Isn’t that the truth!!??

I came upon an extensive list of spiritual/religious books available online….free….

You can’t beat free….

And so I went exploring!!  One of the sites had the writings of SRI SWAMI SIVANANDA. I came across his writing entitled The Life and Teaching of Lord Jesus.  In it he gives his take on the meaning of Christmas, the events of the life of Jesus as told in the Gospels, the meaning of the Beatitudes and the parables Jesus told.  I took note of the following parable....and his explanation.  

Parable of the Unclean Spirit
The evil spirit leaves the house. It wanders through waterless regions. It finds no rest anywhere. It return to the house again. In the meantime, the house had been swept clean! But, what
does the evil spirit do? It goes out and brings seven other kindred spirits with it, to dwell in the house. Imagine the state of the house then! Is it not worse than it was before? Even so:
The evil nature of man temporarily leaves him some times. It is starved out; association with the wise, precepts of sages, etc., prevent the evil from manifesting itself. These forces of the divine sweep the house (the heart of man) clean of all dirt and impurity. This does not last long, however!
The evil nature returns. And, how? Often, sevenfold.

O man, beware! Be eternally vigilant. Look out for the signs of the return of old evil nature. Nip it in the bud. You will then be safe.

I love it when I find different sources....far flung and varied that say the same thing...perhaps a bit obliquely but never the less the gist is the same. 

When I read this parable I thought of Eckhart's teachings on the pain body.

The pain-body is semiautonomous energy-form that lives within most human beings, an entity made up of emotion. It has its own primitive intelligence, not unlike a cunning animal, and its intelligence is directed primarily at survival.

Like all life-forms, it periodically needs to feed - to take in new energy - and the food it requires to replenish itself consists of energy that is compatible with its own, which is to say, energy that vibrates at a similar frequency.

Any emotionally painful experience can be used as food by the pain-body. That's why it thrives on negative thinking as well as drama in relationships. The pain-body is an addiction to unhappiness.
It may be shocking when you realize for the first time that there is something within you that periodically seeks emotional negativity, seeks unhappiness. You need even more awareness to see it in yourself than to recognize it in another person.

Once the unhappiness has taken you over, not only do you not want an end to it, but you want to make others just as miserable as you are in order to feed on their negative emotional reactions.
In most people, the pain-body has a dormant and an active stage. When it is dormant, you easily forget that you carry a heavy dark cloud or a dormant volcano inside you, depending on the energy field of your particular pain-body.

How long it remains dormant varies from person to person: A few weeks is the most common, but it can be a few days or months. In rare cases the pain-body can lie in hibernation for years before it gets triggered by some event.
- A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

 

Truth is timeless...truth is truth whether we find it in the Holy Bible, The Power of Now...or the writings of an Indian swami named Sivandana.  More on that tomorrow….