Spirit Wars and “Spiritual Warfare”
This post will discuss the topic and personal strategies. Most content will relate to both physical realities and metaphorical meanings and categories. Since a person viewing their self as fighting a spiritual war most likely holds onto certain parts of self in this endeavor, it is highly unlikely that the actual adversaries are 
authentic entities outside/inside the self. It is more likely that personal experience has conditioned the person to understand these variable processes as quite serious and sometimes dangerous. To maintain a clear boundary, this post is not presenting a way to treat people suffering from any form of identity disorder; rather, this post offer some ideas about how one might go about becoming healthier via less targeted clinical interventions. The remaining part of the post will offer comments and suggestions for personal consideration of the reader. Most content deals with realistic natural phenomena in life. I hope I am making myself clear here. I hope you find the content helpful.
- Since pure white/golden healing light has been noted in almost all major spiritual traditions, you might wish to experiment with the experiences noted below. Do your best to see the light as a potential healing ally. Allow yourself to feel the light. Do not block!
- Experiment with observing the rising and setting sun. Allow the light to penetrate you; use kinesthetic awareness to do so. Do your best to feel the light and experience its healing power. Enjoy this! Do not look directly into the intense light energy of the sun.
- Study basic astrophysics to learn how gravity (one of the main constants in the universe) has direct effects on dark/black energies.
- On a clear night, look deeply into the starlit sky and allow the star energies to enter you. Feel it; use it. Enjoy this!
- On a clear day, look into the blue sky with moving clouds. Allow the light to penetrate you and feel its power. Enjoy this!
- Go for a silent walk in nature. Notice! Use all your senses to encounter all that is there. Gently gaze at a mountain, pond, lake, or stream. Notice the transparency off the clear water as it moves downstream. Send your troubles (like a leaf) downstream with the current. Make the best of your attention and intention here. Notice! Relax! Enjoy this!
- You may wish to try the Ten Directions experiment. Discern carefully what directions are helpful. What directions bring you into your deep inner self ally? Stand silently and notice the healing air/wind coming from the North, South, East, and West. Notice the effects! Now stand there and bring your attention to everything inside of you. And next – to everything outside of you. Look up and look down; notice. Now use your natural ability to project and send your troubles far, far, far away. Notice! Now move your body slowly and notice; now move your body with more vigorous energy, and notice. You have completed your Ten Directions experiment. Hope it was helpful. Thank our indigenous First Nation Peoples and Buddhist concepts for this process.
- Relax and begin to breathe deeply, slowly. Notice the ease and the difficulty. Continue to breathe. Allow the deeper, slower breath to calm you. Notice how the freshness of the committed breath restores your airflow in your throat, heart, soul, etc. Allow the clean flow of healing breath to cleanse you- in your throat, heart, soul.
- Now do your best to engage your helpful beliefs and helpful behaviors to support your internal healing. Engage in activities/behaviors that you find helpful. Do not engage in thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that are unhelpful. Be strong.
- Examine your personal space-time continuum, and pay close attention to when your time and space are safe for you. Spend much more time in this aspect of time and space. Do the same for being happier.
- Practice paying more attention to the silent, still space between your breaths, between your thoughts, between your heartbeats, and between your periods of suffering. Use the energy of your attention to enhance the space, silence, peace, and tranquility.
- Use your personal, natural wisdom to disempower any obstacles that hinder your progress to improved health and happiness.
- Use all of the above as metaphors of self-protection against all sources of suffering.
- Know that emotional dysregulation, anger, fear all feed your inner dragons. Best to starve them!
- Lastly, if you are a religious person, pray more.
- If you read spiritual books, you may want to try the Lectio Divina approach. In this Latin Christian Church method one reads a spiritual passage over and over and over again, each time going more deeply into the self and core religious beliefs. This form of meditation tends to enhance the power of the spiritual information being read as well as the power of the belief.
Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC
From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton Sangha
Author of Mindful Happiness
“technologize” is not a popularly accepted word, but it is a sad reality. We live in a time when texting while driving may become the new addiction-based cause for many, many deaths. This addiction is so strong people do it in situations that could case their injury or death, or the injury or death of others. Sound familiar! It should. Cellphone “abuse” is not so different from the plans of cigarette producers to “hook” us on something we will pay for during many years. So here is a partial list of what people tend to do when faced with severe stressors.
“experience near empathy” (Kohut), “unconditional positive regard” (Rogers), “hovering attention” (Freud), “the holding environment” in “intersubjective space” (Winnicott), and compassionate awareness to emotional distancing, separation, and dispassion is no easy task. In more in-depth clinical interactions, the process of projective identification between therapist and client may drain your emotional resources; sometimes being “as if” you were the experiencer of your client’s pain and suffering can take a serious toll on your own emotional resources. At time the therapist’s own emotional life lacks the quality of connection experienced in the therapy session. Success in setting emotional boundaries is a very important self-care skill. It may determine your success, failure, joy, or misery in the clinical work you do. It will definitely prevent most case of “burn out.”
helping skills. We suffer just like other people do. Hopefully, our training and experience have given us a bit of a positive edge here. Here are some things you may wish to consider to improve your own level of self-compassion.
