by Donna Eden
When entering deeply into another’s being, you sometimes open to forces you never invited, wanted, or expected. Jim was deeply distressed when he scheduled an appointment with me. He inexplicably kept losing control of his car. His experience was that someone invisible was in the car struggling with him for control of the steering wheel and trying to make the car go off the road. He feared for his life, so much so that he had left the area, gone to Alaska, and had lived peacefully for a year on a fishing boat. When he returned to Oregon, however, the “spirit” was in his life again, and he wanted me to help him get rid of it.
We agreed to work together. I felt I could help him, although I didn’t really believe he was dealing with an “evil spirit.” Psychological explanations for his account seemed far more probable, and besides, I am a person who had and has a very hard time recognizing evil. I can be in denial even when I am faced with direct experiences of its presence.
Donna Eden
"He feared for his life, so much so that he had left the area, gone to Alaska, and had lived peacefully for a year on a fishing boat."
At the time, my office was in my home. After Jim lay down on my table, the session quickly became very strange. When I went to touch him, it seemed that my hands couldn’t get any closer than about four inches from his body. There was some kind of barrier around him. I would try to touch him, but it was as if an invisible force kept me from bringing my hands any closer. I heard words from within that urged caution, but I disregarded them. This was someone who had come to me for help. I found the warning to be a distraction, and I didn’t let it in. Jim was lying there with his eyes shut, not knowing what I was going through.
I finally gathered my will and forced my hands through the barrier. When I did, I could feel his skin, and I could feel that his body was solid. But I couldn’t make an energetic connection. The experience had an ominous feel. I was pushing against something I didn’t understand, and I soon started to feel vaguely ill. Finally, I said, “Jim, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’ve been working on you for forty-five minutes, and I still can’t connect with your energy. I could stop now and set up another time for you to come back.” He said, “Forty-five minutes! Didn’t I just come in?” But then to his surprise he saw the clock, and he said it seemed as if he had been drugged. But he agreed to end the session, and he left.
The whole room felt thick and gloomy. I found my husband, David, and told him I was going for a bike ride. He offered to go along with me. It was early evening. I noticed that when I pedaled more slowly, I began to have the sensation of something hitting the back of my sacrum. It was a thud that came with a rhythm that hit hard and seemed to be getting worse. If I rode fast, it wasn’t so bad, but when I slowed down, it became awful.
David and I stopped at a cafe for a cup of tea, and I was in a very strange space. A friend came over to talk with us, and I couldn’t even hear her. I went home to sleep and had a terrible, terrible night. Looking back, it felt like I was possessed, though I wasn’t thinking in those terms at the time. It was as if something had me in its grip.
"There was some kind of barrier around him. I would try to touch him, but it was as if an invisible force kept me from bringing my hands any closer."
The strange and very unpleasant pounding continued. After a sleepless night, I got up early, not knowing what to do. I had clients to see, but I felt I couldn’t work on anybody. David suggested that I ask my guides for help. I canceled my clients, rode my bike to the park, lay down on the grass, and asked my guides what was happening to me.
"The experience had an ominous feel. I was pushing against something I didn’t understand, and I soon started to feel vaguely ill."
What I heard was that by breaking through Jim’s energy barrier, I had taken on the spirit that had been in him. It had left him completely and was now in me. Evil spirits were a foreign concept to me, but I couldn’t deny that something real and painful seemed to be slamming against my sacrum. It was difficult to ride home. When I did get home, David was there, and I told him what was happening. He didn’t miss a beat. He said, “Well, we’ll have to exorcise it.” I lay on the bed, and David began to speak. He has had some experience with both hypnosis and exorcism, and he knows something about the difference between the two. Eventually, I saw a grayish dark energy, with the faintest outline of a figure, lift up out of me. I fell asleep.
When I awoke, I was fine, but David was upset. His first question, after receiving assurance that I was okay, was “Where did it go?” I said, “Straight up, through the ceiling.” Above our bedroom was an attic where David had his computer. He was deep in the throes of writing his first book, Personal Mythology. He discovered that the file he had been working on that morning before the exorcism suddenly could not be read by his machine. Later, technicians would be able to find only “garbage” in the file. The file contained two chapters from his book that atypically had not yet been backed up. They represented months of work. If the “spirit” was responsible for erasing them, it certainly knew where to strike.
When I heard from Jim, he was jubilant. His experiences of being pushed off the road had abruptly ceased with our session.
Reprinted from Donna Eden’s book Energy Medicine, pp. 361-363, 2008 Tarcher/Penguin.