Deadly Games

Doubt is one of the most important and fundamental methods of deception used by Satan and the evil self and it is a main constituent of egotism or I-ness.

Doubt is the child of hatred and delusion; that is a contemptuous- cynical doubt with intention of denying the truth and running away from the reality and a doubt in relation with the Lord and divine issues...

If it had not been because of doubt man, would never be separated from God and emptied [of his divine potentials].  In the absence of doubt, faith is going to come and with it come certainty and vision; and with certainty, union becomes possible.   

In fact, the majority of human deviations from the divine path have been in a way resulted from doubt and pessimism. 

If human being does not doubt the word of God, he shall certainly find salutation and bliss.  Man has been banished from the Divine Kingdom just because he doubted God's command - is it right or wrong, should I obey it or not?...  Skepticism has always been disastrous to human destiny; it has been the major obstacle of receiving the divine flow and acting accordingly; it has been responsible of many calamities and miseries in human life...

Every being is fascinated by its creator; so is man.  Everything is being drawn to God for His closeness brings joy and happiness.  Yet Satan, or I-ness and egotism, will bar your way, for God has charged him with the mission to test and separate the truthful from the liar and the faithful from the traitor...  The nature of dark ego is, indeed, to keep man away from the source of goodness.  This is not merely a spiritual or philosophic statement but a fact that it veracity can be tested and proven...                

The gravitation draws man to the depth of the earth regardless of the hardness or smoothness or the earth's surface - like body of waters.  Likewise, Satan is also the gravitation force of the ground of our being - our body.  It continuously pulls our self-consciousness and our real human self downward and to the abyss of evil.  This malicious gravity - concentrated in our being - is the main obstacle keeping us from flying into skies and into inner and outer universes.  When this body ceases to exist, we shall be released from this satanic attraction and shall fly.

This flight could be one with broken wings, suffering soul, blind eyes and deaf ears or it could be a powerful one like that of a far-flying eagle.  The evil gravity draws men to unholy-filthy and weak physical level.  Some have been pulled to the depths of the earth - even lower than the world of animals.

This satanic attraction is the very selfishness, conceit, I-ness and self-veneration.  If this retaining and pulling force did not exist and man was freed from shackles of material and tangible world, he would be connected to the Lord and could fly into celestial horizons...

You should strengthen your wings and practice flying.  Break all the chains and fly.  As heavenly birds, you do not deserve to spend your life on earth; your place is in the sky, in the Divine Kingdom, in the unbounded world of truth, and...

However, the evil self tries to block your way to elevation and stop your growth towards eternity.  If you learn to know and understand various aspects of I-ness and ignorance, you shall be released from them.  Delusive skepticism and resistance to divine guidance are among the most dreadful weapons used by the evil self to dissuade and stop you; to deceive and pull you down.    

Fed by satanic spirit - dark and negative awareness - our delusive I-ness creates obstacles, shows resistance, causes us deviate from the main path and attracts our attention to trivial things so we might be lost and fall down; it makes us waste our time and energy and finally miss our goal. 

Doubts and resistances work as brakes and either stop or slow down or even pull back our steps towards a divine life.  They are the main causes of our deprivation of receiving the Flow of Divine Guidance, getting in contact with the Providential Spirit and being fed by It. 

Here are some by-products of doubt and delusive skepticism and few forms of resistance; knowing them helps us getting free from their control:

Delay - postponing to a subsequent date, false self-justification - justifying one's mistakes, self-deception, running away from realities- to resort to various subterfuges, hasty judgments, exaggerating the reality, heresy, forgetfulness and ignorance, erroneous comparison, false confidence and reliance on malicious circumstances, new wishes and goals causing deviation from the divine path, aggressive attitude and direct confrontation against divine guidance and its constituents, feeling of fear and insecurity from the divine path, false feeling of serenity and tranquility in detrimental situations, false feeling of weakness and incapability to execute God's commands and will, various evil attractions distracting one's attention from the way of the Lord, false discouragement from walking in the path of divine guidance, fearing hardship and pressure in following the divine guidance, false feeling of peace towards walking along and obeying evil trend...

The Lord uses Satan and delusion as two means to put human beings to the test.  In the living presence of The Lord Most High and in the field of the presence of His Spirit, we are being tested at each and every moment of our life.  The Lord has a representative and a deputy in every one of us; this representative is the Divine Spirit who is not separate from Him.  Heaven and hell - either in this world or in the worlds to come, joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure, disgrace and dignity, all depend on the results of momentary trials.  These tests are decisive factors of our merits in front of God and the Divine Spirit; they constitute the structure of our existence.  Each successful result adds to our worth and rank and draws us closer to the Lord and gradually deepens and completes our relation with the unbounded existence...

