Faeries and Intention

Also into the waters, into the hills and into the mountains. And so when you met them walking around now, you weren't meeting their physicality. The physicality was inside in the ground.

So you've heard me kind of hint about things going on and and prepping new things and adding video and stuff like that. It's all been a part of getting ready for this launch. So

separately about intentions, but you'll find throughout this entire conversation in both episodes that we keep coming back to intentions. So it's a very important part of this conversation. We get into some listener questions on Talpas, mantras and more after that. And then we continue next episode with more listener questions.

But there was one moment when I years ago when he talked about I it was in a writing he wrote about Like sort of not wanting to engage with someone even like because it is I mean, it's your job, but it you're s your life's calling like It must be difficult to to have a work life balance. When you're in that.

Once again that's the Harrisburg Comic Con. I think it's actually called the Harrisburg Comic and Pop Con.

It's come up a a few times with listener questions as well, and it's just you know, I think we covered a little bit in one of our talks, but it's it's so interesting to talk about and to cover, and that is the idea of you know, the fairy belief. In Ireland and in the Celtic countries, we can say, you know, almost certainly predated Christianity. So what When Christianity got there. You know, how did the Celtic Christian Church react and and think of and treat the fairies?

And before we get into this, since it makes sense again, we talked about this a little in the past, people often talk about the Celtic Christian Church as if it's completely separate. From the Catholic Church. So before I think let's address that before we start with the fairies.

I suppose block any idea that there was a connection to Rome, especially. But if we go through the history, the actual history, what we find is that the juridical rights of the the church as it was set up here very much look back to Rome and to the apostolic sees for their authority. So there's a very, very clear teaching from the early earliest stages of the church. That a church is valid when it has what we call apostolic lineage.

And this is called apostolic succession. The same was true for the early the early Christian church. So were they somewhat separate in terms of custom, liturgy, and the way in which they lived? Yes, they were, but that was common at that time.

You know, you had the the Christians found founded by Thomas in India, for example, and they developed liturgy in a particular way that spoke to the culture there, in the same way the Celtic Christian churches developed their own forms of liturgy and their own ways of doing things that sort of brought in culture.

the the customs because the basic Christian evangeli evangelization model had always been hold on to what's good or what's perceived to be good in the the the home culture as it were. Correct What seems to be negative. So for example, when when the early Christian missionaries through Patrick came here, one of the first things they tried to do was get rid of the ice.

with some of the pagan deities and th and things like that, particularly um sacrifice sacrificing animals and also sacrificing even humans at times to to pacify the the pagan gods or to bring a new harvest or those kind of things. So those things were were sort of um were slowly has dumped out.

And when I say stamped out, we're stamped out peaceably. The Celtic churches are remarkable in terms of the whole history of the Christian tradition in that conversion happened in the space of two generations and with no bloodshed. Obviously that's how evangelism should happen, but historically, particularly where

more kind of state imposed conversion where say for example a king became converted and then imposed conversion on his on his followers. And as the king goes so the land goes kind of idea, that was something that was present in other countries, wasn't present in the Celtic countries. Particularly ardent.

And he names the various peoples at the time, the Greeks, the Romans, the etcetera, and he names the Gauls, which was the Roman name for the Calcians.

So the Celtic Church was seen and and was in communion at that stage. Many years ago now, about twenty years ago, I visited Mount Athos in Greece, which is the center place of all of the motherhouse, if you like, of Orthodox monasticism, both Russian, Greek and and Romanian extraordinary monasteries, some of which have had continuous monastic observance for nearly fifteen hundred years.

They speak to the fact that they were in communion with with the Celtic churches. They venerate all of the saints' precisism and things like that, probably the year a thousand. They showed us relics of the Celtic saints that had been sent by Irish monasteries now long gone since the suppression of the monasteries, etc. And even spoke about the fact that Patrick this is the interesting thing, after being commissioned by the Pope.

to bring the gospel to the Irish. So Patrick felt this call. What did he do? He didn't come immediately. He trains as a priest and then as a bishop and he makes sure that he receives the the actual the blessing to go. And then they they claim, at least their tradition is that he spent then forty days on Mount Athos in preparation for his journey, and that they gave him there one of the most important relics, which was is translated in Irish as the Baholisa

which was his staff. And his staff was supposed to have either been or contained relics of the staff that Christ himself used on his apostolic journeys. Oh wow. And that staff was publicly burned then during the the Protestant Reformation in Ireland. It was pu publicly burned onto the gates of Trinity Abbey, which then became Trinity College in Dublin many years later.

So you you have a particular agenda which is to say, oh, they were all autosophalis, they were all completely separate. It was kind of a communion of equals. But all of that is belied by the fact that when the Celtic churches who had slightly different calendars and slightly different customs in terms of things like monastic tonsure when Easter was celebrated, etcetera.

Uh they came together, the the famous Synod of Whitby in England, which was under the spiritual authority of Abbas Hilda, Saint Hilda of Whitby. And they debated whether or not they would go with the Roman customs. which were now across the whole of Europe because the calendar had been changed by the emperor. And it was agreed that the Celtic churches would, in order to be in union with Rome,

Sc you know, look at your history and follow that. So that's that's the base. That's the th there's the foundation. The next thing becomes what should they do when they arrived and found or this belief in the good people and the the Shiva and the various the various um taxonomic kind of denominations of So the Irish

had very clear lore at that stage. And the lore was that the high fairies, the Sheeta, the kind of noble fairies were the walking spirits of the original inhabitants of Ireland, the Tua de Danan, that these were the tribe that were magic users, etcetera. almost considered kind of demigod like in the Irish psyche at the time. But when the Celts had come and saw the other tribes had come to Ireland, they had fought with the Tudidanan and interestingly what overcame them?

