Our Inner Demons: Parts of our Personality or Spiritual Entities?
The concept of "feeding" one's demons is becoming more and more popular. Furthermore, so is the concept that the human personality is made of multiple parts. I believe both these concepts can be spiritually harmful in the hands of the spiritually undiscerning.
Prior to 2017 I briefly practiced a partswork psychotherapy called Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. It was known amongst my fellow IFS therapists that there are sentient, spiritual energies that can inhabit people. In extreme cases, these entities can even completely possess a person and make them do awful things.
Early in 2017, despite growing success professionally I felt a strong call to leave the IFS Therapy world and try something different -- I saw this new way working in a way nothing else ever did in my life. There was something much more happening, tied to the nature of reality somehow. The stuff of synchronicities and minor miracles -- all outside of the realm of everything I'd ever learned in medicine/psychology etc. Months after consistently and diligently seeking Truth, I spontaneously and unexpectedly became born again with the Holy Spirit -- changing my life forever.
My new eyes brought clarity to many of my prior experiences. I realized that the IFS psychotherapy framework completely normalised the less extreme entities as parts of the client's personality. It is only natural for clients and therapists to do this because there is NO spiritual discernment without God. In IFS, the point of reference for what is a "demon" vs. what is a "part" of the personality is the client's "Self". The Self is NOT the human spirit or the Holy Spirit but a person's soul essence, so that particular point of reference cannot be relied upon as it isn't based on God's omniscience.
Humans cannot be easily taught what is part of a person's soul and what isn't. This is something the Holy Spirit reveals to us as he renews our mind and cleanses our soul. Plus, God does not need to work within any therapeutic practice in order to heal people or boot out demons. If anything, these practices can hinder the power and direction of God's Holy Spirit.
Additionally, without the discernment of spirits, therapists might even introduce or magnify the influence of other fallen entities in clients. Any trance state makes a person vulnerable to the influence or possession of fallen spiritual entities and therapies like IFS, hypnosis etc. are no exception.
In cases of spiritual "gurus" who supposedly exorcise demons and impart 'kundalini" experiences, inner demons are merely replaced with more powerful ones more suited to the satanic agenda.
According to a recent Telegraph article, even some psychiatrists have started to evaluate clients for demonic possession. Again, only very extreme cases of mental illness are thought as possibly having an unworldly cause. These psychiatrists rely on a 'scientific' approach of gathering information. I think this is wise because human judgement is worthless when it comes to spiritual matters but it's unlikely criteria developed from a human worldview would reveal the extent and influence fallen spiritual entities have on humanity's wellbeing and soul.
Personally, I'm glad some in healing field are starting to be more open to the existence of spiritual entities affecting humans. Prior to my own training, I was skeptical of this, although I was open to seeing evidence. All I knew was that I had a spiritual hunger of some kind. After working with clients I became more intellectually open to the existence of 'demons" but remained closed off to the existence of God. God for me signified "atman" or what was beneath the ground of all consciousness.
Only after being born again have I seen the influence of the fallen spiritual realm throughout my own life, the lives of all people around me and behind some strange, then-unexplained experiences.
Jesus' directions to resist "the devil" was vital to my journey. The path I took after leaving the IFS world surprisingly turned out to be pretty much Jesus' directions to his disciples ... I became even more sensitive to the spiritual dimension, thanks to the Holy Spirit, and saw a whole new reality to Jesus' existence and teachings.
I now know God neither forces anyone to believe in Him nor to believe souls require Jesus Christ's salvation. It is far easier for most to be open to there being a "dark side" to the world than to acknowledge our own sinful, fallen state that our Creator wants to free us from, through Jesus Christ. I believe this all serves God's vision in eternity but I had to stop feeding quite a few of my own "demons" in order to see that.
All content on this account is my own unless otherwise credited.
An interesting story, although I am personally still in the skeptical phase, although I know people that can see. Perhaps I should go for a training as well :-)
Hi @void, thanks for stopping by and commenting :) It's really awesome you're curious about this.
In my own journey what helped me was leaving the IFS world and God sending people in my life with this awareness ... I had to learn to go against my own conditioning (including prior spiritual knowledge/experience) and start again. I had to start to be aware of (and follow) God's voice in my own life :)
The proof is in seeing and confronting these demons in our own life. For example, when some entities leave for good it's fairly obvious :) Likewise, when we meet the Creator of our being, it's life changing :)
The best 'training' is to follow God/Jesus/the Holy Spirit -- second best is to work with someone who walks the walk, who has the gift of discerning spirits and is empowered by the Holy Spirit (as opposed to fallen entities) to help others in this way.
I would 100% recommend growing with God/Jesus/Holy Spirit rather than sticking with the status quo of the spiritual world :)
Been listening to Jordan Peterson's talks concerning biblical stories, pretty interesting. That actually reached me, along with reading his 12 Rules... God knows where I will end up :-)
Peterson's been recommended to me before. When I've listened to him it seems he's reached similar conclusions in a very different way.
