The Little Purple Notebook On How To Escape From This Universe
Copyleft � 1998 by Maximilian J. Sandor, Ph.D.
Subscription Information: Maria Loren
[email protected]
Website:
http://transmillennium.net/pnohteftu/
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Christine Norstrand <
[email protected]> has many years
experience in processing. Her webpages are at
http://www.lightlink.com/xine/
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Beyond Exorcism -
New Approaches to Entity Handling
by Christine Norstrand
Introduction
. . . and no two days are the same and no two voices are the same
and one is a loose structure of many beings-- James Hillman
It's safe to come out from under the bed now. It's all been very
hush-hush, this talk about spirits. It's been denounced as
superstition and at the same time been the common thread that has
held together such secret societies as the Order of the Golden
Dawn. Let's take a look at what we already know about spirits and
what can, and especially what should, be done about them.
Definition
I remember my first recognition of such things; Frank Zappa sang
"Jelly Roll Gum Drop" in my head for an entire afternoon. Nothing
could drive it away or replace it. Song circuits that play
repeatedly are a common form of entity. What do we mean by
entity? For the purposes of this article, I use entity to mean
any mental or spiritual phenomena that seems to have a
consciousness, a life of its own.
Nature of Entities
But what is it really? That's viewpoint-dependent. It may be a
neural-synaptic misfire, a food allergy, a neurotransmitter or
hormonal imbalance. Each analysis suggests a different method of
address. >From the muses who-inspired the ancients to the
aborigines of Australia, every culture bears a rich legacy of
myth and tales about fairies and magical creatures. Perhaps these
are merely airy explanations where no empirical evidence suggests
an explanation. Then again, so may be such phenomena as quarks. I
have no evidence that the definition of entity used here is
anything more than hypothetical, without empirical verification,
yet it is one which I believe you will find incredibly workable.
Why Address Entities
In this article, I make use of the term viewing to talk about
that activity that defines a session. I prefer the term viewing
to traditional terms because it serves as a reminder that the
person in front of us is causatively involved in a
transformational process, not a subject upon whom we create
intended effects. That process is independent of us yet we can,
by directing the person's attention or by asking the correct
question at the correct time, facilitate the person's
transformation. I also value the term because it validates the
viewer's power to responsibly examine and change her
considerations about her current situation, and by so doing
change her life and the world we live in.
The best reason to take up the subject of entities in viewing is
that your viewer brings it up, often half-apologetically, as if
she anticipates pushing the limits of your credulity. It
certainly wouldn't be my entrance point in session discussions
unless she brought it up. Suppose what's bothering your viewer is
not resolving any other way? If your viewer complains about
thoughts that don't seem to be her own, case manifestations that
aren't hers, session agenda items resolve for her but seem to
come back out of nowhere, and those scary creatures that just
won't be ignored in the middle of the night, well, it might be
time to take a closer look. However, the road isn't smooth. Our
culture pathologizes experience whisper entity and a dissociative
disorder lurks around the corner. Moreover, the accessibility of
information and the dissemination of various sacred scriptures
across the internet may have your viewer in a state of
electrification on the subject.
She may have been told that she must first complete some
predetermined agenda that is not her own it won't alleviate the
problem and may effectively bypass her area of interest. If her
area of interest is bypassed, she becomes less a causative
participant in the session and more the effect of your decisions,
which is not your intention. Moreover, you would have stirred up,
by coming close to but not taking up, a hot subject.
So what will you do?
Resolving immediate upsets, worries, and transgressions may prove
a workable first action but the question of whether the upset or
worry being looked at belongs to the person or an entity is sure
to come up. It may seem, as an overwhelmed viewer once told me,
that everyone is yelling at once. In such a circumstance,
unblocking procedures are likely to stir up more of what you're
trying to calm down. Then there's the matter of botched prior
handlings, both in and out of session. In fact, entities that
have been previously addressed in an adversarial fashion or who
have been invalidated and ignored are most likely to give your
viewer trouble.
Specifically, entities can be wanted or unwanted. The traditional
focus has been on unwanted entities and has assumed that all
entities are unwanted and detrimental. Before we look at ways to
resolve difficulties with unwanted entities, let's consider times
when entities might be beneficial.
Too often, we take these benefits for granted. In his essay On
the Prejudices of Philosophers, Nietzsche points out that I shall
never tire of underlining a concise little fact which these
superstitious people are loath to admit namely, that a thought
comes when 'it' wants, not when 'I' want. The ancient Greeks
believed that such inspirations came from muses, and sought to
foster such relationships.
Magicians through the centuries have invoked the spirits,
sometimes to do their bidding and sometimes to serve as inner
guides to help them. The fairy godmother and guardian angel
figures permeate the mythologies of many cultures. Again, whether
or not this guide is merely an encysted phenomena (a case
manifestation that has taken on a life of its own with its own
boundaries of consciousness), for our purposes it exists as a
separate entity or being. At the heart of many initiation rituals
is the idea of getting in touch with one's spirit guide, who
often makes itself known in some animal or natural form.
Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, John of the Cross all
underwent lifechanging experiences which included the
manifestation of entities in the forms of angels and demons. What
is the difference between a religious experience and what is
traditionally considered a schizophrenic episode? Both are major
departures from common reality, are literal interpretations of a
metaphysical reality that can't be verified or disproved. Saints
and mystics have experienced angels and demons alike, and their
experiences are central to many religions in many cultures. The
experience has its own image, angel or demon; it takes on a form,
a persona, and this we consider an entity. Such mystical
experiences may be desirable.
However, it is unwanted entities or, more exactly, symptoms
brought about by mishandled entities that are more likely to find
their way to your door. By mishandled, I mean a consciousness has
been falsely threatened as a lifeless object, a non-thing. This
constitutes the greatest invalidation possible to any living
thing. Case manifestations you may encounter include premonitions
of impending and inevitable doom. Often this occurs because an
antagonistic entity stirs up something in your viewer's personal
history. Do difficulties appear to resolve and then reappear
unresolved despite extensive work on her considerations and real
world circumstances? Something is continuing to put the
difficulties there there and it's not because your viewer's great
aunt Lucy won't talk to her.
Entrance Points
There are two possible entrance points. Either your viewer needs
cooling off handling herself, which does not address entities or
sessions will consist of you coaching her to communicate and
handle the entities of which she is aware. It is helpful to work
with a good technical director when handling entities as it
allows one to keep one's case assessment and facilitation tasks
separate, avoiding the traditional pitfalls of projection and
misidentification.
When you first meet the viewer, she may be continually talking
about beings and spirits and such. Whether she is a high-level
case or overwhelmed by her current environment, your initial
steps will be the same: A monitored sequence of steps to
alleviate physical body stresses that includes regular exercise,
good food and supplements, even nutritional consultation, a
thorough intake assessment of her current environment and
relationships, and actions to resolve any threatening factors in
her environment outlined and embarked upon. You know the drill.
But then what?
Here your case assessment skills must be up to snuff. You assess
her state of case of looking at how she is doing in real life.
She may have taken on some big games, but how is she doing at it?
The first possibility to consider is that she is overwhelmed,
always in a state of being stirred up, in which case you use
everything in your bag of tricks to get her calmed down and
oriented in her current environment. The theory and methods of
that are the subject of a different article, but all of my
experience as a facilitator and technical director points to look
for the biggest thing in her environment that is keeping her
stirred up unrealized chronic pain, dangerous threat in her
surroundings, or drugs. It's never something small. It is always
on the magnitude of an elephant in the living room. If entities
are a hot item with her, look for that person in her environment
who invalidates her reality and tells her there's no such thing.
The most important thing initially, no matter what her case
condition, is that you do not interpret her reality for her. In
this you differ from the most loyal friend and the most
compassionate therapist, both of whom will question her
assessment of reality and suggest other possible realities to
her. A process is underway and your purpose is to facilitate that
process. You suggest no other reality as more valid than hers. If
you do not state, or even imply, that what she's telling you is
unreal, she may stop asserting it long enough to change her mind.
Changing her mind is what freedom is all about.
Methods
Exorcism A Limited Theory
Let's take another look at our working definition of entity any
mental or spiritual phenomena that seems to have a consciousness,
a life of its own. The difficulty immediately suggests itself:
Exorcism tends to treat a consciousness as a thing, an object,
without life. Yes, religious and therapeutic exorcisms are
possible but they often occur by the power of force, for which we
rightly anticipate an equal and opposite reaction. The
consequences of that equal and opposite reaction can be
devastating to the body. A particular entity may be so
antagonistic to the viewer that an exorcism approach may appear
to be the only one possible in her current state. She may be
seriously ill, sleepless, in pain. Even so, care for the body,
good food, and light communication and orientation processes
should be the first steps taken. Then, with the viewer somewhat
shored up, you can establish communication with the entity. If
earlier failed session actions have your viewer in a state of
denial about entities, you can still lightly unburden the
traumatic mishandling through exploring methods that ask for
thoughts, feelings, and considerations. As always, only take up
mental phenomena that are real to your viewer, no matter how real
they are to you.
Integration Assets and Liabilities
A more common method than exorcism is to try to integrate the
entity, to dissolve the entity in the personality of the
individual. Although such a Gestalt-esque approach has some
limited workability, it shares with exorcism a tendency to treat
the entity as a thing and presupposes a single acceptable
configuration of personality: One personality, one body, one
experience of reality. Aspects of the entity that are similar to
those disowned by the viewer are examined. She may recognize or
seek to develop those aspects in herself, if they are traits she
wishes to cultivate. Or she may buy into a weakness or inability,
misidentifying with character traits that may be aberrations.
