Spiritual Warfare Archives - Mindful Happiness

October 18, 2019 By Admin

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

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

Polyvagal Interventions for Anxiety S. Porges and his Polyvagal Theory may provide innovative interventions for both anxiety and depression. Many people become trapped in ruminating about the past or worrying about the future; they cannot seem to keep their mind and body in the present moment. Some strong, fear-based, bodily defenses may not respond well to […]

Approaches to Treating Chronic Pain Chronic pain is one of the most common and costly physical conditions in the United States. The following approaches have proven to be somewhat effective in reducing personal suffering from chronic pain. Although some of these can be practiced on your own, it is wise to work with a pain […]

Meditation on Ecodharma and Buddhist Ecology Sit calmly and begin to breathe in and out deeply and slowly. Open your eyes to see and appreciate the natural environment you are in. Close your eyes now if you wish to do so. Know that this nature – the sky, clouds, stars, father sun, mother moon, […]

Using Lectio Divina to Enhance Your Happiness Lectio Divina is an ancient Christian (Benedictine) meditation; it is a form of meditative prayer called “sacred seeing.” We will use a modified version of the process here. Follow the steps noted below. Sit quietly in meditative form, calmly abiding yourself here now. After a […]

Practicing Interoceptive Meditations Anthony R. Quintiliani, Ph.D., LADC The mindfulness-based process and intervention of interoception (also called neuroception) has slowly moved from meditation practice into clinical practice, now being part of the recommended MBSR, ACT, and more current CBT-based therapies. The three brief meditations below are presented to expand the use of interoceptive processes in […]

Meditation Process in Chan Buddhism Chan Master Changlu’s The Deportmant for Sitting Meditation (12th century China) is a clear and helpful set of instruction. 1) It begins with the making of a personal vow for great compassion, personal liberation, and samadhi – all for the purpose of delivering sentient beings from their suffering and to their […]

Self-Help Journaling – Two Methods Generally there are two forms of self-help journaling: writing about worries and concerns OR writing about joy and happiness. In my more than 35 years of clinical experience I have not found the former to be very helpful. Most people stuck in negative mood states are not easily able to […]

How We Make Habits – An Understanding Twenty-five hundred years ago the Buddha reportedly taught how humans make habits. The insights of this earliest Buddhist Psychology sheds shame on the West, with its almost-the-same version of this view in the 20th century. One must wonder if B. F. Skinner or N. Chomsky knew about Buddhist […]

Mindfulness Expands the Art of Journal Writing T. Merton, J. Kerouc, I. Progoff, J. Upton, and others have helped to expand the art or journal writing practice. This type of practice can become your mindfulness practice. You will need to write on a daily basis (even if briefly), and you will need to be highly […]

Money and Electronic “Friends” Are They Real ? The Sutta Nipata (4.15, Translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu) noted “Seeing people floundering like fish in small puddles, competing with one another…fear came into me. The world was entirely without substance….Wanting a haven for myself, I saw nothing that wasn’t laid claim to. Seeing nothing in the end but […]

Insights – Vipassana Mediation There will be future, more advanced vipassana meditations posted on the site. For now, however, we will end this series with a final post about the insights often experienced via vipassana meditation. We learn via experience about impermanence, suffering and its causes, no-self, emptiness and many other things – or, perhaps, […]

Trauma Informed Care – Avoidance Process Although more and more clinicians are learning about and using principles/practices of Trauma Informed Care, too few understand the behavioral dynamics of negative reinforcement in the avoidance of trauma-related cues (people, places, things, internal sensations, emotions and images). This post will give a very brief description of negative reinforcement […]

What Consciousness Really Is Considering that we have been to the moon and back, and more recently surveyed important moons of Saturn, science is still a very long way from understanding how the human brain works – and even further away from having a clear, agreed-upon interpretation of human consciousness. Consciousness is the “stuff” of […]

Psychological Research on the Dangers of Smartphone Abuse There is no doubt that smartphone technology bring us a great deal of advanced technological access to a world of information and communication. There is a downside. Recent research published by The American Psychological Association in March, 2017, and opinions in The Atlantic warn of potential and actual biopsychosocial […]

Meditating in the Gap of Nothingness The Buddha taught about your four best friends, that is how the body changes physiology when you sit, stand, walk/move and every time you are lying down. Modern Western neuroscience now supports this statement of 2500+ years ago. Thich Nhat Hanh added the importance of your breath, walking meditation, […]

Building Emotional Resilience On a personal note, right now I am suffering. Its April 15th and I have a terrible viral infection (sore throat, chest congestion, and fever). I feel weak and miserable. Perhaps all that frigid air we endured in New England this Winter also kept infectious “stuff” under control for a while. However, […]

Making the Best of the Holidays Thanks to Sounds True, we have many good suggestions for making the most of the holidays. It is a norm for the holidays to be happy and joyous, and it is a norm for many people for the holidays to be filled with emotional and behavioral challenges. To reduce […]

Henry David Thoreau & Walking Meditation Henry David Thoreau is, perhaps, the most individualistic of the American Transcendentalists. He asked us to consider what we have learned that is useful as we travel our own “stream of life.” He cautions us not to regret when we die that we “had not lived.” He advised us to […]

Mindfulness-Based Therapy for Trauma In line with the thousands of studies now available supporting the use of mindfulness-based interventions in depression, anxiety, chronic pain and addictions (via emotion regulation and interoception), this post will review recommended mindfulness interventions for trauma and PTSD. The post will note information from two recent books on this topic. Also recognize […]

Mindful Ways to Help a person Change Unhelpful Behaviors Brought to you by The Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont Although behavior therapy and contingency management remain the most effective means to initiate changes in unhelpful behaviors, more generic approaches offer some promise. See the steps noted below to change an […]