How do you fight the darkness?

It was a simple enough question, one that had been answered throughout the ages in the traditional manner.  Prayer.  Leave the fighting to the angels of Heaven.  It was safer that way really.  So that remained the popular answer.  The correct answer.

I never liked the popular answers, there had to be another way.

Did you ever hear the phrase, "God helps those who help themselves?" I sincerely believe that to be true.

I was never one to sit back and wait for God to do all the work.  Mankind was created in his image and I believe that we have within us the ability to realize the same power.  Why couldn’t I fight the darkness?  Why couldn’t I fight it right here, right now?

All my life I was taught that the angels of heaven did the fighting, and it was up to mankind to just praise God and glorify his name.  That wasn’t enough for me. I felt like had to do something more drastic.  I could see them.  I could actually see the demons in the world and I had to do something about it.  

I know, you think I’m some kind of a nut case but I assure you there really isn’t anything special about me.  Have you ever caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye, but when you looked there was nothing there? Congratulations, you’ve seen one too.

Now granted demons don’t go walking around in broad daylight if they can help it.  They prefer to stay hidden in the shadows.  You can only catch glimpses of them as the dart from cover to cover.  Only the strongest of them dare to drift slowly through this world, and even they don’t reveal themselves unless it’s necessary.

They’re invisible to most people, only because we’ve been brought up thinking that they don’t really exist.  Most people see a shadow darting into the darkness and just dismiss it as a trick of the light. You think I’m an insane man who goes jumping after shadows?  Believe me, sometimes I wish it were that simple.  If only I really could destroy them simply by shining a bright light in a dark corner. You can confront them here in this world, in the classic fashion with exorcisms and blessings, but those don’t kill them.  Those measures only force them to move on elsewhere.  To kill a Demon you have to do it in their world, on their terms.

The first demon I ever faced was the worst.  Even though I now know it was one of the weakest I would ever confront, it was the one that proved the existence of God once and for all.  I know that kind of revelation is a deeply personal thing and I don’t expect to convince anyone with my story.  I’m telling you this only because it’s important to me.  It’s important that my story is told correctly.

It wasn’t a flashy confrontation, but it was the turning point. You have to shift yourself to their world, which actually looks a lot like this one except the vibrance of life is quite literally removed.  The world is devoid of color almost like a black and white picture. There is still a hint of color, but it’s almost as if something has drained it all away and all that remains is a residue of what once was. Where the evil has taken root the substance of the world is burned and rotted away.  It’s really quite depressing and not where I would chose to spend my vacation.

I had shifted in the home I was living in at the time.  That’s what I call it; shifting.  It’s the act of moving your consciousness out of this world and into theirs. I don’t know why it happened there, but I guess everything has to start somewhere.  I remember walking down the stairs from my bedroom to the kitchen, wondering what kind of a crazy place I was in.  I saw it when I looked into the kitchen.  The entire wall behind the stove was charred as if there had been a fire.  I could still see some of the frame of the house glowing red and smoldering.  

That’s where the evil had taken residence in my own house.  I could tell it was there, in it’s den.  I could see it’s eyes glowing with malice back in the darkness.  At that point I was frozen with a fear I had never felt before. It was so strong that I couldn’t move.  I knew in my heart that I was going to die.  This evil had rooted itself in my life and would consume my very soul.  

You know the interesting thing?  Most people expect me to explain how the light of Heaven came shining through me, or that Angels suddenly appeared and gave me the power to destroy that demon.  I do believe that God performs miracles in the world, just not in my world. I’ve been called a heretic for saying that, and maybe they’re right.  But holy light didn’t spring from my fingertips, nor did the Archangel Michael appear to lend me his sword.  At least not initially, but I’ll get to that later.

No, it wasn’t a miracle.  It was just the grim determination that if I didn’t do something, that demon would be with me for the rest of my life.  Constantly lurking in my home and destroying me silently. So somewhere, deep inside, I made the decision that I would either remove the beast from my home or die trying. I summoned every ounce of strength I had and took a step towards it.  Now that sounds easy enough, but in reality I was so scared of this thing that the best I could managed was a halting half shuffle forward.  My heart was racing and my fists were clenched.  If it had so much as pointed at me I probably would have died from the fright alone.

