Jim Cogley: Reflections Tues 23rd Jan – Mon 29th Jan:
Midnight deliveries as the storm abates. An observation is that when a storm comes slowly it lasts a long time and when it comes quickly it blows over fast. So, it is with the storms of life. I rather like the quote ‘Storms come into our lives for a reason. They last for a season. Learn the reason and outlast the season.’
Tue 23rd Jan – Exorcism
From reading the Gospels it is very clear that much of Christ’s public ministry was spent exorcising evil spirits and this was usually followed by some dramatic physical healings. Most whom he delivered became his followers. Mary Magdalene, his closest female companion, from whom he cast out seven demons, is a good example. In the context of the time, long before psychology as we know it came into being, the root cause of many, if not most, physical ailments was thought to be demonic in origin. So, conditions like deafness, dumbness, epilepsy and enfeeblement would have been understood in that light. Today our understanding would have moved a long way from that position. However, the question still remains, ‘Is there such a reality as demonic possession, and if not, why is there still a Rite of Exorcism in the Catholic Church and why do we say in the Lord’s Prayer ‘Deliver us from evil’?
Wed 24th Jan – Closing the Portal
We know that there are so many troubled souls for whom Psychology has no answers and for whom medication only acts as a modern-day straitjacket. Listening to such an individual’s story, it often becomes clear that such disturbance was preceded by some level of Occult involvement. This could have been attending séances, going to a fortune-teller or Ouija Board activity. Many would say that since that time, and it may have been decades earlier, they have never felt right, or able to be fully themselves. It seemed as if at that time a portal to darkness had opened and some very destructive energies continued to have free access into their lives. A formal renunciation of evil is really an invitation for that person to finally close that door and command to go to the Light any forces, energies or entities that may have entered through that portal. The effects of this are usually quite immediate and there is a real sense of that person finally coming back home to themselves after a long absence.
Thurs 25th Jan – Symptoms
Where there is a need for deliverance and this is not a conclusion that one should come to lightly, some of the symptoms experienced by the victim are: A sense of hopelessness and desolation, feeling displaced from myself, uncharacteristic behaviour, disturbed sleep and nightmares, feeling more dead than alive, burdened by unknown heaviness that is often accompanied by back trouble, uncontrollable addictive behaviour, uncharacteristic urges or desires, restlessness and aversion to prayer or meditation, a negative thought pattern, unable to take pleasure in anything, extreme pessimism, suicidal thoughts, images or even voices that dictate behaviour, something draining my energy, sense of being watched, fear of going insane and losing grip on reality. Having glimpses of my true self but wondering if it were just an illusion. Where someone is suffering an allergic reaction to psychotic medication or even from being over-medicated, they are likely to experience many of the above symptoms and the medication effect needs to be carefully taken into consideration before drawing a conclusion.
Fri 26th Jan – Ancestral Possession
The psychologist Carl Jung identified a reality he termed ‘ancestral possession’ where, under certain conditions, the soul of a troubled ancestor can attach itself or even take over the life of someone living. Where this happens there is usually a strong identification where the one living thinks a lot about that ancestor and usually finds himself or herself repeating the pattern of that earlier person’s life. This could include taking on physical ailments, emotional disturbances or certain types of unusual behaviour that were associated with the one gone before. This is where serious mistakes tend to be made. If an ‘exorcism’ of banishing a spirit is performed such a troubled soul will understandably resist and there may well be unusual manifestations. However, if that soul is acknowledged, forgiven, and respectfully brought to the Light there are no disturbances but just a sense of relief and peace.
Sat 27th Jan – Seeking the Light
A young woman became deeply troubled after witnessing a man being killed. Counselling and trauma treatment proved to be of no help. Her psychiatrist felt her condition to be outside his remit since he believed she needed deliverance. The trigger factor was obviously the killing, but was there a pre-dispositive factor? Her mother’s father had died years earlier and, as a soldier in WW1, he had witnessed countless killings. Returning home, he suffered what was then known as ‘shell shock’, which we would now understand as PTSD. He was violent and abusive and banished from his home. To add insult to injury the IRA had his pension stopped because he had been fighting for the ‘enemy’. The remainder of his life was spent in abject poverty and misery and died in a ditch. His family never mentioned him, and so he was disowned by family and society. The lady felt that she was now the one through whom he was seeking recognition and when she did so her recovery was all but complete. It was his troubled soul that was the underlying cause of her trouble.
