This is why I'm not a mystic
When it comes to mystical, "spiritual" stuff, I'm completely confused and hopelessly lost. Sure, I believe the spirit world exists, but exactly how it works or what goes on there is a mystery to me.
We Christians are taught that all spirits are evil, apart from the Holy Spirit who is God. Okay. And we're taught that "He who is within you [ie. self-same Holy Spirit] is greater than he who is in the world [ie. devil, bad spirits, whatever]".
But then, as Sivin once said, sometimes it's like as if we Christians don't quite believe that our God is bigger than any ol' evil spirit. We act almost paranoid, racking up a long (and ridiculous) list of do's and don'ts that stretches out from here to Timbucktu.
For example, when my parents converted from Buddhism/Taoism to Christianity (this was waaaay before they married), they burnt any photos they had with pictures of pagodas, sculptures of Buddha or Chinese temples in the background. And I always grew up with the understanding that I should not even step into a temple lest some bad spirit attach itself to me and follow me around. But does this make sense? Somehow it doesn't make sense to me. Who's bigger than who here?
Somebody pointed out recently that we happily invite people into our churches, yet if a friend were reciprocate and invite us to a temple, we wouldn't go -- where does that leave us? Looking like arrogant intolerant bigots, most likely. Hmmm.
I know people who will not wear anything with the symbol of a dragon on it. In Chinese culture, the dragon is a very auspicious symbol, but because in Christian tradition the snake is seen as 'evil' -- due to the whole Adam & Eve being tempted by a snake thing -- the dragon also gets considered sinister by association.
A friend told me recently she was advised not to even watch documentaries about snakes on TV. I was like, What? So now even documentaries are off-limits?!?
You can see why I'm sceptical. Some things do sound very extreme, and yet I don't want to just dismiss them as the creations of paranoid minds coz I don't know whether there could be a grain of truth in there somewhere. Like I said, I don't know how the spirit world works and what is probable or not probable.
I've heard stories of people bringing back what they thought were harmless souvenirs from trips to Asian/Eastern countries and those things were actually symbols of worship in that particular culture, so had spirits attached to them, and this caused havoc and calamities to happen in that household. I don't know... does that mean you'd better not buy anything ethnic-looking when you travel? I have no idea.
What about martial arts? Are they connected to the occultic? Yoga exercises? Role-playing games (RPGs)? I have no idea. I do remember that a team of trainers who came to train Sunday School teachers in my hometown church years ago said Christian children shouldn't watch Thundercats or He-Man -- among other cartoons -- because they were occultic. I was only about 10 or 11 then, I think; I was present at the training coz Mom was a Sunday School teacher. I've never forgotten that, in particular, they took exception to He-Man lifting his sword and proclaiming, "I have the power!" They said only God has the power and therefore in this cartoon, He-Man was usurping God's authority or something. It sounded weird to me then and it still sounds weird to me now.