Befriending Our Wise Monsters: How to Unlock the Positive Energy Inside Our Worst Fears
Image: “I looked to my side, but instead of a charming figure, what did I see?” 1845 engraving by Édouard de Beaumont for the novel Le Diable Amoureux (The Devil in Love) by Jacques Cazotte. From University of Ottawa Library / Public Domain
Most of us love scary stories. When we were children, spooky creatures thrilled us and populated our fantasies and dreams. Back then, the terrors had names and identities: zombies, vampires, yetis, space aliens, the Freddy Kruegers of our youth.
As adults, we deal with invisible monsters, the difficult emotions that diminish our sense of well-being and cause us great distress. Our personal monster may be dread, or panic attacks, or corrosive envy. We often can’t name the emotion disrupting our lives. Our fight-or-flight response tells us we are at risk. It cries: Get me out of here! An overpowering feeling is on the attack!
We are hard-wired to run from what frightens us. This makes sense. Monsters are scary and can be life-threatening; yet our internal monsters can be our best teachers and wisest friends. In a letter to a young writer friend, the nineteenth-century German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, no stranger to grief and human suffering, advised:
“How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” [i]
When we wake with a clenched stomach and a racing heart or are suddenly drenched in sweat, it’s as though some superior energy is threatening us. No one wants to suffer. Our impulse is to escape from threats or deny they exist. But what if running from what frightens us only prolongs and exacerbates the fear?
The dilemma is how do we turn and face our monsters, the anxiety, fear, depression, rage that depletes our life force? How do we transform patterns of blockage and keep the channels between the mind and body open and flowing?
Certain Eastern contemplative practices can be our friends. We don’t have to be Buddhists or meditators to benefit from them. Tsultrim Allione, a Western-born Tibetan Buddhist teacher, offers a modern practice called “Feeding Your Demons” to transform negative and self-defeating patterns into allies. The original Tibetan Buddhist practice is called Chöd. Translated from Tibetan, Chöd means “cutting through.” What is being cut through are the hindrances to well-being and emotional freedom. Instead of denying or running from what overwhelms us, Lama Allione encourages us to relax and cultivate a relationship with our inner demons.
In an act of empathic imagination, we can listen with openness to what our “beautiful wise monsters” wish to convey. Be prepared to be surprised by the wisdom they offer. Naming and personifying a difficult emotion are natural talents of our imagination that help us relate objectively to invisible states of being. In childhood, our imaginations led us into fantasy worlds. As adults, we can still harness our creative spirits by engaging with imagery that represents our inner world.
Lama Allione suggests these five brief steps in working with hindrances. I encourage you to amplify your experience by writing or drawing your responses.
1. Find the Demon: Decide what demon you want to work on. Locate where you hold the demon in your body and observe the demon in your body. Asking these questions can help:
What is draining my energy?
What is ‘eating’ me?
What incident has disturbed me recently?
2. Personify the Demon and Ask What It Needs: Imagine your demon sitting across from you? What size is it? Does it have an age, gender?
3. Become the Demon: Switch places and physically move to where the demon is sitting. From its perspective, answer three questions: What do you want from me? What do you need from me? How will you feel if you get what you need?
4. Feed the Demon and Meet the Ally: Return to your original seat. Imagine your body dissolving into a nectar that consists of whatever the demon has told you it ultimately will feel if it gets what it needs. Feed this nectar to the demon until it is completely satiated. A new being, an ‘ally,’ may appear in its place.
5. Rest in Awareness: Dialogue with the ally to understand how it can help you, then have the ally dissolve into your own body, integrating its positive energy. Finally, rest in open awareness, a state that is free from subconscious chatter, emotional distractions, and the many fixations that make up our daily lives.[ii],[iii]
How does it feel to meet your monster face-to-face? How has your monster surprised you? What message does it bring? Are there other monsters who would like to be seen and heard? Imagine that you really can speak to your most frightening parts and let them befriend you. In the words of the playwright August Wilson: “Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.”
[i] Rilke, Rainer Maria, Letters to a Young Poet, Letter Eight, p. 92. Translated by Stephen Mitchell. Random House (1984).
[ii] Allione, Tsultrim, Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict. Little, Brown and Company. 2008.
[iii] On her Your Life in Process podcast, psychotherapist Diana Hill interviews Tsultrim Allione about “Feeding Your Inner Demons.” February 13, 2023
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