Society's Child
"He is evil, he's not like fog. He's not a diffuse thing, he is a person. One must not talk to Satan, if you start talking to Satan you are lost, he is more intelligent than us," Pope Francis said during an interview with Catholic television channel TV2000, which was published online by Italian newspaper La Stampa.
"He always pretends to be well-mannered with us. He is well-mannered with us priests, with us bishops. He comes in and it all ends badly if you do not notice this in time," he said.
The pontiff's comments come nine months after he urged priests to use exorcism if they hear confessions indicating demonic activity. He said at the time that priests should exercise caution when determining whether a person is suffering from a mental disorder or demonic influences, advising them to work with psychological professionals when coming to a decision.
Pope Francis speaks about the Devil more than his recent predecessors, previously referring to him as an evil physical presence in the world. He has used various terms to refer to him, including "Satan," "the Evil One," the Seducer," "Beelzebub," and "the Great Dragon."
Comment: Hmmm. Could this this be a veiled warning to his underlings about a living person they know, or is the Pope speaking metaphorically here?
Patriarch Kirill of Russia has made what are probably even more insightful statements recently:
Russian Orthodox Patriarch: End Times coming, so don't get all revolutionary!
Reader Comments
So in other words........."The devil made me molest the boy".......
Pope Francis has warned that Satan is an evil force who is "more intelligent" than mortals and will "make your head spin." He urged Christians not to let the Devil into their heads.
He's talking in the third person.
He's (well meaningly I guess ) talking here about STS, and this is their realm, and with vanishingly few exceptions we're here as part of our Soul's Vast Journeys to come to an experientially generated choice between the paths Home: STO or STS.
I could I suppose go on but I'd belabour towards an abridgements of others' self-considerations, which is not a good idea . . .
Always the questions about how to differentiate, a useful shadow side, some "psychosomatic" reaction to parasites literal or interpersonal, an evil possible self, an outside attack, intellectual reasoning gone wild or nihilistic, or the envious, resentful, wrathful, or insatiable "Kingu" within all of us. With the pope the questions don't end with "science rulez." And Satan is an inexact, mythical conception of any evil (or I guess the worst evils) that threatens the order in our lives.
Another case of "Do what we say but not as we do".
In focus of this idea, the deceit is of Divinity, but experienced as a splitting off sense of self that appears as the world-reflection of the motivations and underlying definitions of such a self.
It is inherently Self attacking - yet Self is only 'attacked' under the wish the 'attack' be real. And so a mind of division, rules out wholeness of being, and guards from exposure and undoing by invoking guilt, fear and hate as power.
The power to not know who you are, the power to not recognize life or another as yourself. The power to deny all power by taking it unto yourself and rejecting author-ity by making all things a witness to your own judgement.
A world under its own judgement, split off in separate minded bodies, confident in its power, laughing at the idea of a 'devil' as a sign of psychological 'illness'!
The little armoured mind that seems to think alone in a body is a downstream effect of a psychic-emotional breakdown of communication. Its persistence is the intent and attempt to resolve its inner (upstream) conflicts in an externalized displacement of a world perceived. But the conflicts are not within its world so much as the very predicate of its thinking. The mind formed under illusion is both the victim and the victimiser. In modern terms one may say the mind that has been phished by guile and hacked to suffer under a stolen identity.
The Pope - regardless of being assigned a title - is correct in the recognition that the deceiver is 'upstream' to any capacity we think we have - because what we think we have is a sense of false possession - and I don't mean this in 'physical' terms but in attempt to grasp on and control, is the loss of awareness of the intimacy within shared being, to a mind in reaction to a sense of lost power, lost freedom, denied or betrayed and broken love. A mind that denies its conflict to 'escape' it. A mind that wants to see the conflict 'outside itself' where it can attack it and separate off.
The lie and the father of the lie, is illusion given power. In this you can re-cognize your power by the recognition that you give it away, and then no longer giving willingness to do so. To give the divine energy and attention of You to that which is not only unworthy of You, but which has no life or capacity to receive or see or know you, is the way to not know Who You Are, and is the embodiment of the fear of that which gives life and Is Life.
And so the Great Reversal, in which God - Love's Creation - is demonized, hated and feared, while hate is given power, aligned in, and sacrificed to. Who hates to love must love to hate, and believe it love. Such a 'psycho-pathy' is a sickness of foundation in everyone that walks the Earth alone. But it is a false foundation or a false mind that can in the true of love's witness can be recognized as such as put behind or given disregard - but it cannot be fought or overcome, without such intent embodying the persistence of its own agenda under a trojan or righteous seeming disguise.
Resist ye not evil, is within the context of placing faith in the living instead of the dead concept. Then and only then, shall a mind serve the will rather than lead it by coercion and deceit. Fear not! Does not mean you do not meet fear, but that you do not renew your subscription and investment of sacrifice of life to fear's dictate. To see truly is not a result of understanding, but the result of releasing a false understanding, in which truth rises of itself to Your recognition and acceptance - albeit this step in willingness, and step by step in a growing willingness that lets the light in - rather than steals it.
However it is - or is not - personalized, deceit wreaks destruction and misery as the false mind that guilts you and your world, to then offer power under its 'protection'. We will not be free of this evil by fighting in the world - but only feed sacrifice to its reality in our own mind. But insofar as we stand in such integrity as we have, to not give way to false witness but to recognize its way in us and release or repent of it immediately and freely.
no, it is probably NOT a good idea to talk back with the voices inside your head.
unless of course it is your own voice. and in that case...
you should propably listen to yourself... (even if you think that you are right)