I think some people enjoy stirring mischief.

The only devil we need be concerned about is that part of our self that would have us disobey our conscience.

Thanks Albert and Crossbow for your replies!

Thomas preferred first hand experience, so Jesus invited Thomas to put his fingers in the nail wounds in his hands.

Seeking evidence is good; faith is good too, even better. They are not incompatible. The trick is understanding what evidence, experience, truth, belief and faith, and other parts are, and what they do, so we can hold them in their right places and use them properly. We tend to mix them up, put them in their wrong order and places, then think they are incompatible or faulty. But they are different working parts with different roles, compatible with each other when each in their right place and doing their right job.   

So often, we see the extremes and little balance and moderation. 

On one hand, some or many of the religious fundamentalists see everything that is non dogmatically Christian as potentially demonic.

Then on the other hand, we have a lot of New Age sources that tell us, nah, there's nothing to worry about whatsoever, ever.  All guidance is guidance, and they are all good, etc, etc.

  Well, if beliefs powerfully impact perception, and perception and beliefs impact quality of life here and there, and clearly many whom are stuck are suffering a lot because of limited/distorted beliefs...

    Well, i prefer to take the middle road.  My experience has taught me that many beings out there are friendly in essence.  Some may think they are wiser than they really are, like a well meaning friend giving advice from a limited perspective, etc but they still have basically positive/helpful intentions.

  But i've also learned that there are some beings, which are pretty practiced and good at the art of manipulating and influencing beliefs and perceptions, which CAN have a detrimental impact on the quality of life someone experiences.  is not keeping people limited and stuck, and suffering, a negative thing that we should work on changing?

   Truth be told, the more aware i become, the more i've realized that a chunk of new age channeled stuff does in fact, come from misleading and deceptive sources.  It's not surprising when the motivation beyond same is limited to begin with.  Money, notoriety, various ego related issues etc. tend to lead people to not as positive sources.

    There are a lot of people being mislead by such sources in various ways. 

   But there are plenty of good and fairly deception free sources out there too.  It's a matter of discriminating.

  If you understand some basic laws of how the larger reality works and flows, this can really help in your discriminating more helpful sources from the distorting and limiting ones. 

   The primary law is that of like attracts, begets, resonates with like.  Hence, if you're looking at outer sources, look for ones that are attuned to love more than not and try to live ethically in all areas of their life.   

   Then, for connecting to inner guidance, expanding yourself helps to connect you more strongly and purely to those more purely constructive sources.  Also, asking for help from specific kinds of sources is also important, as guidance respects freewill, and sometimes you need to consciously ask for help to receive it. 

  And yes, i do have to agree with Olinerum some.  "Satan" if you look at the associations, was associated with the concepts of an ancient serpent and dragon. 

   What i've found that Satan really is, is less a specific being, and more a group--an E.T. group that has been trying to screw with and keep humans limited since we've been around.  And they are reptilian looking body wise, hence why referred to as snakes, serpents, and dragons at times.

Judging by the state of the world, and how long and often it's been in such a mess, i would say that this group is pretty good at their job and has had a pretty strong influence here a lot of the time. 

   There are many worlds and groups from same, that are MUCH, MUCH more positive, evolved, and harmonious than this one. Were all the beings there just so much more mature and positive from the get go?  Or perhaps they lacked the meddlesome variable of negative E.T. influence and so evolved more quickly and seamlessly?

  As the good, but often misinterpreted book tries to say, there long as been a war over the earth and fate of humanity.  I do not use the phrase "war" lightly.  Humanity has the potential to degenerate towards a very devolved and Source cut off future, or towards a very rapid leap into near full Source atttunement.

  It would be a serious over sight, to think that there isn't a group out there that is constantly pushing towards the former. 

  So yes, there is a little relative truth to some of the Christian fundamentalist notions, but there is also plenty of truth to the New Age concepts as well. 

Reality is just bigger than both individually. As far as Bruce goes, imo, i think he is a pretty good and expanded source all in all.  He's an "old soul" so to speak, so it's more a matter of natural law. 

This thread is yet another demonstration of the myopic New Age Ghetto mentality.  New Agers have no clue about why Christians consider channeling dangerous and are too intellectually dishonest and lazy to read the best exemplars of what they condemn.  So they do what most bigots do--they create a mindless straw man that they generalize to create the illusion of patronizing critical discernment.  Thus, they freeze like Bambi in the headlights when they hear about gifted mediums who totally believed in the goodness and genuineness of their craft, and despite their contentment, discovered by direct experience that they were actually in touch with demonic entities in disguise.  By contrast, I find that many Christians are very interested in   learning from New Age insights and dialoguing about them.  Thus, last Sunday's sermon on lessons from shamanism was well received and prompted interesting discussion.   

So I throw out this challenge to the Ghetto: identify the books on channeling that Christians most often cite as examples by direct experience of how channeling is dangerous.  I'm confident that you cannot.  So i would no more want to engage you on this question than evolutionists want to engage fundamentalists who attack evolution wiyhout reading a single scientific book in its defense.

Don-  I may be misunderstanding your point, but to me a good example of a book that Christians would identify channeling as dangerous would be ACIM.  Of course, part of that is how we distinguish between legitimate Christians and those who are Christians in name only. 

R