The title of my talk is The Multiple D’s. The book “Earth, the Cosmos and You” by Orpheaus Phylos and Virginia Essene speaks of the multiple D’s of darkness as doubt, discouragement, distraction, discomfort, disease, depression. I then decided to add to this list with destruction, dying, dumb, denial, divided, debt, deceive, defile, despair, destitute, and the devil.
What is darkness but the lack of light, or truth. Some Bible translations use the term devil, Satan, or adversary as the one tempting Jesus while in the wilderness for 40 days and nights. And, when Jesus completed his tests he was ready to begin his 3 year ministry.
What do these terms mean? Some say that those writing the Bible used an old method of reversing the letters like a code. The word “devil” when reversed is “lived”, the word “live” reversed is “evil”. Living our lives backwards such as the world around us having power rather than us being the power; living in fear rather than from love; living from separation rather than from wholeness in oneness of God. The word “devil” says so much, all the multiple D’s wrapped up in one word.
Do we allow the voice of the tempter to take over our mind, and rule our life with all its stories and lies? Or do we claim our dominion and live from truth, love and light. Always the tempter, our adversary speaks in falsities. We are to remember that this adversary is not an entity but is as a shadow that when light appears it disappears into the nothingness from which it came.
Many religious teachings of today make a powerful entity of the Devil that is always doing battle against God, and might even win during the battle of Armageddon. That which is going on within the Bible is within our soul; the battle of truth and illusion, light and darkness, fear and love. Which do we choose. It’s a choice we can make daily, and not some far off time.
The story of the fall of Adam and Eve is our soul’s story. The fall or decent into the 3rd dimension of duality, separation, materiality, time and space. It is a myth to explain how spiritual beings journeyed into the physical realm of suffering, and the rest of the Bible is the return. The many twists and turns along the path, rising up and falling down, and yet always learning and evolving from our experiences.
The listening to the serpent, and the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil lead to the belief in duality and separation. As long as we maintain our focus in this reality of physical matter we shall only know duality, and a limited sense of self.
Taking this journey meant leaving behind our full awareness of our Self. And, out of forgetfulness came a separate sense of “I” an alter ego - a persona that we lay over us like a mask. But this altered sense of “I” we call ego, can only exist in time, space and matter - in duality. Thus it senses its own demise especially as we begin to awaken, meditate, and seek the greater source the “I Am” our true nature of “I.”
The very nature of the ego self is fear. The fear of being found out. That mind chatter is the result of fear. There are so many names for fear, it wears so many faces. It all begins with the sense of separation — we look out in the world and see separateness.
We then fear that it can hurt us, and destroy who we are; death, disease, destitute. We give all our power to the outer material world, and have even created an entity to use this power against us — the devil or Satan.
The battle goes on — with our neighbor, friends, husband, wife, children, relatives, enemies from afar, or its the stock market, corporations, governments, nations, space aliens, or germs, viruses, diseases, pesticides, sugar, fat, drugs, stress.
Violence is the acting out of fear. When I first heard this it was like a light bulb going off in my mind. Violence is the acting of our fear. The person committing violence is in great fear, viewing a distorted world that is believed to be attacking them -- they see themselves as the victim.
When being confronted with danger to remember “Steadfastly facing Thee, there is only Love” or “Let there be love.” To truly see God standing right there in front of us regardless of the form, the words, the action. Seeing beyond the appearance to the Divine Spirit of all life.
When we can see love standing before us, and express that love toward all, then we are love in action. We have come in to our true power, and all is transformed in a twinkling of an eye.
Our own adversary comes to us in many guises. As with Jesus, having his ego fed, telling him how he can rule the world with his great powers. But, this would only derail his mission, and so Jesus answered “Get you behind me.”
Our adversary, mind chatter, feeds us with doubt and discouragement, and reminding us about all our past failures or of future ones or of enemies. Again, “Get you behind me.” Or, it conjures up all kinds of distractions to keep us from our true business at hand. There is nothing but fear in the belief of the multiple D’s.
Now whenever we may think or do something that is out of our true character to replace “The devil made me do it” to being “My fear made me do it.” Its interesting how fast this translates to compassion and forgiveness for our self. Its amazing how it transforms the fear and anger to empathy for another person as we have all experienced fear to some degree.
When we can see that the only enemy is fear, then we can begin to transform our worldly experiences. We begin with our own fears. Look at what is truly driving us — which of the multiple D’s is our adversary. Face our fear, learn from it, overcome, and be empowered to assist others in their waking up and overcoming.
Whenever that negative mind chatter takes over, command it away, take dominion of our self, of our mind, emotions and body. The easiest way to raise our vibration from negative to positive is to breathe slowly and deeply for about 10 minutes. Oxygenating naturally quiets our mind. Toning, chanting or singing is another way to quickly shift our energy. The importance here is to take our mind off of the chatter or whatever it is that is running the fear, and then replace with what is the Truth.
The following is one of my favorite prayers from Mystical Teachings by H.B. Jeffrey, and great to say when experiencing one of those multiple Ds:
“Steadfastly facing Thee, I see no evil on my path.
Steadfastly facing Thee, I see no matter with its laws of mind.
Steadfastly facing Thee, I see no loss, no lack, no absence, no want, no longing, no disappointment, no pain.
Steadfastly facing Thee, I see nothing to fear, for there is no power to hurt.
Steadfastly facing Thee, I see neither sin nor sickness nor death.
Because Thou art Unconditional and Absolute, I also am unconditioned and absolute.”
You can add to this with whatever may be your challenge at the time. I also like to add at the end of each line “All is good.” As in the following:
Steadfastly facing Thee, I see no evil on my path. All is good.
Steadfastly facing Thee, I see no matter with its laws of mind. All is good.
Steadfastly facing Thee, I see no loss, no lack, no absence, no want, no
longing, no disappointment, no pain. All is good.
Steadfastly facing Thee, I see nothing to fear, for there is no power to hurt.
All is good.
Steadfastly facing Thee, I see neither sin nor sickness nor death. All is
good.
Because Thou art Unconditional and Absolute, I also am unconditioned and absolute. All is good.
In New Thought, and Divine Science, we have tools, and I share these tools with you because I have used them, and know they have worked for me. There’s a saying in New Thought, “It works if you work it.” Not just a little bit, but with faith and persistency.
Difficult challenges didn’t change instantly or even overnight for me. I had to work it day in and day out, until it was done. In one instance it took me a month. Every day I would be triggered on my way to work by passing a certain street with a flood of negative thoughts. This had been going on for a while, before I realized what was going on, and that I didn’t want this in my life anymore.
I had to drive those nagging fear filled thoughts out of my mind, and I did it with affirmations, and inspiring songs. Then one day I arrived to work without even noticing that street. It no longer had any power to trigger me. I was just happily singing along with my music.
Years later a similar trigger appeared in my life. This time I would stop the negative thoughts by asking “Is this what I want to create for tomorrow?” and the answer was always an immediate “No!” Then I would ask myself, “Then what do I want to create?” Now I would have to intentionally think. I also began to use this commuting time to listen to spiritual audio books.
Everyone has challenges, the difference is in how we handle them. We can stew in them for a long time or for a short duration. The choice is ours.
We can create a new list to replace our Ds with Ls as in: Love, Life, Light, Laughter, Lighthearted, Listening, Limitless, Liberate, Leisure and Luxury. I suggest to have a long list of positive words at hand to refer to when necessary to lift and remind ourselves of what is true.
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