Helping and Healing the Inner You

Helping and Healing the Inner You

Integrative Strategies for Self Empowerment and Spiritual Growth

Roland Trujillo

  CONTENTS

Finding and Unblocking Restoration

The Mechanism of Denial

Understanding Faith

Christ's Authority to Heal

Not My Will, But Thy Will

The Secret to a Stress Free Life

The Role of Hypnosis in our Conflicts, Tensions, Illnesses, and Misdirected Lifestyles

The Danger of Wanting Something Too Much

Forgiving, Relating, Living, Loving

Response is Obedience

A Primer on Stress & the Solution

Healing and Energy

How Our Emotions Make Us Sick

Energy and Intimidation

The Soul's Recuperative Power

More About How the Soul Gives Power

How to Become Free of Your Hang-ups and Guilts

How to Become Free of Your Hang-ups and Guilts, Part Two

Overcoming the Effects of Resentment

The Meaning of Suffering

Of Myself, I Can Do Nothing

Consume or Be Consumed

Peace Through Strength

Ego Problems and Their Solutions

The Letter Kills, but the Spirit Gives Life

The Beginning

The Leading of Intuition

Dealing with Pressure

The Subconscious Mind

More About the Subconscious

Divine Providence

Why Christians Get Sick

How We Become Debilitated

The Importance of Obedience

Be Careful Who You Serve

The Secret to Life is in Response

Why We Don't Get Better

Why We Become Enslaved

- 1 -

Finding and Unblocking Restoration

All of our symptoms, including death itself, are caused by a defection from God and His Right Way.

Pain is evidence that something is wrong. In a sense, physical pain is the body crying out, asking for help or relief. Something being wrong is a sign that something is out of order. Cancer is the growth of cells that are under the authority of a head renegade cell. But the renegade cell would not have gained a foothold if the body's immune system were functioning well. It would have been observed, reported, and hunted down.

Secondly, other cells would not have defected to the authority of the terrorist if the ruling authority of the body were just and loving.

In the perfect hierarchy, The Creator is the ultimate authority, then Christ, followed by the humble, repentant soul.

With the soul, humble and obedient, as the good king of the body--the mind and all the body's systems, all the way down to the individual cells, live in a perfect system of justice.

In such a system, the ego wants to do God's will. Through the respectful aware soul, truth and love are expressed; and the mind and body carry out the descending orders.

In such a system ruled by proper authority, there is no need or desire to rebel, since all is justice. An atmosphere of Truth surrounds the truth-loving soul, and the Light of Truth searches out all things, revealing and healing even hidden remnants of sin and wrong living in the body.

The mind that is ruled by the Light from God is attentive to what is right, because the soul loves what is right and makes it more important than anything else. Such a mind is ever aware, and in the Light is keen to observe and stay away from anything improper.

Can you see the parallel between this mental/spiritual process and that of the operation of the healthy immune system?

An aware person is careful about hygiene, nutrition, and association. Clean in body and careful about associations, the person is less likely to come in contact with harmful pathogens. If any do get through, the body is scanning constantly so that anything harmful or foreign is quickly dealt with by the immune system.

In a similar way, the humble and honorable soul shuns promiscuous improper associations. When something improper is observed, it is not allowed to cohabitate in the mind. The Light Itself, operating through the still observant soul, does the screening.

The soul merely needs to remain aware and not get caught up in goals, schemes, excessive thought or emotions.

Another analogy is this: you could compare excessive thoughts and emotions with eating too much. A person who has gorged himself and is overstuffed with food or drink is not as alert as the person who has eaten very little or in moderation. Too much of anything tends to interfere with a proper state of mind.

When the body or the blood becomes overfilled with chemicals, salt, sugar, undigested foodstuff, or toxins—it becomes exceedingly difficult to have a clear mind or to realize anything. Yet it is realization that is the key to salvation.

Truth must be realized. When we indulge ourselves in anything—be it food, music, anger, excitement, drugs or even sights and sounds—realization is interfered with.

When we are on medication, we are in a mental fog. When we are sick, and especially when we run a fever, our mind is fogged and delirious. However, if the sickness and suffering sober the soul, it might initiate a time of sincere searching. The pure intent and yearning of this soul will be a silent cry to the Father.

