Part one, emotional demons and the inner disconnection:
“People pray in order to get something, they even pray in order to reach to a more spiritual state. in fact, they worship their inner demons, even if they feel ‘spiritual’. In this state (of worshiping their inner demons), their soul could open and receive external forces that intensify, in an artificial way, their mental and soul’s ability. This people, because they don’t understand that this is a false and misleading, tend to attribute their success to themselves, and become even more arrogant, more venerable – to this demons.
Muso Kokushi. 1300 B.C.
*
In all of us there are demons; It could be a kind of invasion from the ‘Sitra Achra’ (The realm of evil is also termed Sitra Achra/Aḥra Aramaic; the “Other Side” opposite holiness, (in Kabbalah texts). A kind of: ‘Dybbuk’ (In Jewish mythology, a dybbuk meaning “adhere” or “cling” – is a malicious possessing spirit).
This are drives, cravings and desires that live in the bottom of our lower subconscious: This are mainly, repressed emotional problems; painful and traumatic emotional memories, self-doubts, fears, neurosis, etc.
This inner demons are being a very serious center of gravity that controls what is happening in the outer courts of one’s life.
But this occupation with demons isn’t seen and legitimate, the person denies the gravitational pull that the demons have over his life. And so he lives in a kind of disconnection between the control from below and the face present to himself and to the outside.
There is a disconnection between the abys of the lower subconscious and his (developed or undeveloped) – consciousness. In this disconnection there is the fatality and even the tragedy of human beings. A person is supposed to be a master to himself, but in order for this to happen he has to admit that he is a slave to the demons of: sexual and food lusts, cravings, and infantile impulses.
On the awareness level, all are aspiring to be masters of their life. But despite the aspirations, ambitions and statements, on the awareness level, the person falls back on their demons.
And the maximum that could be reached in this gap (between the aspirations and the demons) – is to hide the demons by what could be conceived as a responsible and mature behavior. (And this is what happens usually).
And the problem is intensified because part of the power of those demons stems from an inner emptiness, a feeling that you are nothing, zero. And the demons are a safe escape route that gives a feeling that something is happening, this is the main way in which they feel themselves and their existence.
Part of the reason for the search for psychological treatment- is to find a legitimation to feel and deal with the demons (again, as the escape route from inner emptiness). This is a self-deception and the origin for the downfall, because the attempt to solve the psychological problems, is only gives them power.
So, the inner demons are sidetracking us from our true way or quest. Like a child that tempts his father to go to the store for chocolate, instead of going straight to school.
So, from one hand we hide our emotional obsessions (demons), but from the other hand we dig and deal with it so much /*(because of the escape from the inner nothingness).
The only way for self-correction and repair of the demons infliction in our emotions and blood (cravings and lust) – is to accept and recognize them as a legitimate, and even intimate, part of our self, which is very difficult. And why to do so? The simple understanding of them – is to get rid of them somehow, but the truth is that exactly in this demons – there is the code for our individuality and the energy for spiritual growth, and the getting rid of them (if successful) will erase the necessary codes for this inner development, and the authenticity that makes him special and unique (being himself).
In a state of real emotional maturity – we no longer hide from the outside our emotional demons, and neither we continue to in a loop, around our emotions – and ‘just’ to be. Once the higher, mature emotions are achieved – the emotional demons lose their grip upon us.
We all, (who is more and who is less) suffer from the dominance of the emotional demons, and the remedy society found against the demonic power of demonic emotions – is repressions (inside) and masks (on the outside).
And so great is the power of repressions and masks – that the person himself is not aware of the destruction potential which is in the demons, until they bursts out.
The challenge about the emotional demons – is not to repress them further, or ignore them, but rather, how to become friends and to live in a relative peace, and so, to eliminate the two poles; one is the dominance of the demons (which will intensify the P.I.) and the second is the repression of the demons (which will increase their power, in the dark).
We are easy victims of those emotional demons, it is the vacancy and vacuum of our inner life and inner being – which sucks in those emotional demons, which is charging with power of our untamed and wild emotions.
Part two, living with the shadow:
A shadow is an inclusive term, a kind of personality, or an overall being for the emotional demons.
“A Chasidic Jew complained to his Rabi:
Rabi, I have rising in me terrible thoughts.
Meaning?
I am even afraid to put it on my lips. It is bad for me and I feel bad that I am capable to think such thoughts, that, on them, even in hell there is no atonement.
Well, say it.
Woe. Sometimes I think, God forbid, that there is no justice and no just.
So, what do you care?
What do you mean: ‘what do I care’? Screamed the Hasidic Jew.
If there is no justice and no just, what kind of purpose does the world has?
So, what do you care that the world has no purpose?
Rabi. If the world has got no purpose, that there is no point, than there is no point for the Torah, and if there is no point for the Tora, than there is no point for life, and for this, Rabi, I care very much.
Said Rabi Mendel to the Chasid:
If you care so much, than you are a decent Jew, and it is allowed for a decent Jew to have such thoughts.”
This story is about a dark side in the life of this Chasid Jew, and this is his subversive dark thoughts (expression of demons), and the Rabi tells him that he should recognize and accept this dark side of him; the shadow; (The dark self).
And not only to give recognition to the shadow and stop running away from it, but absolutely the opposite; to love it…
This sounds absurd, but this is the way out of the great dominance of the shadow on our life.
And even more than that; to know that ‘I am the shadow’, and the ‘darker’ the shadow is– the more ‘me’ it is.
So, we have two approaches to the issue of the shadow in us;
One, is running away of the darkness of the lower consciousness (the higher consciousness needs to be developed, so until then, all we have is the lower subconscious), which means: to ignore it and to depress it.
The second approach is to give it recognition.
This two are also the two kinds of leadership:
The leadership of the ruler that is removed from the proletariat uses it, repressing it, growing on his account.
