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Nick Hinton

@NickHintonn

Dec 11

Are Aliens Actually Demons? Are Some Aliens Actually Angels? Are We Actually in the End Times?

Scientists are now saying aliens could actually be advanced forms of AI. And intelligence assets like the Collins Elite claim aliens are actually demons. So, it seems both are one and the same. But if this is top secret information, why is it going mainstream? What will happen when these demonic AI aliens reveal themselves to the masses? Is it possible we are being prepped to accept yet another Hegelian dialectic?

Some Christians claim this idea is a psyop to make us hostile towards Christ’s Army when it arrives in the sky. They say the aliens are actually angels, but because of disinformation, the world’s militaries will try to take them down. This is nonsense. We cannot kill the angels. We cannot harm them at all. So, this theory is irrelevant. Although it will still cause confusion at the beginning of the end, it will become obvious that this is not the case. It seems more likely that we will witness both angels and demons fighting each other above us in the last days.

While the AI demons will be obviously evil, the angels might be deceptive devils too. Ironically, there are also New Agers who claim some aliens are actually angels. The New Age movement began to spread in the US in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the seeds of it were planted a few decades earlier, during the psychedelic counterculture movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which was actually majorly influenced by MKULTRA scientists like Timothy Leary and John C Lilly.

Although both were serious psychologists who worked for the CIA, they held some seemingly unserious beliefs. For example, they claimed enlightened beings from Sirius are guiding humanity towards a global awakening, which will liberate the world from the evil elite and usher in a utopian period of peace called the Age of Aquarius. Lilly also said these enlightened beings are at war with a cosmic AI hive mind that controls the evil elite.

Apparently, they’ve been at war since the fall of the utopian Atlantis, which was created by the Sirians, but corrupted by an interdimensional artificial intelligence the Atlanteans accidentally summoned with the Sirians’ magical knowledge. So, this temporal battle is being fought between black and white magicians to this day. Supposedly, some of these white magicians include ascended masters like the time traveling alchemist saint Germain and even bodhisattvas from Shambhala, the Buddhist version of a previous paradise.

Buddhism played a major role in the New Age movement too. And Lilly and Leary were Buddhists. Interestingly, Lilly and Leary were also friends with Robert Anton Wilson, the author who popularized conspiratorial concepts like the Illuminati and New World Order. He also believed humanity is about evolve and enter the Aquarian Age. He thought this would occur after Eris, the goddess of chaos, liberated humanity from the evil elite, of course. Oddly enough, he associated Eris with Sirius. But Robert Anton Wilson didn’t just make this stuff up either. He was influenced by Jack Parsons and Aleister Crowley, who, unsurprisingly, also had a thing for Sirius.

Parsons and Crowley believed a New Aeon would be ushered in once they summoned the demon goddess Babalon into the world. She is a manifestation of the Divine Feminine and Mother Earth, or Gaia. They claimed she will, you guessed it, liberate humanity, but by destroying the world’s patriarchal social structures like governments and especially religious institutions. Nevertheless, this worship of Sirius is very ancient.

It is actually a Masonic idea that goes back to Egypt, Babylon, and some say Atlantis. In fact, early philosophers said Egypt was a surviving colony of Atlantis. And in antiquity, Sirius was their goddess. She was called Sopdet, Sothis, and Sophia. In the Gnostic religion, she is the serpent that liberated humanity from an evil god’s garden through her wisdom. After she fell from the heavenly realm of Sirius like Lucifer, she became the material world, or so-called matrix, and was forced to share her secret knowledge through a snake.

So, what does all of this have to do with angels? Well, oddly enough, there is a lot of Atlantean symbolism surrounding the Vatican, such as Saint Peter’s obelisk and the Pope’s Dagon hat. And the Vatican is supposedly holding onto a secret prophecy about Mother Mary and Archangel Michael returning to save the world before Christ’s Second Coming. Apparently, this prophecy was revealed during the Miracle of Fatima in 1917, when Mother Mary appeared in the sky over Portugal.

She supposedly caused the sun to dance, which was witnessed by almost 100,000 people. But is it possible this Mother Mary was actually a demon disguised as an angel of light, like what Saint Paul described in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians? Is it possible this was actually Eris and Babalon, or the Whore of Babylon who sits on seven hills as described in the Scriptures? Vatican City is also known as the City of Seven Hills. And it’s named after Vatika, the goddess of the underworld.

So, is she also one of the angelic aliens the New Agers think will save us from the demonic aliens? Ironically, the Vatican owns a telescope called Lucifer, which is being used to look for a cosmic savior. In the Book of Revelation, Saint John describes a War in Heaven. What he witnessed was a mystical vision of a timeless reality, which he could only talk about using symbolic language. However, because of false doctrines, many Christians think it is a description of a singular future event.

So, it seems as if those false doctrines will be used to support a literalized and staged, counterfeit version of this War in Heaven using two factions of aliens: the demonic scapegoats and the angelic controlled opposition. This way, they could even pull off a UFO Rapture if they wanted to. The Rapture is another false doctrine. It was created by a Christian cult, which Crowley was raised in, funny enough. In fact, many “Christian” ideas like Zionism and the reconstruction of Israel’s Third Temple (right before the very end of time) came from fringe Protestant sects that were infiltrated.

Again, the Apocalypse is a timeless reality. Yet, most Christians have been programmed to believe a letter that was written as a warning to ancient Christians will happen all at once within a 7 year period, almost 2000 years later. This idea is called Futurism. And it was created by Masonic Jesuits within the Vatican during the 1500s. They also began spreading Illuminati and New World Order propaganda around this time too. The Vatican did this to get the Reformers off their back, because they claimed the Pope was the Antichrist.

So, the Jesuits basically said, don’t worry about it, the Antichrist isn’t coming for a while, and he’s gonna lead a satanic global government. Who is this really going to deceive though? Isn’t the Antichrist supposed to be subtle? The Jesuits are the real Satanists. They are an old cult of Mithras worshipers wearing a new mask.

Nevertheless, the New Agers also think Archangel Michael is Metatron. So, maybe Metatron and “Mary” will defeat an AI controlled New World Order, which most Christians will believe is the kingdom of the final Antichrist. However, they will be wrong. They will even participate in this war, like the Charismatics who have been taught to fight demons externally. Yet, the Saints of the Orthodox Church, who predate the Protestants and Catholics, told us we should not even look at sky, especially during the end times.

If we do this, we might be fooled by ariel spirits. Instead, we should keep our heads down in prayer, and fight the demons internally. In fact, Father Seraphim Rose believed the Miracle of Fatima was a lying sign and wonder orchestrated by the real Antichrist. The Scriptures say there will be many Antichrists, not just one. The Scriptures also say the end times will be like the Days of Noah, right before the Great Flood, when the pagans worshiped Mother Earth and lived in a hedonistic utopia.

