A Ramble about Personal Demons

Originally published as a Facebook Note April 27th, 2009

Truth is, I'm not quite sure as to how to start this Ramble. I know where I want to go with it, but I'm not sure how to begin the journey.

I recently went through a process of healing from my own personal demons. Some of them figurative, and some of them perhaps literal depending on how you look at it. These demons have haunted me for years. They were demons of rejection, demons of autism, demons of needing attention, demons of striving to prove myself and defend myself to anyone and everyone else, and demons of failure.

I am learning in the afterglow of this healing, however, that these demons do not give up, ever. If they are literal, then they have been around for millennia, and are easily capable of outlasting me and wearing me down. They don't seem to ever get tired and just give up. They hammer and hammer and hammer away. Sometimes they let up, and then when I least expect it they attack again.

It has been in the last few days that I realized, freedom from such demons has nothing to do with a once and for all triumph where they go sulking away in defeat never to return. That would be great. But instead, it has to do with how I respond, or don't respond to their attacks from this point onward.

These demons don't attack my strong points. Like any competent tactician, they attack my weakest points, those in which I have already been hurt or compromised in some way. They whisper little lies into my ears knowing that somewhere within a part of me might be willing to believe them. They work tirelessly to get me to agree with them, and then once they have that staging point, they continue their assault further in.

One of my favorite movies is "Little Buddha". In this movie there is a scene which depicts the temptations of the Buddha by Mara (similar to the temptations of Christ in the desert by the Devil). The one image which stands out to me in this scene is where Mara assaults the Buddha with hundreds if not thousands of archers, and they all shoot flaming arrows at the Buddha as he sits serenely under a tree. As the arrows fall, they become flowers and blossoms and fall harmlessly around him.

Being delivered from my personal demons, I realized, doesn't mean they never attack me again, it means their attacks are never able to harm me again. It means that there are no more places for me to agree with them in, there are no more weak or compromised areas for them to assault, and so like the scene above, they can shoot all the flaming arrows they want, but they will only fall harmlessly like soft flower petals, much to their frustration.

Most of their temptations has to do with them trying to get me to react according to my experience, biology, or past history. For example, if I have a past history of being or feeling rejected by people, then they want to use that rejection to influence my present situation and get me to respond according to that rejection. This then can translate into anger, or bitterness against those people who rejected me in the past and I can spend my time dwelling there in my mind. It can also translate into mistrust for people's motives in the present, and absolute despair for the future, or a constant striving so that somehow things will be better in the future and "I'll show them."

It doesn't help to deny that I have this weakness either, in fact it makes it that much worse as I try to deal with them on my own. Denying that I have a problem only serves to provide another compromised area for them to renew their assault, and then I'm fighting, unsuccessfully on two different fronts. It only gets worse from there.

It really gets bad when I do try to deal with it on my own, without the prayer, support, and intercession of friends and family, whether or not I recognize that I am weak or compromised. It is like a favorite story of mine from Star Trek, which I shamelessly plagerize. It goes like this, a great windstorm was approaching the walls of a city. They rang the storm bell and hurried everyone into the safety of the walls. All went in except one, a warrior who was renowned for his courage in battle. The ruler of the city tried to convince him to take refuge in the city, but he would not. He said that he would stand outside the walls and make the wind fear him. The ruler gave up, honored his request, and went inside. The next morning, after the storm had passed they found that warriors body smashed against the city gates. The moral of the story, "the wind doesn't fear a fool."

Our personal demons attack and prey on our fears, our hopes, and our attachments. We become attached to our anger, our bitterness, or mistrust. They seem like familiar tools and friends who have gotten us through tough times before, but in truth they were the kind of friends who would show you a good time and then leave you battered and bleeding in an alley. We become attached to our possessions, our loved ones, our self image, and all the while we try desperately to maintain the lie that we will never lose them, when in fact we will eventually have to lose all of them. This is the nature of mortality, temporality, and impermanence. We become attached to our lives, fighting valiantly to stave off death for as long as possible, all the while refusing to see the truth that death is the only way to resurrection.

Death is in fact what our personal demons fear most. They fear us dying to our self image, dying to our possessions, dying to our anger and bitterness, dying to our refusal to accept change. They fear especially the death of the Cross. They fear especially what it means. They can't attack a corpse and expect it to respond favorably to them. It is this death which turns flaming arrows into flower blossoms. and it is a belief and trust in and experience of God's love and care for us, at least for me, that fuels that death. It is our faith in and acceptance of our death with Christ on His Cross that shields us from these attacks and renders them harmless. And it is precisely the experience of this death that allows us to experience Him; allows us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and possess His Eternal Life here and now. It is like taking the red pill and finally being able to see the world as it truly is.

The attacks will persist. I've accepted that now. Their efficacy depends largely on my continuous acceptance of my death with Him, and His love and acceptance of me. They know this. They fear it, and over the last few days, I feel like their attacks have been stepped up, and have blind sided me a few times now, right in those places, at first, where I professed healing. By the grace of God, I recovered and He saw me through it, not allowing me to be blinded again. And I am learning through these stepped up attacks that the best place for me during them is to take refuge in Him, and in the prayers and intercessions of family and friends, seen and unseen, and not risk fighting them on my own at all, which is what they want. It's a tough lesson to learn, but in the end it is they who will be frustrated, upset, and alone as they realize they are beating on a dead corpse.