Exposing the Lies of our Demons, Devils & Flying Ghost Monkeys

Source: Evil will never tell you……

“Evil will never tell you how good you are, how strong you are, or what a difference you can make to improve the world. Evil despises your capacity to love, and your potential for good, which promotes hope, and being filled with love and hope makes you less likely to be controled by fear”
Stacey iBold Stibbards

What you say is tremendously important.
If you are playing along at home, we’ve been tackling a bunch of stuff to help kick 2017 off. As a quick review;
There are lies that have come at you and that you’ve adopted as your ‘truth’.
Those lies come at you from a bunch of different sources.
We have installed a ‘gatekeeper’ at the doorway of everything we hear, so we can check it before letting it in. This gives you a chance to examine all this stuff that is coming at you to split into ‘good’, ‘bad’, and ‘suspect’.
You’ve started to identify suspect ‘sources’ and are applying those filters based on a ‘source profile’.

Here’s the aha moment for the day: you yourself are a source that you’ve got to get under control. You have to monitor and evaluate what you hear from yourself, in your own voice, with as much vigor and intensity as you apply to all the other voices coming at you.

When you speak, you are speaking for someone else to hear. But guess what; you are listening in.  And that is critical to understand. When you read something, one part of the brain ‘lights up’. When you hear something, another part of your brain fires up.  You want to learn or understand something a new way; read out loud.  My wife is amazing. She processes stuff by talking it out. If you are a fan of her videos, you’ll see sometimes that she’ll say something, and THEN process it, and understands it differently after hearing it spoken out loud.  I can imagine the spark of a thousand connections in her eyes as she works through it. She formed the words, then she spoke them out. Then she heard them spoken, and understood them from a new perspective. And her insights, real time, are profound. I love watching her in action.

Scientifically, your brain processes words you hear differently; it ignites a different part of the brain. When you hear something spoken, it ignites a new set of thoughts, and new sets of neurons.

So, if you are a source, aren’t your words always ‘safe’?

Not in the least. Many times the harshest things I’ve ever heard about myself are in my voice. I’m frequently own worst critic, and I have a tendency to not cut myself slack. But that’s me; you might be drawn differently. For me; it’s a constant challenge.  What’s worse, and is common for both you and I, is that your gatekeeper recognizes your voice, and lets what is said waltz right in; the ‘filter’ will default to allow stuff spoken in your voice ‘through’.

Here’s where you HAVE to be really dedicated at applying that filter. It’s tough to reign in sometimes; the words come spilling out before you have a chance to check them. But If you can’t stop yourself from saying them out loud, you HAVE to take a moment after hearing them to see if they hold water. It sounds weird, but you’ll get the hang of it.

I’m personally trying to get better at not saying this stuff about myself in the first place, but I’m a work in progress. Somedays, i don’t progress. My wife will say something positive and encouraging, and I’ll find some way to twist it to be negative and a false compliment, and throw it back at her like that was how she really meant it.  You’ve seen me do it; ‘You did that well’ gets turned in to ‘surprised aren’t you? Cause I normally mess it up’.

 

Your brain hears what you speak, and processes it. Here’s the magical, and insidious, thing about our brains. It ‘maps’ what it hears, sees, thinks, etc. Those are memories. Repeat the event, and that pattern gets reinforced a little.  Repeat something over and over, and it is ‘memorized’ and you don’t have to think about the words to the song, or the chords. You just know them.  Well, the same holds true with the lies coming at you. You hear them over and over, and they reinforce themselves, and get printed on you. At some point, even if you KNOW it isn’t true, you adopt that lie as your own, and then it becomes your truth in a way.  I know this woman. (Married her in fact) She was a wicked smart kid, but different. She was told over and over again that she was stupid. Eventually, she started to adopt that mindset in some situations, and would ‘agree’ she couldn’t do something.  (What’s amazing about my wife is that she fought back. Where the school system failed her, she taught herself grammar and English, and everything else she needed to get through school, with little help from educators who were inconvenienced by her different learning style.) If you hear something often enough, you’ll start to believe it. If you are the one saying it, that ‘adoption’ happens even faster. That is your brain hearing and reinforcing something that it has heard, eh. We’ve all seen it in action, I’m sure.

