Spiritual security

The boundary walls, portals and guardians often seen symbolically in the spiritual world appear to play exactly the same role as computer security does in the world of hardware and software.  It prevents unauthorised access and protects it against accidental or deliberate damage. 

The Analogy

Within the computer world, security measures can be applied via hardware and software.  Thus you can have programs that prevent unauthorised  access, for example, but you can also have hardware such as pass-cards and so called ‘dongles’ [lovely word], but for our analogy we need to only concentrate on  software based security because all visions deal with ‘software’.………..

There are three main sorts of test that computer security software products apply:

• Authentication –  Simply put authentication  is the means by which someone [or something] proves they are who they say they are.  In other words the security product barring access will say ‘give me proof of your identity’ – and the person or thing is then expected to provide a  password or a pin number or something they may own that proves they  are them.
  

• Authorization  -  This test is to make sure you are allowed to access or use what you want to.  There are two sorts of check.  The first ensures you have the right to use a function/program.  So can the person ‘pay people’ or ‘access people’s accounts’, or ‘create new accounts’?  The second check is to make sure that if the person can use a program they are allowed to look at the data used by the program.  In effect are they restricted as to what they can see even if they are allowed to use the program.  Without going into too much detail a person may be allowed access to look at the whole file, but alternatively he may be restricted to a part of it or just a few records or maybe only  a part of one record.  During operation, the system uses the access control rules to decide whether access requests from (authenticated) users should be granted or rejected.

• Encryption - encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information. The word  decryption is used to describe the reverse process where encrypted information is converted back to its original readable form

The spiritual world

A person travelling in the spiritual world alone [if you are with a guide it is rare for any restrictions to apply, as by definition a guide will have authorisation to proceed] is likely to encounter all three forms of security, but the security will be perceived in symbolic form.

• Authentication – In visions, exactly the same sort of thing happens as in computing.  You are expected – if you are a lone traveller – to provide some means of identification.  But they are unlikely to ask for your passport or driving license!   Passwords and symbolic pass keys seem to be the most used, and it would seem these have to be obtained from your main spirit helper. The password may have to be given to a ‘gatekeeper’ or guardian or the key may be used to open the portal.

• Authorization  - In visions a person will be prevented from doing what he/she wants to do if they are not authorised to do it. This is where the guardians come in again.  Some guardians are visible, some invisible.  A lone traveller  might find themselves being thrown back by ‘invisible forces’ if they attempt to do the thing they attempt [in virtual terms, not literally], or they might see sudden barriers pop up where none existed before.  Or they might see a truly desperate and frightening monster guarding the ‘function’ they want to access.  So, for example,  they might be travelling towards a fountain they intend to ‘throw themselves into’ [the function].  I think this function is fairly generally inadmissible, so the person may then find themselves confronting a multi-headed snake breathing fire.  A guardian is not a demon, we may have our own demons to fight in performing challenges, themselves seen as all sorts of frightening apparitions, a guardian is essentially fearsome, but doing a good job.

• Encryption – In visions, information is ‘encrypted’ often as puns, like cross word clues.  A set of images are displayed which appear meaningless, but are actually visual clues and are plays on words.  It is your job to turn the visually encrypted clue back into word form.  Whole sentences can be formed from visual clues.  The scenes and image descriptions must be written down extremely accurately as the clues are often very subtle

Some guardians simply fulfill the role of anti-virus software, which in computing is used to prevent, detect, and remove malicious software, including computer viruses, worms, and trojan horses.   Guardians destroy malicious software and you need to be aware of this.  Entering the spiritual world alone without a guide and without authorisation is actually literally dangerous – you can have your mind seriously damaged by guardian software.

The rule in all cases is, if you perceive the thing to be protective, do what it asks, don’t persist.  If it appears to be simply ‘evil’ then it is for you to metaphorically fight it.

The computer world is not totally without understanding of the close ties between the spiritual world and the computer world.  In one of the more ironic naming decisions, a very well know computer network authentication protocol, [which allows nodes communicating over a non-secure network to prove their identity to one another in a secure manner]  was called Kerberos.