[Adapted from The Spirits Around Us]
Sometimes at retreats I've mentioned
the "curse" of certain movies and the danger of certain music.
As an example, there was Rosemary's Baby (starring Mia Farrow), a movie about a woman who bears the devil's child. In this case the director's wife was murdered a year after the movie by Charlie Manson and his diabolical cult-like "family," one member of which had been a disciple of famed Satanist Anton LaVey -- who reportedly had been a consultant to Rosemary's Baby.
The movie was filmed at a famous, "haunted" apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, called the Dakota.
Years later, John Lennon moved there -- holding psychic sessions and seances with wife Yoko Ono; they had psychics as friends of consultants. Lennon saw UFOs. In 1974, Yoko released an album with the title, "Yes, I'm A Witch."
Lennon, of course, was later killed by a "fan" from Hawaii who heard the voices of "little people" telling him to slay the singer. The murder took place in front of the Dakota.
The last person the murderer recognized before pulling the trigger there on West 72nd Street, as he waited for Lennon's car to arrive, was a celebrity passerby heading for Central Park and walking her dog. It was -- Mia Farrow.
Let us pray...
For we see then how life and
spirits dovetail and reverberate and interweave and how we must root out the negative ones (without
focusing too much on them). Most like Lennon have no idea what they are
messing with.
There are other factors as well: family curses.
When a mystic was asked what was haunting a family, she "saw" that it was a "great-great grandfather" afflicting a youngster in that home. "I knew the spirit wasn't good for the family, that he was in some way a malevolent force, and that his presence was a part, if not all, of the child's sickness," she wrote. "All the time I was in that house I kept watching this spirit and praying that he be surrounded by love and angels, so that he could depart and go to Heaven and leave the little boy in peace."
God always helps us purge.
When we believe in the help of angels, it empowers them.
Surround yourself. (Meanwhile, when we stand in fear of evil, or focus on it, evil likewise gains power. Recognize where it is and purge it and move on.)
Misfortune, accidents, sudden emotional effect, anxiety, depression, poor luck in love, addiction, melancholy, exhaustion, and immorality can all have a root in unseen realities. There was the case of a spiritually troubled man who was very much afraid to die and kept going into a demonic rage.
At one point, allegedly, nurses saw him hovering two inches above his bed.
"I was supposed to be putting on a brave front for the less experienced nurses, but I'm still freaked out from that night," she said. "I quit working at that hospital not long after. Before I left, I started to notice some changes throughout the unit. There were strange sounds.
"Peoples' personalities were changing. I watched some of the quiet, shy nurses become very sexual or verbally abusive. We had one nurse who was a very devout Christian. I'd never heard a bad word about anyone or even a curse. She always smiled, was very polite, but after that night, she'd let out string of curse words and obscenities that I'd never heard before and she had the same evil look in her eye as that patient did that night. That hospital needed a priest."
Many do.
That isn't to blame spirits for our sins. We have free will. We make choices.
But brushing up against evil can affect us if we don't cast it off and we must always guard against unusual problems and temptations (as well as personality change).
Often, "temptation" is from invisible entities.
Curses can be very subtle. They can originate from anyone. Frequently they're the product of jealousy. What about the famous World Series "curse" on the Chicago Cubs? I was asked this recently by a reporter for USA Today, and I have no idea about that one, and whether it is legitimate. I do know when a person wishes poorly for you, that can have repercussions -- and the same can occur when we do it, making it urgent that we cleanse our thoughts thinking negatively of no one and certainly not wish negativity upon them! It always returns.
Scripture says a curse will not "alight" without cause. It must be attracted to us. It must have a perch.
This emphasizes the need to purify our interior lives.
-- Michael H. Brown
[resources: The Spirits Around Us and Deliverance books]
