By: D. Cody

Where to begin? My parents were divorced when I was very young, about 3, and I spent the next 10 years bouncing back and forth between them as they feuded and used me as a proxy for their feud. When I turned 13 I demanded that I be allowed to live with my father, since in my childish thinking it was better with him because he had more money and gifts and fun things to do, and I left my mother. This didn't turn out really well though because my Dad did have money, but he didn't have a lot of time/willingness to raise me full-time, since he needed to work all the time to make that money. Some time after that he bought me a computer with a modem (pre-internet) and I became a full time shut-in at a young age.

I remember the first time I got high, alone in my room, sitting in front of my computer. I was so terrified that I would die from it, but I thought to myself, maybe it is better to die than keep living a meaningless life like this. The drug of choice I found was Robotussin. I understand this has become more popular now, but then it was unheard of. I would go to the local grocery story to steal bottles of it every few days and then spend the next 6-8 hours going crazy in my room. I started this in middle-school and was on it hard in high school, finally having it taper off when I went to college. When I was in high school I smoked weed for the first time and also started dealing there.

When I was in high school my mind was very messed up. I shaved my head and started going to the gym. I was something of a neo-Nazi but I didn't call myself that. I hung out with that crowd and I read National Alliance publications. I was always looking for something to cling to. Some kind of power or raison d’être that would pull me out of the existential despair I was in. The skin-heads were good for that. They were all young and angry and had what Nietzsche called 'the will to power' about them. They also did a lot of drugs with me.

At some point during all this I read Mein Kampf and I was struck by a particular passage in it. Basically Hitler says (paraphrasing) that people expect small lies, but if you tell a lie so enormous and integral to their lives, people can't help but to believe it because it would be too shocking if it weren't true. This opened up my mind to the real meaning to the whole white-power and neo-Nazi ideology. I realized that it was all a lie created to gain power, and worse than that it was a failed lie. It wasn't big enough. So, after that revelation, I decided it would be a good idea to start a cult.

I started looking around into different types of eastern spirituality and occult practices that would be good to base a cult off of. The more I read about them, the more interested I became, thinking there might actually be something to all this. I started off with Wicca and other various 'light' things like astrology and divination, but I quickly determined that most of that was rubbish and the real source of power was deeper. Some how or other I got into reading about Chaos magic and psychic vampirism.

The basic idea behind Chaos magic (as I recall) is that reality is amorphous and chaotic, molded by our beliefs and expectations, and that we are all really the gods of our universe, just lacking the will or insight to see and act on this. In Chaos magic there are particular practices based around concentrating your will into words, "sigils", and totems (read: idols), using them as a holding place to bind reality to your will. I created totems and sigils and I would sit in front of them for hours, talking to them, meditating, visualizing energy going into them, so rearrange reality to my desires. This did work to a limited degree but I decided it wasn't quick/strong enough. That’s where psychic vampirism came in.

Basically I determined that everything would go easier if I could supplement my own will with that of the weak-willed people around me. Using the same principles I had learned in Chaos magic, I would select people to 'drain energy' from, and transfer it into my sigils or totems. I also used this practice to attempt to mind control people and influence their dreams and thoughts. The most frightening thing to me now is that it worked. What I started to realize is that somehow or other I had the power I was looking for. I didn't understand why the other people didn't have it, such as the Wiccans and other occultists. To them it seemed like a game, meaningless ritual, something fun and trendy to do. I didn't really care about that though. All that mattered is that I had the power and I would use it to the full extent. The more I practiced, the more I meditated; the more I visualized, the more success and results I had.

At the apex of my 'success' with this, my anger with my dad had reached a boiling point. I was always very resentful at him for not being what I considered 'a real father' to me. Sure he gave me money and bought whatever I needed, but what I didn't have was him. I was so furious about this, having let it simmer for so long inside me, I decided that it would be better if he were dead. I recall waking up from dreams thinking he was dead and being so happy, only to be sorely disappointed when I found out he was still alive and it was only a dream. Then I decided to take this great well of emotion and pour it into my first truly evil act:  Kill my father with magic. He developed cancer soon afterwards.