Was this Great Flood what sank Atlantis? Will Atlantis be rebuilt before the actual apocalypse? Well, it turns out rebuilding Atlantis was the goal of the Theosophists, a group of occultists similar to the Thelemites, the esoteric circle Crowley and Parsons belonged to. The Theosophists influenced the New Age movement as well. And like the Thelemites, the Theosophists were also influenced by the Masons, who created the New Atlantis concept to begin with. But again, Freemasonry has ancient roots in Babylon and Egypt, so none of this is actually new.

Funny enough, the Masons began as the Knights Templar, a group of “Christian” Gnostics that acted as a military order for the Catholic Church. Like the Jesuits, the Templars were influenced by ancient Mithraism, taking after King Solomon, who fell away from the Faith before repenting in his later years. Even funnier, the Masons also call themselves the Sons of Cain, taking after Abel’s evil brother in the Book of Genesis. Cain was the first blacksmith and his family built the first city called Enoch. It was named after the same Enoch New Agers believe became the Archangel Michael and Metatron. Little do they know, there’s two Enochs.

And the inhabitants of Enoch’s city were so evil, they had to build their desert empire underground, so they could hide from God. Of course, God could still see what they were doing. But isn’t it interesting that like Shambala, Atlantis is also considered a subterranean kingdom? In fact, some say the city of Enoch was the inspiration behind H. P. Lovecraft’s Nameless City, which was a portal into an interdimensional underworld, where the godlike cosmic horrors called the Great Old Ones reside.

But there are many more examples of Gnostic and New Age “Christians” who hinted at this Atlantean war between black and white magicians. For example, Rudolf Steiner said there was an ongoing battle between the forces of Ahriman and Lucifer. And Edgar Cayce said there was an ongoing battle between the Sons of Baal and the Children of the Law of One.

Cayce was a channeler, a method of divination the Scriptures forbid. His work seems to align with the writings of Don Elkins, another channeler and UFO researcher who was surrounded by intelligence assets during Project Stargate. And unsurprisingly, Steiner was a former Theosophist. In fact, he predicted the vaccine as a manifestation of the satanic machine spirit Ahriman.

But none of this stuff about the demonic AI hive mind and an angelic goddess is new either. It’s an ancient archetype. Think of Apollo and Artemis, Pandora and her Box, or even the hermaphroditic Metatron and their Cube. Conspiracy theories are not new either. There is nothing new under the sun. This fearful and paranoid, intensely intellectual state of being is the ontological opposite of holiness. Like the prophet Isaiah said, do not call everything a conspiracy and do not fear what the pagans fear, because God is the only one we should fear.

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Nick Hinton

@NickHintonn

Oct 18

Suffering with Joy (in the Apocalypse)

In our confusing and superficial post-truth age, many people are desperate for deep wisdom. So, they turn towards things with the appearance of depth, like philosophy, psychology, conspiracy theories, or even the occult. They also turn towards charismatic figures who have gathered large followings by teaching these things. Because they have such large followings, they seem like wise teachers, since social status is seen as credibility.

But is this really how credibility should be seen? To an extent, sure. For accomplishing worldly things, this makes sense. But isn’t deep wisdom supposed to transcend the ways of the world? And if deep wisdom is otherworldly, doesn’t that make the Truth antithetical to earthly establishments and authorities? For this reason, the truly wise teachers were usually the least popular people throughout history. Most of the time, they didn’t even want to be teachers, but were forced to out of necessity. Then, they were ignored, mocked, or killed.

Being truly wise, they wanted to avoid this fate and stay away from the noise of the crowd. They did not want to influence the masses, because they knew true wisdom is a priceless pearl that can only be discovered on an individual journey. And it can only be bought with someone’s whole life. It is grasped through experience, not knowledge. Deep down, everyone knows this to be true. Yet, our desperate times have deceived us. We try to buy wisdom for the price of a coffee. We turn to teachers who only have the appearance of wisdom.

If they were truly wise, they would not want more money, influence, or even admiration. If they were truly wise, admiration would scare them, because it would be a sign that they are teaching lies, for the Truth has always been, and always will be, antithetical to crowd consciousness. The Truth, by its very nature, has to be persecuted. Conspiracy theorists and occultists know this all too well. The best investigators were not given radio shows or business deals. They were imprisoned or murdered.

Because they know this, it seems a clever form of reverse psychology has been used against them. The supposed truth has been somewhat censored. And the talking heads promoting these half-truths seem to endure a little persecution, despite their platforms growing larger and larger. Ironically, many of them also promote Christ, the most persecuted figure in history. However, the Christ they preach is from a false gospel. It is a lie. And this problem has been occurring since the time of the Apostles. Wolves in sheep’s clothing have always been, and always will be, like gatekeepers in the way of Truth.

Even though the true Christ commanded us to love our enemies, these wolves claim we should take up arms against them and go to war. Have they forgotten that vengeance belongs to God? Have they forgotten that in order to even know God, we must be still? Funny enough, Saint Gregory Palamas was persecuted and imprisoned by other supposed Christians when he began teaching hesychasm, the practice of divine stillness. This divine stillness is our only weapon in the real war, which is not external, but takes place within the heart and is fought against ourselves. Until we defeat our own darkness, we will never affect evil on a cosmic scale.

Until we overcome our own fallen nature, we will continue to sin and seed decay in the cosmos, especially if we are starting civil wars. But blessed are the peacemakers. Even evil people make peace with those who love them. But Christians are called to be at peace with everyone, like Christ, who causes the sun to shine on both His friends and enemies.

Like Gregory Palamas, many other Saints were hated by their own churches. But because they had won the war in their hearts, they still loved them. Like Christ, they forgave them and turned the other cheek, for they knew not what they were doing. The Saints did not even defend themselves, but responded with divine silence, like Christ did when He was on trial. Like Christ, they understood the crowd was deluded and possessed by a demonic mob mentality. They understood even the wolves were simply sick sinners who had been tempted into judgment, anger, and heresy. So, the Saints offered their mercy as medicine.

Like the Scriptures say, our battle is not physical. It is not against flesh and blood, or other people, but spiritual forces. And these spirits, which stand guard at the threshold of the otherworldly Truth, are only provoked when we get too close. This is why the Scriptures say we should rejoice when we are suffering, because suffering is a sign we are doing something right. It means we are actually on the narrow path. In fact, God allows the demonic attacks that happen along the narrow path, because the suffering they cause destroys our egos and strips away our attachments, pushing us out of this world and into His heavenly kingdom at an accelerated rate.