He will make it possible for the soul to realize despite the downdraft of the sickness. All I am saying is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Better to begin seeing what we need to see while it is easier. But if, like with many people, it has taken a desperate situation to begin sobering up--take heart. With God all things are possible.

Sometimes a troubling ailment or condition will settle upon a person who has otherwise led a clean and principled life. "How can an ailment like cancer attack such a person?" we ask. In fact, it is often the most sociable, amiable person who it attacks. The answer is complex, but here is one clue.

Remember what we said about the renegade cancer cell answering to another authority? Its only purpose is survival of itself. The will of the chief rogue cell intimidates other cells and later the body itself. Converted over through intimidation, the other cells serve the head terrorist, and the aberrant behavior grows.

Even the immune system itself can be converted over to serve another will. Some of the kindest and gentlest people in the world have spent their life serving and being nice to other people and the establishment system. They give and give to what on the surface appears to be a good cause, but underneath the plastic surface of society another will operates. Any form of intimidation—even giving in and serving the will of a seemingly nice person who is close to you is a form of intimidation.

Many people spend their life serving and worshipping their mother or someone whose demands they can't say "no" to. Giving in to the will of another leads to serving them. And when you do, they take your life and give you something of their nature, even their governing entity.

And so it comes to pass that the sweetest child in the world gets leukemia, as its life is being drained by a smothering mother. To all the world she seems wonderful, and no one suspects that the child's life has become an external life support for the one who is draining it.

Remember--worldly institutions and yes, even worldly churches, have their roots in hell. They provide an alternative to God's direct rule.

They can take your life, your energy, your money—and all the while you think they are leading you to heaven when they are leading you to themselves and their governing spirit. When you respond to middlemen, putting your trust in middlemen, without realizing it, you bypass the still small voice within.

Serve God or serve mammon.

In fact, from a spiritual perspective, many of our physical ailments are the result of abuse of the body by the ego. For example, many people misuse food. Instead of eating to be aware, they eat to forget. When most people eat, they go into a trance, separated from God and reality, and immersed in their self-indulgence, fantasy and good feelings.

Other people use food as a substitute for love. The resentful person, for example, uses food to comfort his or her angry self. The woman who resents her husband uses the food to be her lover. Alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and drugs are modified food.

Alcoholism, drug addiction and food addiction are simply the gross symptoms of a stubborn ego in denial. The alcohol, the food and the drug help us deny the truth. People misuse their doctor and his medicines.

They prefer to have symptoms alleviated and they misuse the services of their doctor and his medicines for that purpose.

Food abuse, sex abuse, and work abuse occur when we use our mind and body to deny something we don't want to face. The person who is resentful becomes angry and misuses food to comfort her angry self.

The person who resents something at home misuses work to stay away from home. The person who does not have real love misuses work and money to attempt to buy the love of his family. The person who studies too much is trying to compensate for a lack of understanding or is seeking to prove something.

There is the obvious misuse of the body when we become angry--raising our blood pressure, changing our blood lipids, etc. The person who is faithless and who becomes upset, and then uses the upset to escape into and immerse the ego into is also obviously causing wear and tear on the organs and body systems.

The misuse of anything always has the body as an intermediary, and thus the body is abused in order to misuse something else.

Before long, the body becomes worn down and damaged. Pain or other discomfort is the first symptom, followed by faltering performance and eventual shut down.

Typical organs that exhibit the effect of the abuse include: the pancreas, the adrenals, the brain, the heart, the stomach, and the intestines.

It is easy to see why taking pain pills and other palliative efforts do not get to the real cause of the problem which is the abuse of the body for egotistical purposes.

Sometimes altering the environment of the body (such as finding other work or getting more fresh air) affords relief. Eliminating certain poisons, such as tobacco or excessive junk food, is beneficial. Sometimes a rest is helpful—whereby the body has a chance to recover.

But the ultimate fix for our ailments involves a change of attitude of the ego. It requires a soul that realizes that its hatred, willfulness and denial are wrong. When the soul is no longer compatible with anger abuse, for example, because it is more forgiving and less resentful—the soul will simply stop abusing the body.

A person who is no longer trying to deny the Truth will no longer need drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, excessive food or emotion to help it deny.

- 2 -

The Mechanism of Denial

Understand this: every sin has pain associated with it. Every sin has a short-lived pleasure associated with it—but this pleasure soon leads to its opposite, pain.

