Spiritual Warfare, Part 1

Spiritual Warfare
by Scott Bradley

There is a perennial school of thought which sees the Universe as a vast battleground in which the forces of Good and Evil contend. This spiritual warfare is being fought in the trenches of the human heart and its outcome will determine the fate of each and every individual, whether he or she will be ‘lost’ or ‘saved’.

Perhaps your mind immediately thinks of Christianity and the other Revealed Religions, Judaism and Islam. But I suggest that this thinking likewise pervades the Eastern, non-theistic religions, and their more ‘modern’ New Age expressions, as well. Indeed, it seems to be a central motivating factor among most of us who seek a greater spiritual maturity. We are at war against devils within and without.

I have taken the title of this article from the title of the last book of ‘The Enlightenment Trilogy’ written by Jed McKenna (most certainly a pseudonym). The other titles are Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing and Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment. And although I will here try to make a case for an alternative, non-confrontational approach to spiritual growth, I do recommend this ‘trilogy’ to anyone at work on this great adventure of human realization.

Mr. McKenna is a refreshing iconoclast who would have as his standard (were he a Zen Master) the head of the Buddha, bloody fresh, impaled on a stake. For poetry he offers: Fuck Basho’s Frog. It’s not to confronting our ignorance and idols that this article takes exception, but rather to the more fundamental belief that the self is a devil.

In the end, this article is about ‘me’, for it is I who write and it is out of my experience that I expostulate. I have long been at war with my self and it was the inevitable battlefield reversals that finally set my feet upon this path. I have twice been told by female intimates that (translated from the French) I am ‘not good in my skin’. My self is at war with its self.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.