The Exorcism
That afternoon, Laurel and her assistant Lisa had cleansed both houses with sage and prayers—much like Laurel had cleansed my friends’ home a year earlier. Nothing spooky or dramatic—mostly just prayers of protection and blessing that would have been acceptable to any religion. Lisa followed Laurel around both houses waving the fragrant, misty sage and that was that.
Shortly after we got home and started eating dinner, Laurel and Lisa arrived. Soon the ordeal would begin.
Most of this information came directly from a journal I kept at the time of the possession. But the exorcism itself proved to be such an exhausting and overwhelming ordeal that I did not write it down immediately.
However, about three weeks afterward, I got together with Laurel and she made a tape of her recollections of the event. Most of the following description comes directly from her taped narrative. These references will be noted as such.
The Release
Brittany came into the living room and Laurel had her sit down in a chair in the middle of the room, with me, Laurel, and Lisa sitting on the sofa in front of her. Sheila was seated in a chair near the stairwell maybe six feet to Britt’s right. Mima was sitting on the stairs behind Sheila.
Brittany said, “Alright, I’m ready,” and the process began. Laurel told her to just relax and sit back. She began the ceremony by gently inviting any entity or entities that might be residing inside Brittany to leave her and “return to the light.”
Britt seemed to fall unconscious for a second as her head slumped to one side. When her eyes opened, she had this wide-eyed look on her face like she was seeing the room for the first time.
“Hello,” she said as she cocked her head jauntily and looked from one of us to the other. She had a mischievous, even evil grin on her face.
Laurel again invited the entity to leave Brittany and return to the light.
“I don’t think so,” it replied. With that, Brittany arose and walked toward the kitchen, surveying everything as if she’d never seen any of it before—even though we’d lived in the condo over five years by then. Although her attitude was inquisitive, she also seemed to be in somewhat of a hurry. By the time she reached the door leading into the kitchen, I came up behind her.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I asked.
“You don’t need to know everything,” it answered. She quickly walked to the counter where the cutlery is kept and began opening the drawer.
“We don’t need anything in there,” I said as I stopped her by grasping her wrist. She turned to me, growling like an animal and struggled to free her hand. But I held both her wrists, and by then Sheila and Laurel had joined us. Brittany was now kicking, screaming, and hissing. But I had learned my lesson from the first episode of possession. Since Brittany was no longer in control of her own faculties, she (or rather, the entity) would be trying to harm herself or others unless she was totally restrained. So with the entity flailing, kicking, and raging to any within earshot that it would kill us as well as Brittany—Sheila, Laurel, and I wrestled her to the ground with the prime objective being to prevent her from hurting herself.
“They didn’t initially struggle against anyone [in particular],” Laurel said on the tape. “The only struggle against us was because we were holding her down.”
As we held Britt down, one entity after another came to the surface and attempted to assert itself. Laurel was always respectful of them—although firm in her demands that they release their hold on Brittany.
“We started in the kitchen with a bunch of releases,” Laurel continued on the tape. “What I was doing was seeking to identify ways to release each specific entity or groups of entities as they came up.”
Laurel often called upon other friendly entities with whom the entity possessing Brittany would be familiar. Laurel could psychically perceive spirits these possessing entities might recognize and thus enlisted their help by allowing them to channel through her. As I held Brittany’s hands and Sheila straddled her to hold down her legs, Laurel crouched over Britt and spoke to her in voices and accents not her own, trying to convince these entities to leave our daughter and go to the light.
Not all of the entities possessing Brittany seemed to be evil. In fact, many of them were quite pleasant, entertaining, and even funny. When one of these would come through, the evil look would pass from Brittany’s face and a look of innocent, wide-eyed incredulity would emerge. Occasionally, one of these nice entities would not seem to have a working command of the English language.
More than once, Laurel spoke in response to some unrecognizable foreign language with which the entities possessing Brittany wanted to communicate. The first such incident happened as Brittany began speaking in some unknown foreign tongue. It was more than a bit eerie to watch this exchange between Laurel and the fifteen-year-old on the floor being possessed by disembodied spirits. The entity speaking through Brittany would often seem amazed that Laurel (or the entity channeling through her) could speak its language. Then they would begin chattering away. Being involved in theatre, I can do a wide array of foreign dialects, and can recognize most of the standard European languages as such when I hear them. However, the languages being parlayed between Laurel and Brittany must have been ancient, archaic ones no longer in everyday use. Or as Laurel explained later, some of them were even extraterrestrial.
