As of late, I know that I have been covering many very very dark subjects, some of which are quite strange and spooky and quite contrary to my usual bright optimistic take on life in general. It seems as if the darkness has taken over my writings, perhaps indicating the creeping darkness that might be taking over my psyche.
These dark and brooding posts also happen to coincide with much that is disturbing in the world today, thanks in no small part to the atrocious monstrosity of COVID 19 that is looming over us all. Who in their right mind would not be disturbed by this virus? In fact, it would not be a stretch to wonder about my mental state of being and how disturbed I might be feeling, to suddenly dedicate so much of my time posting about the dark creepy themes of ghosts and demons.
I will admit that, yes, I am disturbed by the calamitous situation that has taken a grip on our world, but this is not the reason why my subjects have taken a turn to the darker side. The real reason is far more interesting.
To appreciate the light, we must understand the darkness. In understanding of the darkness, we are grateful for the light. I peer into the darkness to understand it so that I can recognize it and protect against it.
How do we walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death and come out on the other side, safely? Here’s how.
Valley of the Shadow of Death
We live in the yang realm. Because the universe is balanced, yang realm cannot exist without yin realm. Where do you think the yin realm exist? Somewhere far away? Somewhere inaccessible and ethereal? Somewhere on the other side of the rainbow? No, no, my friends.
Yin realm is all around us.
Even as you are walking to your kitchen to get a coke and a snickers bar, you are actually fearlessly walking through the valley of the shadow of death. The dead are everywhere. We just can’t see them with the physical eyes we are given because our retinas have a very limited range.
To see them, we need to develop the extra-sensory perceptions we all have within us. Some people have them in spades. Their third eye is wide open and they see everything! Ugly ghosts, pretty ghouls, bloated sacks, rotted bodies, handsome devils, enchanting maidens. You name it. They’ve seen it.
Others (like myself) are like…stay closed—-Stay closed!!! I don’t wanna see nuthin!
But you know…I have this genetic propensity that comes from Mom’s side of the family, and I have been trying not to get that genetic disease. I work very hard to keep myself from succumbing to what Mom is afflicted with. I don’t want this cursed ‘gift’.
I am not trying to scare you. I am simply stating a truth. There is no balance to the universe if the yang exists without the yin. Ghosts and demons are all around us, and the vast majority of them have no way to communicate with us or contact us. Those that are able to affect the yin world usually either have external assistance, or they are powerful in and of themselves.
There is, however, a balance that does exist to address that invasion of the yin world into our own yang realm. We do also have very powerful priests and wizards on our side of reality, who can lend aid and be of assistance should there be a need. There are also many spiritual leaders who are powerful and can wage war against the deadliest of the yin realm. However, this level of warfare does not even touch most of us, at our level of day-to-day existence.
In the event of inadvertent brushes with the yin world, we can all practice safe protocols to keep them from doing us inadvertent harm. How do we keep them from affecting us?
Smooth as a glass bubble.
What does it mean to be smooth as a glass bubble? I’m going to use the COVID 19 virus as an example.
Viruses are tiny snippets of genetic material (DNA or RNA), encased in a protein shell, and they float around everywhere. There is no escaping them. The only reason why we are not constantly sick due to viral infections is because each virus has a special connection point, a specific protein, that can only adhere to a cell where the cell has a compatible connection point called a receptor protein.
I’m going to call the virus connector the yang connector. This yang connector has to have a yin receptor to attach itself to whatever biosphere it happens to come across. Without this special connection point, it cannot infect you.
See all these red nasties glomming onto the surface of a living cell? That cell has special receptors that accept the virus onto its surface. Since it’s a novel virus, we don’t have anything to fight it off, so we end up getting very sick, and possibly even dying.
So now let’s take this example and apply it to the subject at hand. Imagine that you are a biosphere, floating around in a universe of life blood. You’re all happy and chillin’, going through your normal day, and all of a sudden, you have this feeling something not so good is stalking you.
