I don’t want to say I have a lot of adversaries in my life but I do have some. Sometimes I consider my boss an adversary. When I start a new program of manifestation - for instance, if I want more money in my life for instance, along with getting new money, I also get someone calling me about a bill. I remember when I was in Landmark Education, one of the things they usually teach is that the second you declare something the opposite of the very thing that you declare shows up in your life. In other words if you declare that you are a patient person, the thing that will most likely piss you off the most will show up to test you to see if you are a patient person.
Is that a law of the universe or is it an observation? More than likely it’s a bit of both. I am sure that people thousands of years ago saw this happen and instead of calling it a Universal Law, they called it the Adversary, or Satan, or Tiamat, etc.
At the same time, the concept of an adversary is not limited to affecting the lives of individuals. There are many historical examples of a collective adversary and were not an invisible entities. Malcolm X was told and preached that the white man is the Devil. It is a well documented that he since repented of that opinion. However, placing myself in his shoes, I can easily see how someone could come to that conclusion. Every evil thing from his father’s death to white supremacists, to his mom being put in a home, to the white women he ran scams with, to the collective racial consciousness during his time where at the hands of white people. Many dictators in the 20th century were considered incarnations of pure evil from Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Amin and to a certain extant Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden and Bush.
Admittedly, I don’t have a response to answers of a collective adversary. Are these machinations of a sinister spiritual influence or is this the height of an unexpressed collective shadow?
Ultimate evil notwithstanding, in my experience, I find that the purpose of an adversary is to drive you to be your best. Maybe it’s a question of indefinite articles - the difference between “An Adversary” or “The Adversary”. Ultimately it doesn’t seem to ever be an end to an adversary because there is no real end to the things we want to be, do and/or have. It is also a possibility that the adversary is not really a spiritual figure bent on our destruction, but is a manifestation of our shadow side.
I remember the classic episode of Star Trek called the Naked Time. In this episode, there was a problem with the transporter which caused animate organic objects to have there dark side split from them. In this case, the shadow side of James T. Kirk was separated from his body and manifested into his body double. The interesting thing about this episode was that his power of leadership was in his shadow side whereas his compassion was in his good side. Although being separated for too long a time would cause his physical death, the other problem was that he became an ineffective leader who couldn’t make decisions. The moral of the story is that we need to embrace our shadow side to become whole. In the same way, we need to embrace the potential the adversary is trying to create in our lives. I am not suggesting we form a circle and shout ‘Hail Satan, the Prince of Darkness!’ Nor am I suggesting that we start looking for obstacles in our path. Rather I am suggesting that we accept the fact that there is an adversary and allow its influence to create perseverance, patience and dedication.
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