A good deal of the releasing went on in the kitchen. However, after an hour or so, Brittany regained control of her body. She was exhausted, but I helped her up and we went back into the living room.
“Much was happening with Brittany,” Laurel said on the tape. “There were the entities, and lots of screaming and anger from them was coming out. I did not experience superhuman strength coming from them, or if I did, the guides were giving me the superhuman strength to counter it.”
I might add that in this de-possessing, unlike others Laurel had held, she had Sheila and I to help hold the subject down. So Brittany may not have seemed as strong to Laurel as she really was, but it was taking three grown adults to hold this 5' 4", 135 lb. teenager down.
“The entities found out early on in the process that the three of us were physically a match for them,” Laurel continued, “and that they could not simply become destructive and hurt all of us, including and especially Brittany. As a matter of fact, I told some friends afterward about the process, and I said it gave me a new appreciation for my weight and bulk. There is value in this.
“I went through the releasing process that I usually do,” she continued. “I start with what I call the lightweights, the collections of church mice. I do affirmations; I do invitations to come to the light—and I almost immediately started getting this energy sensation. This tells me the energy is moving. So the little ones in there were going, ‘Oh my God! It’s coming down! Head for the hills!’ And they’re taking off, which is what we were going for. So we started releasing the little ones with this invitation:
“‘Dear ones, welcome in love and light. You are healed and forgiven, redeemed and restored. You are not now, nor were you ever truly a part of darkness. You are now filled with your own higher consciousness, your light self.’ And I believe I said ‘your Christ-self,’ knowing it would be more acceptable under that situation. ‘You are filled with the love of the universe (and I may have said Christ instead of universe). Go in peace, go in peace, go in peace.’
“So at that point the little ones, who were more or less bystanders anyway, were going, ‘Yeah, I’ll go … I’m ready!’
“When the nice ones came through, we didn’t attempt to restrain them. It was easy to tell which ones were friendly and which ones were malevolent. With the wicked ones, even if they were smiling and sounded friendly, you could feel a tension in Brittany’s body—like a cat ready to pounce.”
Frequently, these nice entities would get up and wander about the house. At the time we had two cats, Spot and Baby, who were considerably startled by one entity that said it was from a land covered by water. As the aquatic entity, Brittany would utter this high-pitched cross between a scream and a squeal that sounded very much like the sound you hear porpoises make. This entity could not communicate in English, but unlike many of the others, it was quite good at communicating with gestures, nods of the head, and humming sounds that would indicate approval or disapproval. It seemed to basically understand us but could not manipulate vocal communication itself. Perhaps it was picking up thoughts rather than understanding words.
The aquatic entity possessing Britt began walking up the steps and totally freaked when it saw a large stuffed fish at the top of the landing. I have a five-foot-long El Dorado fish mounted that my father caught when I was a little boy. The aquatic entity became hysterical when it saw the El Dorado. I gently tried to explain what it was, and that I was not the one who had killed it. Nevertheless, the entity was inconsolable until I promised I’d take it down. With sweeping gestures, it demanded I remove the fish from the wall at that precise moment, but I said that was not convenient considering everything else that was going on and promised to take it down later. This seemed to placate it, so Britt (as the aquatic entity) went about inspecting the rest of the house. Eventually, she sat down at the foot of her bed. Britt seemed to pass out and slumped down onto the bed. About a second went by, then Brittany returned as herself and asked me how she got into her bedroom, and then we returned downstairs. After a short break, we continued.
When Britt went back into her trance state, Sheila and I were again holding her down not knowing what or who would surface next. Laurel began the invitation again, beseeching any remaining entities to exit.
“Then I went to the next level,” Laurel continued on the tape, “which is to say: ‘You have nothing to fear. The light doesn’t hurt. You will not be punished. You will not be sent to hell. You will be comforted, counseled, guided, and loved. This is your opportunity to get the help you need. I know there are some of you in there who don’t want to be dead. Well, that’s tough. You are dead! Here’s your chance to no longer be wandering endlessly, earthbound.’
“Then we went immediately to round three,” she said, “which is for the heavyweights. I began by saying to them: ‘I say to you exactly what I said to the others. I know you think of yourselves as bad dudes and all that. And that’s okay. But I say to you, welcome in love and light. You are healed and forgiven. It’s time to come home.’”