You have to filter what you say, ideally before you even say it. But if not, then for sure before you hear it and accept it BACK IN.  That will feel pretty ‘disconnected’ the first couple of times you consciously reject something you just said. (Also, it might earn you some strange looks from dining companions it you have a discussion with yourself about it. You’ve been warned.)

When you stop something you’ve said from coming back in, and you tag it as ‘suspect’, it might also be a good time to pause and consider where that lie actually came from. It’s “root” so to speak.  Was it something you’ve heard over and over, so you are repeating it? That is like an embedded lie that you have to dig out. We’ll get to that in a couple of posts.  Is it something completely new and out of the blue? That’s how they start; unexpected and small. We’ll get to that in the Next post. Was it something Crazy Aunt Louise said about you all the time? Might just be jealousy talking.

What you say has easy access back in to your brain when you hear it spoken out loud. You have to review what you say with as much, if not more, attention as you do what other people speak.

You need a Gatekeeper.
We’ve established that there are things that you believe in your life that are lies. They have come at you like demons. They were introduced into your life by experience or by people and are not true. Sometimes this was done innocently or unintentionally, but sometimes it was meant to hurt you and steal from your future. (Remember, some of these are like demons, eh) But we also discussed that there’s hope, and that truth is out there waiting to be discovered.

Where do you start?

Start here: Reduce or remove lies coming in

If you came across someone hurt in an accident, you stop the bleeding first, so they don’t get worse, THEN they can move on to healing. That approach is exactly what I propose we do about these lies; let’s reduce the inflow of disinformation, then we can start to deal with what is already ‘there.’ We have to reduce the new lies coming into our lives first, and THEN start getting rid of the ones that are there. Otherwise, it’d be like we’re bailing out a ship with huge holes in the hull; we’re fighting a losing battle. We’ve got to get the odds in our favour. We close down some holes in the hull; THEN we can start bailing.

Here’s the problem, though; you can’t just shut off all ‘input.’ We are barraged by more information and feedback than at any time in human history. Stuff, both good and bad, comes at you all day from many sources.  We get fed stuff by the real news, the fake news, the internets, the “twimblebook”, as well as the people around us. I’m not proposing that we stop all input; that would start to turn us into a hermit and sociopath. (OK, I know my ‘holes in the hull of the boat’ analogy just fell apart; obviously NO holes in the boat would be a good thing. But try to keep up)

If we don’t want to stop everything coming in because some of it is good, then what do we do?

We examine it as it arrives, and filter stuff out. What does that mean? It means that you don’t just let every comment, observation, or statement ‘IN.’ It means that you acknowledge it, but then hold it up for examination before you accept it.  Even the Bible says we are to ‘Take every thought captive.’ So take every thought captive for a moment of further reflection.

You take a look at the actual content. You think through the evidence for that statement. You think through the evidence against that statement. You think about the context. And you especially consider the source and the intention.  If you hear, ‘You are lazy’, you have to look at the evidence ‘for’ and ‘against’ that accusation, as well as who said it, why, and why they said it.

That’s a lot to digest, so let’s unpack it;

Evidence ‘for’ and ‘against’

Is there ANY truth to what they said? Is there a perspective in which it’s true? What is their perspective?

Who said it?  As you start this exercise, try to keep track of how you assess the different sources in your life. Over time you’ll start to see a pattern of what sources are typically accurate, and which are not. You can use that ‘pattern’ information later. As difficult as it may be to accept, there are people in your life that are just not FOR you. They talk you down. They don’t want the best for you. Some people are just plain mean or mean spirited. (Crazy Aunt Louise; we’re talking about you.)

Why they said it? What is their perspective? Perhaps they have a different way to look at it, or it impacts them differently.

What was their intention?  Sometimes you have to step back and ask yourself, ‘why would they have said such a thing?’  Were they trying to hurt my feelings? Or were they lashing out because they misunderstood me?

