About the Battle: A Conversation

A dear friend of mine is in the midst of some personal and inter-personal turmoil. Whilst giving me an update, she asked me some questions, about the nature of the battle she sensed going on.

With her permission, and yet honoring her identity, I'd like to share a bit of the conversation with the rest of y'all ... on the off-chance that you might be able to relate ...

Friend: Pray for me... If God gives you a word again.. don't hesitate please to pass it on to me. These are very difficult times... Lots of lies and deceit coming from both medical and family... Family who thinks of medical professionals as a God. I'm walking in God's leading and in truth and there is tons of lies, accusations, and deceit being thrown about and at me. and I've been silent, that's the funny thing. It's really strange. Words being put into my mouth that I've not spoken..

I do feel like I'm right smack at the center of a spiritual type of battle. Now, I know that you and I have some similar thoughts about hell and even the devil. But, I do believe there is something ugly and wicked going on. I don't have it figured out.. I don't even have a clue.

But, you can bet I'm spending alot of quiet time, alone, and drawing close to Him. I have been especially doing so for the last several days now.

Thank you Dena for your sensitivity to His voice...

At this point, at the end of the first message, I felt a strong urge to write to her ... to share with her my thoughts of the source of evil being within us, from our own egos, rather than from without. But, before I could do so, I noticed that she'd sent a second message:

One more thing.. With all the players, both family and medical people, there seems to be alot of Ego involved. and the compilation of everyone's ego is horrific.. very damaging. Now is this what's really happening Dena? Individual ego's contributing to one big "ego" centered mess that looks like the wars we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq? Or is it a spiritual warfare of some sort between good and evil? It's just a nightmare....

And so, I responded:

Praying ... seeing you coming into clarity ... seeing Father as HE is ... seeing yourself as He does ... seeing you IN Christ, using the Mind of Christ, which you (we all) have (present tense). Seeing you making the shift from the thoughts of this world, to the Mind of Christ. Seeing this renewal of the mind happenING, ongoing, AS the journey, the Spirit leading you into all truth ... AS you can bear it. Seeing you comforted, and even at peace, even in the midst of the unsettling confusion of this transition, which very much *does* feel like a battle ... but the battle is in the mind ...

This is uncanny ... I read your first message, and put it aside, even as the response to it came to mind ... "tell her that the battle is not without, but within ... that the 'battle' is between the ego and the Spirit, the darkness within one's own thinking, and the collective-thought of mankind around us ... but remind her to notice that when the Light is turned on, the darkness is utterly absorbed by the Light -- it does not fight back. The only remaining darkness one sees, is when one turns one's back to the Light Source, and thus creates, and focuses upon, one's own shadow. One cannot follow one's own dark-shadow-self, i.e., ego, when one faces the Light, and the shadow is thus behind them, in it's proper place."

So, then I read your second message, and look, the Spirit is already showing you these same things ... yes, our individual egos put out thoughts, which are energy-forces, which combine with the energy-forces of others ... creating a large mass of negative energy ... this force, which is part of our own latent creative powers (for we are created in the image and likeness of Creator God - we are even a manifestation of Him), has often been misunderstood, particularly in the primitive mind of man, who imagined forces of both good and evil, competing, battling ... and invented the notion of "demons" ... including a chief demon ... which they then doctrinalized into the belief of satan ... a word which merely means "adversary". Now quoting from St. Pogo, "we have met the enemy, and he is us."

When Jesus was asked about the source of evil -- a fine time, btw, to instruct us about the "fallen angel" lucifer, who became satan -- he said that evil does not come from without, but from within our own hearts. The Hebraic notion of heart is our own soul ... our mind. That which imagines itself "fallen/separated" from God, and now depraved. That which thus thinks/believes/behaves in a fallen/separated way ... for as a man thinks in his own heart, so IS he. We become, in action, what we believe about ourselves. Christianity, an invention of man, the institutionalization of egoic/religious thought, requires this foundational belief in separation (and came up with the notion of "original sin" ... not found in the early followers of The Way, nor in scripture), and bases all of it's subsequent doctrines on this notion of separation from God.

And yet, we have the psalmist saying, "where can I go from Your presence? if I go to the abode of the dead [Sheol], there You are." How can we be separated from the One who is Omnipresent?

And we have Paul, much later, saying, "you were enemies of God in your minds" - and reminding us that we need to *renew* our minds. We need to come up higher ... to no longer think as the world thinks (i.e., separation, limitation, lack), but to think as God thinks ("in Him and of Him and through Him are all things" -- "nothing created shall separate us from the love of God" - "My ways are higher than your ways").

We are to die to our carnal/egoic thinking ... not to slaughter our egos (for they are a useful tool, once we start to recognize it), but to no longer live according to it.

The ego is our impostor ... posing as us, but not us. Paul articulates this well, "it is not I who sins, but the sin that lies within me." It is not me who thinks the egoic thoughts ... it's that which I *think* I am who is doing this ... much as how I am not what I dream, but I am the one observing the dream. So, too, can I learn to observe this egoic chatter, and realize that I don't have to buy into it. I can take every thought captive, I can question what I think ... I do not have to believe everything that flits through my mind. I can actively participate in renewing my mind ... I can trust the Spirit who is leading me out of captivity to lies, and into all truth. God comes to me disguised as my life ... it's all useful, all good, all fodder for learning. I can come to my senses, in the "far country" of my own egoic thinking, and return Home, to the Mind of Christ.

And when I discover that I have chosen the ego over the Spirit (which does indeed happen, for I am human, I am learning, I have not arrived), then I can choose *again*.


[Thank you, my friend, for allowing me to share this here...!]

Shalom, Dena