Laurel said she identified three kinds of darkness hiding within Brittany. She said this was in addition to spirits of those who may have gotten stuck on this planet visiting here on a fact-finding mission and became separated from their party, and then didn’t get home.
First Dark Entity Type: Inverted Light
“These cases are dealt with differently,” Laurel said, “but of those trying to be bad, there are three types. The first is called inverted light.
“These are dark angels. They are beings of light who are playing the role of villain on stage to create the duality process in the universe. Darkness is necessary for light to push against. Dark angels were actually just part of the learning process in our struggle for eventual perfection and reunification with the Godhead. Not innately evil, they were simply playing a part. However, somewhere along the way they started buying into their own PR. They began believing the wickedness they merely performed was real. They are beings of light. They always were. They always will be merely playing the dark role.
“In the depossession process, we approach them with certain code phrases, such as: ‘It is the Age of Completion.’
“‘Your promise is kept. There will always be a way home.’ At that point, we enter into a dialogue with the entity. They tell me psychically or through the subject what problems may arise in the release. There may be tangled energy somewhere in the subject’s body, for example. I tell them about going home to the planet of light, after which (if they wish) they may return and work as beings of light not darkness—and often they do. They frequently volunteer to help. Such was the case with the entity we came to know as Spence.”
Spence
After Laurel released four or five of the dark beings and a number of the little ones, an entity calling itself Kalikalik began speaking through Brittany. At first it spoke in some unknown language that I didn’t recognize; however, soon he and Laurel were conversing freely in the mysterious tongue. After seeing the looks of confusion on our faces, Laurel asked the entity if it would speak in English so others could understand. It then spoke with a perfectly gentlemanly Irish accent, admonishing Sheila and I that it wasn’t necessary to hold him down. He said he was there to help. Laurel recognized him as one of the dark beings she had dealt with before. She said he had “returned to the light” and now worked on earth as a sort of messenger helping people. He told us he was Brittany’s guardian angel and asked us to call him Spence, a name he had gone by in a life as an incarnated human being.
Spence told us the evil ones had Brittany in a dark place and wouldn’t let her out. He said she couldn’t see us, and for all she knew she’d never come back again. He said there were upside-down crucifixes, fire, and beings there for no other purpose than to scare her into thinking that all was hopeless. Laurel asked him to go to her and tell her that everything would soon be okay and that we were in the process of removing all the dark ones. He was gone for maybe half a minute. Meanwhile, Brittany looked as though she were asleep. Spence then returned, said that he’d told her and she was very frightened, and begged us to hurry.
Laurel then asked Spence if he could “take a look” and see how many entities were left inside Brittany. This only took a split second. He returned saying that the total number of entities either possessing or hiding within her had been seventeen dark entitles and over a thousand little ones. Laurel had expelled five of the dark ones. Several hundred of the little ones had left en masse in several different groups. He said he would try to gather more groups together and escort them out. He also said he could help expel the dark ones, but we’d have to be rigorously involved in that process.
As Spence left again, Brittany began speaking in a tiny little voice. It identified itself by some name I’d never heard and can’t recall. It informed us it was a fairy and had been with Brittany since she was a toddler. The fairy described how it used to sit and play with Britt and loved her toys. Laurel assured her it was safe to leave and called upon entities with whom the fairy was familiar to help in the transition. Laurel asked if she knew an angel named Kalikalik or Spence.
“Oh yes, he’s nice,” the fairy replied.
Laurel then asked if the fairy would go with him; she said yes and that she’d wait until he came to collect her.
Spence returned and said one of the dark ones was trying to come out and he couldn’t hold it at bay much longer. Laurel assured him that this was all right and to let it out.
“Hold her down then,” Spence said. Still possessing Brittany, Spence gently leaned back, asked for a pillow (several, in fact), and relaxed. “Here he comes,” said Spence in his Irish accent. “Goodbye.”
With that, Brittany started snarling and growling, spitting, cursing, and trying to break away from the hold that Sheila, Laurel, and I had on her. Laurel utilized several positive affirmations to invoke the entity to leave of its own free will.
Britt’s Narrative of the Exorcism
I remember my parents bringing me pepperoni pizza the night they took me home. Then came the exorcism. A trusted friend (Laurel, who has since passed) came to the house. I don’t really know, but I guess it was your typical exorcism. I remember evil coursing through my veins during the pre-performance period before Laurel got started with the exorcism. I sucked up those nasty, evil feelings and tried to just relax.
