Fighting Your Inner Demons (Continued)

He was a fairly liberal spiritual aspirant and somehow always minded that he was balding. So he signed up for a hair-transplant. When he told his mother about it he was surprised that she seemed to mind. 'Son', she said, 'you have to accept your genes'. The night before the operation he banged his toe into a door and, and like magic, the swelling of the toe only receded when his scalp had healed. 'Oh, it is a message of the Tao to stop hurting myself',  he thought. He promptly canceled the follow up operation.

What do you make of this story? Contrast that to one where a spiritual aspirant finally manages to beat his alcohol addiction. In this case you are fighting for the light, it is very hard work, but the direction is clear to you. If you make it and beat the addiction you will finally have a shot at being whole. In contrast, the case of the plastic surgery is the opposite. The resistance is coming from your super ego, here represented by the voice of the mother 'you are not allowed to tinker with your body' or the voice of God represented by the swollen toe 'you are hurting yourself'. Truth of the matter is that you are fighting your inner demons in both cases. In the plastic surgery case you are tinkering with your perceived dark side, while in the addiction case you try to rid yourself from your demons.

The question really is which authority has caused you to injure your toe? Of course it was a subconscious accident, but then, most spiritual path traveler agree that there are no accidents. It was the perceived holy side in you that minded. But then, if it minds, perhaps it is not so holy after all. I remember once having a 'Conversations with God' type of exchange with myself over one of my darker desires and I heard God's advice on the matter and everything this voice said was right, yet, it sounded harsh. It was then that I realized that I had an exchange with my super ego. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that there is no God, all I am saying is that at the end of the day you are responsible for your choices. The Tao is here to tell you what implications your choices have, but you are the only authority in this universe who has the right and the duty to define who you really are.