Name Demons

Taking time to do nothing often brings everything into perspective.
Doe Zantamata

"In the process of naming the demons, we may find that they show themselves to us more fully. There are phases in practice when all we will see is desire or anger; We may doubt ourselves, thinking, "Oh dear, I am simply filled with desire or anger,” or "I've got so much doubt," or "I'm so restless," or "Fear is underneath whatever I do."

For a year or two in my own meditation all I saw was my anger, judgment, and rage. When I really touched it, it exploded through me. I spent almost a week without sleeping at one point,
four or five of those days throwing rocks around in the forest and warning friends to stay away from me. Gradually, though, it subsided, gradually it lost its power.

As we go deeper in our spiritual life we find the capacity to acknowledge and touch the hardest places in ourselves. All around us, we encounter the forces of greed, fear, prejudice, hatred, and ignorance. Those of us who seek liberation and wisdom are compelled to discover the nature of these forces in our own heart and mind; we will experience how we get caught in them, but eventually we will find freedom in relation to
these basic and primary energies.

Sometimes when the demons are most difficult, we can use a variety of temporary practices that function to dispel them and act as antidotes. For desire, one traditional antidote is to reflect on the brevity of life, on the fleeting nature of outer satisfaction, and on death. For anger, an antidote is the cultivation of
thoughts of loving-kindness and an initial degree of forgiveness.

For sleepiness, an antidote is to arouse energy through steady posture, visualization, inspiration, breath. For restlessness, an antidote is to bring concentration through inner techniques of calming and relaxation. And for doubt, an antidote is faith and
inspiration gained through reading or discussion with someone wise. However, the most important practice is our naming and acknowledging these demons, expanding our capacity to be free in their midst.

Applying antidotes is like using Band-Aids, while awareness opens and heals the wound itself. When we become skillful at naming our experience, we discover an amazing truth. We find that no state of mind, no feeling, no emotion actually lasts more than fifteen or thirty seconds before it's replaced by some other one. This is true of joyful states and painful ones. Usually we think of moods as lasting a long time, an angry day or a sad week. However, when we look really closely and name a state such as “anger, anger," then all of a sudden 'we discover or realize it's no longer anger, that after ten or twenty soft
namings it has vanished. Perhaps it will turn into an associated state like resentment. As we name resentment, we notice it for a while, and then it turns into self—pity, followed by depression. Then we observe the depression for a little while and it turns into thinking, and then that turns back into anger or relief or even laughter.

Naming the difficulties helps us name the joyful states as well. Clarity, wellbeing, ease, rapture, calm, all can be named as part of the passing show. The more we open, the more we can
sense the ceaseless nature of this flow of feelings and discover a freedom beyond all changing conditions. The purpose of spiritual life is not to create some special state of mind. A state of mind is always temporary. The purpose is to work directly with the most primary elements of our body and our mind, to
see the ways we get trapped by our fears, desires, and anger, and to learn directly our capacity for freedom.

As we work with them, the demons will enrich our lives. They have been called “manure for enlightenment" or "mind weeds," which we pull up or bury near the plant to give it nourishment.
To practice is to use all that arises within us for the growth of understanding, compassion, and freedom.

Thomas Merton wrote, "True love and prayer are learned in the hour when love becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone." When we remember this, the difficulties we encounter in practice can become part of the fullness of meditation, a place to learn and to open our heart."

~ Jack Kornfield, Naming Your Demons