Remember when I said, "God helps those who help themselves?". The moment I decided to fight and took that first step, there was a force that flooded into my being.  I was far too frightened to realize it at the time, but the demon in my house saw it.  As I took another half shuffle towards it, it saw the power being channeled into me and it was afraid.  It took a step back into it’s hole and then I knew I could not lose.

Now I  know you have to ask how I knew it was afraid.  After all I could not see the beast, I could only make out those eyes which gleamed in the darkness. But somehow I knew that it was afraid of me, of the power I had over it.  With each step I took forward, it took a step back.  My fear dissolved and the moment I launched forward to exterminate the beast, I woke from my reverie.  I don’t know if I actually killed that demon but later on, when I had mastered the ability to shift my perspective at will, it was gone from my home.  Where the charred and diseased entrance to it’s den had been, was nothing but the wall of my kitchen.

It’s hard to describe the elation I felt for weeks after that.  I was giddy with the new found power I had.  I didn’t have a mastery of it, just an awareness.  Every time I saw the shadows jump I knew that they were afraid.

Not long after that I had a visit from an elderly gentleman.  His name was Cyrus.  He just showed up on my doorstep one day.  At first I thought he was just a religious nut case come to tell me I’m going to hell.  I would describe him as a Bible thumper, the kind of person I generally avoid myself.  

People are surprised when I say that.  The honest truth is that most Bible thumpers are just babes in the faith, people who like the easy answers and are unwilling to ask or to hear the hard questions.  Worse yet, they’re quick to judge.  You’d think anyone like that would remember the warnings about being quick to judge, but those people usually only hear what they want to hear. Candy coated faith has never appealed to me. Maybe that’s a bit harsh, but that’s been my experience.

Cyrus was different.  Just as I was about to dismiss him politely he told me that it would be a sin against God not to use what he had given me.  There was something in his eyes, something I recognized, so I invited him in to my home.

I was cautious at first; he did pound his Bible plenty but he also had a sincerity that I couldn’t ignore and more than that he told me that he was sent to help me use my gift.  I was still suspicious at the time and I questioned him on just what he thought my gift was.  I’ll never forget the way he rolled his eyes at me and said, "Son, when God sends his holy power through you he expects it to flow like a mighty river.  If you dam it up like this, it ain’t doin’ nobody no good."

Yeah it was a corny answer, but it made sense to me at the time.  Something had changed in my life and I had to take advantage of it.  So I took him up on his offer.  For the next two weeks he came to my house three times a week.  It was a bit overwhelming at first, almost as if I had enrolled in a crash course on theology.

I thought that it would be a simple matter to figure out how to direct this gift and get on with it.  It turns out there is more to it than that.

There is a misconception that believing in God means you no longer have a free will.  Even some modern day Christians say that if you are true you will have no desire but to do the will of God.  What a load of crap.  Knowledge of good and evil comes with the ability to do both.  Those blessed with gifts still have to chose how they use them.

Cyrus was adamant that I acknowledge the evil inside me.  Not that I was the spawn of Satan, but that I had the ability to do evil like every other man or woman.  He drilled into me that the single greatest danger I could face, was pride; thinking that I was better than anyone else and that the rules did not apply to me.  

That in itself was contradictory.  After all, I was different.

"Ah, but you’re not different, just blessed," the old man grinned at me.  "If you were different you wouldn’t be human and I can assure you that you are still human.  The same temptations apply as ever."

I asked Cyrus if he had ever fallen to pride.  His face lost it’s glow and his voice lost it’s sparkle, "We all fall to pride at some point."

That ended our session that day.  I didn’t push him for any details, and he left my place a little sadder then when he came.  Obviously it was a lesson he had learned the hard way.

The next time he came over he declared me fit for the next step.  Honestly it was about time.  I’d never been one for sitting in classrooms reading textbooks and reciting lessons.  I wanted to be doing things.  

