I rarely touch on the Dark Side in this optimistic, light-filled angel blog, but recently something happened to me so unusual that I share it, in case there are others who feel lonely and lost, “beside themselves,” or “not themselves.” It’s not that we don’t all fall into a trough sometimes, feel blue, or even, god knows, become depressed, but what hit me last week was so coarse and unpleasant that I found myself hating whoever was living in my skin.
I went to New York over the weekend, where I met family and friends, visited the Exciting, Noisy, New and Different; yet even in the midst of loved ones, I felt lonely, fearful, awkward, anxious, lost.
Back home, I finally had time to sit in solitude and howl to God, my angels, my inner Higher Self. “Oh God, help me, help me. I can’t do this. I can’t do it alone!” (whatever “it” was.) Then I picked up a pen and began what I call automatic writing. It’s easy.
You go into a slightly altered, meditative state, make a prayer for insight, hold your pencil poised over the pad… and then watch the words flow out. I feel they come from angels, or God, or some Higher Wisdom, and not from little me, for always they speak words of comfort, quiet, calm, and knowledge beyond what I know.
When I finished, I wrote Thank you (as one must courteously do) and set down my pen. Despite the comforting words, however, I still felt that anguished sense of not belonging, of being lonely, lost, uneasy, fraught. (One word for lonely in Italian is abbandonato.) It is my experience that all prayers are answered, and often answered soon.
And so it was this time. I left to meet a friend, Wendi, for tea. She had brought along an Episcopal priest, who wanted to meet me, and suddenly the conversation turned to mystical and spiritual experiences, and then to the age-old question of evil. Is there a force of evil? The demonic?
It’s not a question I like to discuss, first, because in our secular society it’s considered quite batty even to ask the question, but second because if there is the demonic, we shouldn’t give it weight. I go with St. Theresa of Avila, that it’s best to laugh at the devil: “ ‘Oh, the devil, the devil,’ we say when we might be saying, ‘God! God!’” (she wrote) “I’m quite sure I’m more afraid of people who are themselves terrified of the devil than I am afraid of the devil himself.” (More about this in The Ecstatic Journey, about the mystic’s way.)
On the other hand, twice I have experienced the demonic, and both times were horrible. Once I was simply reading in bed when I was physically hit in the chest, WHAP! by a vicious black imp. Paralyzed, terrified, I couldn’t move. This thing was the embodiment of loneliness, anger, malice, fear: it was mean, frightened, dark.
I could not move. With one fingertip, I made a gesture so small that I’m not sure my finger even moved—the sign of the Cross. At which, WHOOSH! It fled. I was free. Was it my imagination? I don’t know, but I think not. Afterwards I went to the bathroom and washed all over.
But back to tea with my friends. As we talked, I realized that I had become infected. Some uninvited influence had entered my energy field, my aura. I’d been in crowds in New York. Perhaps I hadn’t protected myself, perhaps I’d picked up someone else’s anguish or sorrowing. How does it get in? Through the chinks. What is it? A spirit? An energy? a force of evil? I don’t know, but I don’t want it.
Now at tea, talking with these two beautiful women, I remembered what to do— It’s simple. No one noticed; it takes no time.
“I belong to God,” I whispered. Speaking directly to this thing, speaking silently, as I would to my angels, I said, “To all uninvited influences and entities, you are created of love and light. You are whole and healed. There is a place of light for you to go. I ask my angels to take you into the Light. Leave me, in the name of Jesus Christ.”
There was no WHOOSH of blackness gone. I didn’t notice any immediate difference, but a few minutes later, as we gathered our coats to leave, I realized how happy I felt, how clear, how clean, how full of energy and light.
Are there entities or spirits, imps or demons that infect us? I don’t know but I believe it behooves us to clear our energy field, the aura, every day, particularly if we have beenin sad and despairing places, where we may inadvertently pick up the sorrows of others, or their wretchedness, anger, loneliness and fear.
I said that twice I have come into contact with the demonic. I won’t tell the other, but both were black-black-black with the impression of claws, beaks, talons, and each was itself the embodiment of fear and loneliness, poor thing, and of malice, wickedness and wrong. They writhed with violence and suffering.
Send it into the Light. You have only to make the sign of the Cross, even with one fingernail, and it will go. I think even the demons would like to feel good. I think it is good to pray for the demons, as we pray for all suffering creatures, known and unknown, visible and invisible—to pray for forgiveness for them, pray to forgive, pray to the very birds in the air to be forgiven of our failings. We can do much worse than pray. O suffering Earth! May all sentient beings go into the Light.