers of the sea oppress me. You have stripped him of his power and have taken away his armor. You have caused the places of his domain to become utterly waste and desolate and have thrown him and his demonic spirits into the wilderness to be food for the beasts and birds who dwell there.

The mind is essentially a survival machine. Attack and defense against other minds, gathering, storing, and analyzing information — this is what it is good at, but it is not at all creative. All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.

Pierre Janet, a French professor of psychology who became prominent in the early twentieth century, attempted to fully chronicle late- Victorian hysteria in his landmark work The Major Symptoms of Hysteria. His catalogue of symptoms was staggering, and included somnambulism (not sleepwalking as we think of it today, but a sort of amnesiac condition in which the patient functioned in a trance state, or "second state," and later remembered nothing); trances or fits of sleep that could last for days, and in which the patient sometimes appeared to be dead; contractures or other disturbances in the motor functions of the limbs; paralysis of various parts of the body; unexplained loss of the use of a sense such as sight or hearing; loss of speech; and disruptions in eating that could entail eventual refusal of food altogether. Janet's profile was sufficiently descriptive of Mollie Fancher that he mentioned her by name as someone who "seems to have had all possible hysterical accidents and attacks." In the face of such strange and often intractable "attacks," many doctors who treated cases of hysteria in the 1800s developed an ill-concealed exasperation.

In 1954 the gulag at Kengir witnessed an uprising by Christian and Muslim prisoners. The guards were driven out, and for forty days worship was freely practiced in the camp. Solzhenitsyn later documented the atmosphere of elation and idealism which prevailed in this doomed island of faith: the Muslims put on turbans and robes again, and 'the grey-black camp was a blaze of color'. The Chechens made kites from which they showered the neighboring villages with messages about the evils of the atheist system. Many marriages were celebrated. Survivors recall the forty days as a testimony to a possible way of living which had been suffocated by dreary unbelief. Delight in the present, and the knowledge of heaven outweighed the awareness of Khrushchev's inevitable revenge. The rebels were crushed under the attacks of tanks, but in the long term, this same spiritual outweighing insured the atheist dystopia's downfall.

Explaining temptation by saying “God is testing me” or “Satan is attacking me” positions “me” either as the victim, if I am defeated, or the hero, if I prevail. But confessing that “My heart is desperately wicked” provides no such comforts. It heads off all attempts to shift blame, and cuts down all the pretensions of spiritual pride.

The second cause whence these rebellions sometimes proceed is the devil, who, in order to disquiet and disturb the soul, at times when it is at prayer or is striving to pray, contrives to stir up these motions of impurity in its nature; and if the soul gives heed to any of these, they cause it great harm. For through fear of these not only do persons become lax in prayer—which is the aim of the devil when he begins to strive with them—but some give up prayer altogether, because they think that these things attack them more during that exercise than apart from it, which is true, since the devil attacks them then more than at other times, so that they may give up spiritual exercises.

Those who believe the worldly life interactions (vyavahaar) to be the real/true; developed high blood pressure, heart attacks and other such ailments. And those who believe it to be false, they became fat. Those living on both the shores, became lost wanderers. Although living the worldly life, ‘we’ are non-attached (vitaraag, the enlightened one).

Mormon out of whole cloth. He pronounced Mormonism a “myth fraternity,” and slipped into a profound spiritual crisis that lasted until his death, of a heart attack, in 1983. “You can’t set Book of Mormon geography down anywhere,” he wrote in 1976, “because it is fictional and will never meet the requirements of the dirt-archaeology. What is in the ground will

The first wall attacked by Luther was the idea that popes, bishops, monks, and priests are spiritually superior to laity. His view was that all Christians belong to the same spiritual estate by virtue of their baptism and faith. These alone grant entrance into the kingdom of God. This was an early version of what came to be known as the “priesthood of all believers.” Luther demolished the second wall when he rejected the Roman assertion that only the pope has the right to interpret Scriptures. Luther strongly emphasized that laypeople have the right to read and interpret the Scripture for themselves. The third wall torn down was the claim that only the pope could summon church councils. Luther reminded his German readers that the emperor, not the pope,

Although Galileo was a devout Catholic, it was his conflict with the Vatican, sadly mismanaged on both sides, that lay at the basis of the running battle between science and religion, a tragic and confusing schism which persists unresolved. More than ever today, religion finds its revelatory truths threatened by scientific theory, and retreats into a defensive corner, while scientists go into the attack insisting that rational argument is the only valid criterion for an understanding of the workings of the universe. Maybe both sides have misunderstood the nature of their respective roles. Scientists are equipped to answer the mechanical question of how the universe and everything in it, including life, came about. But since their modes of thought are dictated by purely rational, materialistic criteria, physicists cannot claim to answer the questions of why the universe exists, and why we human beings are here to observe it, any more than molecular biologists can satisfactorily explain why – if our actions are determined by the workings of a selfish genetic coding – we occasionally listen to the voice of conscience and behave with altruism, compassion and generosity. Even these human qualities have come under attack from evolutionary psychologists who have ascribed altruism to a crude genetic theory by which familial cooperation is said to favour the survival of the species. Likewise the spiritual sophistication of musical, artistic and poetic activity is regarded as just a highly advanced function of primitive origins.

Use weapons of submission to God, the blood of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, and your testimony as a believer. (See: James 4:7; Revelation 12:11; Ephesians 6:17). Identify the spirits, address them directly by name in a commanding voice, and in faith command them to go in the name of Jesus. Enter the battle with determination and assurance of victory. Christ cannot fail! He is the Deliverer!

I do not judge the quality of my work by the feedback obtained from the masses, for if the masses knew how to judge wisely, would not have supported so much madness throughout human history; I judge my work through the many attacks the devil launches on me, by using possessed souls during the process of creation, and the viciousness of such attacks. It is in the most poisonous insults that I find the elixir of my self-worth.

Nihilism, a normal condition. It may be a sign of strength; spiritual vigour may have increased to such an extent that the goals toward which man has marched hitherto (the "convictions," articles of faith) are no longer suited to it (for a faith generally expresses the exigencies of the conditions of existence, a submission to the authority of an order of things which conduces to the prosperity, the growth and power of a living creature ...); on the other hand, a sign of insufficient strength, to fix a goal, a "wherefore," and a faith for itself. It reaches its maximum of relative strength, as a powerful destructive force, in the form of active Nihilism. Its opposite would be weary Nihilism, which no longer attacks: its most renowned form being Buddhism: as passive Nihilism, a sign of weakness: spiritual strength may be fatigued, exhausted, so that the goals and values which have prevailed hitherto are no longer suited to it and are no longer believed in—so that the synthesis of values and goals (upon which every strong culture stands) [Pg 22]decomposes, and the different values contend with one another: Disintegration, then everything which is relieving, which heals, becalms, or stupefies, steps into the foreground under the cover of various disguises, either religious, moral, political or æsthetic, etc.

The superego is the inner voice that is always putting us down for not living up to certain standards or rewarding our ego when we fulfill its demands . . . In fact, our superego is one of the most powerful agents of the personality: it is the "inner critic" that keeps us restricted to certain limited possibilities for ourselves. A large part of our initial transformational work centers on becoming more aware of the superego's "voice" in its many guises, both positive and negative. Its voices continually draw us back into identifying with our personality and acting out in self-defeating ways. When we are present, we are able to hear our superego voices without identifying with them; we are able to see the stances and positions of the superego as if they were characters in a play waiting in the wings, ready to jump in and control or attack us once again. When we are present, we hear the superego's voice but we do not give it any energy; the "all-powerful" voice then becomes just another aspect of the moment. However, we must also be on the lookout for the formation of new layers of superego that come from our psychological and spiritual work . . . In fact, one of the biggest dangers that we face in using the Enneagram is our superego's tendency to take over our work and start criticizing us, for example, for not moving up the Levels of Development or going in the Direction of Integration fast enough. The more we are present, however, the more we will recognize the irrelevance of these voices and successfully resist giving them energy. Eventually, they lose their power, and we can regain the space and quiet we need to be receptive to other, more life-giving forces within us. . . . If we feel anxious, depressed, lost, hopeless, fearful, wretched, or weak, we can be sure that our superego is on duty.

It is the one who accepts commitment who is strong. The true commitment is the artistic one. This is why artists are so often attacked. They are attacked for their morals, for their ideas – even for their work. Yet their essence – their commitment – is the secret which is unassailable. The true artist knows that creativity is its own reward. Ordinary people fear commitment, you see. Ordinary people fear creativity. They know that if they allow that seething cauldron of yellow liquid to boil over within themselves, then their whole lives will be changed. People fear change. People do not wish to be creative and artistic in any real sense. They wish to decorate, perhaps, and to make things around themselves pleasant – but this has little to do with creativity. … All spiritual paths should be creative. Creativity is involved with sacrifice. That stew of yellow liquid which boils in everyone is a sacrificial broth …

Here was a place unpolluted by men, kept clean by the winds from coarsening human influences, a place where spiritual agencies were within reach and aggressive. Never, before or since, have I been so attacked by indescribable suggestions of a "beyond region," of another scheme of life, another evolution not parallel to the human. And in the end our minds would succumb under the weight of the awful spell, and we would be drawn across the frontier into their world.

Our internal boundaries define and contain the unique personal characteristics of our thoughts, feelings, opinions, behaviors, beliefs, and spirituality. Boundaries help us recognize, honor, and respect our individual wants, needs, and desires. They help us define our separateness and give us safety in our intimate communications with others. If someone verbally attacks us, we maintain our internal boundary and practice self-containment by moderately expressing our thoughts and feelings about their behavior using “I” statements. Or, we may choose not to respond and silently remind ourselves that how another person acts is about that person, not about us. If someone confronts us about our behavior, we use our internal boundary to listen to what they say. We do not internalize what is said before deciding if any of it rings true for us. If we have wronged the other person, we make amends. In either situation our self-worth is not diminished because we have maintained our internal boundaries. 110:2 We use internal boundaries in various ways. An example is deciding how much personal information, such as personal history or financial information, to share with others. Conversely, we refrain from delving into others’ personal business. We might really want to ask a question or say something to someone, yet we do not because we know that person’s private life is none of our business. 111:1 When we have healthy internal boundary systems, we recognize that each individual is responsible for his or her emotional, mental, and spiritual boundaries. We allow ourselves and others to have their own thoughts, feelings, opinions, behaviors, beliefs, and spirituality. With functional boundaries we are able to meet our needs without infringing on others’ abilities to meet their needs. Our internal boundaries can be flexible and we decide what is safe and comfortable for ourselves.