The Celts had weapons of iron and bronze, whereas the Tim of Danan had weapons of copper. So it may actually have been a historical memory of coming, you know, in on a Paleolithic. civilization. But anyway, they wiped them out and the last act of the Duodedanan in order to to preserve themselves was they went into the mounds, into the hills. Also into the waters, into the hills and into the mountains.

And so when you met them walking around now, you weren't meeting their their physicality. Their physicality was inside in the ground. They were seen to be semi substantial walking. Huge respect, huge gift was there.

The lesser ones, the kind of leprechauns and curlicons and and the sort of gnomish kind of peoples and the trickster kind of ones, the the ones of the wild, etcetera, they were the ones then that they kind of said, We don't know where they came from, we were not really sure what they are. We just know again that you have to be extremely careful with them and very respectful. And so

The church never declared, never made a dogmatic statement about the the Middle Kingdom at at all. And so there are two positions held to this day within the Christian kind of orthodox orthodox and I mean orthodox with the small o the kind of orthodox teaching. One is That there are simply angels or demons, and anything that is not an angel is therefore a demon, right? And that was very much taken up within the Protestant tradition, particularly, especially within the evangelic.

But within the Catholic and Or and Orthodox with the big O traditions, there was also the holding that there may be other peoples that we do not know about that we simply haven't been told about, and we're no concern of them and they're no concern of ours. And that found particular authority in the writings of some of the early fathers, particularly Jerome.

And the life of Antony of the Desert, whom we talked about before, who met the famous his encounter with the fawn of the Satyr and who he thought at first it was a demon and did his usual, you know, prayers and blessings to dispel, and the little fellow stood there and said

Don't know what you're doing, but like I'm here in front of you on the conversation. And um they professed to be hungry for the gospel of salvation. They said that the Lord had given them God had given them the wild and had given humanity the cultivated parts of the earth, but that the wild belonged to them. In Ireland then you you had this idea that they were a number of things, the little things, as I said, the Sheila they understood, but the little

things were either angels who had fallen but hadn't fallen completely. Mm-hmm. It's an Irish solution to it to an Irish an Irish problem. The idea that they were sort of mischievous but not evil and that they would be saved on the last day because they had kind of repented in their fall and it landed halfway. The second was possibly the souls of the dead or the souls of unbaptized children.

And one of the reasons that they went for the souls of unbaptized children was because of the playfulness, tricksterishness of it, the idea that that this is just how children actually behaved, you know? And the kind of selfishness and the pretending and the illusion end of things along.

And the third then was simply they were the people of the wild. They were the the ones who owned the the the the wild. And they owned the night particularly. The day belonged to humanity. Nighttime, darkness, etcetera, belonged to them. And, you know, in it in days when you didn't have electric light or gas light or anything else, any kind of a journey was

particularly with the with the weather that Ireland Ireland has, you know, it was it was treacherous. You you you made it as quickly as you could back into the the firelight as quickly as possible.

was that if you have lanterns hung around the horse and cart as they would have had in those days, and you have the slightly bouncing motion of the the horse and cart as it's going along, that this may have actually the rider or the driver into a kind of a hypnagogic state, in which case it became either a dreamlike consciousness hallucination or, you know, the ability to actually see what was around them.

But yeah, so I the way the church dealt with them was in a very pragmatic way, which was they're there. We deal with them. We have our own prayers and rituals which work. As long as people are treating them with respect and courtesy, they mind their own business and we mind our own business. And that's one of the things about

you know, the current wave and I spoke to Joe about this on the Modern Fairy podcast. The current wave of people really wanting, you know, connection with them and dealing with them. Like that is

Absolutely anathema to a thousand years of history. Which was if they wanted to have contact with you, they would have contact with you. You didn't go looking for 'Cause to go looking for them was to annoy them or to upset them or or you know, and sometimes I think we do we do the spiritual world a kind of a lack of courtesy maybe is the way to put it.

Like when we kind of tramp in on their their home turf. I mean if somebody just knocked on your door one evening and said, I wanna walk around the house and ask you questions and shine lights and face and

We were absolutely allowed to go there during the hours of of daytime and you could play in the fairy fort. There was marvellous twisted hawthorn trees and we had all kinds of games and things like that there, beautiful stones. But the way you observed your courtesy was you said thank you when you finished. Every stone or stick that you used had to be put back as close as possible to where you found it, and nothing was ever taken away from the fork.

So we would be lined up by our older cousins and we had to turn out our pockets to make sure that we were not bringing anything back into the house. Because if we did then there was problems. And one of our other brothers, he ha had a similar story with one of his families where one of the the kids decided, I like this particular stone, I'm bringing it home.

And by the time they got to the house their arm had swollen up completely. Wow. And uh the mother from from Dublin had wanted to call an ambulance straight away and the granny who lived down there just went, What did you take?

Mm. So he produced the stone and he was called all kinds of you know, all kinds of eating and was sent back down, I think with an offering of bread as well, and had to leave the bread and the stone um and apologise. And by the time he got back to the house the arm was back to normal.

Ask what it is, they say, Oh, we think it's a spirit, you know. I went through all that before, but it was it was often like, Well, do you think it's bad or good? And they were like, Well, neither, you don't know. And they said, But you don't necessarily because you don't know

You know, it it could bring bad news, it could be bring good news, it could be an omen of good or bad, or it could be showing up because in their belief someone's done something bad, but you don't know. So they said it it's better just not to see it. You know, th they're they're not going looking for it. If it's there, it's there. They acknowledged, you know, it was a hundred percent real to them.

