How to Feed Your Demons

Lama Tsultrim Allione teaches you an revolutionary approach to show your interior demons into pals.

Illustrations by Carole Hénaff.

Feeding our demons quite than preventing them contradicts the standard method of preventing towards no matter assails us. But it surely seems to be a remarkably efficient path to interior integration.

Demons (maras in Sanskrit) aren’t bloodthirsty ghouls ready for us in darkish corners. Demons are inside us. They’re energies we expertise day-after-day, corresponding to worry, sickness, melancholy, nervousness, trauma, relationship difficulties, and dependancy.

Something that drains our vitality and blocks us from being fully awake is a demon. The method of giving kind to those interior forces and feeding them, quite than struggling towards them, was initially articulated by an eleventh-century feminine Tibetan Buddhist instructor named Machig Labdrön (1055–1145). The religious observe she developed was referred to as Chöd, and it generated such superb outcomes that it turned extremely popular, spreading extensively all through Tibet and past.

In right now’s world, we undergo from file ranges of interior and outer wrestle. We discover ourselves ever extra polarized, inwardly and outwardly. We want a brand new paradigm, a recent method to battle. Machig’s technique of nurturing quite than battling our interior and outer enemies gives a revolutionary path to resolve battle and results in psychological integration and interior peace.

The tactic that I’ve developed, referred to as Feeding Your Demons™, relies on the ideas of Chöd tailored for the Western world. Right here is an abbreviated model of the observe, in 5 steps.

Step 1: Discover the Demon in Your Physique

After producing a heartfelt motivation to observe for the good thing about your self and all beings, resolve which demon you need to work with. Select one thing that looks like it’s draining your vitality proper now. If it’s a relationship concern, work with the sensation that’s arising in you within the relationship because the demon, quite than the opposite particular person.

Fascinated with the demon you’ve gotten chosen to work with, maybe remembering a specific incident when it got here up strongly, scan your physique and ask your self: The place is the demon held in my physique most strongly? What’s its form? What’s its colour? What’s its texture? What’s its temperature?

Now intensify this sensation.

Step 2: Personify the Demon

Enable this sensation, with its colour, texture, and temperature, to maneuver out of your physique and develop into personified in entrance of you as a being with limbs, a face, eyes, and so forth.

Discover the next concerning the demon: dimension, colour, floor of its physique, density, gender, if it has one, its character, its emotional state, the look in its eyes, one thing concerning the demon you didn’t see earlier than.

Now ask the demon the next questions: What would you like? What do you really want? How will you are feeling whenever you get what you really want?

Step 3: Change into the Demon

Change locations, holding your eyes closed as a lot as attainable. Take a second to settle into the demon’s physique. Really feel what it’s prefer to be the demon. Discover how your regular self appears from the demon’s standpoint. Reply these questions, talking because the demon: What I need is…. What I actually need is…. After I get what I actually need, I’ll really feel… (Take explicit observe of this reply.)

Step 4: Feed the Demon and Meet the Ally

Take a second to settle again into your personal physique. See the demon reverse you. Then dissolve your personal physique into nectar. The nectar has the standard of the sensation that the demon would have when it will get what it actually wants (i.e. the reply to the third query). Discover the colour of the nectar.

Think about this nectar is shifting towards the demon and nurturing it. Discover how the demon takes it in. You’ve got an infinite provide of nectar. Feed the demon to its full satisfaction and spot the way it transforms within the course of. This may take a while.

Discover if there’s a being current after the demon is totally happy. If there’s a being current, ask it: “Are you the ally?” Whether it is, you’ll work with that being. If it’s not, or if there isn’t a being current after feeding the demon to finish satisfaction, invite the ally to look.

While you see the ally, discover all the main points of the ally: dimension, colour, floor of its physique, density, gender (if it has one), its character, its emotional state, the look in its eyes, one thing concerning the ally you didn’t see earlier than.

While you actually really feel related with the vitality of the ally, ask these questions: How will you assist me? How will you defend me? What pledge do you make to me? How can I entry you?

Change locations and develop into the ally. Take a second to settle into the ally’s physique and spot the way it feels to be within the ally’s physique. How does your regular self look from the ally’s standpoint? When you’re prepared, reply these questions, talking because the ally: I’ll allow you to by… I’ll defend you by… I pledge I’ll… You possibly can entry me by…

Take a second to settle again into your personal physique and see the ally in entrance of you. Look into its eyes and really feel its vitality pouring into your physique.

Now think about that the ally dissolves into mild. Discover the colour of this mild. Really feel it dissolving into you and combine this luminosity into each cell of your physique. Pay attention to the sensation of the built-in vitality of the ally in your physique. Now you, with the built-in vitality of the ally, additionally dissolve.

Step 5: Relaxation in Consciousness

Relaxation in no matter state is current after the dissolution. Pause till discursive ideas start once more, then progressively come again to your physique. As you open your eyes, keep the sensation of the vitality of the ally in your physique.

Feeding Your Demons™ is a course of created and developed by Lama Tsultrim Allione. © Tara Mandala. For additional info and coaching in Feeding Your Demons, go to taramandala.org.