My wife has developed an interesting approach that usually works for her, and I admire it. She holds up this ‘nugget’ of a comment or conversation, and asks herself, ‘Is that something that God would say to me or about me?’. It’s a simple metric or comparison: it sets the bar high and is pretty easy to evaluate.

Over time, if you keep exercising this ‘evaluate what comes at you’ strategy, your criteria will mature and become easier to apply.  When you think about it, you have a filter right now that you use all the time. Some call it a ‘bullshit’ meter. Some call it ‘intuition.’ I’m saying, you probably have a sense when you hear an outright boldfaced lie. What I’m proposing is that you work to make that evaluation more purposeful, and start keeping track of sources in your life.

I’m also proposing that you do one more simple thing, though. (But sometimes the simple things are the toughest.)  After you have intercepted this ‘nugget’ of a comment and stopped it at the door….. after you have looked at it from a couple of different directions and determined that it is not true….. then you have to reject it.   I know that sounds obvious, but it doesn’t always happen. You get hit with something, and you say, ‘that’s doesn’t sound right,’ but you tuck it in your back pocket and carry it around with you anyway.

You don’t have the need, the time or the strength it takes to carry all the baggage around with you that people hand you to carry. You gotta decide what is yours and put down all the rest.

No matter what criteria YOU develop to evaluate what is coming at you,

If the comment fails your evaluation, then don’t let it come home to roost. Kick it out, and say, ‘I reject that.’  You can say it to yourself, or in some situations, it might be good to say it out loud in the liar’s face. (more about when to be rude in a sec)  Stand by your evidence; it’s your decision to adopt their opinion or not.

Their side of things

Those spoken lies coming at you are spoken by a voice. That voice is coming from a person. Now, it could be an innocent misunderstanding. That can and does happen all the time, from my experience. Let’s set that situation aside for just a moment. Remember that the person speaking this lie AT you is dealing with their OWN set of lies in their life, and demons speaking into their lives. I’m just saying, sometimes Crazy Aunt Louise believes what she just said because of the lies in her life, and sometimes it’s something she is just now hearing in her own head. THAT would be a demon talking to her, and she’s just giving it a voice and passing on the message. That sounds a little weird, perhaps. But give it a moment to sink in, and reflect on it. I bet you can remember situations where this would explain a lot. (also, if you are hearing in the back of your head right now, “That’s crazy! This is nuts!”  well, that could be the voice of a scared demon worried you are about to shine a light on his existence. Remember the sound of that voice for later.)

So… lots of input coming at you from lots of sources. You’ve got to ‘stem the tide’ by applying a filter (evaluate and trash) to what you hear, so you slow down lies piling up on your life. As we work to remove these lies that are already IN, we don’t want new ones to take their place. This filter will help keep the freshly removed from being replaced by a new lie.

As stuff hits your filter, you’ll do one of three things. One, you’ll reject it. Two, you’ll accept it as ‘TRUE,’ or Three, you’ll accept it as ‘SUSPECT.’   The ‘SUSPECT’ items are like a conditional pass. You’ll assume they are true while you are trying to gain more evidence.

This filter type activity will become more mature very quickly. You’ll start by applying it to everything, from every source. I know it sounds weird, but until you get your guard up, you don’t want to trust ANY source. I know you love your sister, but scrutinize what she says for a while and see if it holds up. You have to exercise this filter like it’s a muscle. Practice with it. Apply it even after you’ve forgotten about it. Come back to conversations after the fact and think through what you heard.  As you do this, you’ll get better and more comfortable doing it.

Until then, don’t stress out. Everything you prevent from coming in, or tag as ‘SUSPECT’ is a reduction in what you have to deal with down the road. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be an improvement.

Consider this; you are beefing up the “Gatekeeper” that intercepts things as they come in. You have these ‘gatekeeper’ type things in other areas in your life that are special or important. Anti-virus software on your computer. The doorman in your lobby. The door lock and deadbolt on your front door. You pay to preserve the sanctity of the thing behind those gatekeepers. You pay to put another set of ‘eyes’ on things before letting them in.  Think of your mental gatekeeper/filter as the little eyehole thingy that lets you look through your hotel door to see who is knocking. (Only, you still can’t trust the guy that looks like a bellhop. Lol.)  All I’m saying is that you should apply as much time on your mental filter as you do on your door locks and antivirus.