Rose was patently a degenerate. Nature, in scheduling his characteristics, had pruned all superlatives. The rude armour of the flesh, under which the spiritual, like a hide-bound chrysalis, should develop secret and self-contained, was perished in his case, as it were, to a semi-opaque suit, through which his soul gazed dimly and fearfully on its monstrous arbitrary surroundings. Not the mantle of the poet, philosopher, or artist fallen upon such, can still its shiverings, or give the comfort that Nature denies. Yet he was a little bit of each - poet, philosopher, and artist; a nerveless and self-deprecatory stalker of ideals, in the pursuit of which he would wear patent leather shoes and all the apologetic graces. The grandson of a 'three-bottle' J.P., who had upheld the dignity of the State constitution while abusing his own in the best spirit of squirearchy; the son of a petulant dyspeptic, who alternated seizures of long moroseness with fits of abject moral helplessnes, Amos found his inheritance in the reversion of a dissipated constitution, and an imagination as sensitive as an exposed nerve. Before he was thirty he was a neurasthenic so practised, as to have learned a sense of luxury in the very consciousness of his own suffering. It was a negative evolution from the instinct of self-protection - self-protection, as designed in this case, against the attacks of the unspeakable. ("The Accursed Cordonnier")

I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movement exerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is neither morally nor mentally equal to such attacks; at a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down… This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty…

The devil doesn't want God's Word to get to you. He doesn't want it to be pure when it does reach your ears. He wants to snatch the Word of God right out of the air on its way to the ground of your heart. He attacks the church, the pastors and teachers, and he attacks the doctrine; he attacks the hearer and the hearing of the Word. He makes it hard for you to go to church. He makes it hard for the church to continue. Have you ever wondered why Sunday mornings are so difficult? Why waking up and driving to church seems much more difficult than it ought to? Why listening to a sermon is such hard work? Or have you wondered why things are so difficult in the church, why there never seems to be peace, but there is always trouble? The Word of God is always opposed, and getting our ears and our hearts to the place where they hear God's Word is spiritual warfare. Here's why: The preaching and teaching of God's Word is the supply line for the Christian life.

I will intentionally establish an unfazed mindset and attack my most significant life goals, persisting through obstacles until I achieve them. My foremost objective is to compete every day with my former self—to become more as a person—so that I can achieve more in all life’s essential arenas: relationships, health, finances, family, spirituality, the workplace. As I purposefully upgrade critical success traits, I’ll build a confidence and resilience that makes me unstoppable as

BAPTISM BY FIRE Scriptures for meditation: 2 Chronicles 6; 7:1-6 Confession: Jer. 20:9 PRAYER POINTS Thank God for the purifying power of the fire of the Holy Ghost. I cover myself with the blood of the Lord Jesus. Father, let Your fire that burns away every deposit of the enemy fall upon me in the name of Jesus. Holy Ghost fire, incubate me in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I reject any evil stamp or seal placed upon me by ancestral spirits in the name of Jesus. I release myself from every negative anointing in the name of Jesus. Let every door of spiritual leakage be closed in the name of Jesus. I challenge every organ of my body with the fire of the Holy Spirit. (Lay your right hand methodically on various parts of the body beginning from the head.) Let every human spirit attacking my own spirit release me in the mighty name of Jesus. I reject every spirit of the tail in the name of Jesus. Sing the song "Holy Ghost fire, fire fall on me". Let all evil marks on my body be burnt off by the fire of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. Let the anointing of the Holy Ghost fall upon me and break every negative yoke in the name of Jesus. Let every garment of hindrance and dirtiness be dissolved by the fire of the Holy Ghost in the name of Jesus. I command all my chained blessings to be unchained in the name of Jesus. Let all spiritual cages inhibiting my progress be roasted by the fire of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. Now Make this Powerful Confession Before You Proceed I boldly declare that my body is the temple of God and that the Holy Ghost is dwelling in me. I am cleansed through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, whosoever wants me to go into captivity shall go into captivity. Whosoever wants me to die by the sword shall die by the sword. The strangers shall fade away and be afraid out of their close places in the mighty name of the Lord Jesus Christ. They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth,

Q: What do you think is magical about fiction? DFW: ... The first line of attack for that question is that there is this existential loneliness in the real world. I don't know what you're thinking or what it's like inside you and you don't know what it's like inside me. In fiction I think we can leap over that wall itself in a certain way... There's another level... A really great piece of fiction for me may or may not take me away and make me forget that I'm sitting in a chair. There's real commercial stuff can do that, and a riveting plot can do that, but it doesn't make me feel less lonely... There's a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do. It doesn't happen all the time. It's these brief flashes or flames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone--intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I'm in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don't with other art.

The more rights I surrender and the more I level myself down to others, the more deeply do I sink into the average and ultimately into the greatest number. The first condition which an aristocratic society must have in order to maintain a high degree of freedom among its members, is that extreme tension which arises from the presence of the most antagonistic instincts in all its units: from their will to dominate. . . . If ye would fain do away with strong contrasts and differences of rank, ye will also abolish strong love, lofty attitudes of mind, and the feeling of individuality. Concerning the actual psychology of societies based upon freedom and equality. — What is it that tends to diminish in such a society? The will to be responsible for ones self (the loss of this is a sign of the decline of autonomy); the ability to defend and to attack, even in spiritual matters; the power of command; the sense of reverence, of subservience, the ability to be silent, great passion, great achievements, tragedy and cheerfulness.

Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons, a fierce opponent of the Gnostics, attacked them for their spiritual and literary creativity, accusing them of producing a new gospel every day. Implicit in his statements was the view that where such a wealth of diverse imagery, myth, and teaching exists there can be no coherent doctrine equivalent to the dogma and canon of the mainstream Christian church. What critics from Irenaeus to contemporary scholars lose sight of is that Gnostic teaching is the direct result of the experience of gnosis.

ego perceives itself as a separate fragment in a hostile universe, with no real inner connection to any other being, surrounded by other egos which it either sees as a potential threat or which it will attempt to use for its own ends. The basic ego patterns are designed to combat its own deep-seated fear and sense of lack. They are resistance, control, power, greed, defense, attack. Some of the ego’s strategies are extremely clever, yet they never truly solve any of its problems, simply because the ego itself is the problem.

You have to stay out of the game. It’s deadly and no one ever wins. Everyone is a loser. Even seeming wins are short-lived and have the taste of bitterness mixed in with the satisfaction of personal gain. The ego is exclusive by nature. While the spirit seeks to include, the ego is unashamedly manipulative in its culling of people. The intention of self-aggrandisement is barely even covered over. The soul does not see people in terms of what it can gain. It seeks to share. It seeks to create by extension of its own and others’ true nature. The ego is extremely changeable. It has no stability. Constantly guarding against attack and looking out for its own advantage, its perceptions and thus feelings towards others are ever-shifting. This creates unhappiness. The more we veer away from our true nature, the more unhappy we feel. When we align with our better self, we feel happy again. And so the process continues until the spaces between happiness are not as long and arduous. The presence or absence of personal peace is our barometer. It will guide us even if we are not sure of the way.

Some governments have vast armies and weapons with which to confront other nations or resist their attacks, but only the Christian church has the “military hardware” to intervene in the spiritual realm in the heavenlies. As we have seen in Daniel’s case, the one who wins in the heavenlies ultimately determines the course of history. So, the most significant action you can take for the sake of history is to be an intercessor. By so doing, you will pray through spiritual issues in the heavenlies that will determine the history of nations on earth.

If in your relationships you experience both “love” and the opposite of love — attack, emotional violence, and so on — then it is likely that you are confusing ego attachment and addictive clinging with love. You cannot love your partner one moment and attack him or her the next. True love has no opposite. If your “love” has an opposite, then it is not love but a strong ego-need for a more complete and deeper sense of self, a need that the other person temporarily meets. It is the ego’s substitute for salvation, and for a short time it almost does feel like salvation.

Academic and scholarly study are absolutely necessary for our continued understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live. However, a sense of inhumanity has begun to creep over science and academia, a kind of bureaucracy that chokes almost all possibility of real discovery from ever happening, and even worse, a belief system that very meticulously and deliberately attacks spirituality, religion and consciousness in every way possible. Materialist science reduces everything to matter. The human being, in the opinion of the materialist scientist, is nothing more than meat.

First, remember how Control Dramas get started in the first place. When people feel insecure, they do things to feel better in various ways. We don’t just have to defend against our own hurts and anxieties; we also have to defend against others who we think are trying to put us down or otherwise manipulate us to steal our energy. When someone puts us down, we sense that we are under attack and pay attention to them. Because “where attention goes, energy flows,” they get a hit of energy from us and we feel diminished. So we tend to fight back by putting them down or manipulating them in return to get the energy back. As you read in Celestine, this is the game played by too many, keeping too much conflict and corruption in the world. But this is all Ego stuff, of course, developed initially in insecure families. You already know the cure is to always be Spiritually Connected so we have our own centered inner security, which gives us an endless supply of energy, regardless of who is trying to steal it. We don’t have to play these games any longer. Here is what to do: simply stay connected with the person, giving them energy, and then “name their game.” For instance, if you are facing a “poor me” drama, in which the person wants to make you feel guilty about something you didn’t intend to do, simply say, “I am feeling that I’m being forced to feel guilty.” And stick to that. Don’t defend yourself. Just keep explaining your experience of the situation. Keep sending love. They might need to retreat, but you aren’t affected. You are a giver, secure in yourself. You cleared an inauthentic game by expressing authentic honesty. You offered your experience of the situation. Whether the other person wanted to or not, in response to your authenticity, they will find themselves becoming more authentic as well. And since you aren’t disconnecting, it opens the door to talk about true feelings in a relationship. Sometimes it’s the “aloof” Control Drama you’re facing, and the person is using distancing or mystification to get you to keep asking questions in order to win your energy. Collapse their game by giving them energy anyway and authentically saying, “I feel like I really can’t get to know you because you don’t share details about yourself.” Similarly, if you are facing an “Interrogator” who bids for energy by constantly finding something to criticize about you, simply say that you feel criticized and put down when you are with them. They will feel your energy and authentic sincerity and, again, will grow more authentic themselves, right in front of your eyes. The same name-the-game approach also works for the most aggressive Control Drama, the “Intimidator,” trying to get energy from you by telling you they are going to blow up and do something crazy, literally trying to scare you into giving them energy. Gently name the game, but be careful—sometimes it is more prudent to remove yourself from the situation.