Every high is followed by a low, for example. Intellectually, we all know this is true, because we have observed drug addicts getting a high and then suffering the horrors of the low. I remember that when I was in college, one of my friends took some "uppers" to stay awake to cram for final exams. He soon became a terrible monster: hateful and dark, impossible to live with.

We also know this is true because we have all had the experience of getting too excited and worked up over some goal. Once it was achieved, we then had a big let down.

Unfortunately, we tended to blame someone else or the goal itself--which led to resentment. Resentment being a "pleasure" of sorts led to even more pain and more resentment. This process can lead to depression and even suicidal thoughts. And it all began with the simple sin of making something too important to our ego.

Most people, who have been the victim of some injustice (real or imagined), enjoy the "pleasure" of judging the one who committed the infraction. The high of judging is pleasurable to the ego. But there is always a backlash of guilt, anxiety, and fear associated with the judgment. Since it is wrong to judge, guilt accrues. Because the ego does not want to admit it is wrong, it suffers the pain for being wrong.

The ego feels pain when it must realize it is wrong. And the incorrigible ego will blame others for "making him wrong." This leads to more resentment and another round of pain. Unwilling to face its wrongness, the ego must also do something with the pain of being wrong (for judging). The ego may blame and punish another person--a process of projecting onto others. In this situation, the ego often blames and accuses another of the very thing it was guilty of. This is how it projects and pawns off its own wrong. But because this process itself is wrong and an injustice to the other, it only adds more guilt, shame and pain.

The pain of being wrong becomes various symptoms including uneasiness, nervousness, anxiety, and eventually other forms of physical ailments, some psychosomatic and some real.

The basis of nervousness, uneasiness, and restlessness is not wanting to be observed by conscience.

Guilty people feel uneasy because they are not living properly and they are aware of this fact at some level. The Truth is always there, and its presence is a constant but unwelcome reminder that something is wrong about the way we are living.

Because we want to feel good, we resent the presence of conscience (or any aware person) which makes us feel uncomfortable. The uneasiness and nervousness is due to our wanting to escape the incriminating presence of Truth.

When we do not feel dominant, we feel like we are the victim of the watchful eye or presence of an aware innocent person. We seek to wiggle out of their questions or get away from their scrutiny.

When we feel dominant, like when we are the parent of a little child, our uneasiness takes the form of impatience. We become cruel and vicious, seeking to confuse, put the observer down, or eliminate what makes us uncomfortable.

The person who cannot overcome the scrutiny of conscience or Truth becomes resentful. The person who thinks he can dominate becomes violent and cruel.

Remember, the whole process of suffering, deteriorating, and dying is the inevitable result of sin. Adam defected from God and brought a curse of mortification and death upon himself and his progeny. Every sin carries a mortification process with it.

This is the truth. We are all sinning and dying. We must face this truth without resentment, blame or denial. If we use resentment to deny the truth about our human plight, we are adding sin to sin. It is a sin to deny the truth.

Fortunately, the person who is willing to admit the truth is graced by God to suffer differently from others.

The egotist denies the truth by resenting it and then suffers the pain of conflict with God, the pain of being wrong, and the pain of the symptoms of separating from God and the symptoms of dying.

The person who is willing to admit the truth, on the other hand, suffers the special form of suffering called repentance—the sorrow and regret of seeing one's own wrong. Thanks to the mercy and goodness of God, the pain of repentance is short-lived. He forgives us and removes the pain. He then also permits us to observe the symptoms of our prior sins come off the assembly line in an orderly fashion—to be observed, understood, and set free from.

He permits us to see our symptoms for what they are—the sequelae of sin. We may have to experience them for a short time in order to fully comprehend the ramifications of sin. During this period, the soul is given the grace to humbly bear what it cannot change without resentment or blame.

Furthermore, seeing the nature of sin and its inevitable results, the person now also stops judging others who s/he once hated for their denials, imperfections and errors. The soul is given to see that without grace, other's pain of being wrong is just too much for them to bear.

The soul sees that others became wrong because of the projections and accusations laid upon them when they were young. They were required to suffer for the sins of their parents and elders. Because of their resentment, they began to feel inferior, and that inferiority made them suggestible; and they were compelled to take on the suggestions and curses laid upon them. Then the pain of their resentment of the injustice kept them wrong.

