Facing The Demons

This hub is totally opinion based and does not intend to influence anyone’s spiritual or religious beliefs.

We might not be aware of their presence but the fact is that we walk among demons everyday without recognizing them. They just appear like normal people but are primarily responsible for turning our lives into chaos. What they love to do is to test our patience, throw challenges at us, hurt us like hell, turn our loved ones against us and often demean and ridicule us making us feel worthless and unwanted. They make our lives miserable in order to spin a deadly web around us and the worst thing is that we get so much caught up in this web that we forget the real purpose of being born on this planet. We involve ourselves in finding solutions to our (illusory) worldly problems to the extent that we constantly keep on corrupting our souls and severing ties with our creator, while attempting to fulfill our unending & unleashed desires. Finally, a day comes when we suddenly realize how far we have travelled from the ‘ultimate source’. Unfortunately, most people tend to realize the havoc they played with the ‘gift of life’ only in the last phase of their lives. That time it’s too late to make amends.

When I was younger, I used to hate the thought of demons and wonder why God didn’t do anything to stop them, or better still, wipe off their entire race (whatever it was) from the face of this planet. However, as I grew older, I learnt that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are both a part of ‘grand design’ and both are necessary for maintaining balance in the universe. If ‘good’ helps saving souls, ‘evil’ puts the souls through grueling tests and devours only the unworthy ones which means it helps sifting wheat from the chaff. If evil bruises your spirit and tests your mettle, God heals your wounds and helps you recoup from the shocks you suffer. One acts like blistering heat and the other, like flowing cascade of water. Both play a significant role in carving a ‘beautiful you’ provided you understand the bigger picture and keep playing the role assigned to you. The more I try piercing the veil between the two worlds, the clearer it becomes that ‘evil’, in fact, helps the souls evolve. How about calling it a favor being done to the human race! Whatever said and done, the demons act as scavengers by devouring the weaker ones and making space for the stronger and worthy spirits. It might sound crazy but the truth is that it is only the ‘evil’ that helps you learn your lessons by creating every possible obstacle (that you can’t even conceive of) in your life path. The only way to defeat a devil is to stop holding on tightly to all that belongs to this world, be it material desires, relationships or emotions (negative or positive) resulting from those relationships. If you succeed in cutting your cords with the materialistic world, the devil gets nothing to feed on and leaves you alone. Sounds difficult but then who said it was going to be easy!

Just like the living demons (evil in flesh & blood) our inner demons surface from time to time. They dig their poisonous fangs in to our soul and leave our spirit (literally) wounded. When they get hungry they just need something to feed on, something to devour and satiate their hunger. The only way to prevent them from feeding on our soul is to fight them or distract them. (Imagine a man holding a gun in your face and you duck right in time and dodge the bullet. The bullet is, no doubt, fired but it surely misses its target which is all you want.)

If you intend fighting them then you should work on strengthening your soul first, because that is the only way you can fight a demon. Alternatively, if you sense a demon rising (in or around you) and you know that you are not strong enough to fight it then it’s much saner to manipulate or distract it. Give it something to feed on other than your soul or your virtues. When a demon surfaces, its only objective is to push you on a wrong path by creating illusions in your mind. It tempts you…entices you and promises you to give you all that you ever wished for. All glittering things come with a price tag, though! The demon misses out on a small detail while offering you a utopian world. It does not tell you the price you have to pay in return of what he offers on the platter. Devil has only one goal to fulfill; it needs more and more souls to feed on so that it keeps it strength going. If it does not tempt the gullible and innocent souls, how would anyone fall in to the devil’s trap. It’s perhaps why we say, so often, that if something seems too good to be true …it most likely is.

How about giving it nothing to feed on…no desires, repressed emotions, anger, vengeance or regrets? It feeds on your negative emotions (including greed, gluttony, lust, envy and anger) and throws them back at you with double the intensity. The resulting misery of your imprisoned soul empowers the devil further. That’s why we say it’s so liberating to ‘let go’. If you can’t let go in body, you can’t let go in spirit. The only opportunity you get to detach yourself from all worldly elements is while you are in your body, not when you enter the spirit world. That should explain why hundreds of saints for centuries, all over the world, have emphasized on good deeds, detachment from worldly pleasures, indulging in spiritual practices, oneness with Higher Power and so on and so forth. All of their teachings focus on strengthening the soul. (Only weak spirits fall prey to demons; stronger ones recognize them and turn away from them). It seems that all of those spiritually evolved saints wanted the living souls to understand that they have been given a chance to see who they actually are, recognize their true essence and make themselves worthy of God’s kingdom while they are alive.

The body that we are born with is a vehicle that should be used to transport our soul to our real ‘Home’ (the Eternal Light) because that is where all souls belong. The day we shed off our cloak, we should have already attained freedom from attachment to everything and everyone. That is the only way ….out of the Matrix.