A visit from The Devil

I had never heard of such a thing before. Sleep Paralysis. But once a friend told me about it and my research of the subject confirmed that it's an ancient occurrence in people's lives (indeed, the word nightmare itself is derived from the phenomena!) I became obsessed by it.

Part of this obsession was because I realised it had happened to me once, when I was a small child of 8 or 9 years. I'd woken up from a really bad nightmare and saw, what I thought was, the silhouette of my brother and mother standing over me in the dark, looking down. Their presence made me happy, "Thank God they're here right after a nightmare", but as soon as I finished that thought the silhouettes stretched out their hands and started choking me. I immediately woke up.

I'd had sleep paralysis in the shape of two demons. This is not unusual for people who have sleep paralysis and artists renditions of this particular type was what made me realise that that is what happened to me. Being quite the rational kid, though, I simply concluded I had had a nightmare within a nightmare and moved on. Nothing like it ever happened again.

After becoming obsessed with sleep paralysis, I was determined to have it happen again.

My plan was to taunt the devil and I tried to summon him into my mind by means of provocation, I even did so publicly by posting a pretentious (or daring - depending on your view on these matters) picture on Instagram telling everyone how all my life is devoted to fighting him.

Nothing happened. Life moved on.

Before I continue with this story, there are a couple of things I want to make clear to any non-believing reader. I have a none-superstitious view on these matters. I believe in God and the devil as potentials or ideals. As voices and images in our psyche that could lead us either to grace or destruction. You may aim to become a Man of God or you could follow your temptations to the ends of the world and fall into darkness and become the devil incarnate. Many men have done the latter, few managed the first.

It's been hard for me to articulate these thoughts because I've been an atheist now (from formerly being a literal believer) for at least 10 years. As this story unfolds, the steps to which I managed to realise what it is I believe, especially about the devil, will become clearer.

One night, as I was traveling in Dubai, I met a woman from Belarus. We spent the night mostly talking. She was a wise woman, she had a lot of a rural sort of religious wisdom. We'd google paintings and talk about what we saw in them and her take kept impressing me.

After hours of watching paintings, I asked her, "What are your thoughts on the devil?"

"What do you mean?"

And so I told her of my efforts to summon him into my mind. I'll never forget the look on her face.

"Who do you think you are, that you believe the devil will do your bidding?", she said. "He is the devil. He doesn't do what you want him to do. He's not interested in fighting you, he's interested in owning you, corrupting you and stealing your soul."

"Let him try", I answered, "I won't let him".

"Look", she said, "he's not going to do any of that in a way that you'll be able to win. He doesn't play fair, he doesn't care about honor. He'll steal your soul and you won't even know it's gone, let alone that the devil himself stole it from you!"

Damn... That really hit home in me. I understood completely, it made perfect sense. Of course I hadn't been able to summon the devil in the form of Sleep Paralysis. The one time it had happened - I didn't freeze. Of course he will never visit me, that's what I'm prepared for. All my life I've been preparing to fight some evil force, never realising that the forces of evil may take many shapes and exploit whatever weakness I have.

Oh, so you know how to fight? Guess what, I'll fuck you up in ten other ways. THAT'S the game of the devil.

"You cannot beat the devil", the woman told me. "You can only hope to never invite him into your life and keep your eyes open in hopes of banishing him should you ever realise he's gotten his claws into you".

That stayed with me for a while.

Two weeks later, on a particular desperate night, I was taking a bath and feeling sorry about some recent failings, the darkness I lived in as a result of them and my struggle with a couple of issues and tried to understand why I keep failing and falling short of my plans and goals over and over. Why do I keep doing stupid things? Why do I always sabotage my success?

And what, for the love of God, is the root to all of this destructiveness?

What happened next was hypnotic, almost psychedelic.

You must understand, I was in a very poor state. I was very upset and my thoughts were racing, determined to find an answer to my problems, and the answers came, like words written in black floating in the air of my psyche. One by one they passed me by as I rejected them as either pretentious or shallow. Dig deeper, I thought. One by one, even more answers passed me by. Faster and faster. Until the words were everywhere and filled all the space so that everything turned to black.