Later, when they became parents and the opportunity was afforded them, they could not resist dumping their pain on their kids. Of such is the legacy of original sin.

This is precisely what happened to you. You are not responsible for the sins dumped on you by others. And yes, you did suffer. But your biggest mistake was resenting them. The resentment actually made you wrong for resenting, and because of YOUR wrong you accepted blame because it was compatible with the guilt you felt. You undoubtedly made the mistake of thinking that you felt guilty for what you were being accused of (though your guilt was really for resenting).

Resentment has a way of accepting blame and punishment because feeling bad feeds and seems to confirm a reason for the resentment.

Resentment also accepts blame for the pleasure of judging.

But once having accepted blame, the ego must suffer the pain of being wrong or continue the process of dumping on another.

A false accusation causes resentment and pain. The ego might then decide to go ahead and do or be what it was accused of for whatever pleasure values are associated with it.

A child accused of being a thief might very well steal something in order to enjoy the stolen thing (since he's being accused of it anyway) or steal to enjoy the pleasure of seeing the parent suffer.

Resentment locks the person into the pain/pleasure cycle and into the fantasy of imagining pleasures and envisioning morbid results. The cycle ever spirals downward to more guilt, further removal from God, and deeper and darker imaginings, more intense pains, and more loathsome ways of relieving the pain and lowering consciousness.

The solution is to give up the resentment. Willing to know what the truth is without resentment permits the soul to be softened and to receive God's redeeming forgiveness. It also permits the soul to begin to see objectively what the reality is.

You will see is a world where people are dumping on each other and seeking to relieve the pain of their own wrong. You will see a world of false comforts, where each comfort the wrong ego receives only makes it more wrong.

You will also see that you fell into the same trap of hating and being hated, hurting and being hurt, and seeking pleasure to relieve pain because, like other foolish egos, you became resentful.

Give up resentment and the pain for being wrong goes away. What are left are natural pains to be born for awhile (without resentment) until God heals them too.

Someday you will see that most of your life you have been living a lie through accepting lies and then acting them out.

For example, as kids, many of us were harshly teased about something. The implication of the tease was that there was something wrong with us. Resenting and accepting the accusation, we then lived out life as if there were something wrong with us. We accepted the blame, the pity, or the comfort that attended our fault.

On the other hand we may have resentfully rebelled against the cruel implication. The rest of our life involved expending energy to disprove or compensate for our fault.

Remember, resentment separates us from Truth. Resenting an implication, we are left to deal with it without grace: giving in to it or fighting it with anger and compensation.

In fact, culture is neatly arranged around death. Everything including insurance policies, retirement plans, emotional funerals, humanism and the false comfort of medicine and euthanasia is designed to imply that death is inevitable.

Early on in our lives we mostly ignored death or pushed it out of our consciousness. But as the years passed, we were gradually worn down to accept it. Those of us who don't accept it, try to fight it with resentment.

The truth of the matter is that death, though it has become a reality, is a reality because of sin. But death is not inevitable. We were not originally meant to die. We do so now because of the curse of original sin, our own sins, and our failure to find salvation through believing into the truth.

In order to be saved from sin, you need to be saved from the belief in death. But if you continue to believe in death, how can you live in such a way that does not make it inevitable?

This is speculation on my part, but I actually think that some of our deterioration, perhaps all of it, if not caused by sin, is due to a firm belief in death and decay which gives the body no chance of acting otherwise. It's a self fulfilling prophesy, you see.

There is a certain power in belief. We all know that if a person believes they can't do something, they probably won't. We know that some people believe they can do something and they find a way to do it.

It is said that some people who were firmly convinced that someone had spoken a voodoo curse on them have actually died. It's not the voodoo curse itself but it is the shock of believing in the curse. The flip side is placebo, which operates through false hypnotic belief, and displacement or transfer of symptom.

Placebo does not really cure anything, but sometimes it stops worry in its tracks, so that the body has a chance to repair itself without the interference of negative thought and emotion.

While the negative effects of wrong belief can become permanent; unfortunately the so called cures of false belief or belief in a wrong source are short lived. Afterwards, the person is worse off for having misplaced trust, followed by disappointment and loss of hope.

