Where Is The Spiritual Warfare? It’s In Your Mind, and They Are All Fighting For It

I see many variations of Spiritual Warfare on YouTube, TikTok, etc. Many speak about it like it’s a battle between Archangel Michael and an army of millions, or the wrath of God coming down to earth like Zeus. But I want to be clear: that is not the spiritual warfare I’m talking about. Don’t get me wrong, that stuff seems more creative, like DC Comics vs Marvel, the crossover, but no. It’s nothing like that. So don’t let the titles you see on social media fool you. Because while you’re looking for the battle somewhere out there, there’s already one happening inside your mind.

You’ve also probably been seeing a lot of talk lately about regulating your nervous system. I talk about this a lot, and it is one of my main focuses when working with others. But what does nervous system regulation have to do with spiritual warfare? A lot more than you might think. Because if the battle is for your mind, your thoughts, your attention, your perception, then we also have to talk about what happens in your body when your mind believes it is under attack. And if you’re starting to wonder whether your mind is under attack, rest assured – it is.  How? Very simply, if I can repeatedly capture your attention, I can repeatedly influence your state. In 2025, McDonald’s Taiwan and Ogilvy created a campaign called “Goodnight, See You for Breakfast.” They rearranged a culturally familiar bedtime song at 60–80 BPM—a tempo chosen to encourage a calmer state—and paired it with dreamlike imagery made from McDonald’s breakfast foods. The campaign was deliberately placed at night, including on social media at 9 p.m., to reach people during their pre-sleep screen time. The intention? According to McDonald’s, to plant the idea of deliciousness the night before, increasing the chance that consumers would think about McDonald’s breakfast the following morning.  

No one is sitting inside McDonald’s headquarters with a giant mind-control machine. That’s not what I’m suggesting. This is marketing. But it demonstrates something important: attention + repetition + emotion + sensory cues + association can influence what we think about, desire, and ultimately choose.

Now imagine that same principle applied not just to what you eat, but to what you fear. 

The war is for your attention. It seems like everyone is talking about having ADHD these days, but there’s also something else happening: we are experiencing an enormous amount of stimulation all at once. If you’re not doom-scrolling, you’re watching TV, texting, playing games on devices; there’s so much going on that silence is becoming obsolete. Of course we can’t focus! We’ve lost the art of silence. Remember the old slogan at the movie theater, “Silence is golden”? I think we have come to the point where silence may be more valuable now than ever before. 

What happens to the brain when we are never unstimulated?  If every single moment gets filled, whether at the doctor’s office, standing in line, at a red light, eating lunch, or lying in bed, then how do you know which thoughts are actually yours? 

Filling every moment with something can keep the brain constantly seeking the next piece of stimulation, the next notification, video, text, headline, or scroll. We don’t give the mind the downtime it needs to rest, process, and simply be. Just as the body needs periods of activity and recovery, the mind and nervous system need periods of stimulation and rest. Mind and heart coherence is how you may hear some of this described in the spiritual world. Science and spirituality may use different languages to describe some overlapping experiences, but they aren’t necessarily describing identical mechanisms.

We’ve become so accustomed to having our attention occupied that silence itself can feel uncomfortable, and as a result, we have become uncomfortable with doing nothing. And who knows this? The marketing firms that represent big companies, retailers, pharma, food chains, and politicians. They spend millions studying our behavior so they can design campaigns and make sure the right message reaches the right person at the right time. Your phone, Alexa, Google—they don’t even have to secretly listen to everything you say. We willingly provide enormous amounts of information through what we search, click, watch, buy, like, share, and scroll past. Algorithms learn what keeps your attention and then give you more of it. But what happens when you strip that away from them?

The truth? You become harder to influence. Not impossible, because after all, we’re all human, but it does make it a lot harder.  And when is it the hardest for us to ignore? When we are struggling and we are searching for answers, when we enter that “void” (which I wrote an article on as well). Those influences hit us hardest when we are at our most vulnerable, when we should be the most silent to listen to our own intuition and make our own decisions. The moment we most desperately want outside information may be the moment we most need internal silence.

I am guilty of all of this…
We Google.
We ask ChatGPT. Who, at one point, I called my BFF
We watch tarot readings (and I do tarot readings as well!!)
We search YouTube.
We ask friends.
We look for signs.
We watch videos telling us what our symptoms “mean” – like when I was pregnant with my first kid, I think I must have died three times and had leprosy because I put all of my energy into reading
every
single
symptom.
We consume other people’s interpretations of our lives.

And suddenly, everyone else’s voice gets louder precisely when our own voice is hardest to hear.

There’s your spiritual warfare again.

Not because all those outside sources are inherently bad—even ChatGPT, spiritual teachers, books, therapists, friends, etc., can be extraordinarily useful—but because there’s a difference between seeking information and surrendering discernment.

I don’t think the answer is to get rid of technology. We must live with all of it, but in the end, I’m the one in control of where I place my attention. For myself, I limit my “screen” time to thirty minutes a day, and that’s just to catch up on what’s happening. Sometimes, I do get hung up on spiritual and science TikTok because I learn about new books or movie recommendations, and I learn about more mystical teachings and religions. But even then, I have to always keep my discernment radar on.

And since I’m the one in control, I will not willingly give that control away to anyone. My mind, my heart, and my nervous system may respond to what happens around me, but I get to decide what I continue to feed them, where I place my attention, and what I choose to believe.

And in the words of Michael Jackson, “I’m starting with the man in the mirror.” Because maybe winning the spiritual warfare was never about fighting everything outside of us. Maybe it starts with becoming conscious of the person looking back at us.

And maybe that’s how you win the spiritual warfare.

Look at yourself. That’s where your power is. 

TAKE ACTION: If you feel ready to explore what is asking to shift in your life, connect with Neyda Honda through Guided Counsel. Her articles, conversations, podcasts, and complimentary Alignment Consultations offer support for developing greater clarity, emotional resilience, and a more intentional path forward. Discover her work at GuidedCounsel.com or explore additional resources at beacons.ai/guidedcounsel.