Transcendental generosity is generally misunderstood in the study of the Buddhist scriptures as meaning being kind to someone who is lower than you.  Someone has this pain and suffering and you are in a superior position and can save them—which is a very simple-minded way of looking down on someone.  But in the case of the bodhisattva, generosity is not so callous.  It is something very strong and powerful; it is communication.   Communication must transcend irritation, otherwise it will be like trying to make a comfortable bed in a briar patch.  The penetrating qualities of external color, energy, and light will come toward us, penetrating our attempts to communicate like a thorn pricking our skin.  We will wish to subdue this intense irritation and our communication will be blocked.   Communication must be radiation and receiving and exchange.  Whenever irritation is involved, then we are not able to see properly and fully and clearly the spacious quality of that which is coming toward us, that which is presenting itself as communication.  The external world is immediately rejected by our irritation which says, “no, no, this irritates me, go away.”  Such an attitude is the complete opposite of transcendental generosity.   So the bodhisattva must experience the complete communication of generosity, transcending irritation and self-defensiveness.  Otherwise, when thorns threaten to prick us, we feel that we are being attacked, that we must defend ourselves.  We run away from the tremendous opportunity for communication that has been given to us, and we have not been brave enough even to look to the other shore of the river.  We are looking back and trying to run away.   Generosity is a willingness to give, to open without philosophical or pious or religious motives, just simply doing what is required at any moment in any situation, not being afraid to receive anything.  Opening could take place in the middle of a highway.  We are not afraid that smog and dust or people’s hatreds and passions will overwhelm us; we simply open, completely surrender, give.  This means that we do not judge, do not evaluate.  If we attempt to judge or evaluate our experience, if we try to decide to what extent we should open, to what extent we should remain closed, the openness will have no meaning at all and the idea of paramita, of transcendental generosity, will be in vain.  Our action will not transcend anything, will cease to be the act of a bodhisattva.   The whole implication of the idea of transcendence is that we see through the limited notions, the limited conceptions, the warfare mentality of this as opposed to that. Generally, when we look at an object, we do not allow ourselves to see it properly.  Automatically we see our version of the object instead of actually seeing the object as it is.  Then we are quite satisfied, because we have manufactured or own version of the thing within ourselves.   Then we comment on it, we judge, we take or reject; but there is on real communication going on at all.   Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, p.167, Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche

To be pre-occupied means to fill our time and place long before we are there. This is worrying in the more specific sense of the word. It is a mind filled with “ifs.” We say to ourselves, “What if I get the flu? What if I lose my job? What if my child is not home on time? What if there is not enough food tomorrow? What if I am attacked? What if a war starts? What if the world comes to an end? What if . . . ?” All these “ifs” fill our minds with anxious thoughts and make us wonder constantly what to do and what to say in case something should happen in the future. Much, if not most, of our suffering is connected with these preoccupations

Always Remember That, It Is Only The Warrior Who Has Given His/Her All To Defend Himself/Herself And Protect Dear Ones Wisely, Ethically And Morally, Using All The Non-Violent, Non-Offensive And Purely Defensive Means, Methods, Tactics, Strategies; Spiritually, Mentally & Physically Possible AND YET FAILED (Because Of The Obvious Lack Of Skills, Knowledge Or Wisdom etc.), Who Is Actually The Only One, Who Has The Right To (VERY UNFORTUNATELY) Resort To Defensive-Offensive Or Worse Purely Offensive Means, That Might Even Result In The Death Of The Attacker... And So Is The Only One Who Can Confidently And Justly, But Not Proudly, Justify It....

​Banner went on to preach the need of mature Christians to take more responsibility for the state of today’s culture, to be examples of the light of Jesus, and use Christ’s authority to improve the world. ​“Our world is under attack, like never before from the evil one,” he said. “And it will only get worse, much worse. It’s time for every Christian to fight the good fight. We can no longer sit on our hands and allow the disintegration of our society. Get involved with church or Christian groups that evangelize and fight for Christian values. It is the responsibility of every one of you to use your spiritual gifts and find God’s plan for your life.”   ​Finally,

Indeed, Newton confessed, “an evil heart of unbelief fills my sky with many clouds.”73 This lack of trust in God “is the primary cause of all our inquietude.”74 Newton prayed hard against the unbelief in his heart: “For this I sigh and long, and cry to the Lord to rend the veil of unbelief, scatter the clouds of ignorance, and break down the walls which sin is daily building up to hide him from my eyes.”75 Yet in our pride we hold tightly to our cares and open ourselves to spiritual attack (1 Pet. 5:6–8). We pull anxiety close like a blanket, so close that we cover our faces and cloud our souls from the victory and sovereign reign of Christ in the heavens. Even worse, unbelief makes us despondent. By faith we see our sin more clearly, and we see the sufficiency of Christ, which brings daily opportunities for joy in Christ. In turn, joy in Christ brings spiritual fortitude. “The joy of the Lord is the strength of his people: whereas unbelief makes our hands hang down, and our knees feeble, dispirits ourselves, and discourages others; and though it steals upon us under a semblance of humility, it is indeed the very essence of pride.”76 Pride exchanges joy in Christ for a cloud of spiritual despondency. Unbelief also brings insecurity about our salvation, and insecurity in Christ carries compounded anxieties and doubts to snuff out joy in Christ.

Listen: There are two things the Devil is deathly afraid of: fervent Communions and frequent visits to the Blessed Sacrament. Do you want Our Lord to grant you many graces? Visit him often. Do you want Him to grant you only a few? Visit Him only seldom. Do you want the Devil to attack you? Rarely visit the Blessed Sacrament. Do you want the Devil to flee from you? Visit Jesus often. Do you want to overcome the Devil? Take refuge at Jesus’ feet. Do you want to be overcome by the Devil? Give up visiting Jesus. Visiting the Blessed Sacrament is essential, my dear boys, if you want to overcome the Devil. Therefore, make frequent visits to Jesus. If you do that, the Devil will never prevail against you.

In our scholarly work, we must never substitute pious posturing for actual research and engagement with the evidence. It is an ever-present temptation for Christian scholars engaged in a given debate to present themselves and their position as the “spiritual,” godly, or Christian interpretation or argument. This manner of framing an issue rarely focuses on the evidence itself and regularly serves to alienate the opposing side, whether nonconfessional or other Christian scholars. Such pious posturing also is guilty of committing the fallacy of engaging in an ad hominem argument. You attack the spirituality of your opponent in a given interchange and imply that anyone holding to such a position cannot be spiritual. Pious

Remember, please remember, you do not (you must not!) fear, attack, or hate the False Self. That would only continue a negative and arrogant death energy, and it is delusional and counterproductive anyway. It would be trying to “drive out the devil by the prince of devils,” as Jesus puts it. In the great economy of grace, all is used and transformed, and nothing is wasted. God uses your various False Selves to lead you beyond them. Note that Jesus' clear message to his beloved, Mary Magdalene, is not that she squelch, deny, or destroy her human love for him. He is much more subtle than that. He just says to her, “Do not cling to me” (John 20:17). He is saying, “Don't hold on to your needy False Self. We are all heading for something much bigger and much better, Mary.” This is the spiritual art of detachment, which is not taught much in capitalistic worldview where clinging and possessing are not just the norm but even the goal. You see how trapped we are. Great love is both very attached (“passionate”) and yet very detached at the same time. It is love but not addiction. The soul, the True Self, has everything, and so it does not require any particular thing. When you have all things, you do not have to protect any one thing. True Self can love and let go. The False Self cannot do this. The “do not cling to me” encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene is the most painted Easter scene, I am told. The artistic imagination knew that a seeming contradiction was playing out here: intense love and yet appropriate distance. The soul and the spirit tend to love and revel in paradoxes; they operate by resonance and reflection. The ego (False Self) wants to resolve all paradoxes in a most glib way and thinks that it can. It operates in a way that is mechanical and instrumental. This is not always bad, but it is surely limited. The ego would like Mary Magdalene and Jesus to be caught up in a passionate love affair. Of course they are, in the deepest sense of the term, but only the True Self knows how to enjoy and picture “a love of already satisfied desire.” The True Self and False Self see differently; both are necessary, but one is better, bigger, and even eternal.

But the human character, however it may be exalted or depressed by a temporary enthusiasm, will return, by degrees, to its proper and natural level, and will resume those passions that seem the most adapted to its present condition. The primitive Christians were dead to the business and pleasures of the world; but their love of action, which could never be entirely extinguished, soon revived, and found a new occupation in the government of the church. A separate society, which attacked the established religion of the empire, was obliged to adopt some form of internal policy, and to appoint a sufficient number of ministers, intrusted not only with the spiritual functions, but even with the temporal direction of the Christian commonwealth

It is sheer fantasy to think that you can ever transform your grandiose energies so they will never seduce you again, that you can ever prevent your grandiosity from being seductive. Sometimes people think if they just prayed enough, or went to enough masses, then their grandiosity would stop being seductive. Or if they became a cardinal, or a bishop, or a mother superior, it would not be seductive anymore. The truth, of course, is just the opposite, because the more successful you get, the more seductive grandiosity gets. The more traumas and tragedies you have in your life, the more grandiosity will attack you. It can tell you how impressive it is that you are still alive, or it can chide you into depression by suggesting you might as well go ahead and commit suicide. Many suicidal thoughts come from a grandiose perfectionism.

It is the one who accepts commitment who is strong. The true commitment is the artistic one. This is why artists are so often attacked. They are attacked for their morals, for their ideas – even for their work. Yet their essence – their commitment – is the secret which is unassailable. The true artist knows that creativity is its own reward. Ordinary people fear commitment, you see. Ordinary people fear creativity. They know that if they allow that seething cauldron of yellow liquid to boil over within themselves, then their whole lives will be changed. People fear change. People do not wish to be creative and artistic in any real sense. They wish to decorate, perhaps, and to make things around themselves pleasant – but this has little to do with creativity. … All spiritual paths should be creative. Creativity is involved with sacrifice. That stew of yellow liquid which boils in everyone is a sacrificial broth …

hold of people’s minds and actually control them. View a corporate stronghold like the giant squid that attacked Captain Nemo’s Nautilus in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, waiting for people to swim near so it could wrap its tentacles about them. Whenever people begin to think in certain ways, principalities can maneuver appropriate corporate strongholds into position to clamp about them and actually rob them of the freedom to think. While individual strongholds serve as lodgings for local ruling demons, corporate strongholds offer a home to what Paul referred to: Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:11–12, italics mine Corporate strongholds are wielded by principalities, rulers, demonic archangels that use them to imprison the minds and control the thoughts of entire peoples—nations, cities, denominations, local churches, political parties, even philanthropic groups. If you have ever asked, “How could principalities become world rulers of this present darkness?” the foremost answer lies here—by means of corporate strongholds. The function of a corporate stronghold is to imprison the minds of a people or group, to take away their freedom to think anything— including cold, hard facts and logic—contrary to the mindset of the stronghold. It hypnotizes whomever its spell overshadows, so that they cannot see portions of the Word of God (or even secular truths) that might set them free from its delusive grip. But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 2 Corinthians 3:14–16, italics mine That veil, to me, is a corporate stronghold of

and, finally, they knew the value of using what he calls “spiritual and physical terror.” This third lesson, though it was surely based on faulty observation and compounded of his own immense prejudices, intrigued the young Hitler. Within ten years he would put it to good use for his own ends. I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movement exerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is neither morally nor mentally equal to such attacks; at a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down… This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty… I achieved an equal understanding of the importance of physical terror toward the individual and the masses… For while in the ranks of their supporters the victory achieved seems a triumph of the justice of their own cause, the defeated adversary in most cases despairs of the success of any further resistance.