I he I wish the peace of of Christ and his kingdom upon all beings that I encounter, those that I pass by, those that I pass through, those that I pass around, those that I see or do not see. May they be at peace with me and may I be at peace with them.

And you know, and what I love about that is the idea of, you know, I'm passing these beings all the time, you know, I I mightn't see them, I might even be passing through them. Um and so it as long as my intention is a peaceful uh blessing intention then I have kind of, you know, a safe journey.

Like and also and it was one of the things that was we were always taught within the Catholic tradition particularly, but e but within the monastic tradition especially was before setting out on a journey to ask one's guardian angel to speak to any

unseen power or spirit or whatever that we might pass by in case we were discourteous to it without it knowing. Without so that the angel kind of interceded in between for sort of for sort of peace and And I had one experience, I think I mentioned this. I certainly mentioned on the Discord some years ago of seeing

I love the phrase you use, the sort of un people or non people or whatever, but I was stuck in traffic and just watching people walking by the way you do, waiting for traffic to move. And this woman was walking walking along and there was another figure behind her. who was a woman but very All I can say is that she looked stretched, she looked lengthened, you know, stretched. And she was walking as though she was walking through water, this kind of very

slow sort of walking. And I sort of looked and looked away and then I some I looked back again. And I I they there was no acknowledgement of anybody around that they saw anything odd or weird. So I started praying that prayer of blessing for whatever. And the moment I began to pray The person, the being, whatever just turned and looked directly at me in the car and smiled.

So the reason we can change our minds is because we receive more information, other things happen. But an angelic intelligence, which the demons are as well Bring their intelligence to bear on something they have full understanding of in a moment. So they receive full understanding.

the tradition within within the early Christian church especially was that it was the incarnation, it was the revelation of the incarnation that the divine was going to unite itself with physical creation that led to the fall of the angels. Or to some of the fall of some of the angels that you can do. So

Be that as it may, then the question becomes what about other intelligences or spirits or whatever, if they are there? So in as much as they can have the capacity to change their mind and have free will. then yes, they can be saved because they can they can make a decision to live according to good conscience, good reason, etcetera. Um do we baptize them? Well, that's an interesting one. We know in the tradition that saints have baptized and offered the sacraments on occasion.

to beings that would be at least in between. Uh, we spoke earlier on Strange Familiars about uh the famous stories of the werewolves who received the last fights and communion as the as the kind of curse of of this was was lifted from them. We have the story of Saint Brendan, who baptizes and gives communion to a mermaid along the way. There are other st similar stories with different saints as well.

We have the story of, as I mentioned, Anthony, where we have the fawn begging to know about Christ and the good news. So uh the the fundamental answer again is there is no dogmatic position on this other than what we say is that all that is good will be raised and saved. You know, the famous Julian of Narridge, all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be.

We do not know the manner of its ultimate unfolding, but we trust in, at least in our tradition, we believe in the divine as infinite mercy and infinite compassion. So there is nothing created, including the demons, that was not at least in its original essence perfectly good. And so anything that is good will be will be lifted and redeemed and renewed. And the only thing that makes that impossible is if something with with conscious free will chooses not to be part of that.

So that's that's it. I have come across that those stories of the idiomistic experiences where purportedly, you know, spirits of gnomes and things like that asked for baptism or pleaded for anointing or blessing, but they would offer blessing to anything that asks a blessing. But in terms of the full, you know, ontological truth of what was speaking in that moment, I can't say.

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But I do know that I feel like intention is a powerful thing and This fellow's death is tragic and let's not separate that from anything that's Tragic and and our hearts go out to his family and his friends and and everyone that was involved. no one wants this to happen, but, you know, I've seen it so summarily just dismissed out of hand by many people who I respect and many people

who you know, who I consider intelligent and well versed in this stuff. And I get their reaction. I do understand what they're saying. That they want to say don't jump so quickly to a conclusion that that this doll was possessed. Absolutely. Absolutely. I agree with that. But On the other side, I kind of say don't jump so quickly to dismiss intention. And we've we've had people

for dozens of years, if not longer, I'm not sure how long exactly it's been around, I know it's been around for quite a while. Who have treated this style as if it was possessed or infested. The example I give is they have like special tongs or gloves or something to to you know, so no one touches it. And they they they've been treating it this way for years upon years.

And isn't that worth something as far as all this goes? Like like w what does intention do? And I I wanted to get your thoughts on that as well.

spiritual acts or being present. And just to take it out of my own tradition for a moment, people if they're I don't know, about everybody would ever see this, but I'm surrounded by empty shelves here at the moment'cause I'm in the process of moving of moving house with with with the new job that I that I have. But if those shelves were filled with the books that they usually are, then I would show you a a a very interesting text on But the translation of a text of Tibetan medicine.

And within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, one of the recipes, if you like, for the preparation of a particular remedy calls for the use of a white bone handled knife. And get this a knife that has been used It to murder at least thirteen people. And the next step in the recipe says, but if you can't get one that has been used to murder at least thirteen people, get one that has been used to murder at least seven people. And then the next line says, but if you can't get one that has been used

To murder at least seven people, get a white bone handled knife, and this is the important bit, and tell it that it has murdered thirteen people before using it. Okay.

to understand that the intention with which they use the elements is just as important an ingredient, if you like, in the remedy as are the herbs and the the bits and the bits and pieces that are being used.