So, even the demons are not actually our enemies. They are like angels in disguise. And God sends them to us to free us from the vanity of this life. Saint Isaac the Syrian, who was one of the greatest practitioners of hesychasm to ever live, said our mercy should extend even to the evil spirits, who have no choice but to do Satan’s bidding.

But even Satan is not our number one enemy. It is our own weakness, our willingness to listen to Satan when he tempts us to sin. After all, our own sin was what gave Satan dominion over this world to begin with. Similarly, Saint Nikolaj Velimirović said true Christians have no enemies besides themselves. They only have cruel friends, who cut them loose from earthly comforts and force them to flee into God’s embrace.

This is why the Saints actually worried when they weren’t suffering. Because God disciplines the one He loves, they thought they had been abandoned. If they weren’t sick or poor, or being hunted or slandered, or at least getting laughed at, they feared they were in a state of self-deception. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those with an utterly broken heart. In fact, the only way to practice hesychasm honestly is to be driven inward by this kind of pain. Like Saint Theophan the Recluse said, the only true path to virtue is pain and hard work. He went on to say lightness and ease are a sign of a false path. And anyone who is not struggling is spiritually deluded.

However, God exalts the humble. So, even if God grants us a season of rest, the Saints say we should persecute ourselves by seeking other struggles, like fasting or feeding the poor. And if God grants people to praise us for our piety, we should remember our sins and practice self-accusation, lest we become prideful, causing God to humble us all over again. This is why some Saints, who were called Fools-for-Christ, feigned insanity and only did their good works in secret. This way, they were able to avoid praise and heap insults upon themselves, which is an act of self-denial that earns us many crowns in the kingdom of heaven. Like the Scriptures say, God enjoys using foolishness to frustrate the wisdom of the wise.

This holy foolishness is true wisdom because it transcends human understanding. It is truly spiritual because it transcends physical appearances. The Scriptures say even the Cross was considered foolishness to the philosophers of that age, because without childlike faith, its Mystery cannot be perceived. And childlike faith can only be cultivated by an utterly broken but softened heart. Yet, we usually judge fools by what they seem to be. We would never consider them wise teachers. Similarly, we’d never consider someone who’s always suffering as someone with credibility.

But this is simply a symptom of our own egoism and self-love. We can’t handle the Truth. We don’t actually want real answers. We just want to hear what we want to hear. So, we seek the teachers who tickle our ears. Like Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov said “The world lies in a state of spiritual deception and manifests an affinity for those in the same state. But it despises and rejects those who serve Truth…” He also said “Worldly people and even monks without spiritual discernment are nearly always attracted by humbugs, imposters, hypocrites and those who are in demonic delusion, and they take them for saints and genuine servants of God.”

So, it’s no wonder so many supposed Christians are flocking to the false shepherds that claim we need to revolt and rebuild a good society. But what is good? Christ said there is no one good but the Father in heaven. If God is the source of all that is good, then no good can ever come from us unless God first allows it. If we believe we are good just because we have good morals, then we are no different than the Pharisees. We are not called to be moralistic, but holy, or wholly reliant on God, which is true humility. And this is only possible through divine silence and stillness, or hesychasm, which is antithetical to taking up arms against our apparent enemies. It also seems foolish to those who love themselves.

Yet, this is truly transcendent wisdom. When we practice hesychasm, we crucify the ego, which is what causes us to believe uncomfortable situations are somehow bad. Like Saint Isaac the Syrian said, the truly humble man trusts God’s Providence so unwaveringly, the sky could be falling around him, and he would not say a word. Well, the sky is falling around us, and many are failing this test of faith. As a result, they end up following the Antichrist, who deceives them into believing a Pharisaic society is the answer to all our problems, when really our problem is ourselves, or the way we feel about things and react to them. But we cannot judge God’s Providence. We have to look at the world from a passionless perspective.

Is a good society really so good if it has no spiritual struggles? When we are surrounded by worldly comforts, even if they are religiously decorated, we forget about God and His otherworldly kingdom. True Christians have always endured pagan cultures. And we are about to again, only it will wear a Christian mask. Outward illusions like political theatre, UFOs, and satanic cult psyops have externalized the spiritual warfare within, turning Christianity into an idol. There is no need to understand all these illusory mysteries.

They are doubly deceptive distractions meant to take our eyes off Christ and keep us from attaining virtue. In fact, they promote sin by eliciting feelings of anger or despondency. The Saints, like Nicodemus the Hagiorite, would also say idle curiosity and accumulating too much useless knowledge clouds the mind and deprives it of the force needed to understand what is fruitful. When we hear worldly news, we should respond as if we are already dead. We should respond as if the world does not even exist. But the words of the Saints should give us life.

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Nick Hinton

@NickHintonn

Jul 27

The Postmodern Multiverse

Some scientists say we are approaching a quantum age, where the seemingly unlimited potential of consciousness and computers will finally be unlocked. Apparently, this will allow humanity to invent mind-machine interface technologies that make things like teleportation, antigravity, and even instant materialization of thoughts possible. Basically, science is becoming modern magic.

Nevertheless, quantum physicists claim the perceivable universe is illusory, like an energetic hologram or matrix that can be bent by the mind with enough focused intention. And supposedly, computers can amplify intentions. They also claim this energetic hologram exists within one of many dimensions, and possibly within an even larger system of infinite parallel universes.

These ideas are not new though. Ancient Buddhists, Hindus, Gnostics, and even Babylonians made similar claims. Interestingly, the Jews were enslaved by Babylon throughout history. And it seems they were influenced by Babylonian beliefs when they produced their method of mysticism called Kabbalah, which has its own cosmology that depicts existence as a Tree with branches that reach into other realms. Even more interesting, most influential physicists were of Jewish descent.

Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Richard Feynman, Heinrich Hertz, John von Neumann, Wolfgang Pauli, Robert Oppenheimer, and even Carl Sagan were all Jewish. There are many more. But the point is, quantum physics appears to be a new version of an old religion. Even the scientists at CERN seem to venerate Hindu gods. Perhaps the-powers-that-be plan to dismantle Christianity by uniting humanity through science, which looks like the most logical worldview, at least on paper.

Ironically, the scientific method was invented by Babylonians as well. Then, Aristotle adopted it before it was expanded on by the “Christian” Kabbalist Francis Bacon much later. During the Enlightenment Era, many Kabbalistic texts were “Christianized” by Jesuits within the Catholic Church, leading to the formation of many Esoteric Protestant groups that went on to influence the many conflicting Christian denominations we see today.

In fact, Kabbalah comes from a Hebrew phrase that literally means “to receive” or “accept”, which is the basic principle behind Sola Scriptura, the Protestant doctrine that states the Bible is the only authority on Truth, which sounds harmless, but creates an endless self-referential loop, or circular reasoning. It becomes especially harmful when this circular reasoning is used to back up cultish beliefs conjured up from someone’s own interpretations.