The exorcism commenced, and the rest is totally foggy. But I remember the evil entities showing me my own funeral and having to have a closed casket because I died with a look of horror the funeral director couldn’t fix. When they showed me that, I fought as hard as I could to get to the surface—to tell them I was fighting. My parents sang me a favorite childhood song [probably “Dixie”] to keep me conscious. Then, after nine long excruciating hours, the evil was gone—or so I thought at the time.
Second Dark Entity Type:
Luciferic or Anormonic Darkness
Laurel continued on the tape, describing the different kinds of dark entities:
“This is the beast, the biblical beast. This is a non-humanoid, non-angelic darkness. I tell them that I really don’t care what their motives are; their tenure here on earth has come to an end. When we find them, we say something like, ‘Your key member has already been shipped back to the home planet. Then we made an arrangement in case we found some more of you out there. Now there is a beam for you to ride home. You have two choices: Get on it and go, or I’ll squish you like a bug.’”
Laurel said this kind of darkness is not known for its willingness to cooperate, but “generally they look at the offer, check it out, and read my memory files. Then generally they say ‘Oh yeah, they sent him home. Well, we’re going home too.’”
Spence warned us that the approaching Luciferian entity was going to be a bad one, and he was definitely right. Although the three of us were holding Brittany down as firmly as possible, it was still all we could do to keep her still. The snarling, growling, and hissing was intense. Laurel spoke her affirmations, but it just scoffed. Sheila held a cross to Brittany’s forehead, and although this seemed to cause the demon a good deal of pain, it wasn’t about to let up. It started telling us that Brittany would never resurface, following this up with dire threats directly aimed at us.
I was so mad by this point that my natural sarcasm began to surface. I remember after one particularly vile threat, I said something to the effect of: “Attention, K-Mart shoppers, attention—badass dude on aisle three. Everyone tremble and shake.” To which it replied, “Oh, you’re the funny one, aren’t you?” just before spitting in my face. My sarcasm was inappropriate, but sometimes that’s just how I react to stress. I had learned enough from Laurel, though, to know that the best way to fight one of these things was with love and kindness. It was best to just hold it, but not fight back. When it snarled and spit in my face, I leaned over and gently kissed my daughter’s forehead. This seemed to have about the same effect the holy water had had in the initial incident two weeks earlier. She writhed as if in pain and growled.
I realized at that moment the greatest weapon with which to fight these fiends was simply love.
The entity began speaking in Laurel’s direction in one of those odd languages. Laurel replied in a similar tongue. The entity then replied more angrily, and Brittany’s head shook violently. I asked what had been transpiring. Laurel replied that she had given it an ultimatum, telling it she would count to ten, and if it didn’t come out, she would press her crystal to Brittany’s forehead, effectively obliterating the entity.
Lisa came forward with a crystal and challenged the entity to do as Laurel had bid it. Laurel began counting to ten. Since all the other dark entities had begrudgingly exited, I fully expected this one to pull out also, no matter how obstinate it had initially seemed.
It didn’t. Laurel’s count reached ten, and the entity essentially dared her to keep her threat. Snarling and spitting worse than ever, the entity seemed self-assured that Laurel wouldn’t follow through. After asking it to leave peacefully one more time and receiving nothing more than yet another growl, Laurel simply said alright and pressed the crystal to Brittany’s forehead as she called upon some deity with whom the possessing entity was familiar. Lisa then utilized a different type crystal, which she also pressed to Brittany’s forehead.
When the entity recognized the deity Laurel had called upon, a look of shock and terror spread across Britt’s face. The entity bucked and lurched forward with renewed strength. Brittany screamed a throaty retort and was then silent. She appeared to have passed out. I hugged her and kissed her forehead. Her mother also embraced Brittany. Within a few moments, our daughter returned to consciousness as herself and asked for a drink. Mima got her a Dr. Pepper, Britt’s favorite.
“What happened there?” I asked Laurel.
“When he refused to leave, I made good on my promise. I utterly annihilated him just like I told him I would. I don’t like to do that, and usually you don’t have to. But it was the only way I could prove to this one and the others still in there that we mean business.”
Later Laurel described the third kind of darkness to me but said that this was not a type of entity she found in Brittany.
Third Dark Entity Type: Animal Dark
“When spirit is given to newly born human beings, sometimes the spark of divinity most of us get doesn’t lock in,” Laurel said. She said the God light is missing from these individuals. They may be brilliant, but they have zero understanding or zero caring for the harm they may cause to others.
