Excellent points, skyblue and everyone. I hope skyblue won't feel that I'm hijacking this thread if I include an excerpt (from one my million or so books in progress!:) It's about a "true believer" I met who had yet to find the balance that Lyra talks about above.
A True Believer
IÃll never forget Bill the Bank Boy. When I was about 25, I had a little flirtation going with the handsome teller at my bank. WeÃd briefly chat about this and that, always finding something to laugh about. IÃd frequently bump into him during his lunch hour as he took a walk around town, and weÃd sit on a bench for a few minutes and swap thoughts on life. He was my age and was very friendly and sweet.
At some point we went out on a sort of ìdate," sharing an actual lunch at a restaurant together. I spent most of the date as I usually did those days, gingerly mentioning what I did for a living by using carefully-chosen terminology that, I hoped, wouldnÃt scare the guy off. I could usually find out within a few minutes where the guy was coming from. If he was a devout Catholic who had been taught to steer clear of ìwitches," then I knew the friendship would be going nowhere. I wasnÃt a witch, but they would think I was after I mentioned things like palm reading, astrology, and the power of mind over matter. Usually, these men never called me again after an initial outing.
Many Catholic men I was meeting seemed to have this weird thing going on, instantly casting a mystical chick like me in the dual role of Madonna/Whore. On the one hand, they could tell that I was a sincere spiritual seeker, which made me pure and Madonna-like. On the other hand, it was likely that the ìstrange stuff" I was into was evil, and I might just be out to pervert their soul. (And that often turned them on!) ThatÃs where the ìwhore" thing came into play. I could never seem to heal that weird split that was happening in the Catholic boysà heads. These young men seemed deeply indoctrinated into having schizophrenia around female energies. Casting women in an either/or role, categorizing them as Madonna or whore, seemed to be part and parcel of that particular faith. I found the whole thing to be very off-putting, and to this day I donÃt quite understand how people can allow themselves to be programmed in that way.
At the time Bill and I had our little date, I had gone out for a few dinners with people in town, hoping to strike a soul spark with someone. But these encounters went nowhere. A lot of men my age were truly, deeply frightened by someone like me. Either they objected to the very notion of what I was doing with my life on religious grounds, or they tried to tear me down verbally by playing the ìskeptic" card. Obviously, they werenÃt skeptics in the true sense of the word. I doubt Sophocles was in the habit of insulting his female companionÃs intelligence over the dinner table. The nasty, hostile attitude of many of my dates cast doom over those potential relationships.
So by the time I was telling Bill about my life at lunch, I was nervous and on the defensive, having been through so much disappointment and rude behavior with my past dining companions. I found myself prefacing everything I said with, ìNow, I donÃt want to offend you" or ìI totally respect you if you donÃt believe in any of this stuff and just want me to shut up about it."
But as our meal progressed, Bill was practically jumping in his seat, he was so excited about what I was telling him. It turns out that he was fascinated with the world I was describing to him. ìOh, please keep talking!" he said. ìIÃm one of those people who believes in everything!"
I found that incredibly sweet. ìI believe in everything!" What a welcome change from the hard-nosed, aggressive dinner companions IÃd been collecting lately. We went on to share a friendly conversation over a tasty lunch, and I felt better after our discussion. Here at last was someone who wasnÃt prepared to burn me at the stake or treat me like a complete fool just because I dared to assert the outrageous principle that the energy of creation can be accessed through meditation, prayer, and visualization and that dialogue with this Higher Power will awaken a personÃs psychic abilities in the exact time frame that is suitable to that person.
For once, I was able to eat and swallow comfortably and didnÃt immediately feel like throwing up afterwards. Dinner with those other guys had been a largely indigestible affair (on more than one level.) BillÃs complete acceptance of anything and everything I was talking about was refreshing.
It was a little too refreshing, actually. Although Bill remained a casual friend of mine until he transferred out of town, our relationship never became a romantic one. I could see early on, based on just that friendly lunch, that here was someone who was a bit too open-minded. Until then, I wouldnÃt have thought such a thing possible. Now I saw that it was.
