The Spiritual Warrior's Guide: First, Name the Enemy.

Hello, my name is Kallan, and I am an Over-Analyzer. I'm in recovery, and it's a process.

One of the things I struggle with most is letting go of disappointments. My tendency is to take them personally. Down-sizing, not being hired for a job, being betrayed by a friend, someone breaks a promise... all of these tend to make me wonder what I did or didn't do to cause them to happen.

I will mull the situation over from every angle. I'll analyze it to death, then resurrect it and beat it to the glue factory, only to repeat the entire process.

Truthfully? It brings me no sense of closure, no satisfaction whatsoever, to engage in this process. I can pretty much distill the lesson pretty quickly. In a nutshell, it boils down to Mulengro.

Ly De Angeles describes Mulengro in her book, "Witchcraft: Theory and Practice":

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"Mulengro is the name of an entity that is like an alien barb; one that has become an out-of-control arrow that pierces generation upon generation with is poison. It feeds on its own likeness, and people are its host."

She explains further: "Mulengro denies the individual the right to be an individual and assures that is victims remain emotionally crippled. Mulengro is passed on like a virus through the perpetuation of the seven attributes of greed, envy, guilt, deceit, denial, expectation, and assumption. The only way to rid the psyche and spirit of the virus is to abruptly and completely stop hosting it!"

Oh sure, it's easier said than done. It's a sneaky little villain that lies in wait to attack anyone with an opening. What I've discovered is that those disappointments I keep examining ad nauseam are usually the result of expectation and assumption.

Assumption is defined as "a thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof."

Expectation is defined as "a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future."

Woman: Young or Old?

What both of these have in common is my own perception. Perception is my way of thinking about something. That can be easily skewed by the information at my disposal. If I don't have all of the information, I can fill in the gaps through assumption. If my assumption appears to stand up, then I move into the realm of expectation that this assumption can be applied elsewhere or toward the future. When these do not turn out to be true, I have been incorrect and that hurts my ego (bring in the rest of the faces of Mulengro here).

I have to be on consistent guard against allowing this kind of thinking to creep in, and not just inside my own head. De Angeles again: "Do not allow others to perpetuate any kind of these seven faces of Mulengro on you, and do not use them to abort the truth, no matter what the seeming advantage. These faces (behind each of them are the other six) are all vices of disrespect."

Ok, ouch! Disrespect- of self, of others, of the Mystery. I don't want to be disrespectful to any of us! And yet, that's exactly what happens when I allow Mulengro in, even just a little bit.

Assumption and expectation are not the same as intuition. If I'd listened to my intuition in most of these situations, I'd have nipped that whole Mulengro thing in the bud. As I said, it's a process. It takes time, vigilance and a release of ego.

Ly De Angeles cautions: "I warn you that the eradication of these acceptable modes of behavior will place you squarely outside the general flow of the social stratum. That's okay. The Way of a witch is not for everyone."

And, it is the way of the Spiritual Warrior, too. Most of our battles are within us, and in order to fight them, we have to be aware of what they are. To name a thing is to have power over it. Now that we can name our greatest enemy, we can devise strategies against him.

Next week, we'll begin with some advice from one of the greatest war-strategists of all time- Sun Tzu.