The leadership of the shepherd, that goes after a stray sheep.
Which is a leadership on a higher level?
The one of the shepherd is the higher. Because the higher you are – the more you love those who are below you. The leadership of the ruler is not leadership, it is tyranny.
High leadership means: to feel the pain of those who are lower and weaker then you. The shepherd loves his sheep, and the most, he loves the injured and weak sheep, for they need the most support.
One representation of the lower subconscious (in which the shadow resides) is the body; the more we listen to it, relate to it, love it – the more we are a high leader for the body.
If we, as high level leaders of our empire, need to relate to the unsuccessful, vulnerable side of us (the shadow), not to expel, to repress, to deny it. To know that our real authentic self are not our profession, or education, but the little helpless lost child, that need relating to, conformation acceptance – a hug.
So, the little lost child is a large portion of our shadow. To live in the lost kid, does not mean just to know that this is the real me, but more than that; to give him full legitimation, to treat him as the real me.
An authentic person is connected to the lost child, and in him he finds his identity. From reading the essays of the Danish philosopher: Søren Kierkegaard – it is quite clear that he was connected to the ‘shadow’ of the ‘poor child’ in him, and through him he was able to connect to what is authentic and real in the world.
But with politicians, many of them are blotted people, talking in high clichés and slogans, mostly because their ‘shadow’, the ‘poor kid’ – did not get from them any recognition. This is also, to be, connected to their sensations, feelings and body. The denial of the body could be noticed by how people drag their body, the way they drop their body into a chair, the critical way they look at it in the mirror. All this is saying: “this body isn’t me, as long as it doesn’t cause any problems – we don’t pay much attention to what it wants to say to us”. Contrary to that, it could be seen in documentaries – how natives in primitive tribes carry their body; with grace and self-respect, their body is not part of them, it is them. If we would know to listen to the body, it will cease to be a prison for the soul (for the body is giving some expression to her).
Everything below the neck – is the lower subconscious: emotions, cravings etc.
Intellectualism is a proof to that that we lost the contact with the denied self, the unpolished’ unshaped self, the inner child– we call: the ‘shadow’. Whereas’ living full authentic life- means intimacy with ‘shadow’. The shadow is everything we deny in our self, because it is not civilized enough, we scarified the ‘essence’ for the sake of the ‘personality’.
We, our self, are living on a very thin layer of consciousness, it stands between two dimensions that we are not conscious of; the ‘shadow’ –which is connected to the body, and it is called here: the lower subconscious, the other is the spiritual world (‘the world of Ideas of Plato’) – higher subconscious.
We are between the two, but should be based in lower subconscious, in order to allow spiritual energies and intelligences – to enter, and go through, the higher subconscious. We could not receive it through our thin layer of consciousness, it has no capacity to house and process high energies, we can only get it if the higher subconscious is free and we are based in the lower subconscious. The head is the thin layer, it is the mediator between the higher and lower – subconscious.
***
“…our souls may be consumed by shadows, but that doesn’t mean we have to behave as monsters.”
― Emm Cole, The Short Life of Sparrows
“Deal with all this, live with myself, you mean? I honestly don’t know. I stand often enough at the abyss of my soul, asking that same question, looking down into the dark crevices where the black monsters dwell on the bottom. They gaze up at me, and I look them in the eyes. “This also you are,” they say, and I almost fall into the void.”
“And then?”
Anaxantis shrugged.
“And then? I turn around and go do what needs to be done. What else is there?”
― Andrew Ashling, The Invisible Chains – Part 1: Bonds of Hate
“We don’t fall in love with people because they’re good people. We fall in love with people whose darkness we recognize. You can fall in love with a person for all of the right reasons, but that kind of love can still fall apart. But when you fall in love with a person because your monsters have found a home in them– that’s the kind of love that owns your skin and bones. Love, I am convinced, is found in the darkness. It is the candle in the night.”
― C. JoyBell C.
“You cannot defeat darkness by running from it, nor can you conquer your inner demons by hiding them from the world. In order to defeat the darkness, you must bring it into the light.”
― Seth Adam Smith, Rip Van Winkle and the Pumpkin Lantern
“They were tricky, those demons. Could they be trusted? Of course they could be trusted. She’d created them. She owned them. They wouldn’t lead her astray.”
― Rachel Cohn, Very LeFreak
“Many a person over the years has tried- both successfully and unsuccessfully, to get rid of their inner demons. Those who are successful are deemed artists, those who are not are called dreamers at best and lunatics at worse. But where exactly resides that line on which two worlds collide? Does somebody know? Is somebody fit to tell? Who’s to say that those deemed lunatics are not just successes on the making? Who says that those who claim to be just a tad bit crazy are not just as crazy as those that had completely lost it? Maybe, and bear with me here…everyone is as crazy as the one before them and the next one could ever possibly be. Maybe at the end- it’s just that some have mastered creating a façade of calmness and collection while others don’t bother going through all that trouble anymore, if they ever did. Perhaps we all have demons…it’s just that some people have demons far more toxic and difficult to ignore than others.”
― Eiry Nieves
“Its where my demons hide.”
― Imagine Dragons
“We must all face our demons sooner or later.”
― Matt Abrams, She’s Toxic
“Inner demons feed on mind games. Trust me, keeping them satisfied with my own twisted way of thinking.”
― Efrat Cybulkiewicz
“Yes, he liked his face as he saw it there, his mouth quivering around the cigarette between his lips and the apparent ardor of his deep-set eyes. But a man’s beauty represents inner, functional truths: his face shows what he can do. And what is that compared to the magnificent uselessness of a woman’s face? Mersault was aware of this now, delighting in his vanity and smiling at his secret demons.”
― Albert Camus, A Happy Death
Gabriel