Why This Is a Spiritual War and Why Spiritual Work Is a Battle
Facing the Initiatory Crisis of Our Times and What It Demands of the Soul
By Bernhard Guenther, October 9, 2025
We are living through an intensifying spiritual war at a pivotal moment in human evolution.
Esoteric traditions from both the East and West have long identified this era as the Time of Transition, a threshold where the fate of humanity hinges not only on our outer choices, but also on our level of consciousness, soul embodiment, and, most importantly, what we align ourselves with.
At the same time, some people take issue with the terms “spiritual warfare” and “spiritual warrior.”
They believe we should move away from war-like language and speak only of peace, unity, and love. Some argue that if we are evolving into a higher consciousness, we should use “higher-frequency” language and avoid terms that sound too negative, aggressive, or outdated.
The Misunderstanding of Spiritual Warfare
Others claim that spiritual work is not a battle at all. They say that by calling it such, we make it harder on ourselves, that we create our reality through the words we use, and therefore should focus only on love and light.
But real spiritual work tells a different story.
As you go deeper, beyond self-help trends, beyond New Age positivity, and beyond the mental scaffolding of “high vibes only,” you begin to see that the path of awakening is a confrontation.
You come face-to-face with forces, both inner and outer, that do not want you to awaken, on both the personal and collective levels.
This avoidance of the process is known as spiritual bypassing.
It is part of how spiritual work has been corrupted, distorted, and diluted, morphed into a pop-spirituality that has stripped true esoteric and psycho-spiritual work of its depth, fire, and initiatory rigor.
It reminds me of what Jungian psychologist James Hillman said about how the complex and the disturbing have been reduced to packaged formulas of what spiritual growth is “supposed” to look like.
He joked that many New Age and pop-spiritual authors could compile their works into one large volume titled: “How To Become Aware of the Depths of Your Being Without Disturbing the Routine of Your Comfortable Lifestyle.”
The Battle Within: Ego, Soul, and the Hidden Forces
The truth is, if you sincerely engage in psycho-spiritual work to find the truth of your being and let the Divine force guide your life, it will uproot everything in your life that is not aligned with it.
Your ego, with all its attachments and desires, will not like it and will resist it.
It will come up with all kinds of reasons and justifications for why you can’t engage in the work, and why now is not the right time. That you’re not ready. That you have more important things to do.
Or, in the most cunning of all deceptions, it will convince you that you’re already “awake,” that you’ve transcended the need for further inner work, and that you’re “special” and somehow above others.
This is the ego’s favorite excuse, most often augmented by thought injections of occult adverse spiritual forces, which you mistake as your own.
This work is not a self-help, self-improvement, or self-actualization program.
It is not about perfecting the false self or making the ego more functional in a dysfunctional world where pathology has been normalized.
As the late Joseph Campbell said:
“Self-actualization is for people with nothing better to do—people who don’t know their personal myth or deeper purpose in life.”
This path is something entirely different. It is for those who feel a deep, inner calling of the soul to align with something higher.
The very essence of this work is a battle between your soul and your ego.
And that is only the beginning.
We are in a spiritual war. And more and more people are beginning to recognize and name it for what it is.
Christians, in particular, often quote Ephesians 6:12:
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
But spiritual warfare is not only external. The real battle is fought within.
That’s where most people, even those quoting scripture, miss the mark.
We are not just victims of evil “out there.” We are also conduits through which these forces operate, especially when we remain unconscious of our inner fragmentation, childhood wounds, trauma, and shadow material.
Many, particularly dogmatic religious types, tend to view it all in simplistic, black-and-white terms. They label anything outside their doctrine as “demonic,” often in the most overgeneralized and reactive ways.
In doing so, they externalize evil onto others without recognizing how these same spiritual forces of darkness are also at work within and through them.
The Hidden War and The Problem of Evil
This is an occult (hidden) war, and it operates through us.
Dark forces often hide behind masks of the “virtuous,” the “good,” and the “moral.”
They feed on grandiosity, self-importance, self-pity, and victim consciousness.
The spiritual work necessary to anchor the Divine Force is a battle against darkness and ignorance, and these forces work in the most deceptive ways, disguising themselves within your own psyche.
Many masters, including enlightened ones like Sri Aurobindo, have clearly recognized and spoken about this reality:
“Accepting life, [the spiritual warrior] has to bear not only his own burden, but a great part of the world’s burden too, along with it, as a continuation of his own sufficiently heavy load.
Therefore, his Work has much more of the nature of a battle than others; but this is not only an individual battle, it is a collective war waged over a considerable country.
He has not only to conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood and disorder, but to conquer them as representatives of the same adverse and inexhaustible forces in the world. Their representative character gives them a much more obstinate capacity of resistance, an almost endless right to recurrence.
Often he finds that even after he has won persistently his own personal battle, he has still to win it over and over again in a seemingly interminable war, because his inner existence has already been so much enlarged that not only it contains his own being with its well-defined needs and experiences, but is in solidarity with the being of others, because in himself he contains the universe.”
– Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga
That is not “bad vibes” or “negative” language.
It is reality seen from a higher spiritual vantage point, beyond sentimentality or preference.
The problem is that many people misunderstand the word war or unconsciously project their unresolved wounds and fears onto it.
