What is spiritual protection?

Many in the spiritual community, and particularly those new to spiritual energies, elect to practice certain rituals for protection. These are designed to keep evil or negative energies from entering the person's field.

Spiritual protection techniques include smudging a person's energy field or a physical space with ceremonial herbs such as white sage, cedar or osha root.

Additional protection rituals include affirmations and ceremonies for protection, wearing a blessed amulet or a Medicine Bag, crystals or stones strategically placed in a physical space or around a body during healing work.

Literal protection mandallas may also be created, under the guidance of a Shaman or Medicine Man or Woman, that would contain protective elements that are specific to the individual's weakness and challenges, as well as their unique spiritual objectives.

Spiritual protection with light is also common and involves creating, through visualization and intent, a bubble of light around a person, for the purpose of deflecting negative energies.

While a common practice, is such protection from negative entities necessary?

.....Is protection from evil necessary?

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Question on spiritual healing: How do I protect myself, as a healer, against negativity energies and evil beings? Is smudging the best way? Or do you have specific affirmations that work?

Healering facilitation response: When I first became aware of what is termed "negative energies" I became a very fearful being. I read Lynn Andrews books, about how evil entities could be trying to take over my consciousness and my body, and wreak havoc to me and through me.

I also was around a very diverse group of spiritual beings at the time and many of them practiced an almost constant ritual of protecting, smudging, saying affirmations, etc., so I had quite a bit of support for maintaining my practice of shielding and protection.

It was only years later that I realized how wonderful that group of teachers was, in the path of my spiritual development. Only by experiencing what it felt like to live in constant fear, could I truly appreciate the absence of it later.

I did what every other fear-based being was doing at the time....I smudged, used essential oils as spritzers to clear spaces, used crystals and stones all around me, and said almost constant protection affirmations. I was repeatedly clearing my own field and clearing the space around my healing table.

In addition, I kept a vigilant watch during healing sessions and any type of spiritual ceremony, for negative entities that might be trying to infiltrate the Sacred Space. I was not disappointed. I did, indeed, sense negavitity at times and manipulative energy beings, as well as being attacked by what i felt were evil energies. The more this happened, the more I felt I had to shield myself and keep protection from evil foremost in my consciousness.

It was rather exhausting, of course, having to be so vigilant against psychic intrusion and, at the same time, being open to Universal Life Force energies that would help my partners in healing to heal themselves. Looking back, it's a wonder any healing vibrations got through at all.

Somewhere a long the way, my awareness shifted.

I realized that it had all been spiritual training. What I was being taught was to fear not. I was being initiated into living by faith. It was a spiritual journey I had to take, if I were to help others mired in fear and living a fear-based life.

What you dwell on, increases.

I believe this is the meaning of the bible verse in Phillipians: "...Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things."

While I acknowledge that there is still a collective mindset on this planet that is mired in lower vibrational density, I no longer see that as something I need to protect myself against. Instead, I focus on strengthening my connection to Source.

It's a simple matter of bandwidth resonance. Evil has a bandwidth; so does any type of negative mindset.

If you are not vibrating at the bandwidth of negativity, it literally cannot exist in your field nor have any effect to you or through you.

What you fear, you attract:

It cannot be otherwise. Just as opposite ends of the magnet attract, you can draw the opposite of yourself as a spiritual being. Paradoxically, the best way to draw evil to you is by being totally focused on pushing it away and protecting yourself from it.

And just as paradoxically, when you choose to accept whatever negativity or evil is present in your life, as being drawn by some resonant negativity in you, and own the reality you are creating, you can begin to remember who you are, a Divine Being of Light.

Emotional shifts that can invite a resonance with the frequencies of negativity, and even evil, include fear, self-doubt, hate, bitterness, resentment, ego pride and depression. Anything that lowers your vibrational frequency is an alarm to the Spirit. Just as a lowering of your immune system invites infection and disease, the lowering of your personal frequency is always the core issue when faced with negativity in your own field and that is where your attention should turn at such times.

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When I find myself experiencing a lower density emotion, I turn my attention to me, not to outside influences which may have found resonation for expression in me. They are just at whatever level they are but I AM has the option to remember who I AM in such situations and claim sovereignty by doing my own work to release negativity in me.

When I am unable to turn my attention toward the only person I can change, which is me, then I use ceremony to help. The difference is intent.

If I run to the smudge bowl out of fear and with the intent of running some evil entity off, then I've dropped into the fear frequency and turned my focus outward.

If, instead, I realize that my personal connection to that which I've drawn into my life for illumination and healing is so strong that I cannot focus within, the I may smudge with intent to clear the space for my own teachings, to invite in clarity about the negativity or evil I have drawn into my field. Big difference.

My goal is to let go of the need for ritual and ceremony at all. To do that, I have to remember who I AM at all times.

Spiritual Health Disclaimer: It is better to use ritual and ceremony to provide shielding and protection until you are strong enough in your Self to abandon the use of them. I would not change my journey in any way because, at certain points in my life, I desperately needed to feel safe and to feel that I could protect myself. I needed it until I did not need it. So may you.