Similarly, the scientific method basically states, if someone conjures up their own theory, and repeatedly gets the same experimental evidence to back it up, that theory must be objectively true. But with their own theory as their only reference point, this creates a feedback loop of biased expectations. A real reference point for determining objective truth must be objective, or outside the observer. And now that quantum physicists have discovered the mind of the observer can bend an experiment, this flaw is even more relevant.

Again, it seems as if everything is an illusion. Ironically, many philosophers claim we live in a post truth age. And this seems to be accurate because people no longer share an objective view on hardly anything: whether or not covid was planned, who the real president is, the shape of the planet, and even how mathematics work. In a sense, people really are living in “parallel universes”.

However, if we go back to Kabbalistic cosmology, we see its parallel universes are found in the Tree’s roots, which look more like a reverse image of the Tree, or a mirror of it, hence the phrase “as above, so below”. In ancient Babylon, black mirrors were used to see into this upside down dimension, a lower realm on the astral plane, so mystics could consult the spirits there. And it seems today we do the same thing using the black mirrors in our pockets, or our cell phones, which seem to be windows into a virtual version of humanity’s dream space.

It should come as no surprise then that many technological advancements came from Kabbalistic texts like the Steganographia and “revelations” received in dreams. However, they have also come from “insights” gained during psychedelic journeys, such as those triggered by DMT, the “waking-dream” drug. In fact, scientists are now training psychedelic journeymen, or psychonauts, to map humanity’s dream space using a new technology called extended-state DMT, which supposedly causes an individual to have a near death experience without actually dying, kind of like the initiation process in most mystery schools.

Apparently, they have already found infinite hallways and other strange landscapes, which are inhabited by mechanical elves and other curious creatures. Oddly enough, even before this technology was available, the supercomputer architect Seymour Cray claimed elves who lived in tunnels under his backyard taught him how to build his otherworldly machines. Other influential figures like Joe Rogan and Alex Jones have compared these inter-dimensional elves to ancient trickster deities, jesters, and even demons.

But perhaps the most notable person to mention them was Terence McKenna, who told us as the Apocalypse begins, the social structures meant to keep the masses sane will dissolve, and things will get weirder and weirder, until they are so weird, it will be impossible for people not to talk about how weird things are. Supposedly, this apocalyptic force that’s causing things to unravel is being amplified as we approach what McKenna called the “transcendental object at the end of time”, which seems to be a quantum artificial intelligence more than anything else.

However, long before McKenna, the native people from the Great Plains of North America called the Sioux had Heyoka,
shamans who experienced “divine madness” and were believed to be a channel for “thunder beings”. Like the Pueblo medicine men, they acted as society’s contrarians and satirists. Apparently, both inspired modern clown imagery and possibly even the Masonic checkerboard. People say this because the spirits they channeled were thought to inhabit a nonsensical and maze-like realm that resembles the inside of some esoteric temples.

So, maybe computers are esoteric temples too. Like McKenna said, the computers of the past were drugs, and the drugs of the future will be computers. And the Heyoka and Pueblo natives channeled spirits using plant medicines. These nature spirits seem to be the same elemental forces “Christian” Kabbalists and other occultists have attempted to bind and manipulate to achieve certain ends, despite the deceptive sorceries the Bible warns us not to involve ourselves with. In fact, New Agers and other naive people have unwittingly become involved with them too, considering the Kabbalah is where some forms of Tarot and astrology came from. But I digress.

In some occult circles, the roots on the Kabbalistic Tree are tunnels that make up an initiatory labyrinth, which leads into the Nightside of Eden, the shadow of the Biblical Garden and a version of the collective unconscious. The internet has also been compared to a labyrinth and an externalized version of the collective unconscious. And it’s the internet’s algorithmic echo chambers that have siphoned people off into “parallel universes”. Without the internet, this postmodern “multiverse” would not be possible. Like a shadow, it doesn’t really exist. It just appears to, because we are looking into a dark reflection all day long.

This is why so many Hollywood movies and television shows associate black cubes with portals into different dimensions. They are references to the Kabbalah’s Cube of Space, which was popularized by Paul Foster Case, a Freemason who founded The Builders of the Adytum, an occult organization that aims to build “a living temple without hands”, or its own version of the Biblical Holy of Holies. However, the Holy of Holies was actually a prototype of the coming New Jerusalem, the heavenly city that’s shaped like a cube and filled with the many mansions Christ said His flock will one day inherit.

So, it seems the Kabbalists who do not believe in Christ are trying to create their own quantum counterfeit of God’s timeless and endless kingdom. Ironically, the black cube actually represents a tesseract, a four dimensional shape that folds space and time. We see this idea demonstrated in the short story And He Built a Crooked House, which describes a tesseract-shaped house built by a “Graduate Architect” that traps its inhabitants in a series of rooms that form a strange loop, which is a system where the beginning and the end are the same, like a Möbius strip, or a mirror reflecting another mirror.

In a sense, it’s like the self-referential logic behind the scientific method or sola scriptura, which can only come up with conclusions that ultimately deconstruct into endless paradoxes, which again, has been demonstrated by quantum physics, where the observer becomes the observed. Like Nietzsche said, when you stare into the abyss, it stares back. Nevertheless, the man who wrote And He Built a Crooked House was Robert A. Heinlein, a naval officer who lived in Laurel Canyon and worked with the Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Heinlein has been called the “dean of science fiction writers” because, like Hubbard, his work went on to influence most of the sci-fi media we consume today. For example, in the movie Hypercube, a group of strangers wake up inside a sterile cube-shaped room they quickly realize is attached to an almost infinite number of other rooms identical in appearance. Eventually, they discover they are also trapped in a temporal loop, or a time prison, as a part of top secret experimental punishment method being used by the government. When one of them manages to escape, she finds herself in a pool of black water on the floor of a massive empty facility.

The Dark Matter series also depicts a giant black-cube-shaped chamber that uses drugs to transfer the consciousness of a scientist into a labyrinth-like corridor full of doors that open up into an endless series of parallel universes. Similarly, in another series called The OA, mechanical black cubes are used to teleport a mad scientist into parallel universes that have been mapped out by studying the brain activity of people who’ve been subjected to mind control experiments that force them to have near death experiences. Funny enough, they are kept in a pool of water where vines have grown around them, resembling a Kabbalistic Tree. But I digress.

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Nick Hinton

@NickHintonn

Jul 20

The Storm

In the movie Donnie Darko, a troubled teenager named Donald is haunted by a demonic rabbit that prophesies the end of the world to him, which will take place on Halloween during the 1988 presidential election. All of this begins after a plane engine falls from the sky and nearly kills Donald, an event that appears to trigger his seemingly schizophrenic visions. Throughout the movie, they inspire him to do destructive things, like flood his high school and burn down the house of a motivational speaker who is hoarding child pornography.