God Please Undo What I Have Done

When he was diagnosed with cancer and started undergoing the radiation treatments, something snapped in me. I realized how totally wrong and evil everything I had been doing was. I basically broke down mentally. I threw out all my books and idols and my sigil notebook and every token of power that I had. I tried to "undo" what I'd set in motion but I felt like it wasn't working. So then I cried out to God for the first time … please undo what I've done - I've made a terrible mistake. I didn't believe in God then but I didn't know what else to do.  

A few months later I moved out of my dad's house and in with my mother. I was 18 at the time and hadn't seen her in the previous five years. (My Dad did eventually recovered from the cancer -- prayer answered?)

My mom had become a born again Christian and had remarried to another believer and was pregnant at the time with my step-sister. As a condition of me living with them I had to go to church on Sundays and listen to the sermons with them. I did this very begrudgingly. My thinking at that time was that God was basically a thought-form that had been poured into by so many people and for so long that it had basically taken on a life of its own in the unseen world and claimed divinity. I decided instead to dive into the eastern spirituality I had read about before. I realized that all my desires for power and influence had lead me into the suffering I was experiencing, and that furthermore the world was run on such unfulfilled desires, and that the only way out was to stop desiring things and come to peace with simply existing. Detach yourself from the world and escape the cycle of desiring and suffering. I became a Buddhist.

Living with my mother didn't work out. Our relationship had basically evaporated over time, in my mind, and now she was one of those crazy Christians to boot. I didn't like being preached at. I didn't like being told what to do. I didn't like the idea that they would find out I was high all the time and there would be a huge confrontation. I was also 18, a grown man no less, and didn't need to live with my mother in a trailer. So I decided to move out with my friend William. William lived by himself in a 2-story house way out in the country. His father left him to fend for himself after he got kicked out of school and his mother committed suicide in the basement. William was about as messed up as I was and I appreciated that.

William got me a job working as a bouncer at a strip club where he also worked. I was still pretty muscular and strong from my time as a neo-Nazi, and I definitely knew how to intimidate people. I ended up getting into the "drug scene" while I was there and stopped just getting high alone in my room. I was also "hired" to be the body guard and look-out for one of the coke dealers in this establishment. All I can say regarding this time is that God was definitely watching over me. I got the job because the previous bouncer had been hospitalized during gang violence, and my successor was killed in a drive-by shooting. My time there was relatively peaceful.

I don't remember how it got started, but after living with William for awhile I got back into spiritual practices. Something about his mother committing suicide in the basement, along with other people having died in the basement (previous owners), made me think there might be some kind of spiritual presence down there. Like the idiot teenagers in the perennial horror movies, William and I went downstairs into the basement to hold séances and contact the dead. We demanded that the spirits show themselves to us (for our entertainment). I was confident that if anything did happen, I was a skilled enough 'energy manipulator' to keep it in check. How wrong I was.

Shadowy Figures Started Appearing In The House

At that time I had ordered some new books on 'dark paganism' or some such and was reading about the power of the night and how demons were really angels that would quickly remove our short-comings by force instead of waiting around and doing it the slow way of normal spiritual maturation. This idea appealed to me so I started calling on the dark forces of the night to manifest themselves, and manifest themselves they did. At first I thought I was seeing and/or imagining things, maybe because it was dark and I was high, but later on William confirmed that there were strange goings on in the house when I wasn't there. Shadowy figures, about three feet tall or so and the size of children, started appearing in the house and around the property.

I started doing meditations again to create an "8th chakra", as recommended in one of the books. Basically the idea was to pool all the dark energy of the night into a focused location in your body and let the demons reside there. From here they would empower you and do the work of stripping your weaknesses away. The location of this chakra was to be in front of your natural heart chakra. Looking back on this with what I know about the bible, it is hilariously sad. But this is what I did at the time. I didn't really know why I was doing what I was doing. I wasn't desperate for power or to fit in like before. Basically I think I just wanted to be entertained. I also wanted to be different - to be freed from the world that consistently let me down.