I wanted to ask you if you know the answer to a riddle." "Fire away." "Samson told it. The strong guy in the Bible? It goes like this--" "'Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.' That's the one?" "Yeah, it is. How'd you know--?" "Oh, I've been around the block a time or two. Listen to this: 'Samson and a lion got in attack, And Samson climbed up on the lion's back. Well, you've read about lion killin men with their paws, But Samson put his hands round the lion's jaws! He rode that lion 'til the beast fell dead, And the bees made honey in the lion's head.' That answer to your question, friend?" "Wow! Good song! Where'd you hear it?" "Oh, Aaron knows them all. He was hanging around Bleecker Street back before Bob Dylan knew how to blow more than open G on his Hohner. At least, if you believe HIM." "It's an old spiritual. By the way, you're in check, fatso." "Not for long." "So the answer is a lion." "Wrong. Only HALF the answer. Samson's Riddle is a DOUBLE, my friend. The other half of the answer is honey. Get it?" "Yes, I think so.

MARCH 4 YOU WILL PURSUE YOUR ENEMIES AND OVERTAKE THEM MY PRECIOUS CHILD, you do not need to be filled with terror and fear when your enemies plot against you and pursue you. Trust instead in Me, for indeed I am Your God, and your times are indeed in My hands. In the shelter of My presence you are hidden from your enemies and from the intrigues of evil men. Do not be afraid of your enemies. I have given them into your hand. Not one of them will be able to withstand you. But don’t stop—pursue your enemies. Attack them from the rear, for I, the Lord your God, have given them into your hand. I will remove your enemies from your land just as I would remove savage beasts, and the sword will not pass through your country. PSALM 31:14–15, 20; JOSHUA 10:8, 19; LEVITICUS 26:6–8 Prayer Declaration I trust You, Lord. I celebrate and shout because You are kind. You saw all my suffering, and You cared for me. You kept me from the hands of my enemies, and You set me free. I will praise You, Lord, for showing great kindness when I was like a city under attack. You answered my prayer when I shouted for help.

Darwin and Nietzsche were the common spiritual and intellectual source for the mean-spirited and bellicose ideological assault on progress, liberalism, and democracy that fired the late-nineteenth-century campaign to preserve or rejuvenate the traditional order. Presensitized for this retreat from modernity, prominent fin-de-siècle aesthetes, engages literati, polemical publicists, academic sociologists, and last but not least, conservative and reactionary politicians became both consumers and disseminators of the untried action-ideas. Oscar Wilde and Stefan George were perhaps most representative of the aristocratizing aesthetes whose rush into dandyism or retreat into cultural monasticism was part of the outburst against bourgeois philistinism and social levelling. Their yearning for a return to an aristocratic past and their aversion to the invasive democracy of their day were shared by Thomas Mann and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, whose nostalgia for the presumably superior sensibilities of a bygone cultivated society was part of their claim to privileged social space and position in the present. Although they were all of burgher or bourgeois descent, they extolled ultra-patrician values and poses, thereby reflecting and advancing the rediscovery and reaffirmation of the merits and necessities of elitism. Theirs was not simply an aesthetic and unpolitical posture precisely because they knowingly contributed to the exaltation of societal hierarchy at a time when this exaltation was being used to do battle against both liberty and equality. At any rate, they may be said to have condoned this partisan attack by not explicitly distancing themselves from it. Maurice Barrès, Paul Bourget, and Gabriele D'Annunzio were not nearly so self-effacing. They were not only conspicuous and active militants of antidemocratic elitism, but they meant their literary works to convert the reader to their strident persuasion. Their polemical statements and their novels promoted the cult of the superior self and nation, in which the Church performed the holy sacraments. Barrès, Bourget, and D'Annunzio were purposeful practitioners of the irruptive politics of nostalgia that called for the restoration of enlightened absolutism, hierarchical society. and elite culture in the energizing fires of war.

MARCH 6 YOU WILL DEFEAT THE ENEMIES OF YOUR FINANCES I HAVE PROMISED that I will defend My people and keep them from harm. I will strike your enemies with great panic, and they will seize each other by the hand and attack one another. The wealth of all your surrounding enemies will be collected—great quantities of silver and gold and material possessions—and will be given to My people. Blessed is the man who fears Me and finds great delight in My commands. Your children will be mighty in the land, and your generations will be blessed. Honor Me with the wealth that I give to you, and your barns will be filled to overflowing. My blessing upon you brings wealth, and I will add no trouble to it. ZECHARIAH 14:13–14; PSALM 112:2–3; JOHN 10:10 Prayer Declaration In the name of Jesus I bind and cast out every thief that would try to steal my finances. The Lord will rebuild the finances of His people and give the treasures of the nations to them. I will not put my hope in my wealth, but I will place my hope in God, who richly has provided me with everything for my enjoyment. I will lay up treasure for myself in heaven and take hold of life eternal.

He was sitting at his desk. He had to get some relief from seeing what he did not want to see. The factory was empty. There was only the night watchman who’d come on duty with his dogs. He was down in the parking lot, patrolling the perimeter of the double-thick chain-link fence, a fence topped off, after the riots, with supplemental scrolls of razor ribbon that were to admonish the boss each and every morning he pulled in and parked his car, “Leave! Leave! Leave!” He was sitting alone in the last factory left in the worst city in the world. And it was worse even than sitting there during the riots, Springfield Avenue in flames, South Orange Avenue in flames, Bergen Street under attack, sirens going off, weapons firing, snipers from rooftops blasting the street lights, looting crowds crazed in the street, kids carrying off radios and lamps and television sets, men toting armfuls of clothing, women pushing baby carriages heavily loaded with cartons of liquor and cases of beer, people pushing pieces of new furniture right down the center of the street, stealing sofas, cribs, kitchen tables, stealing washers and dryers and ovens—stealing not in the shadows but out in the open. Their strength is tremendous, their teamwork is flawless. The shattering of glass windows is thrilling. The not paying for things is intoxicating. The American appetite for ownership is dazzling to behold. This is shoplifting. Everything free that everyone craves, a wonton free-for-all free of charge, everyone uncontrollable with thinking, Here it is! Let it come! In Newark’s burning Mardi Gras streets, a force is released that feels redemptive, something purifying is happening, something spiritual and revolutionary perceptible to all. The surreal vision of household appliances out under the stars and agleam in the glow of the flames incinerating the Central Ward promises the liberation of all mankind. Yes, here it is, let it come, yes, the magnificent opportunity, one of human history’s rare transmogrifying moments: the old ways of suffering are burning blessedly away in the flames, never again to be resurrected, instead to be superseded, within only hours, by suffering that will be so gruesome, so monstrous, so unrelenting and abundant, that its abatement will take the next five hundred years. The fire this time—and next? After the fire? Nothing. Nothing in Newark ever again.

It is very impressive, to notice that whatsoever you make a person believe about you, that person will rush to represent within his role, as if he or she was mentally programmed to play the drama being offered. People are so trapped within their mind, that they end up always acting inside a theatre, in which their part has been foreseen long before they entered the roles they represent. Likewise, they become easily predictable, programmable, influenceable, manipulated, played like a string puppet. And these puppets become funnier, when mentioning mental programming, fearing mental programing and attacking mental programming, while not realizing that they are doing it, using the words, and gestures, and even phrases, that they were programmed to do, by those who program them. The one with a poor conscience is always a poor actor within his own life. He perfectly represents it, without any awareness. If he had any, he would probably not do it. But what else could he do? As prisoners in a cell with an open door, they ask when presented with freedom: “What shall I do if all I know is this?” And so, they remain inside of it, waiting for someone to tell them an answer they cannot ever understand before they see it for themselves.

Hence, if we follow out this idea, their opposition must not be conceived as something to be done away with, but on the contrary as something useful and life-promoting that should be preserved and strengthened. This is a direct attack on the predominance of the one differentiated and socially valuable function, since that is the prime cause of the suppression and depletion of the inferior functions. It would amount to a slave rebellion against the heroic ideal which compels us to sacrifice everything else for the sake of the one. If this principle, which, as we saw, was developed in particularly high degree by Christianity for the spiritualizing of man, and then proved equally effective in furthering his materialistic ends, were once finally broken, the inferior functions would find a natural release and would demand, rightly or wrongly, the same recognition as the differentiated function. The complete opposition between sensuousness and spirituality, or between the feeling-sensation and thinking of the introverted thinking type, would then be openly revealed. But, as Schiller says, this complete opposition also entails a reciprocal limitation, equivalent psychologically to an abolition of the power principle, i.e., to a renunciation of the claim to a universally valid standpoint on the strength of one differentiated and adapted collective function.

The alternative to violence is nonviolent resistance. This method was made famous in our generation by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who used it to free India from the domination of the British empire. Five points can be made concerning nonviolence as a method in bringing about better racial conditions. First, this is not a method for cowards; it does resist. The nonviolent resister is just as strongly opposed to the evil against which he protests as the person who uses violence. His method is passive or nonaggressive in the sense that he is not physically aggressive toward his opponent. But his mind and emotions are always active, constantly seeking to persuade the opponent that he is mistaken. This method is passive physically but strongly active spiritually; it is nonaggressive physically but dynamically aggressive spiritually. A second point is that nonviolent resistance does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but he realizes that noncooperation and boycotts are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness. A third characteristic of this method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who are caught in those forces. It is evil we are seeking to defeat, not just the persons victimized by evil. Those of us who struggle against racial injustice must come to see that the basic tension is not between races. As I like to say to the people in Montgomery, Alabama: ‘The tension in this city is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is at bottom between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. And if there is a victory it will be a victory not merely for fifty thousand Negroes, but a victory for justice and the forces of light. We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may happen to be unjust.’ A fourth point that must be brought out concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. In struggling for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives.