“But I see that generally in people,” Laurel said. “I don’t normally see that in spiritual entities. Animal dark was not an issue when we were working with Brittany. My task while we were holding Brittany down was to either persuade or force (preferably persuade) the entities to leave her. And to leave her in such a way that they wouldn’t just be hanging out in the house waiting for a chance to hop back on. You see, I can get them off of a subject relatively easily. But that doesn’t solve the problem on a continuing basis.
“Any entities that trouble her from that point on won’t be the same ones,” Laurel continued. “The ones we dealt with are gone. I would name names that might mean nothing to you, but the entities would recognize them. They might say, ‘Yes, I know him. Yes, if he’ll help me, then sure, I’ll go with him.’ The guides provide someone that the entity can trust. Sometimes some of them are afraid to come out.
“Well, we got several dark entities off in the first round. And then we came up with these darling little fairy-like beings who were friendly and gave us some information. One said she had been inside Brittany since she was three years old, and another spirit was a little girl in a pretty yellow dress who died in the late 1800s. These fairies were scared of the bad ones. So we had to negotiate releases of them in several groups. We brought people in, Mother Mary, notably, to help the little ones feel safe so they could transfer.
“At that point we had to convince Brittany, the real Brittany inside there somewhere, that it was safe to let these little ones go. She had cared for them for a long time as we discovered, and it was not easy for her to let them go. For one thing, she would be lonely without them. This is typical of any releases, including the ones that are not like full-blown manifestations of a violent situation. So we got a bunch of them out, and then we did another round of bad ones. Then the one we now know as Spence, Kalikalik, came through, and I recognized his energy. I asked him if he was Kalikalik. He replied yes, and then he would tell us how many were left of the bad ones and of the good ones or the ones being sheltered.
“There were over a thousand of the sheltering ones. We would move them out in batches. There was one bad one who wouldn’t cooperate, and we had to annihilate him. Annihilation is where the personality is truly destroyed; the energy goes back to pure energy, and there is nothing left. We gave him a choice, and he didn’t take it. I’d rather they move out more or less peacefully, and thankfully we only had to squish one.
“Then occasionally Brittany would come up and would want comfort from you. This worked fine. Your instincts were great. You were very good about remembering that that was your kid’s body, with a minimal amount of force to hold her down.”
Jezebel
Toward the end of the cleansing or exorcism session, one of the dark ones claimed to be the legendary temptress Jezebel. She was a particularly nasty one who claimed she “knew Jesus” in the biblical sense. She engaged Sheila directly, claiming she “recognized another whore” when she saw one. Laurel challenged Jezebel, saying they had been sisters in a previous life. There was a good bit of heated exchange between Laurel and Jezebel, them having engaged on this ethereal plane before.
Laurel tried to reason with her, inviting her to return to the light. This was the first demonic figure that I had any compassion for. Up until this particular one, I had been having a bit of trouble understanding why Laurel cared whether they returned to the light or not. Just squish them all and be done with it. However, with Jezebel it was different for some reason. I was feeling actual compassion for this wicked, demonic being inhabiting my only daughter. It suddenly became clear to me why Laurel was showing compassion to these dark entities and inviting them to return to the God source, free of punishment, instead of annihilating them.
When Jezebel finally came around and accepted the love Laurel was offering her, I actually felt a bit warm inside and started to well up. Brittany, as Jezebel, began crying. Then she and Laurel hugged and promised never to become estranged as sisters again. Then Britt fell back, and Jezebel was gone as quickly as she had come.
Provocation and Physical Struggle
At one point, one of the dark entities began taunting Sheila, saying some very negative personal things in an effort to provoke her. The entity and Sheila eventually got into a real shouting match. Then it spit in Sheila’s face, and in a fit of anger, Sheila spit in Brittany’s face. Sheila became so provoked by the entity that she raised her hand as if to strike Brittany in the face.
“I suggested that Sheila back off,” Laurel continued, “because the conflict might have been, among other things, a mother-daughter conflict that was not productive for either of them—and certainly was not productive for the releasing process. I complemented Sheila afterward for cooperating and backing off when I asked her to.
“The closer we came to having the heavyweights removed, the more we were dealing with Kalikalik [Spence, as you know him], and the more the real problems in Brittany’s life started to surface. We were getting down to the point where it was Brittany’s own genuine anger.