As I continued this practice, the presence of the shadows grew stronger and more profound. You could feel a palpable darkness as soon as you entered the house. Walking by the stairs leading to the basement was like walking by a box fan or something blowing waves of darkness up at you.  People that didn't even know what William and I were up to were terrified to be left alone there at night. Eventually this got to the point where the shadows started manifesting themselves in plain daylight, while we were sober-minded and not doing any spiritual exercises.

One day as I was leaving the house to go to work, I happened to pass the stairway to the basement on my way out. As I passed by I was suddenly frozen and couldn't move. Out of the corner of my eye I looked down the stairs and saw one of the figures standing there. As I saw it I became more and more petrified and it started to charge up the stairs at me. As it was right upon me it vanished, and I literally almost crapped myself. That same day I packed my things and moved out. From what I gathered, William started smoking crack after that and the house truly became a den of iniquity.

The shadows seemed to follow me around after that. I moved from place to place and stayed with different people for varying lengths of time, but I could never escape the dark cloud that lingered over my head. I stopped doing all the practices but the shadows kept appearing. I tried to 'undo' the 8th chakra that I had made but I still felt their presence within me.

I eventually ended up staying with my friend Elijah who was a Christian. When I moved into his house the spirits started manifesting again in strange ways. Ghostly animals would appear and disappear from the living room. The TV would turn itself on in the middle of the night. Strange people would come by at all hours. Before I moved in, the roommate whose room I was to take started having nightmares and panic attacks regarding shadowy figures watching him. When I moved in I put up some salt borders around my room, which I had read in a book about hoodoo was supposed to make a barrier against spirits, and I found the salt the next day like it was kicked out of the way and trampled over.

After this I told Elijah some of the things that had been going on, and he confirmed seeing some of it too, particularly the animals and the TV. He decided to purify the house by spreading some anointing oil and holy water from the Jordan around and saying prayers against the enemy. This seemed to curb most of the crazy spiritual activity. I didn't see shadow people in the house anymore. I did still see them occasionally outside as I was going along my daily business. It pleased me to think that it had been largely dealt with though so I just forgot about it. I retreated back into Buddhism.

One of the last things I did when I was enjoying the little "spiritual renaissance" was to attempt to bind a particular girl to me to be mine. I was desperately lonely and I didn't think too hard about the morality of this or anything. It worked and we moved in together and she became my girlfriend for several years. These were some of the absolute worst years of my life. The thing about the bindings is that they go both ways -- not only was she bound to me, but I was bound to her. We became what psychologist would call 'codependent'. Constantly fighting, cheating on each other, arguing, but never able to cut the ties that bound us; always falling back in with each other. We sabotaged each other constantly. I tried to stay as Zen about it as possible, but the real remedy I pursued was getting high. This went on to my mid-twenties.

During one of our arguments I left town and started driving around aimlessly. After visiting and talking to my aunt, who was also into Buddhism and spirituality, I was referred to a Buddhist monastery and stayed there for a few weeks. I spent this time reading and studying Buddhism and meditating in front of a giant golden Buddha statue. The monks at the monastery had no possessions and only ate what was given to them as an offering. I tried to emulate this and ended up eating very little. Around this time I started to lose weight rapidly as I would constantly be fasting and meditating to "undo my ties to fleshly desires and samsara".

After spending the time at the monastery I decided to go to another spiritual retreat that my aunt had told me about. This place definitely had a presence about it. It was in the middle of a large city, but as you drove onto the property you would feel like you were transported into another world. This place was also impossible to find if you didn't know exactly where it was. Most people at the retreat would say things like, "Only people who are chosen can come here" and "People have lived in this town for years just to be close to the center but haven't been able to get in". This made me feel special right away.

The retreat was dedicated to a Meher Baba, an Indian spiritual guru, who claimed to be the reincarnation of divinity as so many of them do. I spent time at this retreat the same way I spent it at the monastery: Meditating, eating very little, but also praying to the then deceased guru. I spent quite a bit of time doing this but I felt very frustrated because, although I could definitely feel a strong spiritual presence about the place, I didn't seem to be getting any manifestations like I wanted. I went on like this for a few days until I started to run out of money and decided I had to leave. That’s when I started getting my manifestations.

