Part Two: Hone your discernment
When dealing with spirit, discernment proves vital. You must be able to determine whether an entity is positive or a negative. I believe many organized religions discourage their flocks from delving into the paranormal because they don’t have faith in their parishioners’ abilities to sense good from evil.
It takes time and personal awareness to develop this skill. Here are a few tips:
- Monitor how you feel and the emotions you project.
- Be aware of any sudden emotional changes; this can be an indication of an energy you have just come into contact with. Say you suddenly feel fearful, when you’ve been just fine and you don’t know what’s changed around you. Or you become giddy. Chances are you are picking up that spirit’s energy.
- Keep your fear in check. The best way I know to do this is by asking the Great I Am for divine protection against all lower, negative entities. Knowing the Lord watches over me, gives me strength.
How to differentiate positive versus evil spirits.
Take cues from emotions or sensations you experience during a paranormal event.
Lower, negative entities Positive, higher entities
Selfish Giving
Angry Joyous
Destructive Affirming
Hateful Loving
Condescending Sympathetic
Petty Forgiving
Galations 5:22 illustrates my point: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
A devout Christian friend of mine possesses a great prophetic gift. Many times, she’ll fight these blessings by questioning their divine nature. She does this because she fears the Devil is putting notions in her mind. This keeps her from trusting her senses, making it difficult to evaluate messages she receives based on positive attributes.
As Jesus said in the Bible, Satan will not stand against himself and a house divided cannot stand. Therefore, blessings and positivity cannot be generated by negative energies.
The Almighty gives you power over visiting spirits.
If you think you’ll have a paranormal experience, ask the Supreme Being to wrap divine light and love around you. Then, during your encounter, if you sense love and positivity, trust that it’s benevolent. However, if you feel anger, negativity, hatred—banish it from you with the Lord’s help. If you merely become uncomfortable with the energy, thank it for visiting and firmly tell it goodbye.
By paying attention, using discernment and keeping yourself safe, you can get the most out of spirit encounters.
I’d love to hear how you discern good from evil and how you protect yourself. Come, join the conversation!
You’ve tackled a very difficult topic, Kathleen, but I think that your suggestion to take cues from emotions and/or sensations that one experiences during a paranormal investigation is key to understanding what type of spirit or entity one is confronting. I might also add that “like attracts like.” In other words, if one is feeling negative, one is liable to attract negativity and thus, it may not be wise to embark on a paranormal investigation in said state. Likewise, a positive attitude may draw out more positive entities or, at the very least, entities that are neither entirely negative nor entirely positive (I feel that in the spirit world, like in the material world, the majority fall somewhere between positive and negative).
On a side note, in one of his written works, Barry Fitzgerald (of GHI) postulates that negative energies abhor UV light and will immediately depart from, or not enter, an area where UV light is present. I have not tested this theory (and hope I will never have to), but it may not be a bad idea to have a UV flashlight in one’s equipment bag when embarking on a paranormal investigation.
Thank you, Sharon. I agree with you 100% about “like attracts like.” I hadn’t heard about the UV flashlights…very interesting. Thanks for the tip!
Hi Kathy,
Thank you for your blogs; I value the wisdom in them. Just wanted to add something from my experience earlier this year with what felt like a negative visitation in my apartment. When it happened again a week later, I had the opportunity to practice your suggestion of thanking it for visiting & telling it goodbye. (It wasn’t a specific male or female type of presence & I didn’t see it, but what I felt was the sudden strong feeling of an unfamiliar, negative presence.) A couple minutes after saying it I calmed down, then talked to my landlady who lives next door & is a dear friend. She’s a devout Christian who has some knowledge about the spirit world. She said this century-old place has had numerous owners & perhaps I had been visited by the spirit of one who had unresolved issues in its physical life that happened here. She suggested that if it happens again to tell the spirit that I’ll pray for it, because sometimes that’s all they want to hear. Not wanting to experience another negative visitation, I prayed that night using both her and your suggestions. I asked God to watch over that soul & to let it know that it no longer needs to come here; and I asked for God’s protection from any more negative visitations – that only positive entities, including those God sends to help me – be allowed in. Since then, I’m learning to completely trust God in His protection. The creepy feeling from those 2 visits occasionally resurfaced in the following 3 months, but I quickly remembered God’s protection and that it’s my mind bringing up those experiences again. (It was my first supernatural experience of the negative kind & my mind was trying to process it.) The more we think about something the more power we give it, so when my mind brought it up again I learned to say to myself, “Trust God – it’s taken care of.” This is the first time I’m sharing this in a way that strangers can read it too & I’m a little apprehensive about it, but thought I’d share the suggestion about praying for an unfamiliar soul whose energy you may encounter.
Thank you for being courageous enough to share your story, as I believe it will help others. I like the idea of telling an unwelcome spirit that you will pray for it, as that is another way of saying to the spirit, “You are cared about.” The more positivity we can put out there, the better our world and the spirit world will become. I appreciate your well-thought out response, Mark. Take care.
This article is a home run, pure and smilpe!
I believe that spirit discernment is a gift from God that is a result of reading His word and serving Him. It comes naturally with help from the Holy Spirit. I believe this because it says so in the Bible and through experience.
Thank you for visiting my site and taking the time to comment, Wanda. I agree with you. The Holy Spirit provides us with valuable guidance. Have a wonderful day.