Nevertheless, it’s later revealed that the plane engine actually fell from a time warping wormhole inside a storm cloud, which had trapped Donald’s hometown of Middlesex, Virginia in a temporal loop. Interestingly, many Donald Trump supporters, or followers of QAnon, encourage people to “follow the white rabbit” by researching conspiracy theories about the Satanic Deep State and their child sex trafficking rings. Some of them even believe their president is taking down this cabal using time travel technology, which was passed down to him by his uncle John G. Trump, a scientist who was given Nikola Tesla’s documents after he passed away.

Even more interesting, conspiracy theories about the Satanic Deep State began circulating in the 1980s when works published by Robert Anton Wilson and James Shelby Downard became popular. Both of them claimed they were followed around by a 6-foot-tall rabbit who told them the secrets of the occult, such as the Revelation of the Method concept, or the idea that the cabal hides their plans in movies. However, Wilson and Downard were most famous for exposing the assassination of John F. Kennedy as a Masonic ritual, another event some movies associate with time travel.

Robert Anton Wilson also popularized Discordianism, a system of chaos magic intended to enlighten the masses through contradictory conspiracy theories that invoke cognitive dissonance and cause ego death. Ironically, some say QAnon was created by Discordians, which should come as no surprise considering the movement is centered around the assassination of John F. Kennedy, as well as Donald Trump, who was supposedly elected through meme magic, another system of chaos magic co-created by the so-called Cult of Kek.

Later, other Discordian authors would go on to expose the September 11th terrorist attacks as yet another Masonic ritual, which depending on who you ask, also made use of directed energy weapons and time travel technology, an idea hinted at in shows like Fringe and movies like Back to the Future and Super Mario Bros. They say this because apparently, a hurricane named Erin was approaching New York on September 11th, despite no one remembering it.

Conspiracy theorists claim this is a symptom of the Mandela Effect, or the false memories caused by fractured timelines, which are supposedly created by CERN and other temporal manipulation devices. Ironically, Erin is also the name of a water goddess who plays a harp. And HAARP is the name of a giant radio frequency transmitter facility in Alaska that has been accused of being a massive directed energy weapon that can alter the weather. It has also been accused of causing Déjà vu, which is another big theme in time travel movies. For some reason, it’s also a symptom of long covid. Some say it’s actually from 5G. But I digress.

The time traveling plane motif is quite common too. It is not unique to Donnie Darko. For example, it is the central plot device in Manifest and other television shows, especially Lost, which features its own version of CERN called DHARMA. Oddly enough, there were actually many unfortunate and strange similarities between the fictional disappearance of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 and the real Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which mysteriously went missing over the Indian Ocean in 2014 and has been the subject of endless conspiracy theories ever since.

These conspiracy theories began to spread more rapidly in 2018 when Twitter users claimed creepy voicemails were sent to their phones from the missing flight’s black box during a magnetic storm. The messages said UFOs had abducted the plane and warned of an impending alien apocalypse. Other internet investigators pointed out how the last known location of the plane was near the coordinates a trident shaped spacecraft crashed in the movie Man of Steel.

The Malaysian Airlines logo looks like a trident. And if one reverses the coordinates from the movie, which are 37° S 76° E, one comes up with 37° N 76° W, which is the location of King Neptune‘s Park on Virginia Beach. King Neptune, the Roman god of oceans and storms, holds a trident and his park in Virginia is near the city Donnie Darko took place in. Lost was also filmed near Malaysia in Hawaii, which was supposedly subject to attacks by directed energy weapons in August 2023. Around the same time, alternative news outlets claimed they had finally obtained video evidence from satellites that proved Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 really was forced into a wormhole by three advanced alien aircraft.

Coincidentally, in 2020, a former Israeli space security chief said aliens exist, and they even have a “galactic federation” that Trump knows about. Some Trump supporters believe their president will help bring about full UFO disclosure. Again, they also believe he will take down the Satanic Deep State, who has been hiding this information, when a seemingly prophetic warning from QAnon comes to fruition. They say “The Storm is Coming.” So, what is this Storm? Many QAnon followers claim there will soon be a blackout, which will be necessary to enact martial law, so the military can arrest and execute the cabal who has enslaved America.

However, there are others who believe this blackout will coincide with a Russian cyberattack or even a Catholic prophecy about a period of darkness when shapeshifting demons will plague the planet. Maybe they will look like aliens. Some would see them as saviors while others would scream Blue Beam! Nevertheless, if and when something like this happens, it might invoke cognitive dissonance among the masses who believe contradictory conspiracy theories, causing civil unrest and even civil war, similar to what happened in the movie Leave the World. It seemed as if this event was going to happen during the overhyped X Eclipse, when CERN was reactivated and trillions of cicadas were supposed to awaken from hibernation, but nothing at all appeared to happen.

Perhaps what really happened was more symbolic and spiritual than literal and physical. CERN has been compared to the Biblical bottomless pit, which releases an Antichrist called Apollyon at the end of time. Trump, who has a shrine to Apollo in his 66th floor penthouse suite, was supposedly almost assassinated in Butler, Pennsylvania, a city near the epicenter of the X Eclipse, which radicalized his supporters. Perhaps these radicals are like sleeper cells, or cicadas. Funny enough, the Bible says when the bottomless pit opens, Apollyon is followed by an army of demons that resemble locusts, insects that look like cicadas. And Cicada 3301 is a cultish hacker group that may have had a hand in creating QAnon.

After Trump survived, the transhumanist Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk endorsed him. But Christians became divided over whether or not he was divinely protected or revealed as the beast from the bottomless pit that miraculously survives a head wound in chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation. Then, Trump went on to announce his vice president pick, J. D. Vance, a nominal Catholic backed by Peter Thiel, another transhumanist who is friends with Elon Musk and founded a company that creates behavior predicting algorithms for the NSA.

Basically, Peter Thiel invested in the technology that could make the Thought Police from Minority Report a reality. Appropriately, Trump supporters began saying anyone who thinks their president’s assassination was staged should be persecuted. Chillingly, just a few months prior, a man set himself on fire outside of the courthouse the Trump trial was held in after leaving behind a manifesto that stated Trump is a fascist dictator who will come to power once the world economy crashes, which will be caused by the collapse of the trillion dollar global Ponzi scheme that is cryptocurrency.

Peter Thiel is also heavily invested in cryptocurrency. In fact, he invested in a blockchain technology owned by the Tlon Corporation, a company that was named after a Jorge Luis Borges book that is about a secret society called the Illuminati, who creates their own universe by writing a metafiction, which is another form of chaos magic promoted by Discordians. However, they like to call these stories hypersigils. To describe their magical methods, they also like to use the phrase reality hacking. But I digress.