Why Is a Path Important? We all know people who make a lot of money, but hate their work. We also know people who do not make a lot of money and hate their work. And we all know people who just work for money. A classmate of mine from the Merchant Marine Academy also realized he did not want to spend his life at sea. Rather than sail for the rest of his life, he went to law school after graduation, spending three more years becoming a lawyer and entering private practice in the S quadrant. He died in his early fifties. He had become a very successful, unhappy lawyer. Like me, he had two professions by the time he was 26. Although he hated being a lawyer, he continued being a lawyer because he had a family, kids, a mortgage, and bills to pay. A year before he died, I met him at a class reunion in New York. He was a bitter man. “All I do is sweep up behind rich guys like you. They pay me nothing. I hate what I do and who I work for.” “Why don’t you do something else?” I asked. “I can’t afford to stop working. My first child is entering college.” He died of a heart attack before she graduated. He made a lot of money via his professional training, but he was emotionally angry, spiritually dead, and soon his body followed. I realize this is an extreme example. Most people do not hate what they do as much as my friend did. Yet it illustrates the problem when a person is trapped in a profession and unable to find their path.

Sending out the Disciples Luke 10 1: AFTER THESE THINGS THE LORD APPOINTED OTHER SEVENTY DISCIPLES AND HE SENT THEM TWO AND TWO BEFORE HIS FACE INTO EVERY CITY AND PLACE; WHITHER HE HIMSELF WOULD COME God is here and now. God is not something outside you, God is within you. God is the innermost core of existence. That is what Jesus means with: "Repent, for the kingdom of God is near". God is not separate from the creation. He is one with the creation. When you understand this, your life becomes a prayer. When you understand this, you will understand that existence is a family. You will understand that life is togetherness. When we discover our authentic inner being, the kingdom of God, we understand that everybody is a messenger. We discover that the divine source expands, and we spread love to all with whom we interact. Jesus sent out his disciples two and two, so that they did not have to go alone. They went two and two in friendship, in love, in trust, so that they could help each other. THEREFORE SAID HE UNTO THEM, THE HARVEST TRULY IS GREAT, BUT THE LABORERS ARE FEW The harvest is great, but there are not many laborers. People are deaf and blind. Somebody like Jesus comes, and you do not want to listen. It has always been like this. Rather than listening to Jesus, people get so jealous of Jesus, that they crucified him. Only very aware and understanding people will listen to Jesus. GO YOUR WAYS: BEHOLD I SEND YOU FORTH AS LAMBS AMONG THE WOLVES Jesus knows that he is sending his disciples into a dangerous world. People will not understand what they say, they do not want to listen, and they cling to their ideas and their tradition. Jesus knows that trust is to be attacked. He knows that love is to be attacked. CARRY NEITHER PURSE, NOR SHOES, AND SALUTE NO MAN BY THE WAY AND INTO WHATSOVER HOUSE YE ENTER, FIRST SAY, PEACE BE TO THIS HOUSE Jesus says that the love and the truth can create troubles for you. "Do not carry purse, do not wear shoes, go barefoot. Do not salute no man on the road". Be ordinary, be simple, be egoless. Jesus says bring peace to the house, because only in that peaceful milieu can the message can delievered. Create a spiritual vibration of peace, spread the feeling of peace, and if you are really feeling it, it will spread. When somebody comes to see you, settle within yourself, Become silent. And you will see a change in the man. We are joined together by our hearts. We exist as parts of one heart. That heart is God. If you create a feeling of peace, it will spread around you. If your gift of peace is accepted, it will be good. If it is not accepted, if you gift is rejcted, it is also good. The peace will still shower on you. HE THAT HEARETH YOU, HEARETH ME, AND HE THAT DESPISETH YOU, DESPISETH ME: AND HE THAT DESPISETH ME DESPISETH HIM THAT SENT ME Jesus says: If people hear you, they hear me. And if they hear me, they hear the one who has sent me.

(FIRE) THE BOOK OF SATAN THE INFERNAL DIATRIBE The first book of the Satanic Bible is not an attempt to blaspheme as much as it is a statement of what might be termed 'diabolical indignation'. The Devil has been attacked by the men of God relentlessly and without reservation. Never has there been an opportunity, short of fiction, for the Dark Prince to speak out in the same manner as the spokesmen of the Lord of the Righteous. The pulpit-pounders of the past have been free to define 'good' and 'evil' as they see fit, and have gladly smashed into oblivion any who disagree with their lies - both verbally and, at time, physically. Their talk of 'charity', when applied to His Infernal Majesty, becomes an empty sham - and most unfairly, too, considering the obvious fact that without their Satanic foe their very religions would collapse. How sad, that the allegorical personage most responsible for the success of spiritual religions is show the least amount of charity and the most consistent abuse - and by those who most unctuously preach the rules of fair play! For all the centuries of shouting-down the Devil has received, he has never shouted back at his detractors. He has remained the gentleman at all times, while those he supports rant and rave. He has shown himself to be a model of deportment, but now he feels it is time to receive his due. Now the ponderous rule-books of hypocrisy are no longer needed. In order to relearn the Law of the Jungle, a small, slim diatribe will do. Each verse is an inferno. Each word is a tongue of fire. The flames of Hell burn fierce... and purify! Read on and learn the Law.

In a way, Star Wars could be interpreted as an extended reflection on what might have happened if Jesus had said yes to Satan’s offer. Qui-Gon wants to train Anakin to be a member of the Jedi, a diverse group of humans and other creatures who have a special connection to “the Force” (a kind of cosmic, spiritual energy). He believes that Anakin is “the chosen one,” born to defeat the dark side and restore balance to the Force, but he must convince the Jedi Council. As the council begins to interview Anakin, Yoda (a froglike Jedi with unusual syntax) probes his fear: Yoda: How feel you? Anakin: Cold, sir. Yoda: Afraid are you? Anakin: No, sir. Yoda: See through you we can. Mace Windu: Be mindful of your feelings. Ki-Adi-Mundi: Your thoughts dwell on your mother. Anakin: I miss her. Yoda: Afraid to lose her I think, hmm? Anakin: What has that got to do with anything? Yoda: Everything! Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you.20 Yoda’s words foreshadow the path that will lead Anakin to embrace evil and ultimately become Darth Vader. Nonetheless, many on the council believe Anakin to be the chosen one, spoken of by the prophets, and they allow him to train. In Episode II, Anakin’s fear becomes reality as his mother is kidnapped and killed by the sandpeople. Anakin is filled with rage, and he attacks their village, murdering not only the men but women and children as well. This scene augurs a later, even darker moment in Episode III, when Anakin will slay a gathering of children who are being trained as Jedis. As Yoda predicted, Anakin’s fear has multiplied and born fruit in anger, hate, and suffering.

Irene: Why would anyone choose to experience illness or disease as part of their spiritual agenda? Jared: The purpose of disease varies with each individual. For most people, disease serves to end physical life when the soul’s agenda has been fulfilled. Irene: An exit strategy. Jared: Yes. Disease also helps people put things in proper perspective and discover what’s really important. Irene: My brother Joe comes to mind. Since suffering a mild heart attack, he’s less judgmental and more accepting. Jared: Precisely. Disease also serves to remind people that control is an illusion and that a greater Power is directing life, providing them with an opportunity to surrender to that Power. Irene: That’s a good example of why it’s impossible to judge a situation as “good,” or “bad.” (Pause) In what other ways do illness and disease serve us? Jared: When people are no longer able to do things the same way they used to, disease can lead to deeper levels of compassion for oneself, as well as for others who are facing similar challenges. Irene: Sometimes we need a wake-up call to open our hearts. Jared: That’s true. As people begin to appreciate what they’d once taken for granted, disease can also assist them in accessing gratitude; maybe they hadn’t stopped to enjoy the changing colors in the evening sky, or maybe it takes being home with an illness to help them appreciate their family. Irene: It’s all for our highest good. Jared: Yes, it is. (Pause) Disease can also provide an opportunity to ask for assistance. People are forced to call on the service of others, who are given the chance to help. Irene: That’s my Achilles heel. I don’t like to impose on others. Anything else? Jared: Yes. People are often more receptive to the wisdom of their soul as a result of disease.

Perhaps the elements of memory in plants are superficially treated," he writes, "but at least there they are in black and white! Yet no one calls his friends or neighbors, no one shouts in a drunken voice over the telephone: Have you heard the news? Plants can feel! They can feel pain! They cry out! Plants remember everything!" When Soloukhin began to telephone his own friends in excitement he learned from one of them that a prominent member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, working in Akademgorodok, the new town inhab­ ited almost exclusively by research scientists on the outskirts of Siberia's largest industrial center, Novosibirsk, had stated: Don't be amazed! We too are carrying out many experiments of this kind and they all point to one thing: plants have memory. They are able to gather impressions and retain them over long periods. We had a man molest, even torture, a geranium for several days in a row. He pinched it, tore it, pricked its leaves with a needle, dripped acid on its living tissues, burned it with a lighted match, and cut its roots. Another man took tender care of the same geranium, watered it, worked its soil, sprayed it with fresh water, supported its heavy branches, and treated its burns and wounds. When we electroded our instruments to the plant, what do you think? No sooner did the torturer come near the plant than the recorder of the instrument began to go wild. The plant didn't just get "nervous"; it was afraid, it was horrified. If it could have, it would have either thrown itself out the window or attacked its torturer. Hardly had this inquisitor left and the good man taken his place near the plant than the geranium was appeased, its impulses died down, the recorder traced out smooth­ one might almost say tender-lines on the graph.

