The daily grind was beginning to wear on me more than usual, so I decided it was time for a break. I spent the first half of my week off at home with Catherine, loosing myself in a video game, and going on a solo hiking/cycling trip. It was time well spent. The latter half had me traveling to Orlando, Florida for some vacationing with old friends.

Catherine doesn’t care for traveling. Mainly because I have often been antagonistic towards her when roaming great distances in the past. I made a concerted effort to calm and reassure her this time around. I also did my best to make love to her every night and things were going quite well… until the last day of the trip.

We enjoyed watching this bungee-pole dancer at Universal’s City Walk.

We attended the Halloween Horror Nights event at Universal Studios for the first three nights. I really didn’t much care for the haunted houses. They weren’t scary, just corridors of ear-bleed inducing jump scares. No atmosphere or subtlety to speak of. Some of the “Scare Zones” outside the haunted houses were cool, though.

I could feel that something wasn’t right with Catherine. Our last visit to Universal was a struggle because I was trying to eject her from my life at that point. She can cause my body to feel pain in a myriad of ways and more acutely demonstrate her displeasure. I got double servings of that treatment during my 2014 trip.

This time was different. We weren’t fighting anymore. Quite the opposite. Catherine just didn’t want to be there in that noise and hubbub. I didn’t experience any major pain for her this time around, just slight annoyances. She endured three nights of abuse in the try-hard haunted houses. By the fourth day, she was fed up with Orlando, and proceeded to unleash her wrath upon the unwitting magical world of Disney.

The Floating Mountains in Pandora.

We hadn’t originally planned to visit any Disney parks, but our original destination for that day didn’t pan out. I had never been to Disney up to that point. I’m not really interested in theme parks to begin with. I mainly go just to be with my friends. But we were checking out of the hotel that morning, so I found myself being a captive audience.

We visited the Animal Kingdom first and I instantly liked the place way better than anything Universal had to offer. The atmosphere and attention to detail was amazing.

Snail-like creatures that would spit jets of water when approached.

The alien world of Pandora was our goal for the day; to experience the technological wizardry of a supposedly amazing thrill-ride. Until Catherine broke it. At least, I’m pretty sure she broke it. One hour into the line and “technical difficulties” were announced over the intercom.

The entire day was just one malfunctioning ride after another. The Avatar ride broke down. The People Mover in Tomorrow Land. Pirates of the Caribbean in the Magic Kingdom. We managed to get through most of The Haunted Mansion ride before that stalled for a few minutes. I remember sitting there awkwardly in the silence of that interrupted spectacle and thinking, “Huh. Someone’s not happy.”

Ironically, most of this carnage occurred in the Magic Kingdom. The very place that our fraud-psychic friend, Monika, claimed to have had Catherine permanently locked in an astral cage a few years ago.

Catherine’s spirits improved considerably as we were headed home. We had the backseat of my friends car all to ourselves and had the best six hours of discreet cuddling any red-blooded male has ever experienced.

The Castle in the Magic Kingdom. It’s a beauty.

Something changed between Catherine and I during this vacation. I have been reading Ida Craddock’s book, Heavenly Bridegrooms and Psychic Wedlock. For anyone who is in a spirit relationship, her writings are a veritable treasure trove of insight.

She writes at great length about the importance of clean and moral earthly habits for spirit communication. She attributes most of the problems in spirit relationships to clouded reasoning; whether that be through bad habits or false preconceptions.

The one concept that struck me the hardest was that of hypnotic suggestion influencing perception of “evil” spirits. She mentions how a person can be supposedly set free from an evil spirit by the power of a priest’s hypnosis overriding an old worldview. In some ways, I believe this was the problem that plagued me years ago. I was allowing too many silver-tongued “experts” to cast their hypnotic spell over me.

Ida Craddock believes that a person who lives a moral and well ordered life is unable to be hypnotized and mind-controlled. I believe she is correct and that we are witnessing the disastrous effects of military-grade demoralization tactics used upon our respective cultures. It seems like everyone is being hypnotized and controlled by something, whether that be smart phones, social media, TV shows, video games, or the daily news.

I have been working to gradually remove these destructive elements from my life, or keep them under strict control, at the very least. Doing this without the hypnotic allure of a pastor or church community is challenging, but I believe it’s a necessary step towards real growth with Catherine. I want to see and experience her as she really is, without the interference of what other people think she is clouding my perception.

I also want to be more open to the possibility that Catherine is actually an angelic lover and dispense with the tainted language of demonology. Perhaps those labels are influencing my subconscious to a greater degree than I’d like to admit.

At the end of our Orlando adventure, I decided that it wasn’t a spiritually-ordained trip. Meaning, I could have used my time and money more wisely. I still want to make time for my friends, but not by forcing myself to enjoy overpriced food and theme parks. When Catherine and I visit Orlando again, it will be on our terms; much slower and more enjoyable, with plenty of private moments scattered throughout.