Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict
Lama Tsultrim Allione teaches you an ancient tibetan buddhism practice revisited for western people. It is a pragmatic exercise that can be done easily at home. A bit strange for everyone that meet this spiritual practice for the first time but definitely something to try or deepen.
It is a sort of self-guided meditation that light up reasons behind inner conflicts in order to solve them.
The book is really well written. Easy to understand and easy to read. There are summaries sections, case studies and a chapter dedicated to the original ancient practice.
Even skeptics can learn something behind Tsultrim Allione’s words.
The ancient practice name is Chöd, defined briefly and really well by Reprogramming Mind youtube channel as:
Chöd (Tibetan: གཅོད, Wylie: gcod lit. ‘to sever’), is a spiritual practice found primarily in the Nyingma and Kagyu schools of Tibetan Buddhism (where it is classed as Anuttarayoga Tantra). Also known as “Cutting Through the Ego”, the practices are based on the Prajñāpāramitā or “Perfection of Wisdom” sutras, which expound the “emptiness” concept of Buddhist philosophy. According to Mahayana Buddhists, emptiness is the ultimate wisdom of understanding that all things lack inherent existence. Chöd combines prajñāpāramitā philosophy with specific meditation methods and tantric ritual. The chöd practitioner seeks to tap the power of fear through activities such as rituals set in graveyards, and visualisation of offering their bodies in a tantric feast in order to put their understanding of emptiness to the ultimate test. Interview is with, author and international teacher, founder and spiritual director of Tara Mandala. In 2009, Lama Tsultrim was selected by an esteemed committee of Buddhis.
Highlights
Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, a Tibetan lama who lived in Italy.
Tibetan butter tea. Gyalwa poured me a cup of butter tea and offered me deep-fried kapsi, a stale cracker made at the Tibetan New Year.
challenges and without recognizing our faults, we would spend our lives waiting for ideal circumstances instead of genuinely working on ourselves. In fact our “enemies,” those who bring up the most
our “enemies,” those who bring up the most in us, are our greatest teachers, and instead of seeing them as demons we could see them as gifts.
Our demons get fatter if they are fought or ignored (which is also an active process), because they feed on the energy of our struggle against them. This is the principle behind fully attending to and nurturing rather than fighting or ignoring our demons.
If we pay attention to a demanding child and give her what she needs, not what she wants, she can relax and settle down. By stopping and discovering what she really needs, you are in a sense paying with your attention. The way to change things is to address the underlying issue, through feeding our demons what they actually need instead of what they seem to want. If we can get down to the fundamental need under the superficial desire, it usually involves love, compassion, and acceptance
Art gives a tangible presence to something that otherwise lives solely in the mind.
Art helps to articulate unconscious content arising through the imagination and to bring it into consciousness.
It is important not to try to create something for someone else to see, but to let yourself enter undistracted into the creation of the image.
When hope or fear or some other feeling attaches to an external phenomenon, whether it’s a person or an event, we have an outer demon. The Tibetan term for outer demons translates literally as “tangible demons.”
a demon that manifests through the senses.
inner demons — are demons that arise from the mind.
spiritual elation demons are attachments to the experiences that develop in meditation.
In Machig’s formulation of the four demons, the demon of ego is the source of the other three demons, because the ego creates the clinging that generates those demons.
Gods create struggles similar to our battles with demons, except they are attempts to get something rather than get away from something. Gods are involved with struggles of desire and longing rather than aversion.
really our hopes are often based on fears. Take a moment and think about your greatest hope. What do you really long for? Then think about your greatest fear. Aren’t they the opposite sides of the same coin, both of which generate tension? I hope for love, and I fear loneliness. I hope for success, and I fear poverty. I hope for praise, and I fear criticism.
Machig’s point in uniting them is that in dividing all experiences into good and bad, the stresses of wanting and fearing are locked together in a cycle of suffering.
when we have a looser, more spontaneous approach, magic can manifest in the simplest of things, and one thing flows beautifully to the next without effort or manipulation.
Where do you find hope and fear at the same time? That’s a god-demon.
releasing the tension caused by our god-demons frees up energy, because we are no longer wrapped up in our own hopes and fears.
think of occasions when you were able to do things without a great attachment to the outcome and noticed how much better they went and how much more pleasant they were.
The brain and the immune system are continually communicating with each other, often along the same pathways, which may explain why visualization influences health.
In the Tibetan language, a demon that causes disease is called a gonpo.
the body and mind are one;
Once again, if we think of diseases as “beings” with personalities and needs, we are giving them an alternative way to get their needs met. The entity of the disease is being redirected to another food source and being satisfied, and therefore diverted from feeding on the body. This takes place through the intelligence of the body-mind complex.
it’s a good idea to ask yourself when you are attacking your partner: Is this my own projected demon?
