Time to feed the demons

 

 

"Time to feed the demons".  

This image arose from a meditation practice I did online with a youtube video recorded by Lama Tsultrim Allione who has written a book called feeding your demons that is based on the Tibetan Chod practice. It is important to understand that in this context our demons are not external, they are internal forces within our psyche.  In many cases people externalize and demonize people and things outside of themselves, these projections on to the outer world are harmful to self and others but it is the fuel of the polarization and discord that we see in the world.

For more about the practice as Lama Tsultrim teaches it: https://www.academia.edu/42410810/Feeding_Your_Demons_Tsultrim_Allione

I found the meditation practice extremely powerful. I came face to face and felt in an embodied way what in the Ridwhan School is know as the "pea", it is the inner core of the ego identify, and may be experienced a a kind of green snotty pea.  We all develop an ego as part of our developmental process, it is an important phase for getting by in the world. And yet, at the core it is false, it is a useful fiction when we create it, but it is not our real essential self, at some level we know this, and in order to grow personally and spiritually, at some point we need to face this.  (For more information on this concept you can visit https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/pea )

Part of the meditation is to fully see and embody your demon.  I was not planning for this to be the "demon" that arose, but it did, spontaneously.  As I felt into this "demon", I felt how my body shrank, cringed and got contorted and became like a snotty green pea, no way to sugar coat it.  Complete undesirable, completely unlovable.  The meditation, rather than to kill the "demon" (which in mythology usually results only the propagation of more demons or more heads to the demon) to direct love and compassion, to offer youreself with complete surrender to the demon and to find out what it needs. Immediatly I began to feel what a terrible predicament this demon is in!  It was intense and painful to embody and yet as I directly complete and unconditional love, the relationship of deep rejection and aversion changed and I could love this aspect of myself and feel such deep compassion for its predicament and pain.  As I did so everything softened.  The "false identity" did not feel threatened and so could soften, there was a sense of loving coexistence... I am certain this scene has been portrayed in many stories through the ages, and in many movies, where the monster or beast turns out to be an incredible ally.

Though this was tough going, the sense of this has remained with me. And I have returned to this again and again, sometimes entirely spontaneously.  And creating the image is a part of the practice of recognizing and loving the core of th ego, what is sometimes described as the core of the "false self"... but in fact, I don't find this terminology helpful.  What I do find helpful is the practice of embodiment, surrender and love.  Tsultrim Allione cautions that this is not perhaps the best practice for those who have not developed a sense of self or for children. And that the part of self-love may be practiced, but there is another step of dissolution, and that is should be used only for adults or those who have grown into "themselves" in the world. 

I am finding the practice of following the inner threads through images that appear from the soul through art to be a powerful practice.  A way of "tending the images" that Carl Jung and James Hillman speak to, and that the poet Rilke also speaks to... In the expressive arts we refer to this as decentering which refers to bringing these inner images and identifications into form through the arts so that they can been seen externally.  Externally they also become a "third" and there is a natural disidentification in which you can play with the relationship to the third, you can open up the range of play, you can transform the inner play or dance or painting you are in... 

A lot has been said in ancient times and modern times, but ultimately it is the practice of noticing and the lightness of playing that allow us to move from the soul and feel the communion with earth and cosmos. It is about the serious play of tending to life.

Quotes specifically to do with tending images:

"… I do want to suggest the peculiarity in an image. Images, you know, are very odd arrangements. They are heightened intensified moments.

All the events of an image occur together. Simultaneity contrasts with the sequential reading of narrative in which events follow one after the other." —Jame Hillman

"You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born. Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens. Just wait for the birth, for the the hour of the new clarity." -Rainer Maria Rilke