Choose God Over Crystals: Inner Peace Without Consumerism
It’s good to be clear, here. We’re not talking about genuine wise monks who chant on top of Tibetan mountains, simply because they don’t follow England’s mostly Christian faith. But in recent years, there has been a huge interest in contacting ‘the other side’, or for a better word than none – the occult.
It’s all seen as a bit of fun. But in fact, all priests who work as exorcists say the same thing: for a ‘demon’ or unwelcome spirit to get into your head or consciousness is pretty difficult – unless you literally invite them in.
But that’s just what is happening, with nearly all towns these days having ‘fun psychic fairs’. But one priest says he literally rolls his eyes whenever he sees such posters. As he knows that often he will be getting phone calls a few days after, from people who have been spooked by eerie events.
Let’s be clear. Whatever your beliefs (and different people have different ones which is fine). Contacting dead people or playing about with oujia boards is not fun – it’s downright dangerous. You’re just letting negative spirits (and they do exist) to enter into your life. And they can be difficult to get rid of.
Of course, a lot of this recent nonsense has been simply due to selling tat: cheap gift and book shops are often selling such books, and some psychic evenings even ‘number the chairs’, so the ‘gifted psychic’ knows your name when you book (some even go through pockets of people’s belongings in the corridors).
No doubt a few may be doing this for genuine reasons (and who are we to say they are wrong?). But it’s a fair thing to say that nearly all religious texts (not just Biblical ones) say the same thing. Pray to God, not some ‘intermediary’ who is likely charging you money for doing so.
You normally find too, that the people paying for such practices are sensitive and vulnerable. Perhaps people who have lost someone dear, and are trying to cope with the grief.
What is far better is simply to take yourself along to a nice little church service, and listen to a sermon, some hymns (or vespers sung by old monks, which is wonderfully peaceful). Ancient and real.
Vincent P Lambert is an exorcist who was trained at the Vatican. He has conducted many exorcisms and has some good advice.
This American priest is just one of just under 200 licensed to conduct such services. He only performs services once a doctor and psychiatrist has ruled out other causes of strange behaviours (some people have approached him simply because they have schizophrenia). He says cases of rare demonic possession are extremely rare, mostly it’s due to people playing about with things they shouldn’t, leading to some worrying spiritual energy around. And usually can easily be fixed, if the person stops doing it.
He is quite annoyed that people view his job as some kind of party piece:
There is a growing trend to see the exorcist as a magician, that somehow I have a bag of tricks that I can make people’s problems go away. But again, it’s not about just casting the devil out. It’s also about inviting God in. I would even say that casting the devil out is the easy part.
It’s really about helping people to know that the greatest thing in life that we can know are not the sins that we do, but it’s God’s love and mercy. God is always ready to forgive if we simply give God that opportunity.
Back in the UK, Welsh Anglican priest Jason Bray is often asked to investigate haunted houses from ‘people who think that Auntie Brenda is lurking in the airing cupboard and she really shouldn’t be there’.
He says the most puzzling thing is when he comes across more people who believe in ghosts, but don’t believe in God.
Jesuit priest Mitchel Pacwa (who speaks 13 languages fluently!) is an expert on the occult, and says that readings have moved on with the times. From the old-style ‘knock three times if you can hear me’ to online ‘new age channelling’, where people will take money over Zoom for going into a trance to speak to angels.
One top US medium charges $700 for a 30-minute consultation.
God is not channelled. Nor are the saints, angels or souls of the deceased. For people who dabble in the occult, the end result is often despair. Father Lawrence J Gesy
How Harry Houdini exposed fake mediums
You’ve likely heard of Harry Houdini, a strongman who could get himself out of any chains, using a combination of picks and skills. What you may not know is that he spent a good deal of his time exposing fake mediums.
He was angry that such ‘scams’ were designed to exploit grieving people. Following his own mother’s death, he would attend seances in disguise, and then shine a torch to expose methods he was clever enough to know how they worked.
He even once built a cage to stop one medium moving and producing tricks during a reading (he was a trained magician).
Derren Brown (the modern day skeptic)
This is not to say that skeptics don’t believe for sure in a God, it’s just that they are often fed up of vulnerable and often grief- stricken people paying out money to people who (even well-meaning) are likely just imagining things. Or at worse, making things up.
Do not turn to mediums or consult spiritists, or you will be defiled by them; I am the LORD your God. Leviticus 19:31
Derren (known for his fancy hypnosis tricks) was actually a religious youngster. And has no problem with those who are. He says that he has talked to a couple of people who have seen ghosts, and he believes them to be genuine and authentic. It’s the other side of new age quackery he has issue with:
I imagine that the occult appeals more to the social outcast with a grudge, rather than the standard do-gooder, lobotomized flower-fairy.
He talks of a million dollar prize fund to any psychic who can prove what they do is real:
This is money that could be kept or given to a charity, not to mention the likelihood of also receiving a Nobel prize and the ability to give the world vital new knowledge that would change us forever. We can look forward to verified psychics working with governments and scientists to help us find peace and understand the nature of eternity, rather than merely pass on bland condolences or upsetting revelations from the Other Side. Or maybe they have better things to do.
Things gone right or wrong?
Many of us have been in this situation. Life is good (or not). Then suddenly life is great! Finally you get some ‘good luck’, and things seem to be going well. Perhaps it’s because you’re a good kind person, and after many years, at last there is goodness around the corner.
After years of bad and sad times, tragedies and nothing wrong right, everything’s wonderful. Then boom! A spanner goes in the works, and back you slide down again. Is this random? It is a curse for not going to church, or is it bad karma?
You don’t know. So you pick yourself up and decide to keep ‘making your own luck’. And boom! More bad things happen. And eventually you become despondent. And decide that you’re either for sure ‘cursed by someone or something’, or you must have done something bad in a previous life. And that’s your lot. And you’re stuck with it.
