The battle against terrorism both foreign and domestic is a conflict between good and evil. People are cruel and warlike for two reasons. They either have selfish agendas, or they are helpless victims creating other helpless victims—programmed to compulsively do unto others as was done unto them.

Either way, you are dealing with an evil that has taken up residence in the person. Overreacting with resentment and anger will only cause you to embrace the very thing you are trying to resist.

The enemy we are fighting is not a person, but one or more spirits. For this reason, we must be very mindful how we react to their assortment of outrageous injustices. It is true that we should oppose evil, which is to say, reject it. In order to reject it, we must be careful not to resent the person in whom the poison dwells.

The reason is subtle, in that from one root springs forth endless branches of suffering. By resenting (becoming upset with) a being made in the image of God, you are unknowingly tricked into rejecting the Creator spirit within you—and this causes conflict and confusion.

Evil, operating through its human conduit, tempts you to hate the person. When you take the bait and hate the person, you become divorced from the ground of your own true being. This in turn opens you to penetration. It is impossible to reject evil by hating the person, because you end up embracing it.

By hating the person, you open yourself to the spirit’s evil agenda, both personal and political. This is because you are responding to its will when you resent, and so separating from the source of good within you by which means evil might have been overcome.

"the real enemy is never a person, but a spirit acting through the person—who has been overcome"

Evil acts through human agency, just as God does. Unlike God in His Divine goodness, evil must infect and so possess the created form in order to act through it by means of some kind of subversion and trickery. Mindless terror, violence, cruelty and deliberate injustice are effective tease offerings—such teases strongly tempt you to resent and puff up in judgment.

When you do that, you fall away from that firm ground of original being—from which root might have sprung the all triumphant good.

Through successive traumas and seductions, the resident malevolent force operating within your oppressor, penetrates your defenseless soul, slowly but surely reprogramming it to do its will on earth as it is in hell. It makes a home in you.

Drugs, alcohol or whatever it is you use to calm your tormented nerves, mask the symptoms of a struggle for freedom you cannot win until you discover the truth that will set you free. And that truth is simply discovering the secret of patient response that is no response of any kind at all.

Anger and fear are symptoms that you are not in your nonresentful, nonresponsive center—that you have descended to where you are reacting to the adversary spirit in such a way that it can penetrate and take up residence within you, and then act upon others through you.

So you see, the real enemy is never a person, but a spirit acting through the person—who has been overcome as a helpless change agent.