When I came to this retreat, they just so happened to have one single bunk available for me to stay on, because someone else had cancelled their visit. Each day that I decided to stay there was again just one bunk or cabin that I would luck into renting for the night. When I ran out of money from doing this and decided it was time to go, someone who I had been speaking to during my time there informed me that Bhau Kalchuri, the last living disciple, was coming and I couldn't leave just yet.  Meher Baba had twelve apostles, just like Jesus (along with many other similarities), and only one of them was still alive, and he was coming to town. I had to meet him.

When Bhau arrived in town, everyone left the retreat to greet him at the airport except a few people, including myself.  I decided it would be too much of a zoo at the airport and walked across the retreat to the private residence where he would be staying while visiting. About two or three other people, along with myself, stood on the porch there waiting patiently for Bhau to arrive. Not long afterwards a caravan of about six cars pulled in with one tiny Indian man sitting in one. I could feel him staring at me from behind his dark aviator glasses. This was Bhau.

The entourage pushed us out of the way and helped the frail old man up the steps. As he came to the top step he stopped and looked at me and asked, "Who are you?" "I'm me," I replied.  "I just heard you were coming to town and decided I had to see you." Then I did a little bow and walked off. As I was walking back to my car and preparing to leave I admit I felt a little bit deflated. I expected fireworks or something when I met this person of supposed great spiritual authority. Wise words or eternal wisdom. Anything. Instead I just got a frail old man that looked at me for half a second and went inside. Boring.

The Apostle Has Summoned You!

As I was walking and thinking all this I made a prayer to Meher Baba. "Baba, if there is anything to this you need to show me right now because I'm leaving and not coming back." At that very moment I heard the voice calling from behind me. As I turned around I saw a young girl running after me saying, "The apostle has summoned you! The apostle has summoned you! You have to come back!" So I turned around and went back to the house.

When I arrived Bhau called me in to have a private audience with him. He asked me a few basic questions like my name, where I was from, and what I was doing in town. I was kind of befuddled by this so I just answered them plainly as I could and said I was looking for spiritual insight. He stared at me for a few minutes and asked how long I was staying. I told him I was leaving that day because I was broke and couldn't afford to stay any longer. "No," he said, "You have to stay." He called in one of his entourage and said "Arrange for this man to stay." And so I did. I was provided free room and board for the next week.

During that week I had private audiences with him every day. I would have meals with him and had a bit of privileged access that others seemed jealous of. After some time he told me, "There is something special about you. I'm going to give you titles. You need to come to the ashram in India to receive spiritual training." I complained that I was poor and I could never afford such a thing. I'm no rich westerner! "Don't worry," he replied, "You just go to India.  We will take care of everything else as we have taken care of you here". Not long after that I left and went back home.

As soon as I got home I started making plans to save up money and travel to India. This was like a dream come true to me. As a child I had always imagined being a travelling holy person, a monk, a saint, something like that. I always wanted to go to India. I also started doing more drugs. I had gotten into hallucinogens some time back and I thought that they were a way to open the doors of perception in my mind to let the spirit world communicate with me more easily. I did this and prayed and meditated, to Meher Baba.

I decided to move away from the small suburban town I was living in and into a nearby city that is known for its liberalism, spirituality, and drug scene. I also moved to keep a physical distance between myself and the girl I had been dating so I could finally cut the ties that bind by lack of proximity. Additionally, even though I was pretty excited about moving to India and etc., I was a bit burnt out on all the spiritual activity I'd been through and wary of shiny deceptions. I decided to stop praying to Meher Baba and start praying to "God", which in my mind was simply a title My intention was to pray to the highest power and authority. It’s kind of funny thinking about how I reasoned my way into that now, but God must have planted that idea in there somewhere.

God - I Am So Lost And Confused, I Don't Know What To Do

When I moved to that city, praying to the title "God", a funny thing happened. One day I was very strung out and hung-over from a night of partying and just dragging my dead body around town. I sat down to rest in a community center, and as I sat I started praying to this "God". I was saying something along the lines of, "God - I am so lost and confused, I don't know what to do". Then I started hearing music. Church music. This was very pleasing to my ear so I decided to investigate the source of it. I found what room it was coming from and I sat there and closed my eyes and relaxed to this pleasant sound.