You will apply this filter to each and every statement or comment coming at you right now. You should apply it to everything you read in this blog. I might be full of crap. As you do this, you might identify a source that becomes more and more suspect. If you have a source in your life that is repeatedly ‘rejected’ or ‘suspect’ with their content, you can start assuming that what they say is bad until you prove its worth. If you can’t avoid the source and remove them from your life, at least you know how to set the ‘default’ for the filter when dealing with them. ‘If it’s from crazy uncle George, then it’s probably a reject’ saves you a ton of stress in the moment.

Wrapping up

There are lies in your life, in what you believe.
These lies come at you like demons.
There is a hope.
Starts by improving the ‘Gatekeeper’ you have set up to intercept stuff coming at you; Make this more purposeful and thoughtful.
Pay attention to the source.
Mature the ‘filter criteria.’ (is that something God would say about me?)

“Evil will never tell you how good you are, how strong you are, or what a difference you can make to improve the world.
Evil despises your capacity to love, and your potential for good, which promotes hope, and hope makes it harder to control us with fear.”
Stacey iBold Stibbards

We work as a team, my wife and I. Sometimes, on longer posts like this one, the ideas and the heart are hers, while the word selection and sentence structure is mine. This is one of those cases. I’m hoping that my contribution doesn’t get in the way of her ideas coming through, or prevent you from seeing her heart.

As we wrap the old year and start the new one, it’s a splendid time to think back through some of what has hung you up this year. I encourage an additional pause to consider how your thoughts might be trying to harm you, and how you might be controlled by the lies you believe. We’ve come to refer to those things that whisper lies in your ears, and which try to plant thoughts in your head, as “demons, devils, and flying ghost monkeys.”   (We both hate the Wizard of Oz, and especially the flying monkeys. When I picture something attacking my mental health, it looks like those little buggers, but a little “ghosty.”)

Those voices might take on the personality of people in your life today, or people that spoke into your life decades ago. Those offhand comments from aunts or adults when you were a kid are a great example; “He’s not too bright, is he?” “She can’t be an author because she’s not a reader.”
The lies arrive small and perhaps un-noticed or as a momentary sting.
But if they ‘take root,’ they can grow and fester and become debilitating.

There is freedom for you to find by exposing the truth. The heaviness that weighs you down can be lifted when you shine a light on the situation. Bad stuff hates getting exposed and hates the light of truth shining on it. (Ever turn on the lights in the kitchen and stuff scurries a zillion directions? If not, you’ve never lived in Florida.)

My wife started digging into the lies in her life 8 years ago. Your results may vary, but she keeps finding things buried out there. Even now it’s an ongoing discovery process.
I want MY truth.
Not my parents’ or grandparents’ truth.
Or the voice of family, friends or strangers.
I don’t want what is popular and normal.
Nor do I want success, as defined by the world, just so I’ll look successful.

Sometimes it’s as simple as asking yourself a question; ‘Do I really hate cats?’. That led my wife to discover that her Grandmother had a bad cat experience as a child, and she passed down her ‘cat hatred’ to her children and grandchildren.  Now we have two cats; one she loves and one that loves her. But she doesn’t hate either one.

Sometimes the truth takes a little more digging; “why did I put down my pen when I was 15 and planning on being an author?” That led her to a really exciting conversation with God over a pile of dirty laundry a few years ago.

We are all dealing with some pretty ugly demons, but we don’t have to believe everything they say. I encourage you to spend a little time getting ready to introduce a new way of thinking that will equip you for a battle.

Your future does not look as bleak as those cagey bastards (the demons, devils and flying ghost monkeys) want you to believe.

Find your truth, and it will change your life. This New Year’s let’s re-solve the solution to an age old problem; let’s change our perspective, change our solution, and walk along as a better ‘YOU.’

Lies come at you like sneaky little things or sometimes big overwhelming things. They are demonic and deadly, so treat them that way.