The Persecution of the Innocents

The innocents referred to here are those seeking to extract themselves from this world and return to God. So perhaps not innocent in the normal sense of the word but since to do this one must become as a little child then innocence might not be such a bad description after all.

It was suggested on the comment thread of a previous post that I wrote something about a phenomenon that anyone seriously treading the spiritual path will have encountered. That is abuse and rejection from those still ensnared in the coils of this world. In the modern God-denying West this is so commonplace as to be almost universal but it is something that has always existed. If you go back to the book of Revelation there is a passage which talks about how the accusers of the brethren were cast out of heaven by Michael and his angels and thrown down to earth where they went about trying to corrupt the souls of men. This clearly refers to the devil and his hordes but the term 'accusers of the brethren' can be taken to apply to anyone who condemns another for attempting to walk the spiritual path.

Whenever a person tries to rise above this world they are attacked by representatives of the world and subjected to criticism. This can range from mild disbelief at your naivety through accusations of selfishness and mental instability all the way up to descriptions of you as insane and even evil. Sometimes this might appear to be well-meaning but at others it is plain vicious. If I say that people who do the attacking are under the dominion of the devil that does not mean they are necessarily bad people. As I say, some can be well-meaning, especially family and friends who worry that you might have gone off the rails. The stories about people running off to join cults you used to hear so much about (though I presume that sort of thing still goes on) shows they are not entirely wrong.

 But I am not talking about that. I am talking about the experiences of anyone who wakes up and then tries to devote him or her self to leading a life and behaving in a way that will bring them closer to God. When you do that you can appear to be confronting people with their own darkness and the less pleasant will attack you for that. So the evil powers can exploit weaknesses in these people in their attempt to undermine you. Either by getting you to abandon your spiritual goals and practices or else by causing you to react in self-defence or with fear or anger. When that happens you have entered a state of negative emotion and/or pride and the devil is quite happy for you to continue in your spiritual beliefs if he has succeeded in dragging you down to his level. He doesn't care what you believe. He's only concerned with the state of your soul.

I said your accusers are not necessarily bad people but the truth is that they sometimes are. I mean bad in the sense of identified with sins of various natures and not doing anything to try to overcome them, either because they are unaware of them or else because they don't regard the sin as a sin - which is in itself a kind of sin - or even because the source of their sin is their delight and how they see themselves. It could be said that we are all like that to a degree, but the degree is important as is the amount to which these sins are a dominant part of our character.

Some people resent anyone who turns to spirituality because they think it means you are saying you are better than them. Admittedly one may give that impression. I rather think I did in the heady excitement of first discovering the spiritual path. I didn't mean to but I did think I was now beginning to wake up and most other people were still asleep and that made me more 'advanced'. But again that's a different thing. What I am talking about happens with certain people regardless of any impression you may give. You show up their deficiencies and they don't like it so they try to bring you down. The only sensible response is not to respond. Don't react. Don't enter into arguments. You don't win arguments. They just create more friction and drag you down. The Masters told me that the mind can argue for any position under the sun but truth can only be known, and that's obvious when you think about it. So just state your position and then leave it at that unless asked to elaborate. Sincerely asked, I mean, not asked as a lure to further argument which your opponent is only interested in winning. 

The Masters also told me several times that the greater progress I made the more I would be assailed by evil in all its forms. Why does the devil attack those who set out on the spiritual path so much? It's clear that he has an interest in stopping souls escape from this world. Whether that is because he gains energy from souls locked in the lower planes, the only planes he can relate to in his fallen state, or because of his desire to prove God wrong in giving humanity free will, I am not able to say. He obviously has an interest in destroying aspiration towards the good and in promoting attitudes and behaviour that separate us from God, and perhaps the more you try to escape his clutches the harder he will work to stop you. The sorry fact is the there are powers in the world, supernatural powers, that seek spiritual destruction and it does no good to pretend otherwise. Indeed, to recognise this is important if one wants to understand the state of the world today and also to know how to protect oneself from them.

Which brings us to the heart of this whole matter. Forces of evil do try to attack the spiritual seeker. The stories of early saints being persecuted by devils are not fictitious or even allegorical. They are true. Nowadays this may not take such an overt form as described in the life of St Anthony and most of us are not saints either. Nevertheless attacks will still take place. These might be inner attacks from dark forces which seek to affect our mind through aggravating our weaknesses or appealing to pride and such like, even tempting us to despair about our unworthiness or the horrors of the world. Or they may be attacks on us from external people, people we know, even friends and family. How do we respond to this, especially knowing that the devil loves to attack by accusing us of his own faults and vices so as to prompt our outraged indignation at the unfairness of it all? Then he's got us where he wants us, in a downward spiral of mutual recriminations.

Jesus told us to resist not evil. This doesn't mean you should allow evil to ride roughshod all over you and have its way. That does no one any good. It means don't respond inwardly. Don't allow evil to drag you down to its level. That is what the accusers of the brethren often seek to do, whether consciously as in the inner dark powers, or unconsciously as in ordinary people fallen under their influence. So try not to react. That's hard but it's what we have to do. And then don't allow yourself to feel self-righteous or superior. That way lies pride.  Don't get angry and don't condemn anyone who criticises you as a pawn of the devil. Even if they are on this occasion, and it may well be that they are, they are to be pitied on that account not demonized as evil themselves. Frankly this is hard when you are under verbal assault but you can look upon it as a test that will make you spiritually stronger and bring you closer to God.

So neither anger nor fear nor pride nor self-justification nor the attempt to repay the accuser in his own coin. Patience, forbearance, long suffering, humility. Hard, I know! But none of us will be accused or pilloried as much as Jesus was. He gave us the example to follow.