This physical reality is but a small remnant of what is actually happening all around us.
BY TERESA YANAROS, DEC 26, 2021
"You Can See Through The Veil."
A friend told me the other day, "I can see the veil. You can see through the veil."
I've been thinking a lot about that exchange lately. I wish I could see that statement from behind his eyes because seeing through the veil can mean a lot of different things. It certainly means quite a few different things to me.
As with everything, I would say this particular thing is "multi-dimensional." There are lots of ways to look at this, many ways to define it, and many ways to feel about it. I thought I would have a go at attempting to break down a few different angles based on my experience. This article is by no means an academic attempt. This is merely a human indulgence, an attempt to put my own thoughts on paper while resisting the journalist in me to back everything up with citations. So, if that's what you're looking for you won't find it here. If you're looking for a somewhat disorganized and chaotic exploration, let's do this.
Discernment of Spirits
Some people can see things in the spirit realm. Some people would call this "discernment of spirits," but honestly, that phrase sort of doesn't make sense to me. Let me tell you why.
I've seen things in the spirit realm over the course of my life. But here's the thing. Just because I can see something doesn't mean that I can discern whether it is good or evil. And to be completely honest, much of my late twenties was spent thinking that some of these things I was seeing weren't evil. Then the whole thing started to break down. I started to realize that some of these beings were seemingly acting against free will. Even though at the time I was not a practicing Christian, I knew to the core of me that neither God nor his angelic forces would go against a person's free will. Little did I know then there are certain things we can do as humans to give license to Satan to oppress us. Once I realized that some of the spirits I was in contact with were demonic, I cried out to God, and therein started a long process of deliverance. (And that's a really long story for another time.)
I've come to learn that I have this gift called discernment of spirits, or so I've been told. The kicker is, only after years of being deceived by the Enemy did I wise up enough to realize I was an idiot and was being misled by Satan into the pit. Either way, only after being delivered by God into the Kingdom of Jesus Christ and experiencing his power myself did I start to understand even how to begin discerning the intention of these spiritual beings, and that process was inspired by the workings of none other than the Holy Spirit.
Let me preface this by saying that discerning spirits is not something I consider to be something I can do. No. This is a gift of the Holy Spirit, given at His discretion. And the Lord giveth and taketh away, so there's nothing about me in this at all whatsoever. There have been times in my life where it has been stronger and more activated than others. I see it as the Lord choosing to lift the veil to show me certain things at certain times. This is not a parlor trick, nor is it something I have much control over. I can, however, pray that the Holy Spirit reveals something and so there is a level of engagement from my end with the gift. Even the word gift bothers me, kind of. Because it's really more like a temporal revealing. And this is all for the glory of God. I hope that all makes sense.
So for the sake of organization, let's break discernment of spirits into three categories that make sense to me:
(1) Seeing spiritual beings in the spirit (extraphysically or in a dream state)
(2) Seeing spiritual beings with your physical eyes
(3) Being able to discern if a spirit is of the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Satan. This one includes sensing things about the spirit realm (by the power of the Holy Spirit) like names of demons, the intent of certain spirits, and knowing other things too, through hearing, feeling, receiving messages, etc. (This category is the most important, versatile in its expression among the Body of Christ, and useful for the engagement in spiritual warfare.)
I'll break this down chronologically.
Seeing in the Spirit...
I have always been very in tune with the spiritual world. I mostly preferred time alone and remembered having experiences being flooded by the Holy Spirit during prayer. Most of my single-digit years were spent barefoot in the forest alone, sitting in a tree I climbed, writing, and enjoying God's creation.
We were raised in a church that had a priest who experienced Stigmata, performed numerous miraculous healings, and gave sermons while statues of Mary would cry. Let's just say, I knew that there was a spiritual world interfacing with the physical at all times. There was a barrier that was being crossed all the time. I was a first-seat witness to how this was real, alive, and active. The power of Christ was healing humanity through the hands of my priest.
I was 9 when we moved to Texas. When we first got to the new house, I knew there was something off. I remember trying to go to sleep in my room and hearing breathing, seemingly coming from my own headboard. It was not my own breath. The slow cadence of methodical breathing would continue even after I held my breath, while I covered my mouth to make sure I wasn't making a sound. It proved difficult to sleep when I could hear the sound of another breath breathing at a different rate than my own.