However, there is such a thing as belief in the true Source. If someone tells you the truth and you believe it, you are operating in reality and on valid basis.

God does not lie. What He has said is true. He also is merciful, forgiving and He may remove the effects of sin. It is doubt that separates us from God. His forgiveness is already there, but through doubt, disbelief, and pride, we reject it.

It is not enough to believe words about God, nor is it enough to believe in an imaginary God or Jesus. Hypnotic belief cannot save you. A person who trusts in the words on a page or the words of someone is believing in the wrong source. Believing in the wrong source cuts them off from belief into the Spirit of God.

I will never forget a man I met at Starbucks. He had come to town, having been attracted by a church that promised all manner of miraculous healings and life changes. While at the church service, he noted that many people were responding to the big light show, music, and multimedia presentation complete with glittering fake manna that was released and came floating down from the ceiling.

Part of him wanted to believe what he was observing, but something in him made him doubt it.

Little did he realize that what it was in him that was silently whispering "it isn't so" was God's Holy Spirit of Truth trying to warn him. His salvation depends upon which he believes. If he believes the external trappings, he will be doomed and he will become a slave of the unholy spirit that is behind the falsity. If he doubts the lie and believes into the Spirit of Truth, he will be saved.

Just as you cannot be just a little bit pregnant, you cannot believe into the truth one moment and the lie the next. Life is decisive. You can't ride two horses at the same time. The spirit of the lie is everywhere operating through its dupes and agents seeking to make you doubt what you know in your heart. It uses hypnosis inducing words, music, and emotional appeals.

It appeals to your pride and it takes advantage of your gullibility and propensity to doubt. It talks to you through its strutting shills and it also talks to you in your mind. Belief in the correct Source saves you, and belief in myriad of variations in the lie and the unholy spirit that stands behind them dooms you.

Christ's words were often the very same that the people's religious leaders had said. Yet belief into Christ had the power to save some people because they believed into Him and into His good spirit. Others, under sway of the unholy spirit operating through the false leaders, were doubtful and full of unbelief.

When it comes to spiritual matters, there is a real belief and a false belief. A belief that is all intellectual, emotional, word-based and fantasy-based might help a person do better for awhile, but it cannot save you. This is hypnotic belief.

Convince a hypnotized person that he is cured and he may get out of bed and say that his pain is gone. He is compelled to act cured. Unfortunately the underlying cause of is ailment is not taken away.

Sometimes a person might be under sway of a false negative belief. Hypnotizing him with a false positive belief may make the negative behavior patterns go away, and this has a positive benefit. Giving up drugs and taking up religion results in a better life style.

Letting go of a negative belief also gives the body some space to recover naturally.

We are always better off for believing truth rather than lies. But just believing in words of truth (even though they may be factual) cannot save you.

The saving belief is belief into the Spirit of Truth sent from God. Believing into the Truth joins you to God. What positive thoughts and hopes He gives you will come to pass because He is in change of them.

Can you see how cultural Christians or hypnotized Christians can be misled? By believing in words, they miss out on believing into the Spirit of Truth itself.

They then look at their own emotions and use them as evidence that they believe. But they are deceived by the words, the speaker, and their own emotions.

Thus it is that even positive or religious words can kill us if they lead us away from the wordless Word of Truth within.

Words, even holy words, are just words. It is the inner wordless testimony that is the important thing. The Holy Spirit wordlessly testifies to the truth of the external fact. It is God Who made the fact a fact, and it is He Who testifies within to its truth.

- 3 -

Understanding Faith

For the person who has turned to the inner wordless way of knowing and trusts in it, the positive things and the sense that something good is about to happen are inspired by the Creator.

These are not beliefs you gave yourself. Nor are they beliefs that some other person gave you. Therefore they have the power of good behind them.

Perhaps this would be a good place to talk about faith for just a moment. Most people think that faith is some far out thing. Others think it is just a concept. Still others think it is an emotional thing.

Faith is a relationship with someone and a trust in them. Can you see why putting your faith in anyone (no matter how knowledgeable, how seemingly nice, or how credentialed they might be) means not putting your faith in God.

The relationship with God, that I call faith, means looking to intuition first. It is an involvement with the inner Light. Like a little child who holds his daddy's hand and who looks to daddy whenever he has a question or concern about anything, the soul looks inward with a silent plea or questioning.

