IV. Too Much Too Soon

IV. Too Much Too Soon 

I am a blabbermouth. My flapping tongue has got me into trouble all my life. There is an enthusiastic (you might say evangelistic) side of me that wants to shout the good news from the rooftops. I have always been a reliedon advicegiver to my friends, an explainer, a criticizer. This is why I am a good teacher, because I have a very strong desire to tell all. However, only in the last year or so have I begun to understand Jesus' injunction not to throw one's pearls before swine. It was necessary for me to understand this before I began this book, which I wanted to write after the first day, but was ordered not to.

When I first met Anton, I told three or four close friends about him and was struck by the apathy with which this news was received. A mild curiosity was expressed, but at the same time there was a sort of embarrassed reserve an unwillingness to enter into the experience. Anton began telling me that I should keep my mouth shut before I put my foot in it royally.

Nevertheless, I felt I could tell two of my close friends, Sarah and Jim. My wife loves Sarah dearly, and wanted the four of us to be friends, buddies, comrades. I had hoped that Sarah and Jim would think that this news was grounds for rejoicing, and that the four of us bound together by secret spiritual knowledge could create a vortex of power that could do much good. This turned out not to be the case.

One night, in their apartment, Anton came and gave an hourlong reading answering the many questions we put to him. The main subject of the reading was Jim's demon, Chileavera. Chileavera (roughly translated) means falsetruth, or mocktruth. Jim is an extremely brilliant man, very quick, very erudite, very witty. However, there is a shallowness to his wit, a foundationlessness, there is

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intelligence with nothing to be intelligent about. He can manipulate verbal structures into elaborate weblike patterns that appear to make sense but don't. Chileavera motivates his mind to see things from an offcenter perspective which distorts his perception, thereby creating a terrible propensity for aberrant response. His offcenter logic puts wrong thoughts in his head that no persuasion can rectify. He is a very angry man, and can erupt almost instantly into a violent rage over practically nothing. He is a really nice guy underneath it all, but he is a pathetic victim of this lowlife entity.

One name for this kind of entity is "elemental"  a kind of castoff being that is incomplete in itself. It has no real personality of its own and no intelligence. It takes on the personality and intelligence of the person it invades. Therefore, very intelligent people are at a disadvantage for they have more resources for the elemental to take and turn against them. Chileavera took every truth I ever told Jim and twisted it in his mind. In addition, Jim decided that I had a holierthanthou attitude, and at the same time was out to get him. He already didn't like me since he was jealous of the closeness which existed between Sarah and my wife, so as a threat to him socially and as a threat to his demon, he began to take every available opportunity to create friction between us. This unfortunate situation has had a destructive effect on the relationship of Sarah and my wife that may never be healed. I do not know if things would have been any different if I had kept the secret (since it is fairly hard to disguise the changes that spirituality has wrought in me), but I do know that by blabbing too much too soon, I have made myself responsible for much pain.

This experience set the tone for my teaching of spirituality. Ever since the horrible developments between

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Jim and me, I have been extremely cautious in revealing explicit information about what I know and have experienced. I have learned to speak of spiritual truths in a general, almost metaphorical way, tailoring what I say to the level of advancement I perceive in the student.

Oddly enough, it is most difficult to talk with church choirs about spiritual things. There is so much attention paid to the proper dogmatic interpretation of the Bible that a person with firsthand spiritual knowledge can appear to be a blasphemer, or a cultist, or even a pagan. In point of fact, I know Jesus better than most of the people who daily pray in His name, but just let me start talking to them about real demons or real angels and I'm in big trouble.

Jesus responds to anyone who calls Him, but He can only make His presence felt proportional to the degree that the callers heart is open to accept Him. The average churchgoer is victimized as much by Satan's snares of dogma, prejudice and self centeredness as nonchurchgoers. The fact the Jesus is involved in prayer is no guarantee that He will be able to raise the consciousness of those who pray, if they do not know how to reach out to Him with the heart. If a person can contact the Holy Spirit and approach the GodPresence Within, he will soon find himself conscious of being aided and uplifted by angels and all sorts of ascended beings. If a person has never had his spiritual eyes opened, he will tend to be offended and threatened by talk of angels and miracles no matter how many Bible verses he reads telling of such things. If God lives at church and not in the heart, nothing good can be accomplished.

It has been an extremely important realization for me that the sayings of Jesus, far from being some aloof collection of otherworldly prophecies, are an extremely practical body of good advice. It is generally acknowledged, in the spiritual works I have studied, that God makes you happier and better in the here and now, since only in the

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physical dimension is there anything but the here and now. Yet, normal churchgoers have a tendency to make a kind of fairy story out of the New Testament without considering the

possibility that what was true then can be true now; that demon possession and miracles both can and do happen now just as in ancient times. Because of the churchgoer's quite conscious denial of the role divine forces play in our lives, I have tried to minister to my church musicians' unconscious (or superconscious) knowledge of their divine heritage, and to make available to them in small doses that which I might have made available in large doses if they were free of prejudice and fear. Generally, I have had great success with this technique, which I will discuss soon in detail.

I have not always been successful at disguising my unorthodoxy. I once had an ongoing altercation with an oldfashioned minister who was convinced that my work was un Christian. Sometimes, I thought, the merest mention of God out of the lips of anyone but himself was an offense to this man, so narrow and selflimiting were his concepts. In any case, things got out of hand and I was ultimately fired as the choir director in spite of the unanimous disapproval and disappointment of the choir.

This is an interesting story, because it is an example of how God works through his servants for the greater good. The choir under discussion was an everdwindling group in an everdwindling church. They were a devoted few, who valiantly pretended to be a real choir week after week, but who more and more were failing to satisfy my hunger for profound musical~spiritual experiences. Indeed, I had felt musically unfulfilled at this place for years, but had stayed out of loyalty and habit. I was fired at the exact moment that a job as choir director at another church opened

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up; I moved right into that job conducting a choir almost three time the size of the previous one, and began to participate in a ministry much more vital and appropriate for my talents.

If ever I had any doubts as to whether God was directing me and caring for me, after this chain of events I had to dismiss them. At the time of my dismissal, I was upset and worried, primarily about money, but I kept getting the message that I would get a better job with a better choir, and that my path lay in the direction of greater and greater outreach; that, when I was ready, my gifts would bless many, and that the new choir was just the beginning. As I continue to rise financially, professionally, and artistically, I think on this prophecy often and am comforted by it through every hard time. I have given my life to God who has a plan and purpose for me; in every dark valley I am therefore unafraid.

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