With sincerest apologies to C. S. Lewis.
And with gratitude to my spiritual director who deserves better than to be called “that Van Duzer woman.”
Dear Wormwort,
What in the bloody hell happened to your patient? You tell me she’s no longer listening to the voices of self-loathing that you whisper in her mind. Now, tell me this, young demon, why the hell not? She’s been listening to those voices for almost thirty years!
She’s onto you now, you say. It’s that Van Duzer woman’s fault, you say. You should never have let her go there. I’ve been telling you that for 11 years! And if she must go, you mustn’t let her hear or learn anything. You must keep her thoughts elsewhere. You tried, you say. Yes, yes, I know all about it: “blah blah blah crucifixion process blah blah blah.”
Crucifixion process! Wormwort, you blathering idiot, you let her hear the only two words that mattered! If you weren’t such a sorry excuse for a demon, you’d have let her hear any words but those!
This is bad, Wormwort. Very, very bad. She’s realized that the voices of self-condemnation in her head are not tools to draw her closer to our Enemy. Your only hope of using those lies effectively was to convince her of that one thing!
I’ve told you over and over: with the ones who really want our Enemy, who read His Scriptures and commune with Him in prayer, you have to insinuate yourself along the lines of their devotion.
This is why I instructed you to start the self-condemnation all those years ago. Whenever she began to feel proud of her growing faith, whenever she knew she had achieved some small victory, you were to whisper into her mind, “You mustn’t be proud of that. It’s not humble. Only the humble will see God. You are not humble. You won’t see God.”
I told you to convince her that such self-loathing is the path to our Enemy. Convince her that she is crucifying her flesh when she says nasty, hateful things about herself. Convince her that such cruelty to her own psyche and soul is the Narrow Path our Enemy preached when He took on flesh. (I cannot speak of that event without shuddering.)
And you did. I had to commend you, Wormwort. You had her eating out of the palm of your hand. She lapped up those words of self-loathing and self-condemnation as if they were milk for her newly converted soul! She drank them so deeply that after a short while you didn’t even have to whisper them to her. She whispered them to herself!
Her faults and flaws and failings, which our Enemy so freely forgives, curse Him, were her focus. She thought she was honoring Him by flagellating herself and flailing about in her own failings, when really she was simply curving further and further in on herself, turning her face further and further away from His appalling gaze of love. All you had to do in those days was whisper the remembrance of a past sin and she did the rest herself. The glory of it!
I love how humans are so easily snared. Even the ones who want to serve our Enemy get caught in the net of navel-gazing. Once that habit of self-focus is established—whether it’s self-focus in a raucous, licentious way or self-focus in a scrupulous, idealistic way is of little import. It’s the self-focus that matters, and once we establish that habit in them, we can sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labors. And with her, you had nearly thirty years of easy living.
It made you lazy and incautious, and you let down your guard (you cannot let down your guard, not even for a moment!), and our Enemy slipped past you and got those two damnable words to register in her befuddled mind. And now she’s realized that the voices of self-condemnation are not the Narrow Path of our Enemy. She’s realized that you’ve tricked her into believing that the self-loathing would crucify her when really it’s the self-loathing that needs to be crucified!
You’ve broken the number one rule of demonic activity: don’t let them see the truth. How many times have I told you that, Wormwort, you moron? Don’t let them see the truth!
You’ll have to change tacks. She still wants to serve our Enemy. And she’s not going to be easily fooled by the self-loathing voices anytime soon. My advice is to lay low for awhile. Let her think she’s won.
Then, when her guard is down, you’ll strike her in that same place—her desire for our Enemy. Always, with this kind, you have to worm your way along the spine of their devotion to Him. Subtly. Even more subtly now.
I’m not sure yet what will work best, but we have thousands of years of experience to call upon, and she’s not unique enough or strong enough yet to withstand our many time-tested ploys.
Whatever you do in the next few days, don’t let her read anything by a spiritual sage. She’s too receptive. It will work too strongly in her. (The timing, Wormwort! It couldn’t be worse! It’s Advent, a dangerous time, when the veil between Heaven and Earth is thin, when your patient’s mind is every day turned toward our Enemy’s breach of the barricades. You have your work cut out for you.)
Keep her busy. Keep her preoccupied. Keep her euphoric about her recent victory over you. Just keep her away from our Enemy and His sages.
I will be in touch.
Your most vexed and irritated uncle,
Scrimglauer
Photo by Catherine Thackstone, Creative Commons via Flickr.