Not soon after I had been sitting there, someone came out of that room and started talking to me. They invited me to a Bible study that was going to happen afterwards, and having nothing better to do I decided to accept. It was kind of boring to me and I was basically there just to waste time, but something deeper was going on that I didn't see right away. This was God wooing me to Him. I was rather prejudiced against Christians due to some experience I had at my mom's church and other things that had happened over the years, but for some reason I felt compelled to keep coming back to this bible study and getting to know the people in it.

The Bible Study leader took a lot of time to explain the Bible to me and explain about the sacrifice Jesus made on my behalf. One thing he told me that really stuck with me was, "It isn't enough to give intellectual assent to this. You must fully believe it and submit to it if you want to be saved." It was so hard for me to do this though with all I had been through, and I think at that time spiritual forces were still pulling me back and trying to prevent me from crossing that line. But eventually I did do this. Later on that year I was baptized and accepted Jesus to be my Lord and Saviour. I told Him, “Jesus … if one thing has become apparent over time it is that I am a terrible leader of my own life, I am giving up the control to You. You are now the Lord of my life; do with it what you will.”

I Was Attacked By The Shadows Again

Soon after this I was attacked by the shadows again. However I had become equipped to fight them and I read some 'offensive Pslams' I had learned about from Marc Driscoll's online ministry and called out for Jesus to protect me. The amazing thing is that the oppressive darkness vanished immediately and it has not returned since. It took awhile for me to kick my drug habit but I also managed to do that under Christ's power. I even started to make amends with my relationship with my mother.

I tried to tell some Christians I had met about my testimony and all I had been through but they didn't understand it. In fact, I would often get strange looks and people would treat me like some kind of unclean person. This was very discouraging at first but I kept telling myself that it was not about the Christians but about Christ. I prayed for a community that I could fit into to appear and make itself known to me, and by God's grace it has. The house church I'm going to now has several people with similar spiritual background, and I do feel Christ's love here, not judgment. It is written:  As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. And:  I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. I was once lost, but now am found.

My life is not perfect, but that doesn't matter. All that matters is that perfection now dwells within me. All I have to do is abide in the fact that the Creator of this universe knows me as an individual, and loves me, and came into the flesh and died for me. Nothing else matters. I don't worry about what I'll say or where I'll go or what I'll wear. As far as speaking goes, who made the tongue? And as far as living goes:

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."  (Matt. 6:25-34)

What I want people to understand from my testimony is this: We are born into a spiritual war. There is no neutrality. You are in one kingdom or another. If you are in darkness now, you can be pulled out of it. No matter how enticing it seems or how deep you are mired in it, it won't be as good as you think and there is always an escape. God, the real God, not the fake demon gods, is willing and able to save you at any time. He already paid the price for your sin and rebellion, and all He is waiting for is for you to come home to Him.

What I want Christians in particular to understand is this: Spiritual darkness is real. As it is written, "We don't fight against flesh and blood, but powers, principalities, and darkness in heavenly places."  (Eph 6:12).  Do not neglect this reality while you are in church and witnessing to people. The kind of spiritual darkness I've been through isn't something you see every day in the West. This type of blatant demonic activity is still very active in some 3rd world countries, but here the enemy uses a different tactic.  We are under a superstition called 'naturalism'; basically that the world you see before you is all there is, and if you can't see it, it doesn't exist. The enemy that you can't see is an enemy that you can't defend yourself against. The tactic that the enemy uses here is apathy, worldliness, and negation of spiritual reality. Don't be fooled.

Several times I had encounters with Christians who prayed for me and attempted to help me. I even lived with some. I imagine it was a very frustrating experience for them. Although I’ve never spoken to many of them again and they will never, in this life, know what eventually happened to me; I’m sure their prayers were indeed heard by God and played a role in my eventual salvation. As it is written, “One sows and another reaps.” Do not become discouraged in your witnessing and in doing the work of the Kingdom. You never know what God will do with your words and prayers.

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