This is absolutely universal across all religious traditions, all contemplative traditions. But actually what we are judged on is the primary intention of the mind and of and and of the heart. So if I go and do something good but out of an egocentric, selfish intention to let myself be seen, okay, the good act is still done, but the intention diffuses the good

energy or the blessing or whatever you'd want to call it around it. And vice versa. If I go and do something, you know, um, with a very good intention but it causes problems or doesn't go the way, it's it's gone, it might cause difficulty for people. But the spiritual world

sees the good intention and the energy with which that is accomplished. So this is why in most of the meditative traditions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and the various combinations of them, all Christianity included, The forming of the primary intention is extremely important, and the and emotion has a much more secondary place.

because intention is located within the will. And so we make a particular decision. Now, where emotion comes in is emotion comes in with narrative. And so narrative can create an emotional intentionality, say for example around this particular doll, when you think of the story associated with it, true or not, is a powerful story. All of the multimedia, the movies, the millions of people who've seen it, the the the scaremongering that goes on around it.

To some extent this is a parallel in the conversation we had about relics. We talked about how there is the relic, which is maybe the piece of the saint or whatever, or something that they used. And one of the ways to actually create relics that was used along the way, which led to a huge confusion of people thinking, Oh, relics are false, but it was that you made an exact replica of the original relic.

touched it to the first relic with particular rites and prayers, etcetera. And then that could be sent off. Now it was understood as a second class, if you like, anyway. But it was seen as just as much a relic as

the actual thing that was uh in the original. And this even led within the strange familiarist purview to the idea of the famous stories of the Yeti scalps in Pangboche Monastery in Tibet, because one of the parallels within the Buddhist tradition and the Christian the Catholic tradition and Orthodox tradition is is very much the cult of relic. Almost the same understanding, same theology, in fact. So when the explorers went and were shown, here is a scalp of a yeti.

And they had all of these monks, you know, swearing to them, This is an authentic Yeti skull and then they take the hair and discover it's goat hair and they immediately go lying monks or you know maybe they didn't or whatever.

that whether you want to go the the current physics route of all is consciousness or whether you want to go the ancient traditions of of you know spiritual worlds and and and presence of of of entities. Whatever way you want to go, the one thing you are using is your mind and your imagination to be able to encounter these things.

So if I'm called to a haunting or to a a problematic house or whatever in one day, if I go in there with the intention of I'm about to be scared, something is gonna happen, you know, I'm weak, it's strong, whatever it might be. You know, I'm a chase out of the place. But if I go in as I do go in with the authority of the lineage, the symbolism, the rituals, etcetera along the way, not relying on my own strength, but on the formed intention to unite myself.

to the lineage and the presence of the divine, then we have a completely different experience. And if you look at all of that stuff that was feeding into that particular vessel, if you want to call it that, that object along the way. There is no doubt but there is a field of intention around that. Human beings are very good at scaring themselves and they're very good at generating negative experiences, particularly. And so

When does the random occurrence afterwards or with it or whatever become actually a cause? You know, th that whole idea of correlation not being causation needs to be invoked, but at the same time we can look at For example, the experiments that the New Kirks did, where they created th 3D printed versions of haunted objects, and then discovered that the same haunting haunted um

episodes weren't happening around those new objects. You know, and and that kind of blows people's mind. And they go one of two ways, which is it's all false and it's all self generated by human beings. Or you can look at it the Tibetan Buddhist or the relic way, which is to say, No, when you have actually created something like this, there is a transition across. Now that's not to say that you may not have a big lovely field of intention created

and some other entity decides, I can wear these clothes. Sure. I can have this. I can feed on this. We've talked before about how fear seems to be one of the great um across the board seems to be one of the things that the everything from cryptids to a to s so called aliens to whatever seem to want to generate. Sphere creates dependency and it creates constant focused attention that is feeding feeding the the other the other meant to be long play.

So generally when these things are dismissed by prayer or simply by people laughing at them or taking verbal authority over them, they flee very quickly because they're not getting fear, they're not getting focused attention. Yeah. So yeah, I I I think there's a there's a huge amount of truth in what you're saying to that about that. And the thing about it is, you know, whether there was any causative factor between dull and field of intention and the man's death.

It's now part of the story. True.

in there. It's just you know, people do energy work, people, you know, it's like I'll say semi believers maybe, you know, people who are sort of lean and and then those who who pray and and etc etc. And there has been Look, do we know that's done anything? No, of course not, but It's just seems like such a wonderful thing. And there's been some wonderful outcomes and in including the fellow who had us all Praying for his mom's house, who where they felt the uh

on reality. And you know, you can even think of some of the the famous water work that was done by that Japanese scientist who looked at the way water crystallizes, you know, depending on on the intentions that that is there, the the plant studies. one of the great forgotten individuals in terms of the sort of um beginning of of par paranormal study in in a in a really strong way, nineteen sixties, seventies, eighties, was a a doctor called Lyle Watson, doctor Lyle Watson.

Who wrote an extraordinary book and I I recommend this to everybody, but the book is called The Secret Life of Inanimate Objects. And that's literally what he's talking about, is when things are used. what happens to the thing.

uh when you surround it with intention, say and he goes for everything from beloved teddy bear right the way through to the the family urloom, you know, or a and the negative the negative thing as well, you know, uh it's kinda passed down and how these can have various associations with them.

I I met somebody recently who is very sensitive and her horror, like her absolute horror at walking into an antique shop, for example, is is really one of the most difficult things for She can feel the you know, the the and and regularly people would come to us, you know, with things that they bought in antique shop.