My brother was having nightmares around the same time. He dreamt of a blanket that would come down from the ceiling and suffocate him in his sleep. He slept with me most nights those first few weeks.
One day I followed my sister up the stairs and she shrieked in pain. She lifted up her foot and there was a needle in the bottom of her heel. Without hesitation, I reached up and pulled it out as fast as I could. We discovered needles all over the staircase. I remember, after pulling the needle out of my sister's foot, I suddenly became convicted that there was something in the house that needed to be removed. One day when my parents were gone, I walked slowly but seemingly with purpose, into the kitchen. I stood there scanning the cabinets. I sensed that there was something up there. I climbed up onto the counter and stretched my arms up above the tops of the cabinets. I felt along the top, feeling around until my hand clasped around something. I pulled down a bag of three Chinese figurines. It felt like there was history inside them. I knew these needed to be removed from the house immediately. I threw them away and the activity in the house ceased.
Seeing Spiritual Beings Physically
The first time I took authority over a being I saw in the physical, I was 22. I had seen things in my room and around my bed growing up, but I had usually just run out of my room to go sleep with mom and dad. But I remember the first time I actually interacted with one and it was incredibly impacting. It was then that I realized the name of God seemed to exercise a level of authority over them.
I had a friend over one night and we were sitting on the staircase inside my townhome. He was telling me a story and I felt the hairs go up on the back of my neck and felt a strong presence behind me as though someone was standing right behind me on the stairs. In the middle of his sentence, I turned around abruptly and threw a glance behind me, half-expecting there to be someone standing on the landing behind us.
"Oh, you can actually feel that?" [I nodded.] "That's interesting, most people can't perceive it. Ok, so I guess I'll go ahead and tell you then. I have a... ghost that follows me around. Been following me for a while now."
After that night, whatever it was that had been following him around began to follow me around. Opening and closing doors, making noises at me, my roommate, and scaring our guests. It even followed me to work and was turning on and off faucets at work. That whole week following the initial meeting was interesting, to say the least. After a week of just general shenanigans, I remember waking up in the middle of the night in complete terror. The thing, this dark black mass, was hovering over me in bed. At first, I was paralyzed in fear. Then, a deep power, welling up from deep inside me, yelled out in command.
"In the name of God, you have no authority here!" I yelled at the top of my lungs.
I watched the thing flee before my eyes. I have no idea where that command came from, but it welled up from I think the deepest recesses of my being. That was the Holy Spirit, for sure. The spirit never came back. By the way, this was not a ghost, by any means. This was a demon. And it fled before the power of God.
Discernment of Spirits - Good or Evil?
When I was in my mid-twenties, the spiritual realm opened up to me in a way like never before. I was writing a book about my spiritual experiences, and it was around this time that Satan and his minions took a keen interest in me. Satan wanted to convince me that his power was of God and that his demons were actually beings of the light. This was done to attempt to draw me into hell, into his kingdom, and to destroy my claim to the inheritance that God had intended for me.
Demonic spirits appear as all kinds of things, and many times they will even try to convince you that they are good. This is was what happened to me. I was getting involved in the new age, taking on occult practices, and trying to reconcile Christian teachings with all kinds of paganism and world religion. It was a total mess, quite frankly.
Simultaneously, true, positive, and godly angelic forces were appearing to me, warning me and telling me to turn back from what I was doing. They were telling me to look at the evil, to go into the Church and look at the exorcisms, that I was supposed to be working with Catholics. I ignored these particular entities. My pride had completely blinded me because I was a popular new age author, and was seemingly on the way to achieving all of my professional goals. (Didn't realize until years later when I began working with Catholics that these angels were actually of God and had been telling me the truth.)
During these years, I had all sorts of different spirits manifesting to me physically and in the spirit. It wasn't until I started to wise up and realize what was going on that the negative beings revealed themselves as such. As soon as they knew the gig was up, they turned on me. What happened next is enough to make a chill go up anyone's spine. It was as though Satan had sent a plague against me. I can only describe parts of it as mental rape. Because of my own actions and sins, I had opened up doorways to Satan and given him a legal license to come into my life and wreak havoc. They were attacking me in dreams and in waking life. I had bruises on my body, fingerprints of demons trying to drag me to hell.
It was from this pit that I became aware of my own sin.
