Listen to this post NOW on Beyond Everything Radio!

The first act of healing is to pause and self assess. After a fall we try and determine the severity of our injury. The emerging question that brings on healing is: “What hurts?” This pause must be intentional. We must stop. We must be still. We must become aware. Pain can be all encompassing or very mild, but we must sit with it, not ignore it or suppress it. Pain can refer from other areas, leaving us confused about what actually hurts. A physician can examine our bodies, but only we can examine our self or soul if we’re able find it. Stillness, silence, awareness, presence, and prayer place us under the bright light of this unique examination room.

True healing starts in stillness.

The first thing we discover when we give ourselves to silence, meditation, or contemplative prayer is that we are able to observe our thoughts. If we can observe our thoughts, the first beam of healing light emerges when we grasp that the observer of thought is not necessarily the thinker of the thoughts. This becomes evident as we learn to “let go” of thoughts as they continually pollute our silence and stillness. The term “monkey mind” refers to our inability to leave thoughts alone. The stream of “this and that” are constantly pulling us into the future or the past, disrupting our visit to the present or Presence. The Puritan, Henry Scudder says we are like a court jester blowing a feather in the presence of the King.

Until we experience just how juvenile and pathetic our ability is to “Be still and know…” or learn how to quiet our hyperactive mind, we will not have any experience with transformational healing. We must understand what it means to wrestle within and strive (often failing) to experience the bliss and healing of divine presence. If we grasp the struggle to be still and “just be”, then we can appreciate that there are forces that are “not necessarily us” which wrestle and war against our soul and distract us into a false self.

“Beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” (Luke 12:1) The false self, or ego, or Fake ID hates stillness. To “get real” means to get still. Only from there can you observe the “principality and power” doing its pernicious work.

For thousands of years, people all over the world have called this “other force within” a demon, or an evil or unclean spirit. We don’t need to be superstitious or overly spiritual to see this. Yes, there are many whose spiritual framework sees demons under every bush and who subscribe to Hollywood’s rendition as depicted in the TV show “Ghost Adventures” where the demons talk through their SB7 Spirit box. Regardless of where you stand on what a demon is, there is no denying that forces exist within us, that mask themselves as us, and disorient us from the present reality. There is a gravitational pull to follow each thought away from the healing center or Presence. Healing 101 is awareness of our disorientation.

In Jesus’ ministry, there are many examples of speaking to demons which are oppressing people. Many times, the demons are found in the synagog or temple. If a demon is a force, which is not necessarily the person, but is acting on or through the person, by disorienting the person’s self awareness, then it makes sense why the cure is to speak to the demon and drive it out. A demon is a malware script that inscribes itself on our self-talk. It comes from the Father of lies or force of falseness within. In other words, it’s a lie, it’s falsehood, which if believed creates a pseudonym or false self. Speaking truth exposes the shadow to the light. Overwriting the malware script with correct code or truthful programing, restores us, as scripture describes it, to our right mind (Luke 8:35).

The light of truth draws out darkness.

The key to healing our demons is gaining the sight to see the malware script upon our lives as other than us. Every healing or deliverance is essentially the separating of the true person from that malware that has inscribed upon them. Healing our demons is the liberty of seeing that we are not what is wrong with us, we are observing what is wrong with us. Until this awakening takes place, we will live under the oppression that we are what we do…that we are sinners because we sin. That is the ethos of the world. That is the philosophy of this “dark inner kingdom”

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, agains the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12

Jesus proclamation of the New Kingdom is that healing has come, it is here, now, for those with ears to hear or eyes to see. John the baptist said its now time to rethink (repent) and believe the Good News that we ARE BELOVED and FORGIVEN, and from that emerges a new (true) person and a new world.

When the new you emerges out of stillness, it sees the world as entirely new.

For most, this gospel message is too good to be true. Perhaps your sense of justice will not allow you to see a person who lies as anything but a liar. Perhaps you want those who have done wrong to get what is coming to them. If that is you, then the malware script or demon has rule over your heart. The bible calls this “demon possession” and this is why those in the temple were disproportionately affected. Religion is based on the justice of retribution not restoration but the kingdom is the opposite. Perhaps it hasn’t dawned on you that for the bad person to get what they deserve means that you must get what you deserve. While you are able to separate yourself from the bad you’ve done, you can’t love others as you have loved yourself, which means doing the same for others. The healing script is that, in love, God has paid for those who lie, and that includes you. All receive the denarius (Matt 20:1-16)

Of course the malware script might insist that you see yourself as undeserving because of something you’ve done. Perhaps you feel there is no hope for you or that you are too far gone. This is simply not true. No theology or ritual can cause you to see this. It is only seen once it is believed. Speak to the malware and overwrite it with the truth. Stop looking to the past, there is no healing there, nor is it in the future. Join the light of this moment, where the shadow fades away. Your very existence is the evidence life and mercy are being breathed into you with each and every passing second. Believe your breath. You and your Maker are good.

The first step to healing is seeing our malware script and learning to overwrite them with the truth. When an evangelical is casting out a demon in prayer, this is what they are doing. When a therapist helps a person with affirmations. When the Buddhist chants, or the Hindi repeats a mantra, each practice is aiming at overwriting the malware scripts in our flawed, limited ways. In some cases it helps, in some cases we are writing over bad scripts with worse ones.

“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first.” Luke 11:24-26

Religion can’t help us. Our methods or practices do not heal us, at best they are only frameworks which allow healing to take place. Healing is personal force, it is a person. Healing is an exchange of the truth as it is for us, for the Truth as it actually is. All suffering begins as a truth problem within the thinker of our thoughts. The first healing is that of our blindness to the work within. From there, the healing of our bodies, our finances, our relationships, and ultimately our world all fall like dominoes.

While it is the truth that sets us free. The question is what are we to do with this freedom?