Oh you know, things that will be passed down and we'll just say, you know, look, would you would you bless it just to make sure it's not carrying anything with it? And we'll do that for the McCoy. It's a real part of our of our human culture and for thousands of years it has been the way we have understood the world. And it's only really in the last, you know, two hundred years or so that this has been destabilized in a way. Like I often talk about the fact that

In Ireland up to fifty, sixty years ago, the vast majority of people built their own house. So they had land, they built them on on that. In order to do that, the very first thing that would happen would be the kind of grandfathers, the elders in the area or whatever would walk the land with them and would say, Yeah, here, here's a good spot, you know, because they had knowledge, the knowledge of where water ran, where flooding happened all.

But there would also then be the person who came to say You can't have a corner of the house in that particular corner of the field because the fairies come through there, or because there used to be a grave there, or because whatever. So the house will slowly be marked out. At that point the priest would come in and would bless the foundation.

And part of the blessing of the foundation would be that they would put in various religious objects. Bread was put in so that those in the family would uh who lived there would never go hungry. there were various other wine water or wine was put in as a sign, y again, they'd never be thirsty. They marked out the doors the doorstep because that was where and you came in you came in for birth and you went out for death. You know, all of these things happened.

And so intention was being built into the very walls of the thing from the beginning. And we we ha we do that still with our with our monasteries. Like we're just after rebuilding some new offices here and on the feast of Saint Francis now. They're offices, like they are just administrative offices. But they will be exercised and blessed and dedicated because they're

So that it's built in and and all of the traditions had something akin to that. And then all of a sudden we go to the mass produce. And problems happen. And people comment saying you know, can you come and and and do something with our home? And we tend to be on the back foot kind of retroactively trying to balance stuff. Or, you know, or it's being built in a way that just doesn't take into account. how the land actually needs something to be built.

And he says the cessation can last for hours before fading back in accompanied by a strong sense of aversion, seems to result in lasting changes to the personality as well as the knowledge and experience of the existence of the world. Of such a state seems to somehow make it easier to access a less tranquil version of it generally, even during the noise of day to day life. So first of all, what is Mantraic pray?

Right. So just being with the thoughts, noticing them, etcetera. Whereas Mandrake prayer is another stage kind of underneath that, where we begin to um stabilize the mind. Again, there's an intention that goes with the particular the particular man.

Yes, we have it in the Judeo Christian tradition as well. It's there from the beginning. In fact, it's present in all religious traditions. Most people nowadays in the West at least would be familiar when you say mantra they would be familiar with that. But in the West we called it the versiculum.

which was the little verse or little word that was repeated and it was taught from the very earliest stages within the monastic tradition. Saint Francis himself practiced it. It's probably most readily known in the West now in its kind of

I suppose it in one of the more most complicated ways, if you like want to call it like that, i is the rosary itself, um which is a form of pray prayer, the repetition of the own fathers, the marriage, the glory bees, the somatic element of the moving of the beads. And the meditation, at least in the early stages, uh in terms of visualizing what we call the mysteries, the different events in the life of Christ and and and his mother. The other form that's most readily known within the West

is is what we call the Jesus prayer, or sometimes known as the FK or the Fke. And the word Fke has the same root as efficacious in in other words, it's it's something that does something to you. And it's the invocation of the name of Jesus, the repetition of the name of Jesus while united with the breath. The original Greek Jesus Christus Ilesonimas, which is is Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, sometimes expanded to Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God.

But even over time, the recommendation is that that would slowly shrink down to just the repetition of the name of Jesus or Jesus. So what does it do? It gives the mind at the early stages it gives the mind something to focus on and chew on. So it allows us to come into a deeper level of coin still.

But as your listener, uh Matt, I think was the w the name, said, There comes a point, and this is readily recognized in all of the tr all all of the traditions, where the outward senses begin to fall away and inner stillness happens. and there is no longer a kind of a conceptual thought going on, but the bodily mental experience of the mantra repeating or sounding internally continues.

What should you do in that moment? You should just allow things to be. But the moment you have noticed that that has happened, you're out of that. Okay. You have moved.

So this is this is the difficulty. And what tends to happen then, at least for the beginner, is they begin to go, Oh, that's terrible, I'm out of it. So now they're two levels out of it. They're having an argument about being So the recommendation of all of the monastic fathers, and this is true in the Buddhist tradition as well, true in the Jewish tradition, where mantra prayer is also used, is to simply notice you've come out of it, restart the word and return.

One of the the lovely images within the the monastic fathers for mantraitic prayer that I love, I absolutely love this, is they say that the beginner in meditation, when you say to somebody, sit still, don't think of anything much, just be present. They're it's like taking somebody and throwing them into a fast moving river and telling them, Swim against the current, you'll be fine.

For a little while they'll manage, but eventually the current will overcome them, the current of their own thoughts, and they're dashed against the rock. And the Rye monastic father who was talking about this says, and they'll never get in the river again, you know, because the experience is so awful. The next stage, however, is to give them the boat of breath.

So you place them in, but you say this time, don't worry about the thoughts, just observe the breath. So that's mind mindfulness, we would call that in a basic Today, right. So you put them in the boat and they're rowing against the current now, but they're with the breath. He said it lasts a bit longer. But eventually they're they will grow tired, their focus will fall, and they'll be dashed against the rocks again.