End Points
Both the exorcism and integration method share this as the chief
pitfall: When is the entity handlingcomplete? As one layer of the
onion is peeled away, a new one is exposed until that moment of
nothing is attained. But in life, you cannot walk down the
street, engage in communication or relationship with anything or
anyone without life taking a new form, a new consciousness in
front of you be it a new country, a new company, the newborn babe
next door, or an entity of the sort we are discussing here.
Perhaps it possible to unravel the woof and warp of existence
itself but such a metaphysic is certainly outside the scope of
this article. On a smaller scale, your viewer will neither spend
her life under a Bodhi tree nor dissolve into the oneness of the
universe. Both the integration and exorcism approaches are
workable, but limited. In my opinion, they are inherently flawed.
Happily there is another approach.
Handling the Entity in Front of You
One outcome of a technological society, and its centers for
religious technology, is the willingness to see other people and
the world as things whose purpose is to satisfy one's own needs.
Both the exorcism and integration approaches, carried to
extremes, tend to reflect this world view. So too, does the
propitiation of divine or natural forces to serve one's own
purpose.
I would like to suggest another way: To treat each other being,
including entities, as the sacred manifestations of life that
they are. Not as the object of a method or a procedure but
because they are worthy of respect for their own sakes. If
exorcism is what that entity needs to freely live the life he
desires, then that the method your viewer works with. The entity
may just be starved for a little acknowledgement, a need that can
be easily satisfied with a simple Thank you or even some flowers
on the table. If the entity asks for integration, then that's the
approach. But it may be neither. How do you know? You
communicate; you ask it. The answer might appear as an idea that
pops into your viewer's head, a dream, or a hunch. Whatever it
is, listen to it.
A close friend claims he is part of a conscious matrix of beings
that freely choose to co-act together. This is an unconventional
approach but I see that the concept works for him and that he is
free from much of the alienation and anxiety that plagues so
many. It seems to me preferable to the annihilation of entities
that bear no ill will.
Unresolved Issues
While I discourage entity handling as a routine point of case
entrance, entity handling may resolve issues that resolve no
other way. In such a case, it is essential to consult with the
viewer physically present in front of you. She acts as
co-facilitator in handling the entity with whom she has a
relationship, even an unwanted relationship, as there are points
of agreement that link the viewer to the entity. In fact, it is
unnecessary to mention entities as such. Unresolved or recurring
feelings that are unresponsive to traditional methods can be
addressed by checking if the feeling or condition seems to be
located to a particular part of the body and if so, having your
viewer ask the questions of the body part.
Communication
Conscious communication with entities has much to recommend it. I
hold that entities of the sort we are discussing here are
connected to us by a harmonic of our own spiritual considerations
and deepseated beliefs. If the entity is antagonistic or
grief-stricken, might one not coach the viewer to find out its
upset and communicate until it is resolved? It occasionally may
be necessary to command an entity to depart against its will,
overwhelming it with force. But as a general policy? Or to force
another to subsume its identity in our own? When we've been
involved in relationships where our identities were overwhelmed,
did it work for us?
If our viewer favors communication and coexistence with her
entities, how are we to go about it? The methods are many and as
varied and unique as your viewer. Having her listen to her
entities and acknowledge them is simple and yet may be the most
effective thing you can do. Often there will be no need for more
elaborate techniques or sophisticated approaches. Where more is
required, an individual program of session actions can be
tailored for the handling of each entity or class of entities.
The usual end point of that program would be that the viewer and
the entity reach an understanding. When that understanding is
attained, the entity may leave on his own, agree to be integrated
into the viewer's personality, or to take his place at the summit
where his voice can be heard when your viewer makes her life
decisions. His wisdom, experience, and viewpoint are available
for the asking. The result is a true community of interest, where
each voice is heard and respected. At best, in the words of Dr.
Jonathan Young, the whole choir of my favorite entities agrees.
Suggested readings & other references:
Campbell, Joseph. An Open Life.
Campbell, Joseph. Myths to Live By.
Eliade, Mircea. Myth and Reality.
Gerbode, Frank. Beyond Psychology, An Introduction to
Metapsychology .
Hannah, Barbara. Active Imagination, Encounters with the Soul .
Hillman, James. The Dream & the Underworld.
Hillman, James. The Soul's Code, In Search of Character and
Calling.
Hillman, James. Kinds of Power.
Johnson, Robert. A. Inner Work.
Jung, Carl G. (ed.). Man and His Symbols.
Tillich, Paul. Theology of Culture.
Young, Jonathan. personal communication.
Young, Jonathan (ed.). Saga.
(published in International Viewpoints, Fall 1996)