This involvement is not an emotional one. It is an attitude of looking to God, of ever checking the rightness of things, and ever wanting to be guided to do the right thing.

Perhaps the best ways to describe faith is by pointing out what it is not. What most people think of as faith is an emotional involvement with words, objects or people. It is the involvement of the ego with whatever or whoever gives it faith in itself and makes it feel good about itself.

This involvement is emotional, physical and imaginal. For example, we get involved with some person (lover or leader) who appeals to our ego. We have an emotional attachment to them, they make us feel, and we toy with them in our imagination.

We become sensitive to their physical presence, which stirs us to feelings. Of course, the feelings associated with being in love come to mind. It is obvious how the lover appeals to something we want for our ego.

We are also stirred by the excitement that a speeding car represents, a soft luxurious coat, or a fancy piece of jewelry. They stand for something—power, party time, excitement, self righteousness, luxury, and so on. A person can also get excited over words or over knowledge.

Just about anything that holds out a promise of glory, greatness, worship, or even the hope of a cure can make us excited and emotional. People who look to medicine to save them can become excited over the latest operation or a new experimental medicine that holds out the possibility of a cure.

A leader or lover appeals to our ego, offering it something, and we will begin to get involved with them, and soon we even have a fantasy relationship with them.

It's only a small stretch to see how someone we hate also involves us with emotions and fantasy. The one we hate gives us feelings of judgment and powerful anger feelings. We judge them, and the feelings of anger or unhappiness, support our ego in its role as judge.

Here's a cute story that illustrates the relationship aspect of faith. A little boy was standing by the curb. A business man came along and asked: "Why are you standing here?" I'm waiting for the bus, said the boy. The business man chuckled and said, I hate to tell you, but this is not a bus stop. After a few more attempts by the businessman to dissuade him, the boy announced: I have faith that this is a bus stop.

The business man shook his head and began to walk away.

As he was walking away, he heard the sound of bus brakes behind him. He turned and saw a big bus stopping for the boy.

As the boy was getting on the bus, he turned to the businessman and said: You see, Mister, the bus driver is my dad."

Faith is a relationship for better or worse. When we put our faith in what we know we know deep down, we are permitting the Light of Truth to enter, and we are involving ourselves with the Spirit of Truth. We yearn for it and we welcome God's involvement in our life. In exchange for our yearning and trust, He helps us to change for the better and wordlessly guides us.

It's not an emotional thing, it's a deep soul yearning and turning to God. It's an inclination of the soul. It's obedience and a willingness to follow through with what we realize is right. It leads to realizations and private revelations that give us more and more good reason for the way we are going. The good that we see happening all around us is the evidence of the faith we had, which was the substance of things not seen and not yet made.

Indeed, the quiet faith does lead to a change in our physical being, evidenced by the happy sad emotion of repentance that purges us of error. We also have a quiet excitement over our discoveries, a joy, and a peace of mind that we cannot give ourselves. More often than not, real faith is trusting in a silent knowing, what we know deep down in our hearts.

One mother will coldly and ambitiously send her child off to godless preschool or school where the child is taught and bullied by strangers and conformed to peers.

Another mother will hear the cries of her child the first day she sends the child off to spend the day with strangers. But she will doubt her heart ache, ignore her intuition and believe and have faith in strangers and experts. Hardening her heart, she pushes the child onto the school bus anyway.

Another mom will heed her wordless intuition and clasp her child close to her bosom. She will find a way to home school her child. This woman has faith. The still small voice, the quiet intuition is from God. This faithful mother may not know this, but what she does have is love for her child and a willingness to do what is right.

It is said that the mind of man plans and schemes, but the Lord directs his feet. But this only for the soul that stands back from thinking, and listens to the heart. Despite the doubts, and though the whole world be arrayed against her, the faithful soul does what she knows deep down in her heart is right.

But the wrong kind of faith—the one most of us have--is a hypnotic and emotional involvement with people, objects, words, or ideas. The ego responds to someone or something that holds our some sort of promise or appeal to it, and the response is excitement and an inclination toward that person or object. The result is an emotional response, a trauma, a physical change, and an imprinting of a memory. Emotion is the evidence of ego response.

The response is also hypnotic. It is a rapport that develops between the object we are responding to and the ego.