Sun 28th Jan – Man with Demons
A child in school was asked what an unclean spirit was and he wisely replied, ‘A dirty little devil!’ That Gospel today is the story of one soul’s journey from darkness to light, from despair to hope, from torment to peace. Even though the language is a bit strange to us 2000 years later it could well be the journey of any of us – it’s still part of the universal journey.
While Jesus is preaching in the synagogue of Capernaum a poor demented soul comes up to him and creates a scene. He cries out, ‘What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?’ In effect, he is saying, leave me alone, I feel worthless, I’m no good, I’m evil, I’m not worthy of love or respect. I so despise myself that no one could love me. I am beyond help. There comes a point where we can feel so low that it is well-nigh impossible to believe that anybody could love or have time for us.
We often hear those words in the Gospels from people who were battling so much with their own demons that they believed themselves to be possessed. So often they shouted out, ‘Don’t meddle with us, leave us alone, don’t try to change us’. Were these the voices of demons or their own voices, we can’t be sure? It may well have been their own voices acknowledging that change is painful and that they feared change perhaps more than they wanted recovery. All of them were sick, broken, isolated and unloved people, they had no dignity and their self-worth was nil.
Our world is full of such hurting individuals and not just in our prisons or hospitals but even in our church seats. We can all find ourselves caught in a desperate situation where we are battling with our own demons and no one even knows how great is the war that is raging inside us. We may be keeping up a front to make it appear that all is well on the outside while on the inside everything feels as if it’s falling apart.
It’s not easy to admit that to be human is to be vulnerable and that as we journey through life we all hit very rough patches and we have problems to solve and obstacles to overcome. You could ask almost any person ‘How’s the problem?’ and get a look of surprise that you knew they had one. Perhaps our true greatness in life lies not so much in what we achieve but in what we overcome.
One of the few positive legacies that came from the concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland was that of psychiatrist Victor Frankl. Having experienced unspeakable horrors and lost all his family in the death camp he came to the realisation that while he had absolutely no say in what the Nazis were doing to him he did always have a choice in how he choose to respond. All around he saw people dying from bitterness, hatred and spite as much as from hunger and disease. Realising that he had the power to make choices as to how he was going to respond he found gave him incredible power. So much so that it enabled him to survive against all the odds and become one of the world’s top psychiatrists.
What he said sounds quite radical, that people don’t annoy, make us angry or hurt us unless we have chosen those responses. In other words, we upset ourselves. Our habitual response is to blame but no matter how much we blame another it will not change us. The power to choose is where our freedom truly lies. So much of our precious time is spent manufacturing our own stress.
If we meet someone who is having a hard day and is horrible towards us, we can take it personal and be equally nasty to them or we can choose to respond with kindness and understanding and perhaps eventually hear the story of what is really going on.
If someone doesn’t speak to us we might well choose not to speak to them and completely miss the reality that he or she was worried sick about something, not able to see beyond their own little world that particular day.
How we choose to respond to situations is just so important because our brain is a bit like a jungle. The first time we choose to respond in a positive manner it’s like having to clear a pathway and its difficult. The next time we go down that pathway it will be much easier. Then slowly but surely as we consciously choose our response pathway it becomes a habit and eventually it becomes automatic. By choosing a positive response we can exercise a lot of our own demons.
Mon 29th Jan – Banishing or Integrating
It was Carl Jung who said ‘that most of the demons that Christians want to be exorcised from their lives are aspects of their own shadow, that instead of being rid of, need to be integrated into their lives’. This would include the entire range of troublesome emotions like anger, greed, lust and envy. The more we deny and try to put them out of our lives the more they control us. In a similar vein a young woman asked to be delivered from an evil spirit. On enquiry she spoke of an energy she carried that drove men away from her, and she wanted it gone. In fact, her father had walked out when she was just four years of age. Every male she met she made a substitute for her father and expected him to be both lover and father. In response to her neediness, all of them had left. It was her inner child that she needed to love and take responsibility for its needs. To think of exorcism was tantamount to banishing that inner child from her life.