The Healing of the Demon Past

Especially around the holidays, but even in general, memories come around to test us. This happened, that happened, this caused pain, that hurt alot, that was messed up, she acted badly, he was a jerk, this went wrong, I shouldn't have done that... All the things that didn't work out, that leave us writhing in mental anguish are the demon past. But how to banish them!?

The short answer: forgiveness. The long answer: forgiveness.

The problem with holding on to all this stuff is that it hurts YOU. Like Malachy McCourt says, "Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die." Demons exist because we are holding on to that resentment; we are holding on to anger, bitterness, humiliation, shame, we are holding on to memories of emotions; and these memories of emotions have very little to do with the experiences themselves.

I say over and over again that each moment, each experience is a gift, if only we will recognize it as such. We do ourselves an injustice by refusing that every experience is part of the masterpiece called our life that we, ourselves, designed, wrote, and directed. We do those who participated a grave injustice by not recognizing the sacrifices they were willing to offer, by playing the "bad guy" roles in our little masterpieces.

We are all a perfect part of a perfect Whole. All those experiences of the past that are designated demons of our unforgiving nature towards ourselves. How sad that they are designated demons, and subject to our hatred, resentment, anger and shame!

We lined up those experiences as gifts to ourselves in the courageously orchestrated masterpiece of life, so that we could learn, and with that knowledge move upward and onward. The only way to heal the demons of our past is by forgiving ourselves and all others for ever forgetting that we are a perfect part of the perfect whole and that without all those so-called demons, we wouldn't be where we are today.

It is only the essence of pure gratitude that will assure we can lay the demons to rest and really move on and often just thinking about the experience itself won't do the trick. Try this: write down the experience, and then make a list of all the things you learned about yourself, how you as a person grew and how valuable that experience was for you to become who you are today.

Blessings.
- Darshan

© 2008 Darshan F Jessop

let it go - the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise - let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go - the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers - you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go - the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things - let all go
dear

so comes love

~ e. e. cummings ~