Delay - or deferring matters to tomorrow and the days to come:  we postpone to repent and to make a radical decision to start a multilateral move towards the Lord.  We postpone what we have to do now for returning to Him.  We say, ''Let me get over with this and later I will seriously begin to know God and myself,'' ''After leaving behind this situation, I shall come to Thee,'' ''First I have to reach my goal and I will consider the divine guidance later,'' '' Let me first solve my problems and secure my future, then I will think of returning to God,'' ''Let me first consolidate my financial and social situation, then I'll think of God and the way to God,'' ''Its time has not come yet, I'm not still ready for it,'' ''First I have to find the real teacher then I shall begin,'' '' It is not possible to step in the path of guidance with all these attachments, I should first get myself rid of them,'' ''Today, I have to finish the remaining and important matters at hand; it is not possible to cut off with everything right now, I shall start tomorrow,'' ''Tomorrow is a better day,'' ''The Lord has to    prepare the ground for me, there are still obstacles standing in my way, I believe He doesn't want it for me,'' ''I need a strong kickoff to start, I cannot move on without it,'' ''I have to wait, examine and evaluate and move on later,'' ''First, I should be left alone for a while and prepare the necessary conditions for thinking and contemplating and then I shall begin seriously...''

Above cases are various examples of satanic deceits; where one looks for every kind of excuses to postpone making a move towards the Lord and runs away from the present moment.  Yet future rolls into the present time through each and every moment; unfortunately, he does not take advantage of these fugitive moments.  Since, deep in his conscious, he is aware of the righteousness of the Flow of the Divine Guidance and can no longer deny it, he chooses a more moderate solution.  He, therefore, would say, ''I have already accepted it, yet I need some more time''.  A quick look into past people's lives reveals that delaying and escaping the present time have seen them off at their graves...

Weakness - Other forms of divine tests and methods of satanic deceits come as feelings of weakness and incapability.  The evil self may provoke all kinds of false feelings to impede one's intention and move towards God.  They may be positive or negative feelings; nonetheless, they are based upon falsehood and stand in the opposite direction of the course of guidance.  We may have good feelings about our caprices and personal goals and feel confident about the wrong path we are following and to be at peace with our selfish life-style. 

Delusive feelings are controlled by the satanic self.  I-ness is the source of various feelings; they may be apparently positive and strong or negative and weak yet they are fundamentally delusive and false.  If we give free rein to our I-ness, it will fill up our life with false feelings...

Depending on one's acceptance and the space he would provide for the satanic spirit, it may induce every kind of positive yet false feeling about malicious ideas and moves and provoke all sorts of negative a deceptive feelings regarding noble and divine thoughts and acts.  It may give a hard perspective of the divine path and discourage people and make them feel hopeless, weak, unable, and defenseless. 

Using every trick, including delusive and unreal thoughts and feelings, the satanic self tries to lead people astray and push them to follow the destructive and false trend.

Sometimes we are tested by fear and feeling of insecurity; we are afraid of following the divine path... Great masters have often tested their disciples and close students through these methods...

The Spirit of God and Satan test human being in different circumstances.  The first gets him closer to the Lord, while the second drives him away from Him.  The Divine Spirit tests man in conditions like, difficulty and ease, weakness and strength, richness and poorness, security, insecurity and pressure...

However, we shouldn't take every thought and feeling as malicious.  Wicked feelings and tenebrous thoughts have their own indications while good and noble feelings have also theirs.  As a general rule, every move based on I-ness and delusion is satanic and dark; and every move that raises awareness and draws us closer to the Lord is good and holy.  Every act that is inspired by the love for God and the Divine Presence is definitely noble and brings about greatness and elevation...   

As we get closer to God, the wicked self grows weaker and more suffering.  That is a general rule.  The union with the Lord happens when this delusive self is eliminated.  It is clear that it will do anything to save itself and prevent our moral and spiritual growth and drag us down into abysses.  Living in heavens brings its death; therefore, it will desperately resist being separated from earth...

Self-justification and self-delusion are also among powerful tactics of the evil self used against human beings to cause their deviation and misery.  There, one deceives himself by justifying his wrong standing point and his errors and have his peace mind.  He desperately looks for excuses to prove he is right, he thinks and acts right.  To refute and deny whatever is against his selfish desires, he resorts to irrelevant explanations.   To escape the atmosphere of spiritual flourishing, he would forward many apparently valid reasons to attack and condemn the path of divine guidance, the methods of guidance and the guide as well.  This is quite natural for the satanic self defends its survival; it attacks to neutralize the attack of its enemy.  Usually, a person doubts about and deny something that he is aware, deep inside himself, of its truth and knows it is from the Lord.  He intuitively approves of it; yet he seeks to silence his heart and conscious and satisfy his egoistic desires.  But to deal with his guilty conscious and feeling of insecurity, he eventually resorts to alibis and self-justification.  He wants to manage simultaneously his evil ego and his divine self, but grasp all, lose all.            