But he says the one to whom is given the gift of the word, the versiculum, the mantra, is like somebody who gets into their boat, takes up their oars, but now throws an anchor over the side. The anchor catches and holds them. The boat, the container of the breath, is their physical aspect that they're there present. The thoughts still continue because we can't stop the thoughts. But now the thoughts just go by and we float and we're simply there.

But I think it's a really good visual image of what the three stages the three stages.

So the only uh remaining piece I suppose is to try and be understand that the mantra itself has no magical power in and of itself. It is again attention and intention connected to that that that have that have a particular Um the only differentiation we would make on that in the Christian tradition is we we would say that the name Jesus has a particular authority because it's the name chosen but then the information. But again, our intention and that tension must be pure.

So there's a lovely story of a Tibetan Lama who really wanted a very powerful mantra and he goes eventually he finds one of the great great saints up in the mountain. And he just won't leave him alone, begging for the mantra, begging for the mantra that will bring him to enlightenment.

So eventually the old ascetic calls him over and whispers right into his ear and says, This is the mantra, repeat this, you will gain enlightenment and he does. He gains extraordinary enlightenment. Like he moves through the cities, he's transcends suffering, etcetera, all of that.

At the very end of his life he's dying and he's still repeating the mantra, repeating the mantra, and he ends up in this nunnery where the sisters are looking after him as he's dying, and it's a great privilege. And they bring in one of the oldest nuns who comes from

The same part of the country that the great saint of old had come from who had given him the mantra. And she's looking after him and she kinda listens for a moment and she leans down to listen to the mantra and she starts laughing and laughing and laughing.

And the old monk opens one eye as he's dying and says to her, What are you looking at? And she said, Do you know what you're saying? And he said, No, no, no, it's the sacred manure that the saint gave me and she said, What you've been saying for the last forty years over and over is manure, manure, manure.

And it's a wonderful story. There's great, great truth in it because it's the intention and attention that accomplished the movement, not the authority of a particular word. So I think we just need to be aware. There are no shortcuts, unfortunately.

good you know, good grounding and all that. If you are somebody who suffers from Depression, mental illness, addiction, any of those kind of things, I would be very, very careful about getting involved with the paranormal at all in an active way. Simply because you're going in with a certain lack of stabil mental and emotional stability. And I've seen it have very negative effects for people who have who have gone in in Whitla.

I'm not saying don't completely, but I'm just saying be aware. Right. Be really aware. The second element I would say is as things go on. If you are beginning to separate yourself from the ordinary If this becomes all consuming, if it begins to break down relationships, so one of the things we've noticed, I mean, I've certainly noticed is.

Somebody begets an interest in in the paranormal, right? And their wife, husband, partner, whatever it might be, thinks, wonderful, they've got a new hobby. That's great. Off they go and off they go and they they they do the thing. If they don't draw the other partner in the The emotional buzz, the emotional high of experiencing the these things with others, and then being unable to communicate the level of what how important the thing was when you go home.

will often create a kind of a feedback loop whereby the person begins to spend more and more time with the people who get it or who understand and becomes more and more separated from wife. husband, children, partner, whatever it might be.

So we you know, d to be careful of that. Anything that begins to absorb attention or anything that's generating fear. If someone is receiving serious dark dreams, if so this we're getting serious now about stuff, serious continual dark dreams, suicidal thoughts or radiation arriving from a seemingly nowhere. taking refuge in in addictive substances or activities or whatever. Or and this is one we always watch out for And it's one that needs to be very subtly handled. But unusual pain aches.

lack of energy, physical energy, no interest in anything other than the stuff itself. Especially and this is one of the things to look out for, not cleaning. A sudden drop in hype where people will actually lose lose the awareness that, you know, that their body needs to be looked after or

something real that you're hitting or whether you're hitting a nexus of story and intention and all of that kind of stuff. You just need to be very clear. And I think you often say it as well and I've said it as well. A sense of humor is the most important thing to hold on to.

Closed off, prejudicial. Like that's a basic discernment for anything in life. And I think that's that's really important.

Yeah. If you're making that choice, it's the wrong choice. That's given your choice between your family and this other thing that you don't even really know what it is, that's the wrong choice. And and if if you feel like you're making that choice you're making the wrong choice, I'm telling you.

you know, retreated completely from family and friends. I know people who've become obsessed with kind of, you know, the conspiracy or that they will be the one who will solve it. Or even worse, they are the one who has solved it. And everybody else is wrong. You know, and as much as we speak of things like dogma and things that must be believed within the tradition, et cetera, we're we're very conscious of where the other things are that we kind of say, Well, we don't know. Yeah. You know.

That's a very important thing to to hold on to.

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West and particularly the Western paranormal tradition has kind of just grabbed that wholesale and brought it over and it turned it into something very simplistic. Yeah. So we need to be very kind of careful of cultural appropriation and that kind of stuff. However, taking it as what most people think it is.

Do I believe that that can happen? Yes, I do. And I believe things like, for example, the Phillip experiment, uh, the stories of Alexandra David Neal, the great explorer of of her theories, what she achieved even just physically as particularly as a woman at the time she was travelling is absolutely extraordinary.

Uh you know, in the in the Western tradition we would speak of what we call our our eidolons and idolons Again, where a number of people would put a lot of energy, attention, intention into particular forming a particular thing and then usually for particular purpose, generally for a nefarious purpose. But one of the one of the questions again becomes at what point is the tallpah just a coat for something else to wear. Right.

And I think that's what for example Alexandra David Neal and she had created. I mean, I always laugh about this because her tulpa she created was a Franciscan friar, actually. That was what she went with, this kind of friar tupa. guy who slowly over time went from being an image that she was holding in her mind to an image that she could see but nobody else could see to eventually an image that people saw from time to time.

