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Charles Fillmore said “the work of every overcomer is to cast out of himself the demons of ignorance and immaturity through the power and dominion of his indwelling Christ.” So, demons or evil spirits are actually conditions of the mind, and your job is to cast out or change these negative states of mind within you. The Aramaic word for evil simply means immature or unripe. So when the Bible speaks of evil, it is referring to ignorance and immaturity --- in other words, your lack of understanding about the power and dominion of your indwelling Christ.
This spiritual immaturity exists because you are asleep or unaware. So you use the creative power of your indwelling Christ blindly – ignorantly. Spiritual growth is about actively seeking to wake up to who you are. Often, however, the seeking becomes the focus, and you fall asleep and lose your way. Let me share with you the psychological process that happens within us all that supports this state of sleep. 
From a place of spiritual immaturity, your thoughts and words bring forth an ego or a personality of like character. In Lessons in Truth, Emilie Cady defined personality as the false outer mask we use to relate to our worlds. This is true, but we do not have just one personality. The personality I call John is actually many subpersonalities. The same is true of you. For example, the “Attila the Hun” that comes out when we are crossed in traffic is not the same personality that presented itself as Mr. or Mrs. Nice Person when we reached the church parking lot t his morning! Although you may consciously want to resist this notion, you know intuitively that it’s true.
This is what’s happening when you find yourself back into “business as usual” a few days or weeks after the workshops or the books and so forth. The subpersonality that went to the seminar or read the book is not the same one that took control when you left that environment or that state of mind. Without realizing it, we give ourselves over to these subpersonalities and their mindless responses throughout the day because we are asleep.
How does this happen? Pierre Teilhard said, “There are two forces in the Universe. One force draws like things together. Then the second force draws that group into a new level of intelligence and complexity.” This principle also applies to your thoughts and feelings.
When you came into your life experience, you were bombarded by thoughts, feelings, opinions, and attitudes from those around you. At the same time, there were certain inherent attributes that you expressed more strongly than you did others. The combination of those attributes is what makes you unique, and it is what directly influenced how you initially responded to life.
Over time the thoughts and feelings that you accepted as your own began to group into patterns of responding. These patterns of responding are also called reactions, or mindless responses. They are mindless because, as I said, you are unaware of when these attitudes come and go. You pay little or no attention when they appear. As these groups of thoughts are called upon more and more often, they gain strength within you. They are drawn, as Teilhard said, into a new level of intelligence and complexity. They become your subpersonalities.
Now, the underlying desire of most of your subpersonalities is a positive one. They originally formed to help you survive – to help you survive the stressful dynamics in your family, at school or at work. Unfortunately, an ignorance of our creative birthright and the ignorance that we are constantly creating our lives whether we admit it or not results in our using FEAR as the inspiration for our creations. Fear can only create negative conditions, or obstacles, in your life. So spiritual growth requires that you learn to look beyond appearances to that kernel of unconditional love that exists at the center of each subpersonality. Then your work is to cast out the fear-based aspects so that only the positive remains.
Imagine having a dog who loves you and protects you. One day a stranger attacks you, and your dog leaps to your defense and saves you. You’re very grateful to your dog. But, you become fearful that someone is lurking around every corner to attack you. Your dog picks up your vibration of fear. He’s on ready constantly, striking out at anyone coming within three feet of you! Eventually, he’s such a danger that everyone wants you to put him down.
You’ve felt so much safer with your dog viciously protecting you that it never occurred to you that you might be missing something because of it. The people who love you are getting weary trying to have a relationship with you because of the dog. Now that you’re aware of the situation, you don’t know what to do. You’re torn because you love your dog. You’ve become dependent on him to protect you, but even if he couldn’t protect you, you would still love him. You love him because you know he loves you unconditionally, and that he’s only trying to help. You just can’t bring yourself to destroy him.
So you decide instead to work toward changing his view of your relationship. You know you have to let go of your fear before your dog can let go of his need to protect you from these self-imposed demons. You created the situation with fear. You are going to have to resolve it with love. And this is also how you harmonize the subpersonalities within you --- by looking beyond the demons within you and acknowledging the angel.
So now it’s time to meet the stars of the salad bar. They each characterize a major subpersonality that you may have to deal with at one time or another in your life.
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