Although I was the one with the ìcrazy" life, working in a career which nine tenths of the population still equates with gypsies, tramps, and thieves, I found that spending time with someone who was too much of a ìbeliever" was just as uncomfortable as being with a companion who believed in nothing, who maintained a rigid and unyielding ìIÃll believe it when I see it" attitude.
Bill was a classic case study of someone who had a lovely, open heart and a malleable mind, still quite young in many ways and inexperienced in life (although I, at just 25, wasnÃt all that experienced, either.) He was free of hard-set opinions and prejudice. But he also didnÃt have a fully developed sense of discernment or an ability to be well, skeptical. I got the sense through my conversations with him that BillÃs open-mindedness would get him into trouble one day. So many sharks infest the waters of life, and they find the legs of innocents to be very tasty snacks. People who are as sweet and trusting as Bill inevitably get taken advantage of by more nefarious types, sooner or later. I prayed that he could avoid some of those harsh life lessons, because I didnÃt want him to turn into a bitter and jaded sort of person. The man I had lunch with would make some nice girl the perfect husband one day.
I lost touch with Bill, but I will always be grateful to him for sharing those warm words with me when I ventured to discuss the wacky world of the paranormal. His kindness healed me somehow, making me feel more confident and accepting about who I was and the unusual journey I was on. I could see that my work had value and that I shouldnÃt allow anyone to knock me down. He also taught me an important lesson about the many genuine seekers who are, perhaps, a little too accepting. True believers not only needed to learn how to protect themselves, they also needed more education so they could make distinctions between ideas that might be harmful to them and concepts which would empower them. Open-hearted people like Bill could use a vocabulary lesson in the language of the metaphysical universe.
(end excerpt)
And skyblue is right - living as we do in this polarized reality, it can be a challenge making sure that we don't take on the qualities of the very thing we have identified as "evil" or the "enemy" or as just plain "bad." And some would say that in attracting negative or "evil" experiences, we are being shown that we have disowned those shadow aspects of our own nature. So that's why the "message" gets so STRONG sometimes from something that appears to be "outside" ourselves.
I think that life here is a paradox consisting of seemingly opposite things coexisting.
Yes, "bad guys" do exist and seem to be bent on hampering the spiritual free will and sovereignty of many of the denizens of this planet - and we shouldn't be happy about that or tolerate that.
But the more we obsess or become rigid in our examination of these things, the more we become just as rigid and obsessive as "them."
And it's true, on many boards forum moderators and owners struggle constantly to find this same balance.....what do you do when someone who might well be a government or military industrial complex type of chaos inducer really IS stirring up troubles on the board? You have every right to put a stop to it for the benefit of other forum members, who don't deserve to be sucked into that chaos. Yet the "policing" of a forum can put you in the unpleasant position of having to take on the same characeristics of those rigid, unyielding characters you're trying to get rid of.
It's all about boundary setting, I guess, and yes, it's all about balance, too. Neither become a paranoid freak nor a passive wuss. Don't go to the extreme of being a total skeptic, but don't become a believer in "everything" (like Bill from my essay.) Don't be full of hatred and fear, but also don't let yourself become so filled with squashy, squooshy love that you're just inviting the world to stomp on you. (Been there, done that, have the marks on my back to prove it 
And sometimes on the path, I think it's important to work at reclaiming your innocence. If the pursuit of knowledge, or wisdom (or anything, for that matter!) is turning you into someone you don't want to be, then it's time to be as a child again. Soak up humor, goodwill, and lightness until that heaviness fades. Reconnect with feelings of buoyancy and don't force yourself to remain in a place of heaviness just because others choose to be. Honor your own lightness of spirit and do what you can to enhance and nurture that light. The grumpy folks who are dedicated to relieving their own pain might not like it, but you can leave them to it in a loving, noninvolved, way, without hampering their journey or yours.
Those are some ideas, anyway!
LipstickMystic aka Jennifer
Tom and I have met z3n3rg in person, and he's cool. And even though both names have "Z" and "G", one is prounounced with a hard G, while the other is pronounced "Zen-ergy", as in, zen-energy.
