Who are you deep inside?

Give your demons a home in your being. Give them respect and dignity—be willing to face these energies. (Adyashanti)

Every day I share a favorite spiritual quote on Facebook and Instagram and typically get a few likes and some affirmative observations. Yesterday’s ‘demon quote’ by Adyashanti got much more pushback than I would have expected. The objections were the familiar, ‘our mind is fertile soil—it is our choice whether to allow weed in or not’, or, ‘we are on a journey towards the light—darkness doesn’t exist’, and similar assertions like that. I actually agree with these expressions of cautions not to give our demons a little finger, as they may may take more than our hand and swallow us whole as we do. No, I understand Adyashanti’s message differently. Our demons have a message in store for us. They represent an energy inside of us that we may not have allowed sufficient space for expression, often in our desire to be spiritual. We are on a journey towards wholeness and the demons can help us figure out how to proceed by finding a way to express all the inner energies that define us.

I have two ruling energies, the impatient goal-getter energy and the more philosophical and loving energy. Both energies have always been part of me but it took me the longest time to acknowledge them and to understand that they both need their outlet. My demon shows his face when I am out of touch with my inner core. I remember a time during graduate school when I studied economics in the daytime, but devoted the rest of my time to the spiritual section of the Rockefeller library at Brown University. I stumbled on the writings of Vivekananda and J. Krishnamurti and I even briefly wondered whether I should sign up for a spiritual profession instead of economics. Then I had a strange dream.

I saw Yeshua after countless incarnations trying once again to share the gospel in today’s modern society. All the accumulated frustration of convincing the masses that just weren’t ready for his message had made him a drug addict. Then I saw how I married my wife and how we would ascend to Heaven together. The message was clear to me, spirituality had to wait. I first had to build a career for myself, and a family life to live. Then I knew little about the conflicting energies running through me but the symbolic dream had pointed me in the right direction, get all the competitive energies out of the system before signing up for a spiritual journey.

At work in the financial industry I found an outlet for both my ruling energies. I was a player coach of sorts with my global coverage and led a team that figured out the world together. This was the cooperative and caring energy at work. At the same time I had my own strategy ideas and communicated them accordingly. This was the discriminating goal-getter energy in me. Life led me to this power sharing arrangement, I could never have come up with this balance on my own. That was really the power of the strange dream during my graduate school days. Actually, now that I have moved on to my spiritual profession as writer and a coach I realize that I still use both energies even today. The caring philosopher writes the books, the goal-getter, problem solver helps my clients remove the interferences that they encounter in their Ascension journey.

Based on my own experience over the years, this is how I would handle the darker energies inside. Be willing to look into the dark corner of your soul. Listen to the message that the demons they have in store for you. Express all inner energy as authentically as you can without undermining your spiritual journey and without wearing rose-colored glasses either. Lastly, don’t forget to have alone time with all the confusing energies that run through you. Be one with the fear, the restlessness, the emptiness, the greed, the lovelessness, or whatever else it might be that bothers you. Be one with it, without having an opinion. In time, everything that is not you will drop off like the outgrown skin of a snake, and you can be your authentic self without interferences and inner conflicts. Do you already know what message your demon has in store for you? Do you know who you are deep inside?