The Red Nasties
Suddenly, out of the corner of your eye, you see this nasty red thing with its yang connector pointed at you and trying to glom onto you!
Without hesitation, you throw everything into the air and run around, screaming, trying to keep the red nasty thing from touching you, but no matter how fast you try to run, it is right behind you.
And then—AAAAAAHHHH!!!
Too late. It has reached you. Then it takes its nasty yang connector out and tries to rape you. What do you do???
Well…first of all, you need to calm the heck down. Then, you need to ground yourself. Then, you use some techniques and transform yourself to become as smooth as a glass bubble
That’s right. Keep your surface smooth. Don’t provide any exposed yin receptors and those nasty red yang connectors have nothing to glom onto. You would be effectively immune to the invasive assault of the red nasties because they can’t infect you. There is nowhere to grab onto. You are protected.
But how do we get that glass globe to encircle us? How do we protect ourselves? If you’re Jesus or Buddha, the answer is to face them head-on. Jesus and Gautama actually had to go into the wilderness to find and fight off all manners of demons and jinns in order to grow and achieve enlightenment, and they came out victorious.
Did Jesus and Buddha write down a step-by-step process to deal with the demons? Sadly no, but we do have later-day buddhas and priests who figured out how to do this and did write all this down. I will address their methodology in a future posting, but that’s far beyond what we, as normal non-saints non-clergy people need to do. All we have to do is recognize the symptoms and shield ourselves.
Lucky for us, we don’t have to go anywhere to find ghosts and demons because, as I have stated before, they are everywhere. All we have to do is practice the methodology of creating this protection bubble, and then maintaining it everywhere we go. We just need to do our small part, and leave the heavy lifting to those better trained in energy warfare.
Our small part starts off by clearing out negative energies from within ourselves.
No Negativity 
There is a very good reason why you should not hold negativity within you. Negative energies cause stress and anger to continuously simmer and bubble underneath the happy smiling façade that you have built up all these decades to showcase to the world. Smiling to hide the negativity is only a band-aid. It may keep the wound from getting further infected, but if you do not cleanse and treat the wound, it will continue to fester and will eventually cause serious damage.
To clear out the negativity, don’t dwell on it. When something is not going well in life, switch gears immediately and find something else to do that will lift your spirits. If that does not work, switch gears and try something different. Dispel the darkness and the negativity by banning it from ever taking residence within such a holy place as your soul.
Sometimes, the negativity comes not from events but rather from other humans. Sadly, many folks do not possess the inner strength to exhibit and practice human kindness.
This is often due to internal and external private battles that they are currently dealing with in their lives, but we have to do our best to roll with the punches. If we are not able to duck their punches and we get hit with others’ negativity, we need to walk away to protect ourselves from further damage.
Remember Jesus’ mandate to forgive those who trespass against us? He wasn’t saying that just to have something cool to say. He was trying his best to teach us how to protect our own souls from becoming damaged by others’ evil intents and actions.
The forgiveness does not benefit the person being forgiven at all. They still have to deal with the karma of causing you damage, and no amount of forgiveness will cause that karmic retribution to disappear. The only person that it benefits is the person doing the forgiving.
You see folks, anger and resentment are powerful acids that eat us up from the inside. We need to quickly forgive and be even quicker to forget, because holding onto that negativity will rot us from the inside out. This rotting process causes pits and scars to appear on our smooth beautiful glass walls, and it is these abrasions and protrusions that will give those red nasties a toe-hold with which to insert their yang connectors into.
Once we have taken control of the negative thoughts within, the next part of the preparation of our soul is to be grateful for our lives.
Be Grateful 
Gratefulness is one of those oddly paradoxical states of human nature that gives a huge exponential bang for the tiny little expenditure that you provide. It doesn’t take much gratefulness to do the job because its only job is to re-center us when we deviate too far from our base.
This is how gratefulness works.
If you move too far towards the edges, everything looks precarious, everything looks skewed and warped or lopsided. Move back to the center, and that terrible looming thing is not so close and leering at us. The centered person sees all things in their appropriate positions, and is then able to act accordingly.