The faithful soul is the one who is committed to what is right and so turned to the inner good that the external teases have no appeal.

The faithless soul does not love what is right enough to not want to leave the door to the mind ever so slightly ajar, so as not to miss some titillating ego appeal. And when it makes its approach, the soul toys with it mentally, which already lets it in. Soon emotions and feelings begin to take hold and then the person acts on the feelings.

The hypnosis is the hold that the appealing person or object has on the mind. Once the emotional bond and hypnosis sets in, thoughts and attitudes are transmitted through the emotional connection from one to another, and especially from the dominant stressor to the one who attention has been captured.

Soon the hypnotized person may take on the thoughts, the mind, the attitudes, the beliefs of the tempting stressor that are projected his way. In short, the victim becomes identified with the dominant stress.

That is why the captives of terrorists often become loyal to those that terrorized them. It's called the Stockholm syndrome. That is why young people, who are easily appealed to with idealistic notions, can come under influence of a cult or cause to which they give their all, and from which it is almost impossible to loose them.

People become identified and loyal to their pets, their team, even their drugs. The psychotic clings to what he has been converted to for life, for hope, for identity. And when he finally sees that he has been betrayed, he often clings to it in hate: going on hating it and unable to give up his grudge against it.

Can you now understand why God commands us not to have any other gods before Him? Whatever we make too important, whatever we give ourselves to in love or hate, gains the power to rule us and we become its slave. Only God gives us freedom. Anything else can only enslave. Even if it is a mere object (we have resented or emotionally reacted to), it gains a terrible power over us even in our mind. An object cannot set you free. Even if another's intent is not to enslave you (though often it is, because that is how they gain power over you), there is the enslavement in the mind: the obsession, the memory, the resentment.

The only way to become free is to regret your making something too important and forgetting about your Creator. See what has happened, don't resent your enslavement, and let go of the hate and resentment.

The ultimate hold that things have over us stems from our own stubbornness. Something we don't want to admit, something we still look to it for, or a resentment that keeps us trying to win, prove something, or get even.

By standing back, we let go. Look at it this way: if something in the past keeps haunting you, there must be something that gives it a power over you. Remember, we said that the stubborn ego actually uses the memory to struggle with and hide in. The stubborn ego does not want to acknowledge dependence on God and submit to God. A complete reliance on, trust in, attachment to and loyalty to the Creator results in disinterested mental distance. But the unrepentant ego moves toward the person or object or notion that is appealing to it. Some sort of continuing desire, resentment, unforgiveness, or hope keeps the attached and enslaved. Think of it! The ego actually enslaves itself to something in order to avoid God.

People and objects lose power over us when we stand back and no longer want their lies and no longer want anything from them. By standing back, we move closer to the Creator and farther from the creature.

Now, getting back to whatever it is that still has a hold on you from the past. There has to be a continuing hold of some sort. Whatever it was that first enticed you to leave your first estate and venture into the world of beasts and drugs is long gone. What is it that now, at this very moment, keeps the attachment, memory and rapport alive? There has to be a present day something, involving the will--something you don't want to admit or something you don't want to let go of that keeps the attachment alive.

Often it is something that we still want (power, money, respect, a happy home, or appreciation) that we just don't want to let go of. We think back to the past where it was denied us, and we still want and resent not getting it.

It can also be something we don't want to admit: that mom didn't love you, that you failed your child, that have failed in business. Not wanting to admit that this is true, you resent and struggle with the idea. But it keeps coming back to haunt you. If it suddenly became unimportant to you, it would lose energy and go away.

Another factor is trying to make up for the loss we experienced in that moment when we think we lost respect, love, success or whatever. The memory of that moment comes to mind, we resent it, and then we are energized to strive and struggle to prove ourselves.

The present moment factor that keeps the enslavement going is most likely a form of stubbornness: resentment (conscious stubbornness) or repression, anger, suppressed hostility (which are often unconscious), or striving to prove or obtain something.

Another form of stubbornness is an unwillingness to admit something. As I said, it is often something like an unwillingness to admit that you hated your mom, for example. This unwillingness to admit the truth keeps you subject to lies and subject to having to serve that person in guilt. It can even keep us tied to someone after they die. We are not able to be set free because we won't admit the truth.