When he commits a sin, he gets a guilty conscious and begins to justify and convince himself in order to calm his anxiety. 

When he deviates from the right path and follows the path of Satan and selfishness, he is aware, deep down in his heart, that not only he is not getting closer to God but is distancing from Him.  He is intuitively aware of the right path, the word of God, the trend of guidance, but on the other hand, he is submitted to Satan and has no will of his own; Satan's will is his will and he obeys him.  So he naively tries to conciliate these two trends.  He chooses to ignore his sin and to justify his deeds.  He slowly slips into a deadly-sweet sleep...     

Still, another trick of the wicked self is to escape from the reality.  One uses every subterfuge and keeps himself busy with other things to avoid the reality and to be where the Divine guidance flows.  He does not wish to be awakened and runs away from awakening and those who wish to wake him up.  To escape the reality - manifestation of love and elimination of I-ness and selfishness - he may even have recourse to some kind of love and delusive faith that he has made up in his mind...

Forgetfulness and neglect are also among Satan's stratagems. 

The Lord's message initiates a momentum in human spirit and soul and impels them towards infinity.  The divine message shakes the sinful heart and provokes a tremor in man's being- the intensity of which depends on the degree of one's acceptance and sensibility.  If only this tremor happens with great intensity, it shall dig so many treasures and precious mines out of man's being...

The message of God is the enemy of the evil I-ness and if it hits its heart it can destroy the Satan of one's being and if it falls short of the mark, it can damage it anyhow.  That is why the evil I-ness tries continuously to run away from the Lord's path, the divine principles and God's message for their mere remembrance could jeopardize its existence.  Therefore, it compels man to forgetfulness and he becomes forgetful of God - his beloved, of his divine duties and purpose...

As soon as the Divine Spirit reminds man of the main way and the divine message, the evil self creates such conditions to keep him busy and make him forgetful of his duties.  It does not let him concentrate or remember God and keep Him and His way in his mind...

Delusion of guidance makes one believe that he is following the way of divine guidance and worshipping the Lord; however the worshipper is none but the satanic self.  This kind of worship is also a way of self-satisfaction.  One worships and talks about sacred verses and words but in truth he is using these right evidences to justify his wrong move.  He believes he is drawing closer to the Lord.  However, this dreadful delusion causes him a false confidence and serenity which shall prevent him from looking for the true divine path.  He shall spend a lifetime in the delusion of guidance and worship of God, but at the end, he shall find himself very far from Him; so much far that he shall be unable to see the True-Living Lord...  He is under evil seduction and his only way is the way that Satan offers and he is already following and believes it to be the right and divine path.  His fanaticism pushes him to condemn every other path except that which Satan suggests.  He believes his way to be easy but he finds the real way of guidance to be difficult and strenuous. 

Nonetheless, this is not but a mere suggestion from the Evil Spirit that uses also new occupations and desires to steal man's attention. 

As soon as one tries to give his attention to the Lord and go to Him, his ego's Satan - his corrupt I-ness - gets to work and brings over a new occupation, a new desire and an attractive goal and makes him face new problems just to keep him busy with anything but God and divine principles...            

                                                                                           To be continued

Q.  Considering all these ruses and deceits, how shall we find our way to God? 

A.  It is true that there are so many evil games and tricks, but the way is one and quite obvious and clear.  There is no need to get involved in all these games and to overcome them...  To pass through divine trials and to turn out well from the traps and obstacles of the wicked self you have many options:

-         Do not pay any attention to these games and thoughts; be indifferent and do not give them any importance.  Is it worth thinking about something which is a lie, a deceit, a delusion, and a dream?  Do not even look at it and you shall see they shall automatically disappear and fade away...  

-         Know these games and pitfalls and become aware of them.  If one knows enough the danger, he shall not get involved in it anymore...

-         Rely on God for He supports and guides those who truly rely on Him.  Leave your worries to the Divine Presence and let His Presence do whatever is necessary to do... 

However, the love for the Lord is the one main answer to the main problem of delusive I-ness.  Therefore, with the radical elimination of this evil I-ness, every pitfall, every deceit, every obstacle and every resistance will disappear as well.  On the other hand, manifestation of one's love for the Lord will remove and efface egotism, selfishness and conceit...

-         Whispering God's names is like a shower of rain that can wash away dirt and evils and clean and purify one's ego from its impurities.

-        If you strive to guide others and to remove obstacles from their way to guidance, there will be definitely someone within you who will also take care of your difficulties and solve your problems.  When you completely devote yourself to the service of the Lord and to the guidance of human beings, you will realize there will be not many problems to take care of.

-         If you dedicate your time, energy and the space of your life to God and you occupy yourself with divine concerns, there will be no more time, room, and opportunity left for your ego to deceive you and attract your attention with misleading maneuvers. 

-         ......   

Back

Share