Leading up to CERN’s reactivation during the X Eclipse, was also the launch of CERN’s White Rabbit Collaboration. It was announced on March 22, the same day the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall in Russia occurred. When this happened, conspiracy theorists claimed the footage of the tragedy was strikingly similar to the opening scene of Tenet, a movie about time traveling assassins. At this time, NASA also announced they were sending a time capsule to the Moon. Similar to Tenet, In the Shadow of the Moon is a movie about a time traveler who attempts to stop a group of terrorists from starting a civil war in 2024.

John McAfee, the self-proclaimed mad man and software inventor who helped create hacker counterculture, predicted a civil war as well. He also promoted the QAnon movement and claimed to know a time a traveler from Russia. Apparently, they told him that Bitcoin would go to a million dollars and Biden would drop out of the presidential election once he was replaced with a wildcard. Ironically, Russians believe their president, Vladimir Putin, will take down the Satanic Deep State too.

Apparently, Putin is already engaged in a Holy War against them. And Putin seems to get along with Trump. So, maybe they are on the same team. Or maybe the liberals are right and QAnon really is a counterintelligence group connected to the Kremlin, similar to Operation Trust, which was a fake anti-Bolshevik resistance organization made up of sleeper cells and front companies that intended to target and track real revolutionaries in the Soviet Union during the early 1920s. Again, everything is contradictory but can be both true and false at the same time in this postmodern world.

So, are we actually caught in the middle of a Time War being fought between factions of powerful politicians? Or are we literally living in a movie, where apocalyptic events are staged and scripted for our entertainment? This is what some followers of QAnon actually believe. Similar to the Discordians, they claim in order to enlighten the masses, the world stage has to be exposed for what it is by making things so absurd and obviously fake, they are impossible not to question. Like the light that falls from the sky in The Truman Show, the props must reveal themselves. They tell people to grab some popcorn and enjoy the show. They say it will be Biblical. But even The Truman Show was really just a Gnostic take on a paranoid man living in a surveillance state.

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Nick Hinton

@NickHintonn

Jul 12

Ecumenism in the End Times

While the Greek Orthodox and those associated with Constantinople continue to fall further away from the faith in a more obvious way, the Russians may be doing the same in a more subtle way. Many Orthodox Christians are already aware of the dangerous and heretical ecumenist movement. But is it possible there are actually two ecumenist movements forming? One that’s blatant, and one that’s controlled opposition?

It seems left-wing Orthodox are becoming lukewarm. But it also seems apocalyptic propaganda is radicalizing right-wing Orthodox into a militant mindset that is truly anti-Christian. Perhaps this extremist attitude will cause religious uprisings around the world. Maybe Orthodox Christians will begin fighting liberals alongside Muslims,
conservative Protestants, and so-called Truthers for a seemingly good cause, but unwittingly help establish a fascist theocracy in the process. It would look like a righteous society, however, only on its surface.

The Book of Proverbs tells us there is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death. Hitler radicalized conspiracy minded Protestants and Orthodox Christians against the Jews to establish a utopian Third Reich free from usury and cultural degeneracy, and it seems Putin and Islamic world leaders will do something similar by going to war with the Jewish bankers, the Satanic Deep State, and the transhumanist globalists, all of which make up the so-called Illuminati and New World Order. They are a version of the Antichrist, but it seems they are not the Antichrist’s final incarnation. The Illuminati and New World Order seem to be more like a scapegoat, or a fake Antichrist the real false savior will “save” us from.

Interestingly, there’s even a former right-wing bishop from Texas named Joseph Strickland who’s been appealing to conspiracy minded Catholics who are fed up with Pope Francis. Strickland supports Trump, who seems to be a candidate for the Jewish messiah, the figure that will help usher in the end times after solving the world’s political problems by returning all the Jews back home to Israel. Trump has also declared war on the Satanic Deep State and he seems to get along with Putin. So, will anti-globalist conspiracy theorists and right-wing religious extremists unwittingly help usher in the real Antichrist? After all, he’s supposed to appear Christian.

Oddly enough, the modern Saint and wonderworker Elder Ephraim of Arizona prophesied that only four Paschas after his repose, there would be an economic collapse, divisions within the Orthodox Church, and a Great War. He passed away in 2019. And Israel is already pulling the world into a globalized conflict as they prepare a temple for their messiah. However, Elder Ephraim also said “Russia won't collapse. On the contrary, it will strengthen and play the leading part in saving Orthodoxy on Earth”.

Elder Joseph of Vatopedi, who performed miracles even after his death, said something similar. He claimed “The Russians in a short time will conquer Ukraine and they will be welcomed with great enthusiasm. Turkey will allow the American planes and warships to cross Bosphorus and to attack Russia. This is when the countdown will start for the existence of Turkey. Over the sky of Ukraine and the North Pole for the first time there will be a war between Russian and American air forces. The Russians will easily overpower the Americans!”

During an interview conducted in 2001, Elder Joseph of Vatopedi elaborated further. He said “Things are now in such a state of deterioration -- a condition that is common throughout the entire world, at the present time. And it is subsequent to this specific condition, this precise limit, that the wrath of God will begin. We have reached this extreme. And it will now happen that what the Lord, in His mercy, formerly endured, He will now, acting in accordance with His righteousness, chastise, because the time has now come for that.

There will be a war, and wars, and we will experience great difficulties. World power has now been seized by the Jews, and their goal is to annihilate Christianity. The wrath of God will be such that all those secret foes who are bringing about this state of affairs will be destroyed themselves. It is for this purpose, in particular, that the wrath of the Lord is being sent down: in order to destroy them, in one way or another.

But this should not unduly frighten us, because we must always have hope in God. Because thousands, millions of martyrs, including our New Martyrs, suffered in exactly the same way, and we must be prepared for this and not be unduly frightened. There must be patience, prayer and hope in Divine providence, on out part. Let us pray for the renaissance of our Christianity after this war, after everything that awaits us, in order that the Lord might truly give us the strength to restore all this. But this evil will have to be endured.”

After being asked how soon these things will happen, he said “Everything has now begun; now, there will be a great explosion. Following this, there will be rebirth. …many [icons] are streaming myrrh. The word is that the Saviour is weeping, and the Mother of God is weeping, and the icons weep.

…This is the beginning of these events, troublesome events, military ones... The movers and shakers of this evil are the Jews. They are being prompted to do this by the devil, in order to destroy the seed of Orthodoxy in Greece and in Russia. This will be their chief obstacle to world domination. And they nevertheless will compel the Turks to come here, to Greece, in order to begin their work; and Greece, although she has a government, does not, in reality, have a government, as such. She lacks strength, and the Turks will come here. This will be the moment when Russia, too, will move her forces, in order to repel the Turks.