I'm not familiar with him entirely but it seems like Jordan is making some reconsider Christianity in a new way, thanks to the strong intellectual angle :) When I started writing this blog, I wondered whether my message would benefit from a more intellectual approach but my spirit leans towards an approach weighted a little more towards the intuitive/spiritual, if you know what I mean :) This is why I cannot listen to the Peterson for long, even though I like him.
A strong intellect/logic will definitely help some with a strong intellect to consider spiritual things when they haven't considered them before :) I hope this jump in "openness" then serves as a stepping stone over past blockages …
I believe, it's the full change in the heart/soul/spirit that matters ultimately. If we consistently keep going towards only Truth (Truth as opposed to human truth).. we'll end up in the same place :) :)
Yeah, he offers a different view, which is pretty intellectual. But the message is clear and rather simple actually. When you get it you don't really need to listen to JP's talks any more, at least not too much, unless you take it as an intellectual exercise, that is :-)
I had to stop listening to the biblical stories at one point, because I was simply too full of his talks and it was getting repetitive. Although it is not too bad to hear it multiple times :-)
I know what you mean with the intellectual vs. spiritual approach. I actually really like both, because it is reaching different parts of myself. You see, you have to feed both the brain and the heart to go in the right direction, I guess :-)
Absolutely, I get what you mean :)
I'm no longer satisfied by long, purely intellectual exercises hence my lack of patience :p
Plus, the intellects of God/Jesus/Holy Spirit -- way more jaw-dropping and mindblowing!! The tiniest smidgeon of God's power fries the brain and body!! In a very good way :) So.. Jordan Peterson might be awesome. But not God awesome :D
I still really admire Peterson's patience and gift to explain every point intellectually though.
It's a truly inspiring @nadinemenezes
I'm glad, Aditya!
Around 1980 I started interacting occasionally with various spiritual entities (or so I believed), using various (apparently) therapeutic procedures. Reading accounts from various practitioners who still do this with their clients, it seems that the clients' accountability levels go way down. Because "Oh, it wasn't me that did that thing, it was ___ who caused my body to do it".
For a decade or more I haven't personally been looking into causes outside of myself, although many of my (free) online procedures have this ownership option: "Sometimes handling a specific charge works better when the person concentrates their attention into a particular area of the body or space around them, as if the charge were owned there. The more familiar alternative is to address some charge generally." This allows the client to decide for herself if she wants to include such a choice.
That's a really interesting comment, yawnguy. A couple of years back, when I worked as a therapist, I myself used to give clients the option to see whether something was a part of them or not, to have the ownership option as it were. I see things differently now.
I believe the question about accountability arises when we help others in ways that do not have any Godly spiritual discernment -- ways that are not actively led by God/Jesus/Holy Spirit. When we see the sky is blue, we KNOW the sky is blue... there is no need to ask anyone. Furthermore, it isn't possible to "teach" others spiritual discernment or program algorithms that demonstrate spiritual discernment because what is "taught" by humans or "programmed" is spiritually dead in nature.
I'm writing a post that touches upon this issue in more detail. Thanks for your comment!
Thanks for responding. I agree that a simple algorithmic approach cannot teach spiritual discernment, but I'm not trying to. Briefly, after the client has chosen to investigate this avenue, here's the routine. The client can decide to abandon the narrowed approach at any point, at her sole discretion.
(Above taken from the screens following pressing "Ownership" at http://paulsrobot.com/session-audio-gen-main-options.html, after one has triggered a hot topic to address)
OK, I won't take up any more of your time. All the best!
I too developed techniques to help others release stress. In addition to healing, these techniques (that anyone could follow without the use of a therapist even) helped relieve stress, bring calm and clarity and even appeared to remove entities. Unfortunately, anything that comes from human understanding rather than the understanding and power of God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit perpetuates the fallen spiritual world. All therapies/healing/modalities/techniques come from humans. They are spiritually dead and always end up being useless for the spirit, even if they appear to release entities.
Likewise, casting out demons even in Jesus' name without the authority given through Jesus Christ is also spiritually useless.
Jesus said:
Hi, I've been quite busy so haven't finished the article yet but I wanted to answer your question re: client accountability dropping when dealing with the possibility of spiritual entities being involved.
Basically, I believe the biggest reason is because the therapist/practitioner has low accountability to their own spiritual discernment, if they do indeed have any. The low spiritual accountability in the practitioner is then reflected in the client's own accountability.
All practitioners choose to be limited by the therapies they work within or limit themselves in how they market themselves as being trained in. This draws in particular kinds of clients. Both practitioners and clients basically operate mostly within their own psychospiritual comfort zones.