This was the initial deliverance moment. Even now as I write this part, my eyes well up with tears. Oh the depths of my Lord's grace, to save me from my iniquity.
I was curled up in the fetal position in bed, crying out, knowing that I was completely alone. I felt like I was in outer space. All of my sin was ever before me, I was drowning in it. I sobbed and wailed from the depths of the pit that I had placed myself inside. It was at this moment that I looked Satan directly in the eyes. He was exposed. I saw him fully at that moment, for what he was, for what he did, all of his lies lay outstretched before him. He smiled at me. He condemned me. He thought he had won.
It was from this pit that I cried out, just one time, with every ounce of my soul, "My God! Help me!"
And at that moment, the Lord swooped into my life and has been carrying me home into his arms ever since. He stepped with a FULL FORCE back into my life. He pulverized the walls of the enemy. He took me back. He broke down the strongholds. He destroyed the claims that Satan had over my life. I witnessed the power of God come in with the force of a thousand tempests and take over my life. He showed me exactly what to do. And in the meantime, he turned the dial WAY UP on my sensitivity to a few things:
(1) the presence of idols
(2) the inner workings of demonic strongholds
(3) the intent of spiritual beings
I could feel the idols around me. I just started burning things. The Lord started to show me the inner workings of how demonic strongholds work. As the Lord tore down the strongholds in me, he was unraveling the work of the Enemy and knitting me together into a new being in Christ. The rest of this story is a long one, so I’ll leave the rest for another time. For now, let’s move into the final section of this story, which is the most important aspect of seeing through the veil.
From The Pit to the Kingdom
Because of the deliverance I experienced, seeing through the veil for me is an ever-present reality. There is not a day that goes by that I am not rejoicing in God for my salvation in Christ.
I was completely lost in the pit of destruction, and because of the grace of God, I am here. Nothing that I have done is to be glorified here, all I did was realize how surely I was dying in my own sin. After repenting and turning away from the world, I went running into the arms of Jesus.
I can see through the veil in the sense that I have seen the death and destruction that awaits every person who chooses to die in their sin. I never want that for a single person on this planet. I want everyone to turn away from sin because it leads to the worst place in the universe, a place without the presence of God.
God wants each and everyone to love and choose him, but he doesn't force us to do anything. We are walking through a spiritual battlefield each and every moment. So many people fail to recognize it as such. The only reason why I can see through this veil is because the Lord chose to pluck me from Satan's grasp. And now I cling to my Lord and Savior like there's nothing else to cling to, for there is nothing more life-giving than the Eternal King, himself. I see through the veil in the Word of God, that I cherish and pour over as much as I possibly can. The Word fills me up like eternal water and the truth seeps into all aspects of this realm.
The eternal reality of Christ pours into every facet of my existence. I can see the kingdom of God at hand. I can see Jesus coming back to establish his Kingdom. We must remain vigilant at every moment, for there's no time to waste. We are called to love God with our whole hearts and minds. This means we must put away all idols. Destroy the distractions. And fully and with all our heart give our lives fully over to God, to live in communion with him in every glorious moment.
We must cling to him, for he is our life and the length of our days!
Closing Thoughts
When I see people getting all caught up in the aspects of the spiritual realm that I used to be caught up in, particularly, the idea of making contact with spiritual realms through occult means, it makes me so sad. We are humans and therefore we have a desire for spiritual things. But the key to true spirituality and eternal life is Jesus Christ.
Attempting to make contact with the spiritual realm through occult means, "ghost" hunting, EMF devices, tarot cards, Ouija boards, spiritism, channeling, spirit writing, drugs, and any other kind of way is leaning into Satan's web of lies. This world is filled with the counterfeit. Satan is ready and willing to give us a counterfeit sign and wonder, and a REALLY CONVINCING one at that. Humans are prone to wander and idolize things of this world. We lock our eyes onto the lie, the shiny thing, the being of light, the distraction meant to keep our eyes off of Christ.
When I had my fill of all the lies of Satan, who was there to save me and protect me? It was God, Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The truth is, Jesus is the way. All other ways don't lead to satisfaction. They lead to more empty desires. To find true fulfillment and peace to rest in Christ.
I have no other wants or needs. My only need is Christ. And that is how to see through the veil. Keep your eyes locked upon Christ and never let go.