Goodbye Kansas

Fair warning on this one: we're going head first down the rabbit hole and Kansas is going bye-bye. So here's your blue pill. If you keep reading, it's your own risk.


Ok. So I've written before about my condition. I am highly sensitive to lots of things. While you might sneeze, I'll have flu like reactions. While you might have indigestion, I go to the hospital. This makes holidays with obligatory feasts and ample treats particularly difficult. I often have weird dreams following food that my body doesn't want, so what follows could be related. But it struck me much different. Those dreams have a particular tone and themes. This was like other dreams I've had, if we want to call them that, but not like my usual body signals.

You might want to apply a rational interpretation to what I'm about to relate and that's fine, I've done that too. There could very well be more of gravy than of grave about this, to borrow from Mr. Dickens. But I'm not convinced that's all there is to it. In my experience, nothing is ever just this or that, but inextricably linked with everything else. So I'm going to write it as I experienced it and leave it there. Red pill down...diving into the hole.

You may have read about my past experiences in spiritualism. When one does that, certain things change and don't go back.  Like many things in life, once you cross a line, you can't uncross it.

So last night, through a series of dream events, I found myself on a dock in a swamp with a couple unidentified people. There was a stroller with a baby in it. Somehow it was brought up that it was now widely accepted that it was not Lucifer who had been responsible for a certain unclear historical event involving a baby, but in fact, Lilith. I was alarmed at the mention because in spiritual realms to mention is to court the presence of, and in waking life...ok, we'll go with that...in waking life I had encountered lilith before and she is terrifying in the true sense.

Just then, as the dread of how she might appear was coming on me, a snake-like tentacle glided up on the dock from the water. The end had been cleaved off like an octopus in a Japanese restaurant. I yelled to the others that she was here and quickly kicked the writhing thing away only to find another reaching up. They grabbed the stroller and turned it over, spilling what had been the baby into the water, but fortunately it was now only blankets. (Thank God! My dreams are not always so sanitized.)

My heart quivered within me as a white shapeless molten form rose up from the water with the serpent arms. It quickly began to take a female shape as if moving through stages of plasticene scuplture until even the snake tails became human arms. There she stood with black hair and hellish eyes, a demonic half-smile on the well-formed mouth. She was larger than a human by at least double and stood in the swampy water while still extending above my head where I stood on the dock.

She addressed me familiarly. I quickly remembered in my fear that the only course was to resist and call for help. Demons have no inherant power, they are merely self-negations, perversions of created things. So in reality, they can only decieve and frighten. But if you've never encountered one like this, trust me, that fear is enough to make you forget your wits.

Therefore, rather than answer a single word and open the door for her, I rebuked that she was not wanted. Like Saruman in LOTR, if you let them speak, they'll get in your head in a heart beat. Like Gozer, you have to clear your mind. Or since that's impossible, you have to fill it with truth and higher power, which they can't combat. So I continued to shout that I was a son of Jesus (not sure where that wording came from) and that she had no power over me. She had no power here. That was all I could yell and I clung to it fiercely while trying to stay between her and the others.

She fought back with everything she had and the battle lasted several minutes.

 As I gained some confidence I began to thrust my presence forward at her, like a spiritual shove with every affirmation and rebuke. Finally, she turned and fled, gliding over the water to a nearby road. I turned to chase her, wanting to kill her once and for all. She flew into a box truck, like UPS, only white like a bread truck, and drove away.

I quickly gave up pursuit realizing that it was not for me to kill one like her. Only to resist...which I had done...and she had fled...SHE had FLED! The mother of demons that had engendered such fear on my part had fled at my resistance! The original succubus that had plagued me for so many years in various forms had been driven out of my mind...in very literal dream imagery!

I woke with a start thinking I had only just drifted off to sleep, but it was morning. The battle had taken all night, but it was over.

Is this a bit of badly digested food? A phantasm of my hypersensitive body? Maybe, but maybe that pharmacaea opened the door for something more. Is the demon driven out? Is the hold broken on me? It's too soon to tell.

But I think it was Black Elk who said that you can tell a dream from a vision by how well it stays in your mind when you wake. This has shaken me to the point that I had to look more into it this morning.

I dared to look up lilith and to my surpise, I found she is often portrayed as partly serpent. I tell you, no where in my memory does that reference occur. I can't even recall looking for images of her. She is also often drawn with a certain dark-haired appearance, which she had assumed in my encounter. I'm not making conclusions. I can rationally surmise an explanation that still perfectly suits the outcome.  But you know what? I don't really care what really happened, or what "real" even means. I care only about True, and in any case, this is a true story. Ding Dong the witch is gone! And I'm celebrating that for all it's worth. Thank God for deliverance and I pray it's for good!

War

I recently heard someone speaking about Deliverance, with a capital D.  I hadn't heard of it before.  Honestly, I ended up in a position to hear him speak completely unintentionally.  Anyway, the word with a capital D refers to, the speaker said, "the casting out of demons." Yep.  I'm not kidding.  It's a thing.  He wasn't making that up.  I check everything.