.
.
.

That's when I saw Him. And felt him. And heard him speak.

"It's me", I heard him say. Then I saw a black silhouette inches away from me of a thin man's face wearing a black top hat looking at me, with a nasty, evil grin on its face. "It's always been me."

I froze for a second and, realising just that, immediately rose up on the bath tub, naked, my fists raised ready to fight. I knew it was stupid, I knew he wouldn't materialise and start fighting with me. I'm not superstitious at all. But I also knew I don't want to freeze and I don't want to feel helpless. A fighting stance is all I have, I told myself, regretting more than ever that I didn't have a Cross of Jesus around my neck to protect me against this evil.

Every bone in my body was afraid and I opened the curtains so that I could see the rest of the bathroom. I knew nothing was on the other side, heck I was (and still am) convinced that that's impossible. But I was afraid and that fear was magnified by my imagination which in turn was magnified by my blocked view of the bathroom.

Later that night, as I lay in bed, I thought about what had happened.

I've invited The Devil to my life, I thought, many many years before. He's been with me ever since and he's still with me. He will always be with me.

I thought about what the woman had told me. the devil is conniving. He's convinced me of his non-existence, he's eased me into believing the most childish things about myself. The attributes I thought were protecting me from evil, where the exact same attributes he had exploited.

One such attribute is that I've always been determined to fight evil and I deeply believe I am protected from ever turning evil myself. I've been exposed to evil many times and I've never been tempted by it, nor jealous of the power it has given those who use it.

One result of this is that I don't allow myself to hurt others and I feel devastated when I do hurt people by mistake. Here's where the devil comes in; some of these mistakes were so egregious the devil lured me into thinking I can never learn from them and instead I should hurt and ruin myself.

"You're too dangerous", he convinced me. "Too potent. What is more important to you?" He asked, without me even understanding he's the one who asked me, "Power or Goodness?"

"Goodness", I replied.

"Then stay in your place, don't act in the world, don't take up any space. You cannot control your power. You cannot control your actions. You will always do more harm than good". And so I obeyed and started to believe in the following:

I cannot look women in the eyes, because they fall for me, and I do not trust myself to hold their hearts in my hands.

I cannot speak of my wishes, because the world grants them to me, and I do not trust my heart not to grow greedy.

I cannot ask people to follow me, because people follow me to whatever end I aim at, and I do not trust my aim to be true.

Instead of learning from my past mistakes, the devil convinced me that I cannot learn and therefore must grow impotent, harmless and useless. And by living in such a state, year after year, he knows that I would inevitably grow resentful, angry and murderous, until all my protections from evil has withered away and what is left is a dangerous monster. Dangerous, because my sole purpose was to be dangerous in order to protect people from evil, but if resentment and malevolence would get a grip on me, all that competence would be turned into destroying that which is good.

That's when I understood who that silhouette of the thin man with a top hat and an evil grin was.

It was the devil, for sure. But it was also me. Me, me, me! The man I will become, if I allow myself to continue down this path the devil has led me to.

That is the way the devil materialise in the world: by corrupting the hearts of men, turning them into incarnations of his SPIRIT.

When an axe murderer enters your house, you're having a visit from the devil, as much as a visit by a madman.

When the Nazis are knocking at your door, it's as much the devil as it is Germans led astray by anger and resentment and evil.

The devil may not exist as a conscious being, the same way Santa Clause does not exist, but nevertheless The Spirit of Santa Clause gives rise to presents to millions of children around the globe.

So too does The Spirit of the devil possess the hearts of unknowing men.

I wear a Cross today. Because The Spirit of Christ protects me. Not in some magical way, (however, James Randi's definition of "Real Magic" comes very much in handy here) but in a practical way.

I kiss him, day and night, asking him for protection and strength. Reminding myself, everytime, that the devil is within me and that only by aiming at the highest good, the best ideal I can imagine, may I be strong enough to withstand the trials of life and turn away from the conniving lies and temptations that the devil has filled my path with.

And so what exactly do I believe in?

The devil.

Is.

Real.

And I NEED to fear him.