The Deepening Though in the wake of 9/11 Americans gathered in houses of worship across the land and it appeared as if there would be a national return to God—it never came. In place of the revival was a spiritual and moral apostasy that was unprecedented in its scope and accelerating pace. There was now increasing talk concerning the end of “Christian America.” Polls noticed a growing departure from biblical ethics and values. The turn was most pronounced among the younger generation, portending a future of even greater moral and spiritual departure. In the fall of ancient Israel the nation decided it could rewrite morality and change what was good and evil, sin and righteousness—so too in America. What had once been recognized as right was now attacked as evil, and what had once been recognized as sin was now celebrated as a virtue. Morals, standards, and values that had undergirded not only the nation’s foundation, but also the foundation of Western civilization and civilization itself, were increasingly overturned, overruled, and discarded. And those who would not go along with the change—who merely continued to uphold that which had once been universally upheld—were now increasingly marginalized, vilified, condemned by the culture and the state, and persecuted. And not only did the blood of unborn children continue to flow, as it did in ancient Israel, but the number of those killed was now well over fifty million, a population of many Israels. The nation’s moral descent had now reached the point where the government was seeking to force those who held to God’s Word to go against that Word, punishing resistance with fines, damages, and condemnation. Any deviation from the new ethics of apostasy was swiftly punished. At the same time, the name of God increasingly became the object of attack, mockery, and blasphemy.

Door: So spiritual direction is a slow process that looks idle and inefficient. Peterson: It's subversive. I'm a subversive, really. I gather the people in worship, I pray for them, I engage them often in matters of spiritual correction, and I take them on two really strong retreats a year. I am a true subversive. We live in a culture that we think is Christian. When a congregation gathers in a church, they assume they are among friends in a basically friendly world (with the exception of pornographers, etc.). If I, as their pastor, get up and tell them the world is not friendly and they are really idol worshippers, they think I'm crazy. This culture has twisted all of our metaphors and images and structures of understanding. But I can't say that directly. The only way that you can approach people is indirectly, obliquely. A head-on attack doesn't work. Jesus was the master of indirection. The parables are subversive. His hyperboles are indirect. There is a kind of outrageous quality to them that defies common sense, but later on the understanding comes. The largest poetic piece in the Bible, Revelation, is a subversive piece. Instead of (being) a three-point lecturer, the pastor is instead a storyteller and a pray-er. Prayer and story become the primary means by which you get past people's self-defense mechanisms. In my book, I say it this way: "I must remember that I am a subversive. My long-term effectiveness depends on my not being recognized for who I am as a pastor. If the church member actually realized that the American way of life is doomed to destruction and that another kingdom is right now being formed in secret to take its place, he wouldn't be pleased at all. If he knew what I was really doing and the difference it was making, he would fire me." True subversion requires patience. You slowly get cells of people who are believing in what you are doing, participating in it.

(Notably, temporary loss of blood or oxygen or excess carbon dioxide in the blood can also cause a disruption in the temporoparietal region and induce out-of-body experiences, which may explain the prevalence of these sensations during accidents, emergencies, heart attacks, etc.) NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES But perhaps the most dramatic category of out-of-body experiences are the near-death stories of individuals who have been declared dead but then mysteriously regained consciousness. In fact, 6 to 12 percent of survivors of cardiac arrest report having near-death experiences. It’s as though they have cheated death itself. When interviewed, they have dramatic tales of the same experience: they left their body and drifted toward a bright light at the end of a long tunnel. The media have seized upon this, with numerous best sellers and TV documentaries devoted to these theatrical stories. Many bizarre theories have been proposed to explain near-death experiences. In a poll of two thousand people, fully 42 percent believed that near-death experiences were proof of contact with the spiritual world that lies beyond death. (Some believe that the body releases endorphins—natural narcotics—before death. This may explain the euphoria that people feel, but not the tunnel and the bright lights.) Carl Sagan even speculated that near-death experiences were a reliving of the trauma of birth. The fact that these individuals recount very similar experiences doesn’t necessarily corroborate their glimpses into the afterlife; in fact, it seems to indicate that there is some deep neurological event happening. Neurologists have looked into this phenomenon seriously and suspect that the key may be the decrease of blood flow to the brain that often accompanies near-death cases, and which also occurs in fainting. Dr. Thomas Lempert, a neurologist at the Castle Park Clinic in Berlin, conducted a series of experiments on forty-two healthy individuals, causing them to faint under controlled laboratory conditions. Sixty percent of them had visual hallucinations (e.g., bright lights and colored patches). Forty-seven percent of them felt that they were entering another world. Twenty percent claimed to have encountered a supernatural being. Seventeen percent saw a bright light. Eight percent saw a tunnel. So fainting can mimic all the sensations people have in near-death experiences

When someone goes to the doctor and says, “I hear a voice in my head,” he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don’t realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues. You have probably come across “mad” people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that’s not much different from what you and all other “normal” people do, except that you don’t do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn’t necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or “mental movies.” Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person’s own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease. The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by “watching the thinker,” which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence. When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You’ll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.

FREEING YOURSELF FROM YOUR MIND What exactly do you mean by “watching the thinker”? When someone goes to the doctor and says, “I hear a voice in my head,” he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don’t realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues. You have probably come across “mad” people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that’s not much different from what you and all other “normal” people do, except that you don’t do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn’t necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or “mental movies.” Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person’s own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease. The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by “watching the thinker,” which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence. When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You’ll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.

APRIL 6 Don’t be discouraged at the spiritual war you’re called to fight every day. The Lord almighty is with you and wars on your behalf. Between the “already” and the “not yet,” life is war. It can be exhausting, frustrating, and discouraging. We all go through moments when we wish life could just be easier. We wonder why parenting has to be such a continual spiritual battle. We all wish our marriages could be free of war. We all would love it if there were no conflicts at our jobs or in our churches. But we all wake up to a war-torn world every day. It is the sad legacy of a world that has been broken by sin and is constantly under the attack of the enemy. The way the apostle Paul ends his letter to the Ephesian church is interesting and instructive. Having laid out the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ and having detailed their implications for our street-level living, he ends by talking about spiritual warfare: Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak. (Eph. 6:10–20) When you get to this final part of Paul’s letter, it’s tempting to think that he has entirely changed the subject. No longer, it seems, is he talking about everyday Christianity. But that’s exactly what he’s talking about. He is saying to the Ephesian believers, “You know all that I’ve said about marriage, parenting, communication, anger, the church, and so on—it’s all one big spiritual war.” Paul is reminding you that at street level, practical, daily Christianity is war. There really is moral right and wrong. There really is an enemy. There really is seductive and deceptive temptation. You really are spiritually vulnerable. But he says more. He reminds you that by grace you have been properly armed for the battle. The question is, will you use the implements of battle that the cross of Jesus Christ has provided for you?

Let us now assume that under truly extraordinary circumstances, the daimon nevertheless breaks through in the individual, so to speak, and is this able to let its destructive transcendence be felt: then one would have a kind of active experience of death. Thereupon the second connection becomes clear: why the figure of the daimon or doppelgänger in the ancient myths could be melded with the deity of death. In the Nordic tradition the warrior sees his Valkyrie precisely at the moment of death or mortal danger. In religious asceticism, mortification, self-renunciation, and the impulse of devotion to God are the preferred methods of provoking and successfully overcoming the crisis I have just mentioned. Everyone knows the expressions which refer to these states, such as the 'mystical death' or 'dark night of the soul', etc. In contrast to this, within the framework of a heroic tradition, the path to the same goal is the active rapture, the Dionysian unleashing of the active element. At its lower levels, we find phenomenons such as the use of dance as a sacred technique for achieving an ecstasy of the soul that summons and uses profound energies. While the individual’s life is surrendered to Dionysian rhythm, another life sinks into it, as if it where his abyssal roots surfacing. The 'wild host' Furies, Erinyes, and suchlike spiritual natures are symbolic picturings of this energy, thus corresponding to a manifestation of the daimon in its terrifying and active transcendence. At a higher level we find sacred war-games; higher still, war itself. And this brings us back to the ancient Aryan concept of battle and the warrior ascetic. At the climax of danger and heroic battle, the possibility for such an extraordinary experience was recognized. The Lating ludere, meaning both 'to play' and 'to fight', seems to contain the idea of release. This is one of the many allusions to the inherent ability of battle to release deeply-buried powers from individual limitations and let them freely emerge. Hence the third comparison: the daimon, the Lar, the individualizing I, etc., are not only identical with the Furies, Erinyes, and other unleashed Dionysian natures, which themselves have many traits similar to the goddess of death — they are also synonymous with the storm maidens of battle, the Valkyries and Fravartis. In the texts, for example, the Fravartis are called 'the terrible, the all-powerful', 'those who attack in storm and bestow victory upon those who conjure them', or, more precisely, those who conjure them up in themselves. From there to the final comparison is only a short step. In the Aryan tradition the same martial beings eventually take on the form of victory-goddesses, a transformation which denotes the happy completion of the inner experience in question. Just as the daimon or doppelgänger signifies a deep, supra-individual power in its latent condition as compared to ordinary consciousness; just as the Furies and Erinyes reflect a particular manifestation of daimonic rages and eruptions (and the goddesses of death, Valkyries, Fravartis, etc., refer to the same conditions, as long as these are facilitated by battle and heroism) — in the same way the goddess of victory is the expression of the triumph of the I over this power. She signifies the victorious ascent to a state unendangered by ecstasies and sub-personal forms of disintegration, a danger that always lurks behind the frenetic moment of Dionysian and even heroic action. The ascent to a spiritual, truly supra-personal condition that makes one free, immortal, and internally indestructible, when the 'Two becomes One', expresses itself in this image of mythical consciousness.

