Learn to stand your ground against churchy folks who work in darkness. Because not everyone who goes to church, that fills religious spaces, or that associates with those circles is operating from a place of integrity, or even has the capacity to truly psychospiritually grow as a person.

What I mean by that is that a lot of people are simply Pharisaic spirits caught under the spell of performative devotion, shallow displays of holiness, and a hunger for control over others (control over those within their own rigid religion and those that are outside of it), rather than the willingness to do the inner work of personal transformation, where their fixation tends to rest on rules, appearances, and hierarchical status instead of honesty, inner healing, and genuine psychological and spiritual depth and development. And that’s why it’s crucial to discern that their energy as Pharisaic spirits is not, and never will be, the true measure of light, integrity, or spiritual maturity.

So, if you have people like that trying to silence you, guilt you, or force you into submission to their boxed-in way of thinking, or that are simply trying to wear you down with their demands for compliance, don’t be afraid to start standing in your own power. This is because the very act of holding firm boundaries with those who misuse religion as a weapon is a declaration that you will not be swayed by their shallow performances or corrupted manifestations of faith. And it’s a reminder to yourself that your worth and growth are not determined by how well you fit into their religious expectations, but by how faithfully you remain to your own inner alignment and sacred standards.

And over time, as you begin to live more fully from that place of psychospiritual strength and clarity of discernment, it becomes clear that when you do stand your ground against their obsession with overreaching control, facades of righteousness, and authoritarian religious order, you begin to expose their inability to actually engage in authentic inner growth or honest self-reflection. And in doing so, you also reveal the difference between what surface-level religion and what genuine inner transformation looks like, making it harder for them to disguise their religious performance as depth of character and as evidence of authentic moral authority that are both actually forged through continuous cycles of psychospiritual transformation and conscious-based development.

This means that you don’t need to get caught up in their machinations of religious domination or exhaust yourself trying to defend your own psychospiritually sovereign path; instead, your strength is found in firmly and consistently refusing to hand them authority over your life, where that defiance speaks louder than any sermon, communal ritual of performance, or appearance of false devotion. And in turn, such a stance also pierces through their schemes of sinister group dynamics—whether it’s campaigns of collective shaming and public humiliation designed to isolate you and erode your sense of belonging, gaslighting campaigns that twist your words and experiences, scapegoating rituals that pin the weight of their dysfunction onto you, or manipulative shows of false unity that attempt to pressure you into compliance—where, in each of these, choosing to resist their efforts of domination and control reflects the integrity, inner freedom, and authenticity of your own life’s journey rather than a life lived under the spell of religious conformity.

So, out of that awakening of perception, their attempts to manipulate or control your life—and to dominate your inner psychological and spiritual realm through their rigid doctrines and authoritarian demands—they will finally begin to lose their grip. This is because you now see through the disguises they hide behind, where you also no longer measure yourself against their false standards of righteousness and authority (if you ever truly did that at all). And that’s when you also begin to realize that the deeper growth unfolding within you is not found in trying to convince them to see differently, but in choosing to honor your own journey without apology, even if throughout your life you continue to experience cycles of opposition, scapegoating, or collective targeting—where at the end of the day, you’ll always transmute the darkness of their religious control into fuel for your own transformation and ascension.