Demons and Angels

A while ago I wrote about the unexpected repercussions of detoxing from mercury. Bits and pieces of what I thought were my personality sloughed off and disappeared. It reminded me of meditation practice. My tactic for that has been to show up and put in the time. That’s what I did for chelation, too, and it was really, really, really worth it. I hope the meditation will pay off as well, but then my teachers all say not to look at it that way. You have to settle in for the long haul and not be constantly looking for results. So, I continue to just show up and put in the time.

In the ongoing saga of my Buddhist practice, I have gone to many retreats. These were ten days to 45-day silent retreats with non-stop meditation practice. A couple of times before going into one of these sessions, I crashed my adrenals and got to sit for a long, lonely time dealing with what that feels like. Crashed adrenals tend to bring up what the Buddhists refer to as “the hindrances,” namely desire, anger, doubt, restlessness and sloth and torpor. When you have pain all over your body and are dealing with insomnia in its every possible form, a lot of negative mental states will tend to arise.

At one of these retreats, I had an interesting encounter with anger.. I was sitting in the meditation hall feeling like death and I started to ruminate about WHY I was so sick. I got angry at the long line of dentists and doctors who had put me in this situation by poisoning me. I was really fuming.

In the rarified atmosphere of a silent retreat, uncanny things can happen…good and bad. The instructors tell you not to get excited and to get back to work. But this time, sitting fuming in that hall, I noticed a little creature manifesting just behind my right shoulder. It was female, and seemed formed out of gnarly roots. It was dead ugly. The more I fumed, the more it took shape. I cut out the fuming pretty damn fast and it just faded away.

Soon after, I had an interview with one of the teachers and she said, “Oh yes! You have to watch out for those things. They feed on your negative emotions. Be careful or she will become your best friend!”

Sometimes I think about the people I meet on the internet who have been injured or had their children killed or injured by the medical system, particularly the mothers with whom I identify so closely. You have been injured and betrayed and left twisting in the wind. Your anger is justified. But be careful not to let the anger itself injure you. Insult to injury, so to speak.

If fuming and anger can cause nasty little demons to manifest, then presumably loving kindness and compassion can cause the sweeter and prettier “better angels of our nature” to show up, too. I think it’s worth giving it a try.