No one knows your demons better than your intimate partner, which makes this relationship both a priceless gift and a special challenge.
it’s important to recognize that the addictive substances themselves are not demons; our attachment to them is the demon. These demons come from our own mind
Addiction is a clear example of how the outer world is not the problem. This is why diets, prohibitions, and repressive strategies have never worked with addiction; they all assume the issue is the substance rather than the person’s relationship to it. By feeding these demons and coming to a place of rest and integration in the fifth step, we can treat the insanity of addiction at its root level. When dealing with a serious addiction, I suggest a holistic and integrative approach using psychotherapy and twelve-step programs as well as feeding your demons.
Whoever fights against monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Thinking about our demons in the wider context of our maternal and paternal lineages can help us to track the broader patterns of demons at work in our lives.
“Merely,” of course, is a huge step. It’s nothing but a few neurons’ worth of faith, just the knowledge that you can do it. But without faith, the leap never works.
For example, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is considered to be a living Buddha by the Tibetan people and could certainly be at risk of being caught by this demon, yet he is humble and compassionate to everyone. If
If we find we have taken on an air of self-importance, or start labeling those who think differently from us as wrong, this is the demon of elation at work.
If we are in the grip of this demon, we stop examining our own motives and actions. Our behavior may become sloppy and careless. If demons like this appear and we fail to recognize them, we will be taken over.
If you are honored but recognize that the praise is like a hollow echo, then you are not in the grip of a demon of elation.
Buddhist thinkers teach about the demon of elation, they always emphasize its dangers for spiritual seekers.
In the Tibetan tradition one of the safeguards against this kind of demon is to share your spiritual experiences only with your teacher. These experiences may be exciting, but it’s important to hold them close.
People can also get caught in the demon of elation when using drugs to try to experience spiritual epiphany. Whitney learned about psychedelics in college and began using them with the hope they would take her to the ultimate experience.
Anyone on a spiritual quest should know these moments will come and are actually opportunities to go deeper into our path. Becoming caught by demons of elation is like seeing a sign for Paris and thinking you have arrived in Paris. Spiritual experiences and dreams are an indication you are going in the right direction, but they are by no means the end of the path.
the power of demons depended solely on ego-clinging.
the demon of egocentricity should come first, not last. But then I saw that it is the very process of understanding the other three demons that allows us to see the fourth demon.
The real root problem is clinging to notions of self versus other, not realizing how much of what we consider to be external reality we ourselves project. A simple way to put it is this: where there is egocentricity, there are demons and gods; where there is no egocentricity, there are no demons or gods. We can see the demon of the ego in our reactivity, in being irritated by criticism and inflated by praise, in wanting to accumulate material things, and in being upset when we lose wealth, possessions, or status.
once we’re caught in the apprehensiveness, we become unable to experience the original, fundamental state of openness. We don’t realize we ourselves are creating this experience moment by moment; we think it is coming from outside.
Let’s use swimming in the ocean as a metaphor for our relationship to original spaciousness. We can have many relationships with the ocean: we can struggle against it in panic, we can manipulate it for commerce, or we can relax and play in it. The ocean is vast and spacious, so we might feel distrustful of it. But if we can relax the feeling of separation from the ocean and rest in it, we discover the vastness that has always been there. Now we can float easily and restfully in it, and all anxiety disappears. This is release from the ego.
The ground of being has always been there, but it hasn’t been seen.”
Knowing this, don’t try to block the emotions and sensations that arise in your mind. Don’t try to analyze them. Whenever thoughts or memories come up, don’t hold
But clouds do not change the sky, and if you let your mind have its transient thoughts without interference, the demons will be overcome effortlessly.
just hold things in a lighter way, seeing them in a context of spaciousness. When you realize that most of your experience is a fabrication of the mind, there is no demon to be fed. It’s already gone. The traditional analogy for this state is “a thief entering an empty house.”
I have focused mainly on personal demons, with the idea that the influence we cast on the world begins with ourselves.
When a collective demon is able to possess us, it means that we have in ourselves some aspect of whatever we are reacting to.
As we consider the challenge of understanding collective demons and how they work, it is important for us to remember that the only way to stop collective demons is by becoming aware of our own demons. By doing our own work we are less likely to get swept up by a collective demon in the first place. The personal becomes global
Do not be fooled by the idea that demons are external to us. We are seeing our own mind projected in living color all around us. Train yourself to see things this way. Generate love and compassion toward whatever demon appears — without or within. When you finally understand from your own experience that there is no need to cater to the concerns of the ego, you will no longer cling to hopes and fears, or gods and demons. You will see that the source of your pain is clinging to your ego. You will rest in the limitless expanse of awareness — your true home. And you will be free.