A Buddhist story. The monk says there are two wolves inside me. One is angry and fighting, the other is kind and gentle. He was asked which one will live, and his answer was the one I feed. The metaphor is apt. If your inner demon is a hateful wolf, you need not feed it. When you see it as what it is, coming from you, and part of your reality that you chose, you can chose new things. The reason inner demons seem more common than beauty, or at least can seem more common, is that the inner demon arises from fear, but it doesn’t become an inner demon until fear becomes hate. You create inner demons to “protect” you.
Many of us are very focused on killing the angry wolf. Actually most are. Everyone I hear speaks about what they have to stop. Killing the angry wolf often ends in literally killing the person who tries. This is maybe why the ancestors believed demons could kill them. They scared themselves to death, and since it wasn’t an obvious killing, it had to be supernatural.
Stress. Stop judging. Stop eating junk. The list is long and pressure builds, and they keep failing as they’re feeding the inner demon they’re trying to kill. So instead of saying I need to stop being this or that way, what should I say? The other side is love. We have to give more attention to “I like this”, “I want this“, “I love this“, “I love you“. You do determine your focus with more intention on what you want. Instead of being the “guilty penitent” who God gives nothing because “I’m not worthy”, consider that what you want has already been given. You can just have it, and you don’t have to deserve it or prove anything.
More often I have other people telling me what I need to stop doing. They’re trying to control my demons, or is this a demon of their own? Sort of both. They used to say the demons arranged themselves in legions. Whole medieval command structures.
Usually what you hate in someone else is also in you? Is that true? That is true. Inner demons do talk to each other, but what might be surprising is that the demonic hierarchy is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. They don’t have influence because they can tempt you into sinful, selfish badness. They have influence, because every need has an associated fear and we all want our needs met. It‘s the same even if you want to go into haunting. There is no ghost that doesn’t have an attendant inner demon. Some need that not only wasn’t met, but left an enduring spiritual scar.
Ah, so often ghosts have a message? For justice or revenge if they were murdered say, and they know the truth of what happened? They always do, but often it’s muddled. These are just observations from investigating haunting. I‘m not requiring anyone believe in haunting. It could just be mass hysteria as I said earlier, but if it is there is still a message. It is perhaps a call for self analysis. Especially if there is “co-dependency” on an inner demon, that family or group is headed for a crisis.
It’s not really a ghost if you only see it in dreams and have no waking appearances of it? Well again, I’m not trying to force my beliefs on anyone. The realm of existence our minds function in is home to the “archetypical” demons as well as personal demons. I don’t think we leave it. We change our relationship with it. Even science notes that nothing can be destroyed, not literally. It can only transform. So if you dream of the dead, it is very possible it was that person. But if you only dream, then though they are real they are not a ghost. They are not trapped. They still exist, but their existence is the natural one and as it should be. The obsessing with this world, for them or for us, is the problem, and it’s actually obsession that gives rise to inner demons. Obsession is either a neurotic or even psychotic first step to multiple-personality disorder, a.k.a. full demonic possession.
There is a disorder that stems from obsessive behaviour isn’t there? Obsessive compulsive disorder? Yes, and they feel quite victimized by life. I think a lot of folks have it to a degree. Any psychosis arises, because literally any brain can potentially go there.
Your own inner demon in full manifestation in you? Yes. The beings that seem independent of inner demons, and yet people have seen as demonic (like the “Mothman”), have not shown much interest in hurting people. In general, they are marked by not really caring what happens to people.
It seems fascinating to me that one can have hundreds of demons. Is that true also, like in multiple personalities? It’s possible, but it usually doesn’t grow to hundreds. People generally aren’t that broad minded or thoughtful.
Are there any good films or books on that subject of multiple-personality disorder? Books, yes. It’s used in movies too, but almost strictly as a fictional convenience, like the movie Fight Club.
As in Batman? Yes, Two Face from Batman. Part of Two Face would not hurt anyone willingly. Their other sees the world as nothing more than a coin toss and enjoys playing the game.
So villains are manifestations of demons and maybe Batman himself? Even Batman has inner demons. He intensely hates the Joker. The Jokers inner demon is “brother” to Batmans. Jokers big thing is that life is incoherent, unreasoning, and unfair.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~