“Now from my point of view, I should tell you that this release was not unlike other releases I’ve done. Except for one thing, and that was the client. The subject was fighting physically. Except for that, it was just what I’ve done for hundreds and hundreds of people. I don’t regret the fight, and I would encourage you not to regret the fight—because I really don’t think that either Sheila or Brittany would have accepted the release, or the fact that the work was done, that the job got done, if there hadn’t been a physical struggle.
The Use of Crystals
I asked Laurel to explain the use of crystals during the cleansing. I commented on how the various entities seemed to recoil to the touch of the crystals as if being burned. She explained that they function in much the same way as the holy water I had used during the first night. Crystals can draw out negativity, and that actually hurts the entity.
“We did use the crystals to absorb some of the negativity and to help force it out,” she said.
More Than a Little “Draining”
The whole release/exorcism process took six hours, from 8:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. We chatted with Spence, through Brittany, for about another hour afterward. Britt, Sheila, Mima, and I then thanked and hugged Laurel and Lisa and said our goodbyes. They left about 3:30 a.m. It was a grueling six hours, and I really hadn’t expected it to last that long; although I’ve read since about exorcisms that took even longer.
“It was physically demanding, and everyone was exhausted,” Laurel said. “On the whole, I thought Brittany did absolutely beautifully.”
Although the victim and the exorcist are the focus of any exorcism, this one at least had a supporting cast: “You and Sheila were great,” Laurel said, “comforting her when she was Brittany, with an appropriate response to the entities, depending on who we were talking to.”
Physically, I didn’t feel normal for several days. I can only imagine how my eighty-year-old mother felt. But Mima hung in there. She was there with us till the bitter end. On numerous occasions she went back and forth (between entities) to the kitchen to bring water for Laurel, Sheila, Lisa, and me, and Dr. Pepper for her granddaughter.
Lisa seemed to be mostly there for moral support and maybe to learn. Laurel had brought a cinched velvet bag in which she kept crystals with various spiritual purposes. Occasionally, she requested a specific crystal and Lisa dutifully supplied it.
Laurel’s Estimation of Spence
The “Spence” entity would come in and out of Britt’s life for the next decade and a half. She continued to channel him sporadically long after the exorcism. For years, Spence might pop up anytime, anywhere—usually at inconvenient times. For many years, I often pondered just what exactly he is. Fallen angel? Past-life personality? Alter ego? Interdimensional traveler?
“Now as far as Spence is concerned, it would probably be true to say that he is an alter ego of Brittany in addition to being an angel. It appears to me that speaking as Spence with the Irish accent gives her a chance to say things that she perhaps is not comfortable in saying, or to discuss her own conflicts or her own fears about what is happening in her life. But Spence is echoing Brittany’s fear. And as that, I do see him as a separate being, as Kalikalik, who was one of those whom I first met as a dark being, a dark angel (the energy is what I recognized). But he returned to the light and volunteered to be a helper.”
I asked her if he was a combination of a separate entity and an alter ego.
“I think he is an actual entity,” Laurel replied, “that she has a long-ago connection to and contact with. I think he is allowing her to express herself through him, and that’s how you get the alter ego part.
“Brittany really needs to know that she’s in charge of her own body and her own life—that no entity, no dark spirit, no fallen angel, no critter from outer space, nothing, can make her do anything. They cannot force her. They cannot take her consciousness away from her in order to come through her. But if they convince her that they are more powerful—she buys into it, and then it happens.”
Taking Control
Laurel went on to describe the importance of understanding how we are all in control of our own consciousness—and the importance the God force within each of us plays in mastering that control. I think this may very well be the most important thing in this book. For anyone out there battling the possession of any kind of alien entity—please, take this to heart:
“Having that absolute knowledge that says, ‘I’m in charge here’ is awfully hard for a lot of people,” Laurel said. “It’s especially hard for those who have been raised in the belief system that says there are aggressive forces outside ourselves that are more powerful than we are.
“I do not allow anyone, any other human, to say: ‘Here’s what God wants you to do,’ regardless of whether it’s a minister from the pulpit or a counselor or whatever. I am the one who says: ‘I feel by the light of the God within me. I feel this is the thing to do. This is the decision I make.’ And if I make a wrong decision, I know very well that God will not reject me for it—because sometimes my human self, the lower self, screws up. We all make mistakes, but we should take responsibility for it.”
Then Laurel said the thing that made me sit down and write this book:
“I was impressed with your desire to write about this and help other people in this situation, because a lot of the kids in the psych ward are there because of attachments, spirits, possession. You could be an enormous comfort to other parents.”