And then over time she lost control of it, she says, and it became something else. She began to get very uh afraid in in fact and kind of nasty feeling from it. And when she went to do the unravelling of it. It fought it. It fought it hugely. And it took a lot of effort and a lot of support from other Buddhist lamas and monks to dissolve the thing and finally get rid of it. So yeah, I think as well when we look at things like residual haunting, for example, or

The idea of I mean you've had it with some of the Gettysburg Bridges and things like that, where stories have been created, people go there. I I think we can unconsciously generate Tulpas as well. And I think some of those things are you know, I mean I I really loved the guy the guys you had whose theory were uh around the um well the ghosts are more likely to talk to you if you look like them. Yes.

Yeah, I I mean I smiled at that first and then went, Well hold on, lots of the friars who turn up to talk to us, you know, we're we look exactly as as they did, so maybe there's there's a certain familiarity. on the other side as well that's needed. But I think that's kind of topic, if if you like, in in form. I've encountered what I would say was definitely residual haunting in some places, particularly hospitals, where something manifests in a kind of a personified form but is really just

it's I would guess more the the the the the kind of the pain and the suffering that's present within a particular place. And we have kind of rituals and prayers that we do to do to to clear that.

So yeah, I I do think that they're there. I think but the the differentiation between what's a full on tulpa, what's a residual haunting, and what's a kind of a crisis apparition, they're slightly different. And then we see in ascetics and contemplatives and saints of all of the various traditions, this this idea of the kind of billocation or being able to, you know, appear in different places at different times. Stretch one's consciousness was the way.

talk the the Pierre talked about it. He said the times when his angel would appear on his behalf. looking like him, he was he would be unaware that that happened until somebody told him. And then there were other times where he would be in deep prayer and meditation and would feel what he called a stretching of the soul, would suddenly find himself out.

Obviously when he was there he could be encountered physically, etcetera. People, you know, received things from him, he touched them, held held, you know, held things, moved things, etc. But to all intents and purposes he was still back in his original place. But he always felt that that was a gift bestowed by a higher rather than something that he was kind of able to do.

These are the presence and movement of the divine in our own being, and every human being receives the greater charisms. we receive what we call a supernatural infusion of those at baptism in our tradition. So in other words, a very different conforming of the soul to these channels.

When we speak of the lesser charisms, they're the ones that most people think of as the greater, so things like prophecy and stigmata and miracles and all that. But the church is very clear that they are actually lesser. They are simple simply manifestations. natural or supernatural ability that are given in the good sense for the upbuilding of faith.

So in the church's understanding, a miracle, the only purpose of a miracle is not the healing of the person concerned or the raising of the dead or whatever it might be, it is to deepen the faith of the entire community. So all of the comparisons then are given for the upbuilding of faith. Upbuilding of faith, the strengthening of hope and the deepening of love is the way it's it's it's put.

So when someone is being put forward for canonization, while we look to see our miracles worked through their intercession or through their prayer, they're not canonized based on the miracle. Canonized based on what we call heroic virtue. So the idea that this person has gone above and beyond in the pursuit of faith, hope and love and the various gifts of the you know, peace, patience, love, kindness, gentleness, all of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

That sort of puts the foundation and then we can talk about the individual, Padre Pio. So Padre just means father, like you'd say to a priest in in in Italy. His his religious name was Pio or Pious, we we would we would say in in English. He was born Francisco Forgione. in a little town of Pietroshina, very to very, very poor very, very poor family. From the very earliest days he had a tendency towards

faith and and religious life. Um he discovered later that not everybody had sight of the angels or apparitions or visions. He just presumed everybody else had because he had them To the end of his days he had constant visible sight of his guardian angels. who he called the companion of his youth, and the angel would appear to him at the same age that he was all the way along. Those sometimes appearing younger uh sometimes appearing younger as well.

So uh he eventually became uh he was entranced by by Saint Francis particularly and wanted to become a Suscence became a capuchin, one of the branch that I belonged to as well. Died in nineteen sixty eight. But one of my favorite stories about him comes from one of our own brothers, now dead and gone, but I lived with him for many years, who who went to

to stay in in the Friary during the war years. So that was during the time when nobody really knew about Padre Pio at this stage. He was under investigation by the Vatican, so he was only allowed to live within the Friary. This was the second investigation. The first one was for seven years when he wasn't allowed to have contact with anybody other than a friar or Vatican appointed officials. The second one was particularly interesting because the Vatican insisted that two of the doctors involved

must be must have been uh either atheist or or or communist. They were not allowed to be Protestant Catholics to ensure that that they wouldn't kind of give in based on on faith that that that that that couldn't be like an accusation like that couldn't be made. So anyway, our brother, brother Bruno, an Irishman, a good solid northern man. If any of your listeners out there have watched uh the TV show Dairy Girls, that was the accent that he had, and that lovely northern accent.

went all the way over to Italy, failed absolutely at learning Italian because the dairy accent does not work with the Italian at all, but lived in the friary for a number of years and kind of observed PO. And all the way through he just saw a very ordinary friar who was present at all of the various exercises. The only thing he knew was that he had two permissions that were unusual at the time. One was he would come to meals but he very often didn't eat. He had

illness, stomach illness is that that meant that he he he didn't eat, but he ate very, very little his his whole life. In fact went through many years of of kind of extreme fun instinct. And the other permission he had was that he could stay up at night to pray in the chapel because in those days every moment of your day was was organized by Nate could stay up in your room and pray, but PO had permission to stay light.