So as he presented it, it's a system of counselling that focuses on removing demonic influence from people's lives.  To his credit, he was not at all pushy and delivered his talk in a very matter-of-fact and non-spooky way.  He did not come off as a charlatan.  I'd have walked right out.  I think he legitimately believes what he's saying and considers himself more reasonable than many he knows in the field.  Since he could approach it in a rational manner, I felt he deserved a fair hearing.

He didn't go into detail about the process, partly because he didn't want to spook people out (he said this) and partly (I think) because he had a seminar to plug and a 'ministry' to support.  Though he didn't ask for money.

He gave a few stories, but mostly just talked about the background principle.  The stories were sufficient to make me think.  I have enough experience of the spiritual to safely admit demons and other spiritual forces do exist and influence people. But the background principle is what didn't sit well.

He pulled verses from the Bible that seemed a bit out of context and misinterpreted.  But as is my bent, I began to consider what might be true in it.  Was I the one misunderstanding?  He admitted demons aren't behind every problem, but claimed they could be behind any problem.  He alluded to some sort of contractual type scenario in which people can, knowingly or not, give demons access to themselves.  He claimed that Jesus could save a soul, but that the body and spirit might still be "infected" as he put it.  The focus of Deliverance is to break those contracts and make people as free and healthy as possible.  He said that there was a process people had to participate in.  Alluding to some 'steps' and such people had to take to be sure they stay free.

I left mostly denying it, but with enough doubt that I had to consider more fully.  I talked it over with my wife and son.  I asked God to tell me what is true.  I even wrestled with it in dreams for a couple nights.  I debated calling a mentor of mine and discussing it with him.  Was I right?  What if I wasn't?  Could I be suffering from some seemingly medical ailments because of the doors I'd opened in my past?  What about beneficial suffering; the "thorn in the flesh"?  Wasn't Jesus sufficient?  Why wouldn't he cleanse everything?  Could I take the chance on that?  Was it worth the chance?  It didn't fit with my understanding of the universe, but it did echo many of the things I encountered and heard from people in the Spiritualist world that I had dabbled in fairly extensively years ago. 

So finally, I decided to look it up.  Though I was a bit scared of creeping myself out.  The speaker had said it was easy to find on the internet.  So I did a late night search and was quickly provided with an article from an ex-Deliverance counsellor who shed all the light I needed. Thank God for answering.

This long article described the Deliverance movement in such verbatim detail to the speaker that I had no doubt they were talking about the same thing.  In fact, they quoted the same people, same verses, same vocabulary.  The article described it as very real.  He had seen many amazing things happen.  But still he left it.  The reasons he left it encapsulate my very difficulties.

I'm not going to try to digest the whole article for you.  Look it up yourself if you're interested.  What resonated with me was, for one, that the Deliverance movement is a 20th century invention.  It claims roots to ancient times, but no more than Wicca can claim to the ancient pagans.  In other words, it's a modern supposition of what might have happened, and not a true religious tradition and therefore does not have the weight of history and community of consent behind it.  But more importantly, Deliverance is essentially a works-based faith.  Freedom is not obtained by the work of God.  It's made possible by that, but people then have to get the right prayers, the right lifestyle, the right program to be fully free.  And then only so far as they keep it up.  Further, it adds chains to people with the concept that when a demon returns, it brings more with it and makes the end condition worse.  Thus someone who is struggling lives in eternal fear that they may not only go back to the torment, but it may get worse.  And if you've never experienced spiritual torment of this kind, let me tell you, it's enough to make you high dive into concrete.

The article described it like a spiritual protection racket that Satan himself backs by putting on good demonic shows.  "Sure, cast me out, but watch how much of a fight I can put up. Get proud, feel special, feel afraid."  It's like the Fight Club assignment to pick a fight and lose.  It puffs up the counsellor and terrorizes (in the Terrorist sense) the victim who now has to look around every corner for the evil he knows "can get him at any time".

So is there another view that allows for demons and their influence but avoids this false paradigm of Spiritual Warfare?  Yes!  God is sovereign over all things.  Christ has put all powers beneath his feet.  The head of the serpent has been crushed.  Evil in fact, doesn't exist.  Philosophically proven, it can't.  What we call evil is the negation of a created thing which God called good.  A thing's evilness is exactly proportional to the degree it departs from what it was created to be.

There are far more verses in the Bible supporting this worldview.  Jesus sets free.   Nothing can harm me except as God allows and that means it will only be for my good, like chemotherapy that makes me sick so I can get well.  Or like physical training hurts so my muscles grow stronger.  The demons have no inherent power.  Only the illusion of it.  So what more would they want than to be attributed the power to control and manipulate us.  Sure they'll exploit it!  If we want a show, they'll be happy to oblige. 

Better to learn what Sarah had to learn in Labyrinth.  Not how to defeat her demons, but that they had no power over her in the first place.  With that it's all over.  This is echoed in my own life: dreams, studies, experiences, and reasoning.  It is the only way.  It is the Truth. 

Demons are real, but the conflict is not.  It's a bluff, a farse, a simulation of the Matrix.  God is sovereign and the truth is what is real.  As in War Games, we have to learn that, "The only winning move is not to play."