The first few times I shifted, it was by accident.  Cyrus would have called it divine intervention, but I call it accident.  He explained that the body was a vessel for the soul, and that to see the world unhindered by the body, the soul had to force its way out.  That sounds a lot easier than it is.  A soul that’s been in a body for a while becomes molded to it, like a hand in a well worn leather glove, except there’s no hole where it can be drawn out.  You have to push your way out. It all starts in meditation.  You have to focus your thoughts and your will away from your senses.  When you’ve done that, you’ve managed to focus your soul, all that remains is to push out of the flesh and bone cocoon. It’s not easy to do.  Every little sound, every touch reminds the soul that it’s connected to the body.  We probably sat in silence for more than an hour the first time, and even then I was only just becoming aware of the separation of body and soul.  However over the next few weeks with Cyrus there as coach it became easier.

When I had mastered the technique I could shift at will.  That’s when Cyrus gave me some guidelines; don’t shift while driving and always remember where you left your body. Advice that seemed trivial at the time.

That left me with the one question that he had sidestepped so far.  He had shown me how to track them and how to find them, but he hadn’t mentioned anything about how to fight them.

"Well how did you do it the first time?"

He had  known so much about my gift I just assumed he knew what happened, so I was a bit stunned when he didn’t.  I related my story to him and the fact that I didn’t know exactly what happened.  All I could remember is deciding to fight, taking the most difficult step in my life, and then I woke.

He was taken aback at this, "You mean you don’t actually know?"

I could only shrug my shoulders in reply.

"Well now, that is interesting.  I’ve trained many of the new candidates but they’ve always known what shape their gifts have taken.  I’ve never run into someone who didn’t know." He sat back into my living room sofa and gazed off into the distance, "Well I guess you’ll find out along the way."

"What?  I’m supposed to fight the cloven hoofed fiends of the night, and you can’t even tell me how?"

"Son, it’s just not that easy.  Usually the people recruited to fight in the Lord’s army have already used their gifts and they know how to channel it.  You seem to be the exception."

"Well how do other people do it?"

He sat back and thought for a moment, "Well as far as I can recollect, it’s usually in some fashion related to the recruits natural ability."

Cyrus was a wonderful person, but sometimes his ability to answer a question without actually answering it, "That doesn’t exactly help me Cyrus."

"Well, I once introduced a Judo master.  He used the power of the Lord to enhance his own skill."

"I’m not the Karate Kid."

Cyrus just laughed in his mellow baritone voice, "When the time comes, I’m sure you’ll figure it out."  

Still not the answer I was looking for, "How do you do it?"

His eyes twinkled, "In my prime I was a boxer.  Not the best in the real world, but with the power of the Holy Spirit I’m a force to be reckoned with."

"You box demons?  Just how do you kill a demon that way?"

"No demon can stand against us, that much is written.  However just as you made a choice when you let me in the door, there are those who choose to follow the deceiver.  Sooner or later you will run into them.  They are more dangerous than the demons themselves."

"And exactly when were you going to tell me about them?"

The corner of his lips curled into a smile, "When you were confident enough to ask."  His smile faded just as quickly as it had appeared, "They are like you and me, mostly normal people.  However they’ve chosen to use their gifts to support the darkness."

"Why doesn’t He just take their gifts away?"

"We already discussed that.  It’s all about choices.  The gift is given freely and the recipients have to decide.  Many chose not to use it at all. A few like yourself choose the light others…well they chose the other side.  It’s important to remember that you have the same choice to make every day, every hour."

The last day Cyrus came to visit me, we didn’t practice anything. Instead, I asked him the one question he had not bothered to touch on, why me?

Like most things in life the answer wasn’t simple.

"Son, if I knew the answer to that it’d be because I was dead and the almighty himself had just explained it to me.  I can only tell you the conclusion I’ve come to after a lifetime doing the Lord’s work.  The human heart has great power.  I’m not talkin’ about the muscle beating inside your chest, I’m talkin’ about the heart of the spirit.  Throughout time mankind has faced the classic struggle of good verses evil.  The Lord gives us all the freedom to chose our paths, for better or worse.  Those of us with the courage to face down our own demons are given the opportunity, the choice,  to become active in the fight against evil."

That was the start of the life I lead now.  I slay the beasts of the night, not for fun or for profit, but because I have to. I have to try to make the world a better place, even if the world doesn’t want it.

Beginnings
Sun February 23 2003

Suffer the Children
Sun June 29 2003

Shadow Champion
Wed January 28 2004