And Bruno was still a little bit kind of, well, is he you know, who who is this guy until one day they were in the church. And uh Father PO was helping distribute Holy Communion during the the Mass. And as he came along to one particular woman, he presented the the host to her um to to receive, and instead she grabbed his arm, pulled his arm down, and kissed his beloved hand where the stigmata was.

And Pio erupted. He had a very he'd very rough, strong voice. If you ever I mean his voice is there on on YouTube, etcetera, if you listen to it, it's a real strong Italian voice. And he turned on his heel and went straight back into the sacristy and one of the other priests had to kind of continue in his stead.

So our brother was very intrigued as to what what he had said, so he asked a number of the brothers and they were kind of a bit loath to say, but eventually they said, Well, he said something like You stupid woman, you stupid woman, kissing the hand of the butler when the lord of the house is in front of you.

And that was the moment when for our brother he kinda went, Okay, I'm with him. No problem. It wasn't about him as such. He bore the stigmata, the five wounds, open wounds in hands, feet and side, and that wound in his side, through very painful but medical investigation that took place regularly, they discovered was an open wound to the heart. and was bleeding out quite regularly. He bore those for fifty years.

He should have died. The wounds never became infected, never became any lesser than they were, though he prophesied himself that he had asked that they would be removed from his body after he died. And the week before he died they suddenly began to close. When he died the medical inspection was done of his body at the order of the uh, the the guardian in the house the winds had completely sealed with new s new skin. There was no not even Along with that he also once a week.

on Thursday nights received the crowning of Orange, the shoulder wound would open and he would receive the stigmat uh the stigmatic of the um spurging. That was never made public until after he had died, but the friars would assist him going through

Uh he was a powerful exorcist, there's extraordinary stories of healing and extraordinary stories of particularly what he had was the reading of hearts, which was people would go to him for confusion and spend about sixteen hours a day in the confessional hearing. People would go in to say there are a few little bits and pieces and he would suddenly have full knowledge of their whole life.

I know of people who refused the chance to go to confession to him because they were too frightened that he would see everything.

Or reverse glossalalia, which is that he could hear somebody confess in uh their own language and he would understand it completely.

he had there are remarkable accounts of invisibility of him becoming heavy as rock or light as air.

were they church and I don't think so because you don't have to prove every single one. Correct me if I'm wrong. You you know, they would they would prove Yeah, they would prove what's necessary for for sainthood, if you know the miracles necessary to it for that.

But at the same time, I suppose in the end it's about the fruit. It's always about the fruit. So in terms of, you know, uh whether or not Miraculous phenomena is good or not, is judging. Well, what's the fruit? Is it really saying deeper compassion, deeper? love, deeper grace, or is it separating people? Is it making people afraid? Is it, you know, affecting people in a

We d we differentiate between between two kinds of fear, what we call salutary fear, which is the fear that happens when someone gets a shock, their worldview is shock. Nowadays, in the paranormal sense, we'd call that ontological shock. The idea of suddenly oh the world is more complicated, bigger than than I ever thought, and there's a shock as we move into that. That's salutary fear because eventually that becomes peace.

And but negative fear is something that actually is just about terrifying. I suppose crushes the spirit of the person in some way.

And that's one of the big differentiations I would make, for example, when it comes to prophecy. So if you look at a lot of the whether it's the the kind of occultic prophecy or the alien, supposedly alien prophecies or whatever What you often find is it's fear, fear, fear all the way through. You know, everything is doomed, everything is destroyed.

You might be lucky enough'cause you're the seer to survive, but it's inevitable and there's nothing you can do apart from maybe give our s give ourselves over to you and we will say you know, we will save you. What you find in genuine, what we would call genuine Christian prophecy. So say for example, you look at We looked at it over three two or three programs, I think the Fatima and end of things. What you find is that yes it it can be quite clear that there are terrible things to go through.

But the end is always and all shall be well. Everything shall be well. I in fact m in the end my immaculate heartbook. You know, in the end there will be peace, in the end there will be grace. And I think that's a key factor for somebody if you're examining these things is to ask, well, is this begetting peace?

Is it begetting grace? Like I remember one I won't name it, but I remember one series of visions that was going on, a visionary experience that was going on, the church was investigating it or whatever.

the people at the heart of it, it became, you know, there was a lot of questions around money and where money was going. There were questions around impropriety and marriages broke down, that kind of stuff. And immediately the church look We don't know where this is coming from, but it it's not coming from a good place and you know advise people to avoid it.

people still went to it because they were hungry for the miraculous phenomena associated with it. I'll do good things through that. Of course, absolutely. But But it's always it's always examine the fruit, examine the fruit. That's the thing. Don't let the the fireworks bells and whistles destroy. their own movement to be there so as to um to move on. I mean Saint Paul in scriptures puts it beautifully, he says, you know

Prophecy will fail eventually, you know, miracles will end, like even even even the dead who are raised eventually die, you know. In the end there's only three things that last faith, hope and truth.

I think they were a breakaway group from either the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons. Can't remember which. But anyway, they broke away completely. And he told them all that, you know, the biblical prophets were coming. They were they were coming back.

And he gave them a date and they had to build this mansion in the middle of the desert for these guys to live in. So they built this huge mansion and then they created gardens around it and they imported plants from the Holy Land so that when they came they would feel at home. All of these beautiful gardens, etc. And of course the date came and went. And then the next prophecy was, well, they will come when you're worthy enough for it. They've asked me to move into the mansion to mind it for

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