When things are at their dimmest, one of my favorite things to be grateful for is the life that I have been given. Sure, there will be days that are challenging and times that will try anyone, but any sick person will be able to relate to this idea, that just about any challenge can be faced and overcome, as long as we are healthy and alive. It is more important, especially at this virulent time, when just hugging a friend or family member can either kill them, or kill us. It is especially important to stay centered, and to stay grateful, at this unprecedented time.
As an aside, the Buddhist monks can tell you the inordinate number of spirits who would give anything to be able to borrow a person’s body for a short time to do the one thing that has kept them from moving onward in their soul’s journey. Many of these souls are suicides who are stuck in between realms because their lives were self-terminated (more on this in future postings), and they will attest to the fact that just to live is holy, and just to be is precious.
There are other things besides being alive that we can also be grateful for—the blessed sunshine, the sacred night, the bright blue skies, the sounds of children laughing. If we can make a small list and just glance at them every day, they will remind us of how blessed we truly are.
The feelings that gratefulness generates are so powerful that it causes our bodies to change chemically from within. That’s because the simple act of being grateful releases a couple of endorphins called dopamine and serotonin. These two hormones are collectively known as happiness hormones and are structurally similar to morphine.
I kid you not, you can literally get addicted to feeling happy, and so after awhile, simply by generating that tiny amount of gratefulness and activating that grounding effect, it eventually becomes a habit. This is one habit that I am happy to say, is a good thing to cultivate.
Furthermore, endorphines are natural painkillers. They activate opioid receptors in the brain that help minimize any pain or discomfort we might feel (think about how painful childbirth is, and yet, how much most mothers endure the pain because they love their children so much and are excited to bring them into the world, after months and months of waiting). These happiness hormones do a great job in bring about feelings of euphoria and general well-being, and the best news of all is this. When you are happy and euphoric, the glass bubble around you is impenetrable, and shiny as…well…glass!
Chant a Mantra, Sing a Song
I’m about the least religious person I know. In fact, for half of my adult life, I was an atheist. I believed in nothing but myself. Come to think of it, I still do, but in a special Taoist way. Now, I chant when I get a bored moment. It just comes naturally, into my head to do so. I don’t force myself. It’s kinda like….hmmm…like an earworm. 😀
Regardless of your faith, the thing that you need to do to maintain that shine on your, now impenetrable, glass ball, is to keep yourself grounded and centered, and the best way to do this is to chant. I kid you not.
Start off with something easy.
Just keep this rumbling through your mind’s ear, and as you focus in on the words, your mind is occupied with something that is good and clean and has a high vibration with lots of power that have been imbued into it by hundreds of millions of people who have been chanting this exact same sentence for thousands of years.
If ancient Asian chants is not your cup of tea, try something like this. For Christians, Jesus actually taught his followers a quick and easy chant. It’s called the lord’s prayer.
This is the Dominus Illuminato Mea in Latin. The prayer itself is rather short, so I would just repeat it over and over again for as long as you remember to repeat it. It’s like working the rosary, but continuously.
If none of the above do anything for you, then sing a song.
Karen Carpenter told us to sing a song, even if it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear. Singing is honoring our humanistic ability to give utterance to the strains of our hearts. It also keeps our minds engaged so that we don’t wander off our calm center. Repeat it until it becomes ear worm. When it has turned into ear worm, you know you have it mastered.
This is your bubble of serenity. Encapsulate yourself with this glass bubble wherever you go. Keep your glass surface squeaky clean so that there is nothing to glom onto. Keep negative energy from invading, either from within or without. Stay grateful so you don’t stray too far from the center. This is just about as Taoist a statement as I can possibly state, since it doesn’t matter how you get back to center, it only matters that you do.
And that, my friend, is the only way you can walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death safely, and with the Universe/God/Allah/Tao inside your heart.
…
Taobabe 
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