Events will develop thus: when Russia goes to Greece's aid, the Americans and NATO will attempt to prevent this, in order that there might be no union, no merger, between two Orthodox nations. They will also arouse other powers, such as the Japanese and others. There will be great slaughter upon the territory of the former Byzantine Empire. Of those who perish, there will be some 600 million, alone. The Vatican will also participate greatly in all this, in order to impede the growing role of Orthodoxy and prevent such unification. Thus will Divine providence find its fulfillment.”

He went on to say “God will permit the destruction of all those who are sowing these temptations, pornography and drug addiction. And the Lord will so blind their minds that they will destroy one another without receiving any satisfaction therefrom. The Lord will permit this precisely in order to bring about a great purging. As concerns Putin, that time will not last long, and there will be an immediate war, and he will not be around for long. But, following this extensive cleansing, there will be a great renaissance of Orthodoxy, not only in Russia, but throughout the entire world; such a great surge of Orthodoxy. The Lord will extend His blessing, His Grace, just as had been the case in the first few centuries. Then, when people went to the Lord with an open heart...

This will last for 3 - 4 decades, then the dictatorship of the antichrist will quickly set in. These are the terrible events that we must endure; let them not frighten us, because the Lord will shelter His own. Yes, we will surely experience difficulties, hunger, and even persecution and much else, but the Lord will not abandon His own. And those who are placed in positions of authority should compel their subjects to be with the Lord, the more; to abide in prayer, the more; and the Lord will shelter His own. The condition that will prevail following the cleansing will be one of a great renaissance.

We, as pastors, must restrain as many people from sinning as we are able, in order that the Grace of God might not depart from us all. In order that we might be as close as possible to God, to repentance and to prayer... Then the Lord will always be with us, regardless of how difficult might be the circumstances. The Lord will not abandon us. We need to restrain ourselves and keep and hold our people.”

So, it seems sometime soon, after Ukraine is reclaimed by Putin in World War III, Holy Russia will experience a spiritual rebirth, and the whole earth will experience an Orthodox revival. Saint John of San Francisco told us the end of time would not come until the whole earth has heard the gospel in an Orthodox context. And both of these predictions seem to line up with the many more apocalyptic prophecies given by other modern Elders and Saints, such as when Jonah of Odessa said:

“People from outside [Ukraine] will confuse us and make us fight each other. We will fight against our Russian brothers. Oh what a war will that be… just in a matter of days the Russian army will get to Kiev. And there will be such a joy for the Ukrainians who will impatiently wait for the Russian army. Because in this way all the political and church issues of Ukraine will be resolved!”

Saint Lawrence of Chernigov said “When a little freedom appears [after the fall of Communism], when the churches and monasteries are being opened and restored, then all false teaching will come out, and the demons and secret atheists (Catholics, Uniates, Ukrainian self-ordained, and others) will fiercely take up arms against the Orthodox Russian Church, its unity and its conciliar nature. A godless authority will support these heretics, and therefore they will take churches away from the Orthodox and slaughter the faithful.

Then the Metropolitan of Kiev (not worthy of the name) together with his like-minded hierarchs and priests will strongly shake the Russian Church. The whole world will be amazed at his lawlessness and will be frightened. He himself will go off into eternal perdition, like Judas. But all these slanders of the evil one and false teachings will disappear in Russia, and there will be One Orthodox Russian Church.”

In another example, Elder Barnabas of the Gethsemane Skete said “Persecutions against the faith will constantly increase. There will be unheard-of grief and darkness, and almost all the churches will be closed. But when it will seem to people that it is impossible to endure any longer, then deliverance will come. There will be a flowering. Churches will even begin to be built. But this will be a flowering before the end”.

According to a prophecy found in a collection of manuscripts written by Nikolay Motovilov, Russia will be the epicenter of a worldwide call to repentance. Before passing away in 1879, Nikolay Motovilov lived an interesting life. An apparition of Mother Mary saved him from suicide, he was imprisoned by Freemasons, and his increasingly otherworldly behavior caused secular people to think he was mentally ill.

Nikolay Motovilov was a wealthy businessman who became a Fool-for-Christ after being discipled by an ascetic monk and living Saint, Seraphim of Sarov, who taught him that the true purpose of life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. This famous conversation from his manuscripts was eventually published for the whole world to read. However, what Saint Seraphim of Sarov prophesied to Nikolay Motovilov about Russia’s future, specifically in the villages of Sarov and Diveyevo, never was. It was seemingly censored until only recently.

Apparently, Saint Seraphim of Sarov said he would come back to life during the apocalypse and begin to preach again, leading to the salvation of many souls across the globe. Like Lazarus and the legendary Holy Youths, the Seven Sleepers from Ephesus, he would awake from the grave with a message. He told Nikolay Motovilov:

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Nick Hinton

@NickHintonn

Jul 9

Noetic Prayer & Worldly Orthodoxy

Just as the Saints prophesied, a global Orthodox revival is taking place before the end times. However, because this revival is also taking place during the Digital Age, a confusing culture of online evangelism, or Cyberdoxy, has formed around it too, for better or worse. Without Cyberdoxy, a global Orthodox revival would not be possible. So, it is a good thing that the internet has exposed so many people to previously inaccessible information. But it is a bad thing that the internet has also exposed people to too much information too quickly.

Because the internet has replaced the role of the wise elder or teacher, many converts have become puffed up with knowledge, or intellectually prideful. This is understandable though. The internet has replaced real life relationships in general. But this has severed people from reality and made them more hostile toward each other, a kind of behavior the internet actually reinforces by rewarding it with views, likes, and even monetization. So, a lot of people’s first impression of Orthodoxy is some heated debate where a Protestant or leftist is humiliated, or some supposed priest is just saying something crazy.

It’s no secret that the algorithm works against us by promoting divisive content. It’s also no secret that social engineering scientists use echo chambers and limited hangouts to reshape and radicalize our beliefs. Heated debates have become trendy, and while they have led some to the Truth, it has come with the cost of fostering legalistic and sectarian attitudes, which are truly Pharisaic, or Antichristic, in nature. We are called to be meek and merciful, not push people away or tempt them into anger by calling them heretics. Even if our theology is correct, it is not what saves us.

Truly, these debates are not hard to do because the logic of the world is fundamentally flawed. There is no reason to take pride in untangling it. It’s like saying the sky is blue to a blind person and being applauded for it. Saint Paisios told us we will not help anyone by calling them the Antichrist. We must not be fanatical! Even the heretics have a God who cares for them. Although these debates are temptingly hilarious, that’s the point. They say laughter is contagious. And this infectious spirit is a dangerous one that appeals to our fallen nature.

