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www.shamansociety.org 35 Quite often people contact me for help as they claim they have been feeling like they were haunted or possessed by other entities that enter their bodies and instruct them how to think or act. These people often feel bafed vulnerable and desperate in most cases they are what we call regular people with no necessarily re- ligious or spiritual backgrounds. They want to know Are they making it up Is it real How can we know for certain Did they al- low it to happen to themselves Do they bring it upon themselves and are responsible for this invasion Do they act up their trau- mas These are all valid questions. I learned to never contest their stories and experiences as I believe that every personal experience is valid and real and for my clients it is for sure a reality seen or unseen by me they have to deal with. From ancient mythology found in all spiritual traditions and from stories passed from generation to generations we hear ac- counts of individuals whose bodies and spirits were overtaken by bad or evil spirits. Sometime these negative energy forces can be felt imprinted in geographical locations where humans performed harmful acts on others. In my own Jewish tradition there are two universal opposing forces of good and evil God and Satan which are also ingrained in the Hebrew language. Gods name is SHaDDaI and the word for evil being is SHEDD which omits the letter I Yud which symbolizes God. This is similar to English were if you just reverse the word EVIL you get the word LIVE. Satra Achra My great-grandfather a well known Tzaddik Righteous Kab- balistic Rabbi Mordechi Zundel Margolis from Kolono Poland devoted his life to the war with the Satra Achra the Aramaic phrase for Other Side. He claimed that in the war between dark and light forces the dark ones wanted to divert him from the righteous path. He said When God created the world he created it with the option for people to choose between good and bad. The good is the choice to follow Gods ways and the bad is the op- tion to create distance from God and go after all kinds of strange earthly passions. Inside us we have our soul which is our truest and purest manifestation. The soul wants us to live in tune with it to be with God and do good deeds. On the other side God created bad forces that exist outside the human being. Their goal is to force a person to behave in oppo- site ways to his true soul to be bad. These forces are called Satra Achra or the Other Side. It is the opposite of the good side. These forces try to darken the world from Gods light. They consistently try to make a person choose between the bad over the good. It is important to note that a person has the power to choose the good. The bad forces are created so people can realize their inner powers. When we control the bad we create happiness in the upper worlds and the light of happiness will then come to the lower worlds. Ways to Understand Evil Spirit Possession Before I had a personal dramatic encounter with these forces I tended to look at them from a psychological or even so-called New Age approach. I thought evil was illusionary and exists only because humans believe in its existence. I followed an ap- proach that said spirits are neither good nor bad benevolent nor malevolent but can be so because of the projections of the mind. According to this approach evil is a state of mind and the key to deal with it is the power to change the mind by achieving a higher awareness and consciousness through various breathing or medi- tation techniques. Or evil can be diffused by using positive imag- ery and energy words only and avoiding words that have negative connotations. Another view suggests that evil and suffering pres- ent themselves in order for us to learn and heal our Karma or life lessons. In this way bad and evil spirits are our teachers. Ayahuasca Spirit Talking I have been going to the Ecuadorian and Brazilian Amazon almost yearly for fteen years to learn from South American shamans. It was there a few years ago on the bank of one of the Rio Negro tributaries in the Brazilian Amazon I took part in a sacred aya- huasca ceremony led by a Pishuna tribal elder. As the ceremony began I heard sweet angelic sounds and then saw sweet-looking spirits hovering above me. This time it will be an easy ceremony I happily thought. After awhile those sweet spirits asked me to convert to their religious teachings. I politely refused asserting my atheistic upbringing from the kibbutz where I was raised. But they kept sweet-talking me promising salvation and all of my hearts desires in return. I became suspicious. They kept trying to tempt me and promised If you follow our teachings you will get what E S S A Y Discovering Evil Personal Encounters of a Non-Believer by Itzhak Beery ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Opposite Pascuarela devil mask Museo de Arte Popular Mexico City