Perhaps now you can see that the soul's unwillingness to admit that it is wrong keeps it subject to Satan. Pride's unwillingness to admit wrong is the ultimate denial, and Satan is able to use it to enslave us. Related to this is pride's unwillingness to give up the tinsel trappings and false hope of worldly success. The ego also clings to the hope of a cure. And when success or happiness is no longer a viable possibility, the ego clings to distractions and emotions that keep it from being bared to the Light of Truth which would devastate pride and dash illusions. The entire world is enslaved to whatever helps it deny the truth.

Can you see why a willingness to admit wrong and be sorry in our heart is the key to getting better from whatever ails us and whatever has us in its grips?

The principle of standing back and observing, with a sincere willingness lay down the life of pride will eventually set you free from everything. As a matter of fact, the very act of meditation combined with a willingness to admit wrong and to know the truth, regardless of the consequences, is already salvation. After this beginning, there will be a long period of seeing more and more wrongs and errors, seeing more and more subtle struggles, willfulness, denials, and little attachments to words and notions that support some sort of pridefulness. With each denial, resentment, attachment, false hope seen and let go of—one is progressively freer.

Do you now understand what Christ meant when He said we must lay down the ego life and take up the spiritual life? Can you see what Paul meant when he said: I die daily? He meant that each day he lets go of that which maintains the ego life of pride apart from God.

Bear in mind that resentment and judgment are the most subtle and insidious sustainers of pride. The ego life, to a large extent, consists of a secret fantasy life of judging others and resenting our luck and lot in life. Can you see how the ego uses knowledge of good and knowledge of evil to make judgments about others? Can you see how resentment can maintain a whole ego life built around some incident that we keep resenting and which sustains the pride to keep living in hate?

Can you see how the devil himself was traumatized by his hatred of God and good, and now lives on informally hating over and over again anything good?

Can you now see why we must not resent anyone or anything? If you do, you are likely to Can you now see how an appeal—sometimes extremely subtle, such as a little come on or a hint of meanness, can cause something to enter the mind? And then, toying with the notion, the victim can then search out more experience to find out if there is more there, to be sure about something, or to struggle with it?

Once a suggestion enters, we often keep toying with it. If it's negative, we try to find a way to defeat it or counter it. The victim may get so involved that he or she may spend a lifetime trying to disprove it. Often the victim is converted over to the notion, if he or she cannot find the way to completely disprove it.

The emotionally and hypnotically and traumatically created follower or believer is a mindless slave of the cause, cult or idea. Completely converted over, through the trauma of emotional belief, the victim becomes a rabid groupie. Islamic terrorists, follower of Hitler or various causes are among this group. The fanatic can also be converted over to an otherwise true or good idea. Environmentalism, concern for animals, or a noble religion like Christianity have both reasonable and commonsensical adherents, as well as hypnotic fanatics. The fanatics give the cause a bad name.

Once again, the faith that stems from involvement with people, objects, words, or imagination is emotional hypnotic. It is ego involvement based on emotional response to an ego appeal.

The true faith in God is unemotional. It is based on awareness, whereby the soul stands back from experience and observes calmly and neutrally from a little distance. In the Light of Truth, the soul sees the fatal appeal and shrinks from it without reacting, without assenting or rejecting. It remains distant and impervious.

Standing in the Light, the souls sees in the Light. Remember, the analogy I gave earlier about how love is not looking into each others eyes, but together both looking at the sunset.

A little child will not be afraid to investigate a noise in the dark if he is holding his daddy's hand and together they get a flashlight and go to look.

When the soul locates the inner light (which it now knows as conscience or intuition), loves that light, and wants to remain aware in the Light, will then view things without being disturbed by them or being sucked into them. Aloof, wondering in the light, not tempted to get involved or sucked in, the soul is safe. The light reveals deception, and the soul does not follow.

The ego which avoids the shaming Light (because it is unwilling to be humbled) is forced to deal with and grapple with things on its own. Being an ego, it simply cannot help but deal with things in an egotistical way. It worries, analyzes, decides, and falls into error. And because it is subjective, it looks at everything for a mindset of what will preserve or promote pride. It simply cannot see that the lying support or the offer that's true good to be true is in fact a lie and a deception. It errors, falls in love and falls in hate. And it suffers from an ever deepening and enslaving involvement with people, objects, words, knowledge and substances.