The Saints warned us about this “spirit of correctness” and told us those who follow the intellect, and not the heart, will follow the Antichrist. Like Father Seraphim Rose said, it is possible to be outwardly Orthodox, while at the same time not being inwardly Christian. He also said “the 'super-Orthodox' of today can very easily become the prey of Antichrist.” Perhaps he was referring to some Ortho Bros, because, even worse, it seems memetic warfare has been used to normalize extremism and debauchery within Orthodoxy’s online community. Hateful ideologies and vulgar jokes have become trendy among converts as well. And because of this, even their parishes and priests are being desensitized. After all, they are only human.

Perhaps this double-edged sword is also a honeypot, or a way for intelligence agencies to incriminate and track potential religious revolutionaries. Nevertheless, it would appear there is actually an agenda to destabilize, discredit, and compromise this global Orthodox revival with an infiltrated and hijacked Cyberdoxy. Truly, this is the work of the Enemy, who is always trying to get ahead of Divine Providence by putting stumbling blocks in front of the faithful. Despite all of these glaringly obvious traps and errors, people continue to call absurd behavior “based” and so it is imitated by impressionable minds.

This too is understandable though, at least somewhat. Because the principalities and powers who orchestrate world events are Hegelians, the political pendulum is swinging again and the people have been forced to react to the absurd behavior of their perceived enemies. But you don’t fight fire with more fire. Likewise, you don’t fight absurdity with more absurdity. Even though the world seems more hellish than ever before, this is partially another product of the Digital Age, where everything is exaggerated and negativity is amplified.

The world has always been hellish for true Christians. There is no political solution. We are not called to fight in culture wars and save the world. In fact, we are called to do the opposite. We are told to reject the world by fighting the flesh and saving our own souls. Saint Paul instructed us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. On Judgment Day, you will be accountable for your sins and no one else’s. However, the world is more hellish in other ways. Because the Digital Age has isolated people and severed real meaning from their lives, many of them have projected this void onto the internet and its political landscape.

However, we don’t always feel the weight of this isolation because we have been given the illusion of connection. Plus, the instant gratification and gluttonous comfort the Digital Age has provided us with have numbed us to it. Similar to the boiling frog parable, this toxic combination has slowly created a luxurious kind of hell, one where life is painful because it has actually become too easy. Like animals in a zoo, we’ve become sick and soft from our artificial environment. This is because real meaning comes from real suffering. And this lack of suffering has led to a lack of new Saints, which the Church needs now more than ever before. Not arrogant apologists.

It’s said suffering creates Saints. Like Saint John Climacus explained, a person “…must leap into the fire, if they really expect the celestial fire to dwell in them”. The simplest way to become a Saint is through martyrdom, or self-sacrifice and persecution for the faith. But the only other way to become a Saint is through hesychasm, or unceasing prayer, which is a contemplative practice that requires a degree of constant suffering, or pain of heart. Pain of heart draws us closer to God and makes us more dependent on Him alone. It leads to genuine repentance and a sincere longing for His otherworldly Kingdom.

For this reason, some say the first step towards sainthood is becoming a poet, which requires a lot of deep pain, like what King David went through when he wrote the Psalms. In them, he told us the most pleasing sacrifice to God is a broken and contrite heart. It’s the only thing we can offer Him that He did not already give us. And like Saint Paisios said “To pray with the heart, we must hurt.” And if we have no problems of our own “We should make the other’s pain our own! We must love the other, must hurt for him, so that we can pray for him.”

Unceasing prayer can even cause physical pain in the forehead, chest, and shoulders, as if the unpleasant sensation were spreading out in the Sign of the Cross. Nevertheless, it is an activity that must be cultivated and begged for. It requires effort, but it is also a gift of Grace that God gives us only when we keep knocking and asking. To begin this process, we simply repeat the Jesus Prayer, which is “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” At first this is done out loud, then silently, and finally mystically, or without inner dialogue.

The Prayer is one of the shortest but most profound utterances one can make. It is worship, because it acknowledges Christ as Lord. It is repentant because it acknowledges one’s sins. And it is humble because it requests the gift of Grace, or God’s Mercy. In order to say the Prayer at all times, we must defeat our distractions by being vigilant and watchful. This means we constantly remember our imminent death and always remain mindful of God’s presence in us. We also use the Prayer to combat the frustrations and temptations in our daily lives. And by doing this, we can give thanks and rejoice in all things, because each battle becomes an opportunity to turn to Christ and sanctify ourselves.

Again, this is a pain driven process. And this pain also requires a hatred and anger towards one’s own sins. These emotions are normal and useful if applied correctly. This emotional energy is supposed to be channeled into the Prayer, not culture wars or politics. Only Christ can conquer Satan and sin and save the world. In fact, He already did. So, we do not battle these things head on with our own strength, lest we stick our hand into a supernaturally strong Chinese finger trap. It is true what they say, that what we resist persists, and where attention goes, energy flows.

So, we fight Satan by ignoring him and turning to God, the One who goes before you and does the impossible. When we try to white knuckle our sins, we succumb to self-reliance and pride. Even worse, if and when we finally fail to maintain self-control, we can fall into despair, and give up the race altogether. If you sin, you should not be surprised. After all, you are a sinner. But you have been forgiven, and have only been instructed to intend to change the course of your life by getting up and continuing to run each time you fall. The Saints say we won’t be judged so much for our sins, but our repentant hearts and the direction we were headed. When John the Baptist knew the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, he simply said repent! He did not ask us why we sinned or how much we sinned. He didn’t even say stop sinning! He told us to turn to God.

Again, we do not get wrapped up in Satan’s schemes, we stand against them by putting on the Armor of God. This includes the Belt of Truth, the Breastplate of Righteousness, the Shield of Faith, the Helmet of Salvation, the Shoes of the Gospel of Peace, and the Sword of the Spirit. The first two represent protection against lies and accusations. The third represents having the Mind of Christ. And the last two represent spreading the Good News and speaking the Word of God. Notice how the armor is all defensive. The sword isn’t a weapon used for physical violence. Christ didn’t attack Satan in the wilderness. He simply quoted the Holy Scriptures, which is a form of contemplative prayer.

When we read Holy Scriptures intentionally, we memorize them effortlessly, because God writes His Word on the tablets of our hearts. Kind David showed us how to do this when he meditated on God’s precepts. And like Saint Mark the Ascetic said, “If a man tries to overcome temptations without prayer and patient endurance, he will become more entangled in them instead of driving them away.” So, don’t rely on yourself. Cry out to Christ! Admitting we can’t do it on our own is true childlike humility, which according to the Saints, is the mother of all virtues. Like Saint John Climacus said “Humility is the only virtue that no devil can imitate. If pride made demons out of angels, there is no doubt, that humility could make angels out of demons.”

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