Have no anxiety about anything,' Paul writes to the Philippians. In one sense it is like telling a woman with a bad head cold not to sniffle and sneeze so much or a lame man to stop dragging his feet. Or maybe it is more like telling a wino to lay off the booze or a compulsive gambler to stay away from the track. Is anxiety a disease or an addiction? Perhaps it is something of both. Partly, perhaps, because you can't help it, and partly because for some dark reason you choose not to help it, you torment yourself with detailed visions of the worst that can possibly happen. The nagging headache turns out to be a malignant brain tumor. When your teenage son fails to get off the plane you've gone to meet, you see his picture being tacked up in the post office among the missing and his disappearance never accounted for. As the latest mid-East crisis boils, you wait for the TV game show to be interrupted by a special bulletin to the effect that major cities all over the country are being evacuated in anticipation of a nuclear attack. If Woody Allen were to play your part on the screen, you would roll in the aisles with the rest of them, but you're not so much as cracking a smile at the screen inside your own head. Does the terrible fear of disaster conceal an even more terrible hankering for it? Do the accelerated pulse and the knot in the stomach mean that, beneath whatever their immediate cause, you are acting out some ancient and unresolved drama of childhood? Since the worst things that happen are apt to be the things you don't see coming, do you think there is a kind of magic whereby, if you only can see them coming, you will be able somehow to prevent them from happening? Who knows the answer? In addition to Novocain and indoor plumbing, one of the few advantages of living in the twentieth century is the existence of psychotherapists, and if you can locate a good one, maybe one day you will manage to dig up an answer that helps. But answer or no answer, the worst things will happen at last even so. 'All life is suffering' says the first and truest of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths, by which he means that sorrow, loss, death await us all and everybody we love. Yet "the Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything," Paul writes, who was evidently in prison at the time and with good reason to be anxious about everything, 'but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.' He does not deny that the worst things will happen finally to all of us, as indeed he must have had a strong suspicion they were soon to happen to him. He does not try to minimize them. He does not try to explain them away as God's will or God's judgment or God's method of testing our spiritual fiber. He simply tells the Philippians that in spite of them—even in the thick of them—they are to keep in constant touch with the One who unimaginably transcends the worst things as he also unimaginably transcends the best. 'In everything,' Paul says, they are to keep on praying. Come Hell or high water, they are to keep on asking, keep on thanking, above all keep on making themselves known. He does not promise them that as a result they will be delivered from the worst things any more than Jesus himself was delivered from them. What he promises them instead is that 'the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.' The worst things will surely happen no matter what—that is to be understood—but beyond all our power to understand, he writes, we will have peace both in heart and in mind. We are as sure to be in trouble as the sparks fly upward, but we will also be "in Christ," as he puts it. Ultimately not even sorrow, loss, death can get at us there. That is the sense in which he dares say without risk of occasioning ironic laughter, "Have no anxiety about anything." Or, as he puts it a few lines earlier, 'Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say, Rejoice!

Most ministries in our church have not begun with a bright idea in a pastors’ meeting. We usually don’t say, “Let’s start a street outreach,” and then go recruit laypeople to staff it. We have learned over the years to let God birth something in people who are spiritually sensitive, who begin to pray and feel a calling. Then they come to us. “We want to start such-and-such,” they say—and the ministry gets going and lasts. Discouragement, complications, and other attacks by the enemy don’t wash it out.

we must prepare ourselves for him and for such attacks; and the way to do that is to study the Scriptures.

Paul’s reference to “burning coals on his head” indicates the irresistible power of deliberate, focused love. Ancient armies often used burning coals to fend off attackers (Ps. 120:4). No soldier could resist this weapon for long; it would eventually overcome even the most determined attacker. Love has the same irresistible power. At the very least, actively loving an enemy will protect you from being spiritually defeated by anger, bitterness, and thirst for revenge. And, in some cases, your active and determined love for your opponent may be used by God to bring that person to repentance.

Ministry leadership is not a fortress against spiritual attack; it’s the front line.

As much as I would love to take you to where I am at the speed of lightning, you are not ready. Because of that, your fears will transform my life into a hell, and your ignorance will attack me and give me much suffering. And this is why I ask you to read my books. But if you choose not to read them, I cannot do anything for you, as the books prepare you for the journey you may never be ready to take. This journey may seem slow at first and for a long period of time, but only because you are heavy in ignorance and fears. They must disintegrate with wisdom rooted in Truth.

I believe that what the vast majority of the masses call life is just fiction. A therapist's work ends up being trying to bring them into nonfiction. Although I feel that many are just replacing a novel by another. Too many people tell me: 'Why do you talk like you know the truth? There is no truth'. It is as if they felt that I'm destroying their inner world by being direct. They feel the need to project a defense mechanism to protect it. Another common phrase is: 'You don't know me better than I know myself'. This one is also interesting. Because it is as if the person was saying: 'You don't know my novel better than I do because I am the author of it.’ Life pretty much follows the same principles — gravity, air, water, fire, weight, hight; all of which is represented in maths, physics, and other sciences. But most people these days consider a personal attack when you make them observe something that may touch their inner world. It's the oversensitivity paradox in which we live today, for people want to feel more alive but are afraid to live at the same time. Allegorically speaking, they need to float like a bubble of steel. And many times they are perfectly fine in discussing others' issues until those issues are projected at them for self-analysis. Quite often, we are not really talking to a human being, but to his alter-ego. There's not much difference between the real self and the alternate version of that self for such person. And how ironic when both the therapist and the patient play the same game from different perspectives. This is why people don't want the truth anymore, but an alternate version of reality where they can merge themselves as if they were merely a chemical solution melting with another. They are too afraid of the truth because they have often been hurt when trying to find it. However, the concept of truth merges with the personality of the individual. And that is why having a personality is now an outdated concept, often falling into the realm of the abstract — Everything is relative, everything is fine, and everyone is everything you can decide for yourself. So why live if life has no meaning? Well, life does have a meaning, but won't be found by running away from it.

Valley of the Damned. Valkyrie Kari tells of the great warrior Crazy Horse (abridged) ’Twas written of those of long ago, That honor should be “as long as grass shall grow.” In battle honor is a fearsome beast, none can contain, In the strength of heart, it brings only shame. A mighty warrior of the plains was he, Crazy Horse of Sioux battle creed. Given to the ravages of noble, savage war, Against his enemies, he vaulted fore. Peering down from lofty mountain hold, The Horse in dream; the warrior was of olde. The promises they were broken one by one, Until only war unbridled could be hardtily done. Understanding and honor was not for those weak, Only the evil Long-knives now he eagerly did seek. The Knives came to steal, to plunder their land, To kill sacred mother with marauding, guilty hands. They had no regard for their own swelling words, With lust in their eyes, their greed greatly stirred. From southern lands came noise that Longhair did kill, Black Kettle’s camp, their blood he had spilled. Longhair destroyed all; dastard agent of evil strife, Deprived them of children and their bountiful life. Yet this lone, brave holy man stood in Longhair’s way, Crazy Horse, vision man, his plans were well framed. His command rode north hard to that destined battle, To meet wicked Longhair—to dash him from the saddle. Fate led him on to Little Bighorn, Where warriors of the sun met with sacred horn. A hellish dry place of calamitous battle, Found many a soul hearing death’s final rattle. The Long-snakes scouted for the great camp, That morn’ they set their fateful, forked-tongue attack. They raised their sabers, waved them strong, Entered eternity, their deaths foresaw. A sea of pilfered blue engulfed in crimson red, Amidst swirls of feathers sacred of the motherland. Through carnage, The Horse did lead his men, Beyond the battle, to the place where legend began. Up hill rode the bold Crazy Horse, With a thousand others to show determined force. To engage Long-knives at their last stand, Striking them down until dead was every man. Great Gall and Crazy Horse led that righteous attack, Against forceful Custer, whose plans did not lack, For ’twas he himself who boasted, wantonly said, “I will become a great chief, if my enemies I fill with lead.” With righteous honor as their sacred ally, Holy arrows that day swiftly let fly. Horse met Longhair in battle forever stayed, Defeated mighty Custer; his corpse on the field in state. Upon that fateful day, on sage choked sandy plain, Spirits clashed with spirits, for the sacred domain. Unconquerable, indomitable this sacred warrior heart, Leads many against the evil now, for this righteous court. Thus, Horse brought the valiants into stark raved battle, Battle scarred by holy wounds delivered by blue devils. Yet he would not relent, this honorable man of gifted vision, But peace came through the lie; his life ended by steel incision. Breathing his last, quiet honor came his way, “Bring my heart home, the Great Spirit will find my way.” Thus ˊtis with all whose understanding shows what may, Honor leads righteousness to death, ask they of that claim. War spirit vigilant with mighty spear and bow in hand, Leads Great Plains spirits, under his gallant command. His spirit never conquered lives it to this good day, Among the heroic mighty, let us his spirit proclaim. In the hour of travail, honor can be finely seen, Leading multitudes unto battle, their hearts boundlessly free. Cowards can never know the freedom of the plains and wind, Or how she musters a soul and the courage found within. Born in deep commune of Earth and Great Spirit above, Understanding and honor flow from hearts of great love. One without understanding is a fool at best, One without honor is a spirit that ne’er rests. O’ majestic One of the relentless plain, The mountains ring joyous with thy name.

Christians are by nature missionaries. There are times when you are sent into an unfamiliar environment and sense something that you could not know in the natural. You may be sensing a dark, oppressive atmosphere over a city or an organization, or even a spiritual attack targeting someone you are called to meet or minister to in that new environment.

And what is often referred to as love may be pleasurable and exciting for a while, but it is an addictive clinging, an extremely needy condition that can turn into its opposite at the flick of a switch. Many “love” relationships, after the initial euphoria has passed, actually oscillate between “love” and hate, attraction and attack. Real love doesn’t make you suffer. How could it? It doesn’t suddenly turn into hate, nor does real joy turn into pain.

Most of the so-called bad things that happen in people’s lives are due to unconsciousness. They are self-created, or rather ego-created. I sometimes refer to those things as “drama.” When you are fully conscious, drama does not come into your life anymore. Let me remind you briefly how the ego operates and how it creates drama. Ego is the unobserved mind that runs your life when you are not present as the witnessing consciousness, the watcher. The ego perceives itself as a separate fragment in a hostile universe, with no real inner connection to any other being, surrounded by other egos which it either sees as a potential threat or which it will attempt to use for its own ends. The basic ego patterns are designed to combat its own deep-seated fear and sense of lack. They are resistance, control, power, greed, defense, attack. Some of the ego’s strategies are extremely clever, yet they never truly solve any of its problems, simply because the ego itself is the problem.

Friends, we have to confront the reality that sometimes the problems in our lives do not come because “we're living in a broken world,” or “the enemy is attacking us.” Sometimes our problems are a direct result of us failing to exercise self-control. We are not living in obedience. Just as we, as loving parents, will not let our children compromise without consequences, neither will our loving heavenly Father. He is calling us back to a path that will bring peace.

[S]ometimes the problems in our lives do not come because “we're living in a broken world,” or “the enemy is attacking us.” Sometimes our problems are a direct result of us failing to exercise self-control. We are not living in obedience.

Conscious people with true knowledge of self don't see; Attention as affection Attachment as connection Codependency as support Disagreement as attack Lack of boundaries as empathy Trauma bonding as healing Enmeshment as intimacy External validation as internal self esteem

If you've suffered an anxiety attack, maybe you've encountered the grounding techniques of the five senses. What's one thing you smell? Tell me two things you hear. There is a mysterious entanglement between our welfare and our capacity to ground ourselves in a particular place. We are meant to be connected to our where, to the sensory experience of it. The simple beholding of place can slow your heart and steady your breath. It is quite the protective force.

Denying God is "ad hominem" to all humanity. Atheism commits ad hominem at every moment because it attacks God who is our Self. In this way, every man is characterized as incapable of achieving the goal, which is the main ad hominem attack.