Not so fast!
Of course, first of all don’t feel guilty for feeing that life is against you. Having self-help gurus telling you that you should feel because others are worse off, won’t do any good. Perhaps if you were in a better place in your life, you may be more able to help those worse off. So sort yourself out first, to help others.
There are three reasons (realistically and logically) that your life is the way it is. Let’s look at all three:
It’s just life (random)?
Could be this. Some people say nothing is random, but others point to whole countries that are starving. Have they all been cursed or got bad karma? It’s more likely that they live in countries witih corrupt regimes, and western governments are doing little to practically help.
If you walk down the road and get hit by a drunk driver, this could be due to lax drink-driving laws or bad weather that caused freak weather that sent a car off the road.
It could be (simply logical reasons) that you suffer. If you have very low self-esteem and continue to stay with someone who knocks you around, it’s going to continue until you get help.
It’s a curse from God?
Unlikely. God is a nice guy, and would not want you to live your life suffering. Animal suffering doesn’t happen because God wants it to. It happens because people cause suffering – even if they pretend they’re religious.
One non-believer once told a Christian ‘I can’t believe in God because of all the bad things that happen in the world’. So the believer asked ‘Ok, so now God doesn’t exist, who’s causing it all’. He replied ‘People’. She replied, ‘So why when you put God back in – is everything His fault?’
There are many people who have suffered, who now don’t believe in God. But paradoxically, many people who have suffered have more of a faith in God.
Immaculée Ilibagiza lived in a room with many other girls for several months in Rwanda, after her whole family was massacred during the genocide. She prayed the Rosary and even met the people responsible years after, forgiving them. Hard to do, but she did. What about the six million Jews killed during the Second World War? They didn’t become atheists, they are still Jewish (those that are still alive).
Some believe that animal and human suffering is a consequence of humanity’s original sin, which disrupted the entire universe. And in fact that those that cause suffering (saying they are from God) are anything but. Possibly from the other side, even if they don’t know it.
Catholic Concern for Animals is an organisation fuelled by love for other species, but also for God. Remember Saint Francis of Assisi (and our own Northumbrian Saint Cuthbert) both lived their lives for help other creatures.
It’s bad karma?
Again, highly unlikely. Karma is more of this world (cause and effect). Aussie writer Andrew Matthews once wrote karma in a nutshell in most cases: ‘If you smile at someone, they will smile back at you. If you hit someone in the face, they’ll hit you back’.
Karma is more again an energy (a country at war is going to have more bad things happen). Children in Africa are not starving because they were evil in a previous life. There is enough (wasted) food to feed everyone on earth.
We have billions of people on earth now, and we have not had enough people in history for them to be reincarnated from. Same with the animal kingdom.
Many of us empaths often feel like this day-long. It’s impossible to go through life without perhaps accidentally hurting others (from emotionally wounding old friends to choosing the wrong vets for a sick animal). From accidentally treading on insects and killing them, when you didn’t mean to.
How to feel better?
It’s more about creating habits, and that’s where mindfulness can help. It can help you not to ‘overreact’ to everything. If you see something that upsets you, an emotional person may then have an outburst, and create a circle of events that then tumble into worse ones.
Say you have a friend who has upset you. Instead of going off for a walk and practicing mindful thought, you may lash out, and lose that precious friendship forever. Or you may falsely accuse a partner of having an affair.
Or you may chastise a vet for misdiagnosing your animal friend. Or you may be angry at someone for eating meat when there are vegan bacon alternatives available (after seeing pigs in a lorry en-route to the abattoir).
Or (especially in today’s climate) lash out at anyone who doesn’t share your beliefs on politics, people on boats, immigrants, climate change or Trump.
Of course being angry never helps. It just sends people in the opposite direction from love.
How to break the cycle if you feel cursed
If you feel that life is overwhelming and you can never seem to get your life out of its present rut, follow the advice that ‘stupidity is doing the same thing over and again, and expecting the same results!’
Instead:
- Let yourself feel like you feel. Whether that’s sad, angry, ashamed, guilty or indecisive. All of these are normal feelings. Let them occur, to feel them and then heal to let go.
- Stop making dramas in your brain. Obviously big events are big events. But you don’t have to feel like everything in your world is broken. Try to focus on the next few hours, on what could go right.
- Look after the basics. If you eat well, exercise, and avoid smoking and excess alcohol (and get enough sleep), often life will feel better the next day anyway. Try to sleep, before making big decisions.
- Try to separate how you feel from what’s actually happening. People may be avoiding you because they are going through their own stuff. Not because they hate you, don’t care about you or wish to cause you hurt.
- If you find it difficult to deal with stuff alone, find a trusted friend to talk to. If you don’t have anyone, pop into a local church to pray, call the Samaritans or even talk to a professional, if needed.
- Know that when bad things happen, nobody is ‘punishing you’ from above. You may have lessons to learn (self-esteem, boundaries, balance). But nobody is up there ‘waving a stick at you’ if you messed up. All the universe is love, and love always wants to help.
Often the feeling of ‘cosmic punishment or bad karma’ is due to childhood beliefs (you’ll burn in Hell if you don’t do what we say!). Or cult-like organisations that tell you that you have to follow what they believe, to avoid punishment in the next life. No ‘karma’ is punishment’, it’s lessons of love.
To get over the ‘domino effect’ of cascading into several bad things happening at once, just don’t do anything! Just live a simple balanced life and don’t make big decisions, until you can get your mind in a calmer place. Mindfulness is good, as it avoids anything to do with religious beliefs, which can help some, but can trigger bad memories for others (often of guilt and shame, especially from a Catholic background).
