The nature of "demons". (Psychedelic context).

[ThaOreoBoros]

After many years of personal development (over a decade) drawing from a vast array of sources and experiences, coupled with my first full-on, non-dual, psychedelic experience I've become fully immersed in the truth that there is nothing here except for me experiencing myself. 

It has to be the case then, that whatever falls under the label of "demons" are just unintegrated aspects of my own being. Right? Meaning that if on my next psychedelic experience I set the intention of "meeting my most feared demon" I'll just receive some profound, yet currently painful to accept insight about myself. No actual red-devil-cartoon-monster is going to come walking into my bedroom. Right? I'm fully aware that I could create that sort experience for myself on psychedelics (red-devil-cartoon-monster) for the sheer spectacle of it but that's all that it would be - a spectacle. Right?

I am asking because the most bountiful results in personal growth, love and happiness for me have always come after sessions of shadow work. Naturally I want to continue to go deeper in this direction. However, before I go jumping WAY off the deep end I do want to make sure I don't accidentally invite Lucifer Himself or one of his cronies into my apartment. You know - on the off chance I'm making some common naïve mistake here. (However intuition and experience suggest that Lucifer has already set up in my apartment as a permanent tenant and is actually typing away this very post.)

Grateful for any insights. 
Would actually LOVE it if I'm COMPLETELY wrong with all of this.
May You be a Victorious, Liberated $oul.

Edited March 16, 2021 by ThaOreoBoros

[ThaOreoBoros]

bump

[GreenWoods]

Demons are most likely real. Most people just aren't able to perceive them.

Be careful with your intentions.

If you want to do shadow work, rephrase your intention to something like "meeting the part of me which I most fear".

[knakoo]

I recommend this video to understand more about "demons". 

Also the following video is amazing and important to understand the first video :

 

[AtheisticNonduality]

A gray tall lanky thing.

[allislove]

On 16/03/2021 at 5:36 PM, ThaOreoBoros said:

Would actually LOVE it if I'm COMPLETELY wrong with all of this.

Yes! Listen to what feels like goodness, ease, peace, joy. Let go everything that is in discord with actuality. 

Mind is very sneaky, it can use personal development work for creating a new ego's mask. Investigate the direct experience, do not believe in story telling that feels like ?.

Read @Nahm 's post regarding emotional scale by Abraham Hicks: https://www.actualityofbeing.com/the-emotional-scale. How does the thought about "Lucifer" feel? Find the feeling on the emotional scale. If the feeling is not at the top of the scale, it's safe to assume the thought is a lie.

Care how you feel, that's the whole point of personal development. ?

[Nahm]

@ThaOreoBoros

Other than human imaginings, like books and movies, what is your direct experience of demons? 

This is probably a much better opportunity to question & inspect direct experience vs abstractions of thought. 

There aren’t individual entities at all, human, demon, elves, you, me, or otherwise. 

[WaveInTheOcean]

all the users on this forum replying to you are also just parts of your own being, hehe, its all one, i.e. you. Real and not real all at once;)

[Loba]

I wouldn't go looking for that energy.  If you find it you will know, it feels very heavy, dark, static, magnetic.
Like how God contains love, when you find this energy, it will be outside spacetime and contain a collective of hatred and fear, both individually and on a global scale.

If you find such energies within you, do what you can to neutralize them.

http://maryshutan.com/darkness-spirit-and-the-feminine/

Quote

It is the tendency of our culture to mistake what is dark within ourselves for what is wounded, rather than seeing darkness as its own kingdom, and carrying its own beauty.

It has been a long path for me to separate my rather dark tendencies from what was wounded within me. We tend to speak of dark as “bad”, and especially in modern spiritual communities the idea of transmuting anything that is not of the utmost purity into “light” is the predominant ideal.

This means that individuals who are naturally dark, who resonate with the earth, with death, who if they saw something slightly mischievous or simply not compassionate would be fine or even curious (to get along swimmingly with), who love their inner wildness, their bodies, their sexuality– all things that a perfectionist mind steeped in unconscious christianized patriarchal mythologies creates strict guidelines against in an effort to separate from– are often cast out of spiritual communities, or must find their way in “dark” communities often populated by individuals who are confusing darkness for adolescent angst or mental instability.

I have been sitting with this pattern for years, as what I have noticed is that those who are the “darkest” carry the most light. Generally many of the individuals steeped in “lightwork” are simply looking for escapism; many who believe that they are only working with what is “compassionate” are simply self-creating or may even be being fooled because of their lack of discernment when it comes to the spiritual realms. 

Mostly people end up blocking themselves because the spirit realms, and the natural realms, and our daily lives, do not fit into tidy transcendentalist paradigms.

We create light by making room for it. By digging in our own dirt, by going to our ocean floor. By healing, and healing is a messy job. Becoming conscious is a messy job. We cannot be light unless we have contended with our own darkness and integrated our own shadows.

If you are looking for advice from both sides of the coin, I would not use this forum as most of the people here have thrown out some of the more important aspects of true spiritual connection, in favour of simply seeing a false light.  This place has developed a... ... .... culture.  Most of the people here do not really delve into authentic work.  And most of them share Leo's blind spots.