From a Jungian perspective, discomfort with the word warrior or the language of battle often reveals a shadow issue. It may point to unprocessed trauma (including past life trauma) or unconscious fears that are being bypassed.
This is not about glorifying violence, being “tough”, or adopting a macho stance.
But neither is it about ignoring the very real battle we are in, both within and without, with unseen forces that actively seek to block us from purifying, awakening, and aligning with the Divine.
There is also a deeper distortion in the belief that we must abandon “war-like” language in order to evolve spiritually.
This is one of the central New Age traps that Sri Aurobindo warned against, especially in Essays on the Gita, where he critiques spiritual pacifism and the refusal to engage with evil.
As both he and Rudolf Steiner emphasized, the problem of evil — its reality, its cosmic function, and our response to it — is one of the defining challenges of our time.
And it must be recognized in the world, faced within ourselves, and understood for the teaching function it entails.
Not everyone is called to the path of the spiritual warrior. However, those who are willing must be prepared to engage in both the outer and inner battles with sincerity, courage, and humility.
Why Differentiation Is Essential in the Spiritual War
As Sri Aurobindo said, “This is not only an individual battle, it is a collective war waged over a considerable country.”
Why is that?
Because once your consciousness expands through sincere inner work, you will inevitably come into contact with various forces and beings that are battling over humanity. You do not live in a solipsistic vacuum.
This is an ancient battle that moves through us, and it has reached its peak at the end of this Kali Yuga..
It is therefore imperative to understand the forces you are subjected to, so you can consciously choose what to align yourself with, and not be deceived by the veil of light, spiritual pride, imposter spirits, or the Luciferic temptation.
Caught in the mind-prison of materialistic reality, we assume that we alone are the creators of our thoughts, desires, feelings, and actions.
Yet the sense of a fixed, independent identity, separate from everything else, is the greatest illusion and spell we have fallen under.
Forces and beings from higher and lower realms, elementals, the forces of nature, collective suggestions, karmic and evolutionary currents, and the thoughts, emotions, and energy of other people are constantly moving through us.
They influence our behavior, identity, and life direction far more than we realize.
At the same time, you are affected by unconscious drives within yourself.
These include inner child parts, sub-personalities, suppressed shadow aspects, trauma imprints, Animus or Anima projections, and conditioning from your parents, ancestors, society, culture, and religion.
All of these shape how you perceive yourself, others, and the world, and they influence your desires, relationships, and life goals, for better or worse.
So who is the real “you” in the midst of all this?
A spiritual warrior must learn to differentiate, identify what is arising within, where it comes from, and consciously choose what to align with.
The Call of the Spiritual Warrior in the Time of Transition
Ancient non-physical beings have been battling over humanity for thousands of years. These unseen forces still contend for influence over the human soul, and each of us stands at the center of that battle.
The great bifurcation of humanity is accelerating. The splitting and polarization are intensifying.
This Time of Transition is an initiation, and the outcome is not guaranteed.
If human beings truly understood what is at stake, they would drop all distractions and focus on what matters most.
Many are called, yet few choose to answer the call.
As more people lose themselves in disembodiment, distraction, and unseen influence, the call to reclaim sovereignty and align with the Divine and Dharma has never been more urgent.
As the veil thins, it becomes imperative for anyone on a sincere path of awakening to understand the deeper spiritual realities in which we are embedded, and the forces that influence us, so we can discern what we consciously align with, both within and without.
If you still believe that “waking up” is just about exposing conspiracies and arresting all the “bad guys,” or eliminating evil externally, you are severely mistaken.
Nor is it about ignoring evil, taking the philosophical “non-duality” bypass, and focusing only on “love and light.”
All of these assumptions reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of evil, particularly its cosmic function as a force of ignorance, and what is truly required to eliminate it for good.
You cannot move toward a higher consciousness until you have sincerely faced the darkness, both within yourself and in the world.
Anything less is avoidance.
Anything less becomes a spiritual persona, a mask made of beautiful words, quotes, and ideas about what you think it means to be “spiritual.”
This is one of the core problems in New Age and pop-spirituality today. It also mirrors the deeper corruption of religion and the loss of esoteric truth in modern spirituality.
God is peace. But God is also war.
No one escapes the Law of Ascent and Descent, not the individual, and not the collective. I’ve explored this before in my work, and its effects are becoming more apparent and intense in our current time.
It requires a descent into darkness before there can be a real ascent into embodied higher consciousness.
“The higher one rises, the farther one is pulled down. Evolution does not move higher and higher, into an ever more heavenly heaven, but deeper and deeper.
Each evolutionary cycle closes a little lower, a little nearer to the Center where the supreme High and Low, heaven and earth, will finally meet. The more Light the seeker possesses, the more darkness he uncovers.”
– Satprem
The nature of true transformation is a battle, but its successful outcome is glorious, magnificent, and beyond what the mind can comprehend.
That’s why the spiritual warrior who serves the Divine with sincerity, humility, and courage, without blame or complaint, and who is rooted in the true Self and aligned with purpose through sincere psycho-spiritual work, does more to uplift humanity and the collective consciousness than millions who fight shadows on the wall, unaware of the deeper forces at play and disconnected from their true nature.
Godspeed.
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