The devil knows who's working to defeat him, and he will attack those who attack him.

When you deny emotional pain, everything you do or think as well as your relationships become contaminated with it. You broadcast it, so to speak, as the energy you emanate, and others will pick it up subliminally. If they are unconscious, they may even feel compelled to attack or hurt you in some way, or you may hurt them in an unconscious projection of your pain. You attract and manifest whatever corresponds to your inner state.

Fake freedom teaches that believers can live on the redline of this world, with one foot on “belief in Jesus” and the other entrenched in what offends holiness. Yet in this position, the enemy has access to attack anytime he chooses. 
 This is not faith; it is spiritual roulette.

All the enemy truly cares about is you jumping out of God’s protective presence. Once you are away from the loving shelter of the Almighty, the enemy’s singular focus is your continual slide toward utter destruction. He wants everything in you that belongs to Jesus to die. Whether slow or quick makes no difference to him; our enemy is always watching and waiting for an avenue to attack and destroy. His endgame is to run you down into a spiritual massacre so complete that the horrifying result will be his defecation on your skull.

In proficient English, Samira explained that her current job for the United Nations was to represent women who had been raped by Taliban militia. The leaders of the militia wanted to kill Samira because of her faith in Christ and because of her attempts to hold them accountable in a United Nations court of law. She had personally led more than thirty women to Christ, baptized them, and was now discipling them. She had done all of this in an environment nearly devoid of male believers who might be able to lend her protection. I listened in amazement as she shared the story of her own spiritual pilgrimage. The Lord was obviously using her in a powerful way. By the time she and I met, Samira’s superiors were already seeking to extradite Samira to the United States—for her own protection. I begged her to stay among her own people because I couldn’t see how God could replace this young woman of faith in such a dark and difficult place. However, the slow-grinding, irreversible gears of international diplomacy had already been set in motion. Samira was whisked out of Central Asia and flown immediately to the American Midwest where she began to make a new life. When I arrived home from my trip, I told Ruth all about this remarkable young woman. We arranged to fly her from her new home to Kentucky for a visit. She spent a week in our home. We took Samira to a moderate-sized church in central Kentucky for Sunday morning worship. It just so happened that there was a baptism service scheduled for that morning; an entire family—mother, father, and two children—were to be baptized. As their baptism progressed—with this young lady believer from a Muslim background sitting in the pew between Ruth and me—I noticed Samira beginning to fidget, twisting, turning, and rocking backward and forward. It was as if she was having an anxiety attack. In a quiet whisper, I asked her if there was something wrong. Samira tugged on the sleeve of my jacket. She whispered forcefully in my ear: “I cannot believe this! I cannot believe that I have lived long enough to see people being baptized in public. An entire family together! No one is shooting at them, no one is threatening them, no one will go to prison, no one will be tortured, and no one will be killed. And they are being openly and freely baptized as a family! I never dreamed that God could do such things! I never believed that I would live to see a miracle like this.

We do not see into the world in which God lives, but He definitely sees into ours.

The traditional spirit is already tending as it were to withdraw into itself, and the centers where it is preserved in its entirety are becoming more and more closed and difficult of access; this generalization of confusion corresponds exactly to what must occur in the final phase of the Kali-Yuga. [...] it would be quite logical for the ideas spread by Westerners to turn against them, since they are of a kind that can never beget anything but division and ruin. It is through these ideas that the modern world will perish in one way or another; it is of small importance whether this be by way of quarrels among Westerners themselves, quarrels between nations, between social classes, or, as some people assert, through the attacks of 'Westernized' Easterners-or, another possibility, as the result of a cataclysm brought about by the 'progress of science'; in any case, the dangers facing the Western world are entirely of its own making and proceed from itself. [...] but the spiritual power inherent in tradition, of which its adversaries know nothing, may triumph over the material power when this has played its part, and disperse it as light disperses the shadows; we may even say that it must triumph sooner or later, but it is possible that there will be a period of complete darkness before this happens. The traditional spirit cannot die, being in its essence above death and change; but it can withdraw completely from the outward world, and then there would really be the 'end of a world'.

our pattern of ignorant killing, attacking, and blaming is, in fact, history’s primary illusion, its primary lie.

retreat in order to charge with greater strength, and to kill the enemy with one fatal blow! This teaches you to withdraw frequently into yourself. Recall your insignificance, your inability to accomplish anything. You will then place great confidence in the almighty power of God, so that you will be able, through His grace, to attack and conquer the passions that oppose you. Here you must implore: “My Lord, My God! Jesus! Mary! Do not abandon your soldier! Do not permit me to be conquered by this temptation!” Whenever the enemy gives you a breathing spell, call up your understanding to reinforce your will. Strengthen it with motives that will raise its courage and give it new life for the fight. For example, if you are unjustly accused or harmed in some other way, and, in desperation, are tempted to lose all patience, try to check yourself by reflecting on these points: 1. Consider whether you might not deserve the unpleasantness you are undergoing, and whether you have not brought it upon yourself. If you are in any way to blame, it is proper that you patiently endure the agony of the wound which you yourself have occasioned. 2. However, if you are not guilty on this score, glance back at some past offenses for which divine justice has not yet inflicted a punishment, and for which you have not sufficiently expiated by a voluntary penance. When you see that God, in His infinite mercy, instead of a long punishment in purgatory, or even an eternal one in hell, has decreed but an easy and momentary one in this life, accept it, not merely with resignation, but with joyous thanksgiving.

If you looked in the mirror and did not like what you saw, you would have to be mad to attack the image in the mirror. That is precisely what you do when you are in a state of nonacceptance. And, of course, if you attack the image, it attacks you back. If you accept the image, no matter what it is, if you become friendly toward it, it cannot not become friendly toward you. This is how you change the world.

The Beast - attacks, but the Spiritual Beast defends only.

It is important that we do not attempt to freeze Cockburn’s spirituality at a particular point in time or from a particular “theological” perspective. In a 1986 interview for Nerve magazine, Cockburn said, “The fact that I’m a Christian has an obvious effect on how I see the world, which in turn shows up in the songs.”[30] But both the association of the word Christian with the religious Right in America and Cockburn’s own deep distaste for all “dogma” that ends up functioning as a violent weapon with which to attack others have led him to “rely on oblique imagery to get at the real things.”[31] While he has a profound and deep sense of “walking with God,” he also knows that such language is almost totally inexplicable to most people, precisely because such pious talk has been co-opted and defiled by a religious fundamentalism that has been at the heart of so much evil in the last few decades. Yet, Cockburn can’t help himself. He has a decidedly Christian-shaped experience of God that is caught in mere “glimpses.” Those glimpses, however, “are strong and tantalizing.” And so he confesses that the “sense of being in the company of God is continually growing. And I like it!”[32]

O cow! Let the crow think that it is attacking you while it just eats parasites off you.

Moreover, when the narcissistic leader is under attack, his response is defensiveness and a victim complex.

Turnings come in cycles of four. Each cycle spans the length of a long human life, roughly eighty to one hundred years, a unit of time the ancients called the saeculum. Together, the four turnings of the saeculum comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and destruction: The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays. The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval, when the civic order comes under attack from a new values regime. The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays and the new values regime implants. The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one.

A strong unconscious emotional pattern may even manifest as an external event that appears to just happen to you. For example, I have observed that people who carry a lot of anger inside without being aware of it and without expressing it are more likely to be attacked, verbally or even physically, by other angry people, and often for no apparent reason. They have a strong emanation of anger that certain people pick up subliminally and that triggers their own latent anger. If you have difficulty feeling your emotions, start by focusing attention on the inner energy field of your body. Feel the body from within. This will also put you in touch with your emotions.

In hard, trying times the Lord is building in us the patience, endurance, and character that will eventually produce the habit of joyful and confident hope. When you and I are in the midst of a spiritual battle against our enemy, every round we go through produces valuable experience and strength. Each time we resist a temptation or endure an attack, we become stronger. If we are patient through the trial and refuse to give up, sooner or later we will gain victory in the situation and enjoy increased patience, hope, and spiritual maturity in our lives. God always gives us the victory if we remain steadfast and refuse to give up.

will intentionally establish an unfazed mindset and attack my most significant life goals, persisting through obstacles until I achieve them. My foremost objective is to compete every day with my former self—to become more as a person—so that I can achieve more in all life’s essential arenas: relationships, health, finances, family, spirituality, the workplace. As I purposefully upgrade critical success traits, I’ll build a confidence and resilience that makes me unstoppable as I fight to achieve what matters most to me and

Afterward, Marvina and I fried the chicken, and, I tell you, all hell broke loose when Kerresha tasted the meat. "Oh my God! Holy Jesus and Guadalupe Mary!" Before Marvina could ask her to stop using the Lord's name in vain, Kerresha leaned back in her chair and feigned a heart attack. "Oh my God! Mmm, mmm mmmmm! Where? What kind of voodoo did you put in this chicken?" "Ain't no voodoo here in this house," Marvina bucked. "Yes! There is!" Kerresha licked her fingers. "I promise you. On God." She put a hand on her heart. "This chicken just took me back to the spiritual power of the ancestors." Marvina was so flattered she couldn't be mad. We both looked at each other and laughed, because, truth be told, this was exactly the reaction people gave the first time they tasted Momma's seasoning on expertly fried chicken. "Y'all." Kerresha raised both hands in the air like she was getting happy in a holiness church. "Is it the grease? The seasoning? Chickens raised by unicorns?" "It's the seasoning," my sister and I said simultaneously. Kerresha swallowed another bite. "Whatever y'all put in that seasoning is a miracle. A double miracle, since it also has the power to make y'all finally both agree on something.

Perhaps there is no better defense against spiritual attack than humility;

Often, genuine relief from diabolical attacks can be attained by making a good sacramental Confession, praying daily deliverance prayers, fasting, and leading a sacramental life. These are effective, proven remedies. All levels of demonic affliction require such remedies.

In part, the proliferation of diabolical attacks is related to the rejection of God, faith, and the gospel, and the embrace of relativism, moral compromise, and love of the world.

The church’s biggest challenge wasn’t a secular world attacking it from the outside, but rather moral corruption arising from the inside.

You may be opposed and attacked and it is important to understand that a spiritual attack is not aimed at you as a person, but rather at what God has placed inside of you.

You may be opposed and attacked and it is important to understand that a spiritual attack is not aimed at you as a person, but rather at what God has placed inside of you. The adversary may want to take it away and it's warfare when you won’t allow it!