If you are looking for information on dark energy, you can go within and tap into what is darkest in your heart, or you can open your perspective to the horrors that take place in the world and to merge the necessity of some of creation's harshest acts.  You have to train yourself to See this part of reality in an objective manner.

Without the polarity of being able to see what is evil, then you won't have the ability to see what is good.
Open up to the idea that you might be food for something else.

Open up your mind to the idea that even divine insight could come from beings that are still just as flawed, that in other ways consciousness has developed, it will have its own blindspots.  That you still have to parse truth from fiction, be a good experience or a terrible one, angel or demon.

Edited March 21, 2021 by Loba

[peanutspathtotruth]

@Loba Great response! 

@ThaOreoBoros Drawing from experiences, I think there is also the collective side of this phenomenon. The collective, unresolved shadow, and it's huge. On some trips of mine, I seemed to "enter" this realm and was asked if I was really willing and ready to go further. Processing the pain, and accepting the dark sides of love in this collective energy, doesn't result in individual resolution. There is nothing to gain for an individual, it's the whole cleansing itself through a seeming individual. And this has its own flavor of immense beauty. This truly feels like the ultimate altruism. 

And out of this shadow I can imagine that energies may manifest within our perception in various ways and we interpret them as actual entities. That's what DMT can feel like at some stages. 

Also, I heard Shunyamurti talk about ghosts in some video, and he said that when egoic patterns are extremely dense and violent, they can energetically perpetuate even after the physical death. Who knows, but sounds interesting and somehow makes sense. 

So maybe it's not all our own psychological shadow. 

[ThaOreoBoros]

15 hours ago, Nahm said:

@ThaOreoBoros

Other than human imaginings, like books and movies, what is your direct experience of demons? 

This is probably a much better opportunity to question & inspect direct experience vs abstractions of thought. 

There aren’t individual entities at all, human, demon, elves, you, me, or otherwise. 

GREAT POINT$. Thank You.

In a way, all of reality is a human imagining isn't it? That's precisely what also makes it a divine imagining. As I am not the first human being ever imagining things - I simply want to gain more of an insight into this field which I am sure has been thoroughly explored by many curious others such as myself. To have at least a cursory glance at the map before I go exploring the actual territory. Surely these collective abstractions of thought didn't come about for no reason did they?

As You have very clearly stated Yourself my notions of what falls under the category of "Demons" come from my culture: books, movies, etc. However that is not to say there aren't very real, tangible, direct (and potentially VERY PAINFUL) experiences to be had and insights to be gained by exploring what's underneath the veneer of what my limited cultural experiences have provided me with so far. In the same way by which my journey to understanding the true nature of God started with exploring the abstractions of thought (in the form of organized religion, books etc.) provided by my immediate surroundings. These abstractions of though are exactly what ultimately lead to (via integrating, transcending them and still being left hungry) very direct experiences of non-dual states of consciousness a.k.a. God.   

Lastly - It is ULTIMATELY true, that there are no individual entities. However it's also PRACTICALLY true that I still experience myself as separate. I believe that's as important a feature of God's creation as unity is. Following that - any unnecessary suffering I may encounter as I set off on this new journey I will experience as very much so directed towards me specifically. I'm sorry I'm a very glutenous, lustful, body-identified, limitless creature. It $TILL. HURT$. ME. When I F*CK UP. At the end of the day - just trying to keep that pain to the bare minimum required for consciousness expansion.

Peace. <3 <3 <3.

[ThaOreoBoros]

25 minutes ago, peanutspathtotruth said:

So maybe it's not all our own psychological shadow. 

That's exactly what my intuition is. 

Where is this video that mentions ghosts? Any chance of You finding it?

[ThaOreoBoros]

19 hours ago, knakoo said:

I recommend this video to understand more about "demons". 

Also the following video is amazing and important to understand the first video :

 

Lord THANK YOU - this is EXACTLY what I needed.

[Nahm]

1 hour ago, ThaOreoBoros said:

However it's also PRACTICALLY true that I still experience myself as separate. I believe that's as important a feature of God's creation as unity is.

You think you do, but if you inspect a bit, you’ll notice you actually don’t. You are yourself. What this is really about, wether acknowledged now or later, is thought attachment and emotional suppression (intense spiritual bypassing). Might sound abrasive admittedly, but might save you years of suffering when you could be creating the life which is the dream within you too. 

Quote

Following that - any unnecessary suffering I may encounter as I set off on this new journey I will experience as very much so directed towards me specifically.

Try to point to where it’s coming from. 

Wish you the best in any case. If souls, demons, etc is your thing per se, Godspeed brother. 

[Boethius]

This is the Eastern Orthodox view of these topics.

Edited March 21, 2021 by Boethius

[Bodhitree]

There are a few different ways to approach “your demons”.

The first is on an intellectual level, by looking at the darkness in your own behaviour. Anger, fear, hatred, jealousy can all be powerful negative forces within our lives, and if you can examine their roots, you can overcome them. Insight and consciousness of how they work within you are the key. This kind of shadow work i generally encourage.

The second is on an psychic level. Which means basically go looking for them. This I don’t recommend, as an entity usually has some amount of independent agency. You may find yourself saying in a psychically charged environment, I wish to meet a small devil, and find this entity using all your worst, most self destructive impulses against you.