The Christian should not be obsessed with the Devil, for he holds no power over us (1 Jn 4:4). But neither should we be ignorant of the temptations and trickery he uses to affect a soul.
I was reading an interview with Lady Gaga from her forthcoming documentary. Something struck me from her description of a particular experience early in her career, before she got famous. I will tell you why in a moment, but first her description of the event:
"I had just been on stage, it was a good show, I was high on the love and applause from the crowd. I was outside lighting a cigarette, thinking about scoring some more cocaine. I was aching for more. More of everything. I just wanted to feel good. Feel anything.
Then this man, a strangely ageless man in a suit, spoke to me. He was leaning against the wall, smoking, and he said to me 'I think you've got what it takes. Do you want it?' I asked what 'it' was. I thought he was coming on to me. But he smiled and said 'Everything. Success. Fame. Riches. Power. Do you want it all?'
I looked at him curiously. I couldn't work him out. Then he just stood there and sang one of the songs from my routine earlier. It was otherworldly. I stared at him like he was a dark jewel dredged up from the deepest ocean. I got down on my knees and asked him who I should praise. I looked him right in the eye and told him I wanted it all. I told him I'd do anything."
The man. That man. I read it again, and got some strange goosebumps. I remember--when I was in the throws of my first major psychotic bout of mania a little over a decade ago--experiencing a vision. I wrote about it later in my journal, following my hospitalization:
"I saw a vision of a black man, an Angel of Death, dressed in common clothes outside my window. The Dark Man sits outside my bay window, in the garden. He sits like the moon, legs crossed, twirling a black-eyed Susan between his fingers. It spins like a yellow cartwheel, faster, until the olive shaped black eye bleeds out onto the pedals and yellow pigment drips onto the concrete below. I followed him here to this grotto, like someone just woken up from a nap, bewildered and walking blindly, settling into my chair. He sighs and tosses the flower aside.
The Dark Man whispers to me to come and see. I look out the window and he points to the maple tree in the front yard. Fluttering in the wind on the branches are hundreds of photographs--girlfriends, lovers, high school buddies, college friends, camping trips, road trips. Pictures of late night partying, jumping off rope swings, traveling, hitchhiking, bungy jumping, cliff jumping, racing bikes. Pictures from New Zealand, Australia, Haiti, Mexico. Old family photos, yellowed and dog-eared. My brother playing his first guitar; my other brother with his stuffed animals. My parents on the back patio at our old house before I was born.
I kneel on the couch and watch it from the window. But the wind begins to blow and one by one the photographs are ripped from the branches and flutter off into the sky like dandelion blossoms. I run out onto the porch but by the time I get outside the tree is stripped and bare, forlorn in the night, arms braced to the sky. I turn to the Man. He is paging through a book, the plastic film pages blank. The Dark Man has stepped in as a sort of stepfather. He reveled in the fact that I had not come from him, but yet he had such strong influence over my life, was with me in the womb. So much so that during this time of mania he paid visits and mingled his wisdom with that of my real Father, so that it was hard to tell sometimes who was speaking.
I rest on the couch for a moment and watch the maple tree. The Man is sitting on the ground with his back against the trunk, his hat tipped down over his eyes. It looks like he is sleeping, but he never sleeps. He is always waiting. He is always looking for fun.
But I don't know if I'm having any fun anymore. The erratic passion is there, but it's like a sour adulterous relationship--it's slowly getting old, tiring, complicated. And hard to get out of. I want eternity. I want moments that never die, but I am tired of this sleepless hell.
I lock my door and turn off the lights and when I go back to the window the Man is chipping away at the bark with a knife, whistling an old slave song under the light of the moon. Inside a heart carved in the base of the tree are my initials: RPM. He turns and takes off his hat, bearing his gleaming white teeth. He gets up and puts on his hat. 'Everything is written, and everything is a dream,' he says, and walks off slowly into the night whistling that old slave song, 'Everything is a happy dream...' The moon is strung up in the sky like a wafer on a piece of thread, silent, twirling, pale and lifeless, serene, and passionless."
I have always had a soft spot and affinity for Lady Gaga. I think she is an earnest and creative person. She smells truth, but she's not there yet. I do think she is missing the mark with the public focus on the physical (fibromyalgia) explanations of her dis-ease and malaise. She poses with priests, praises homilies on the Eucharist, and snaps photographs of herself clutching rosary beads--I don't know what her motives are, and its not my place to judge them. But if she really did make some sort of pact with a demon at some point in her life, any attempts to treat this psycho-somatic source of chronic pain will be ultimately ineffective, for there is only one Physician who can heal such an affliction.
The spiritual realm is the undercurrent flowing beneath the surface of this life. It affects EVERYTHING, and our ignorance of the forces at work vying for our soul only compounds the problem of illness as it manifests in our everyday life. While I don't doubt I do have a legitimate 296.46 diagnosis that requires treatment and management, looking back I can see the diabolic forces that plagued me during this time also had a root in my own personal sin that compounded and exasperated the symptoms. Blasphemy, gluttony, idolatry, drunkenness, fornication, and the temptations from outside of myself to take my life all had a demonic spiritual taproot that had taken hold in me unrecognized. I put myself in situations early in my life where I may have incurred an evil spirit. I hung out with those who practiced New Age mysticism; I spent the night meditating outside a cave where spirits made themselves present. At one point I had gone to Thailand and participated in yoga, bowing unknowingly to false gods. And this was all after my entrance into the Church! I don't know where it had snuck in the backdoor, but I gave plenty of opportunity, for which I have since repented and sought deliverance
Mind-body-spirit--the synthesis of which makes us human. While medical treatment was largely effective in my case, it wasn't until I got serious about repentance and cleaning up my spiritual life, having recourse to the Sacraments, was prayed over for deliverance by keen friends who recognized that something not of God may be at work in me, and got serious about being in a state of grace, that my mental health improved to the point of a full remission. Neglecting the spiritual dimension of life and dabbling in that which might, even inadvertently, invite in the demonic, is something we do to our great peril. Remaining vigilant is essential, since we know that
"when an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, "I will return to the house I left." When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first." (Mt 12:43-45).
There is so much depression, so much suicide, so much unhappiness manifest in the world today. Do we dare ask the question--what is the root cause, and what is the state of our spirit? Fr. Amorth asks and unequivocally answers the question we should be considering:
"Can we make the case that the demon is more active today than in the past? Can we say that the incidence of demonic possession and other, lesser, evil disturbances is on the rise? The answer to these and similar questions is a decisive YES. Rationalism, atheism--which is preached to the masses--and the corruption that is a by-product of Western consumerism have all contributed to a frightening decline in faith.
This I can state with mathematical certainty: where faith declines, superstition grows."
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