April 15, 2023

 “The Betrayal Demon”

I’ve often thought the Catholic Church’s fixation on angels and demons to be a bunch of hooey. Polarities do nothing for me and only serve to deepen the perceived split between good and evil, whatever good is and whatever evil is. In the broader sense of the Divine, neither really makes any sense.

I have, however, had a number of experiences with so-called demons, most notably desire demons. I’ve perceived demons as sort of parasites, feeding off their host. However, that’s not exactly correct as it makes demons still seem evil in some way. I don’t think they are evil, any more than the host upon which they are feeding is evil. I see them as almost symbiotic with the host because both host and demon receive benefits from the deal. The host receives protection of a sort because, joined with the demon, it is stronger than it would otherwise be. The demon receives ‘food’ in exchange for protection. It’s not wrong and it’s not evil. It isn’t exactly healthy, though.

It’s more useful to see the demon/host union as an interim stage. It’s never meant to be the end or final stage. Think of it like a protective cocoon made up of two entities. Sooner or later, the cocoon will ‘hatch’ and the demon and host will transform into their truer natures. At least, that’s the hope. It might take several lifetimes and a lot of time ‘stuck’ in the in-between realms, though. And there will be suffering. Lots of suffering.

So, not good or evil but not healthy, either. Health is relative and I think the host/demon union provides something important for both and represents a step forward, a step toward eventual health.

I’m a case in point. Lately, I’ve been sitting with my bitterness and disappointment toward, well, toward everyone. My tendency to idealize people has gradually been fading away but I’m seeing that it covers a deep hope closely followed by a deep disappointment. I’m hopeful that I will finally be able to trust everyone I meet. However, almost immediately, I see that they are flawed and untrustworthy and I reject them. My heart wants to open to them but closes almost immediately, slamming shut. I am left with bitterness and disappointment. It’s not exactly hatred because I don’t hate them, I just don’t trust them and I resent them for being untrustworthy.

This habit arose out of three lifetimes of experience. For at least three lifetimes and perhaps more, I’ve been bitterly disappointed and betrayed by basically everyone I’ve loved. Griffin is perhaps the deepest such wound of betrayal because I loved him deeply and unconditionally and trusted him with my life and yet he took it, murdering me without warning. Of course, I know why he did it and I don’t blame him for it because it was really the least worst option at the time. The truth remains, though, that the person I loved the most, hurt me the most.

Griffin wasn’t the first and certainly wasn’t the last to betray my trust. Basically, everyone I’ve ever loved has betrayed me. (And I’ve betrayed them, too, but that’s not something that usually stands out as much for me. Maybe someday it will?) Because of these successive betrayals and injuries, my heart has been deeply wounded and conditioned to slam itself shut. Of course, the DH work has helped to open the doorway to my heart more and more. For many years, I worked through betrayals in my current lifetime. Now, it seems, the accumulated betrayals of my other lifetimes are coming to the fore. It makes sense that Griffin’s would be the biggest and hardest to get over of these. Even though I love him deeply, I can tell I haven’t forgiven him yet. The act of murder came out of nowhere and caught me completely by surprise. It hurt me to the core, especially because the end result was the loss of Griffin. Yeah, he’s still with me and, as far as I can tell, will always be but he’s no longer present physically in my life and I don’t know if we ever will meet again as physical beings. This is hard to get over.

This morning I experienced a letting go and an opening of my heart, sloughing off some of the wounds of betrayal. This was helpful and I’m grateful because my heart is more open as a result and I feel like I’m seeing more clearly. It’s good to feel compassion for my fellow humans rather than disdain. I hope this continues! I also feel an incremental amount of forgiveness for Griffin. I still haven’t completely forgiven him but I doubt that forgiveness will ever come all at once. Rather, it’s a process of working through.

The experience of letting go also exposed the presence of a betrayal demon. I should clarify what I mean by demon because I don’t perceive them the way that Catholics and other Christians do. I’ve written about this before but I’ll restate it; my view is that demons and angels are the same entities. A demon is simply an angel that has been temporarily corrupted, meaning it’s forgotten its divine nature. We humans are usually to blame because the angels get trapped in our orbit and fall when we fall into unhealthy ways of being. I do feel like these ‘demons,’ even though they have fallen so to speak, are still beneficial. The human soul and the demon form a symbiotic relationship of sorts, buffering the human from the worst of the suffering and allowing the demon to feed on the negative energy. It’s not optimal, of course, or particularly healthy but it gets us through. It’s a placeholder, a sort of stasis, until the right conditions for growth are present. Once the light of understanding falls on the twinned pair–human and demon–freedom and growth are possible. The demon can free itself from the thrall of the human and regain its angelic nature, being wiser for the experience. And the human is free of a heavy weight, able to breathe for the first time in a very long time. It makes no sense to view the human/demon unit as an end state; it never is. It may be a very long time but eventually understanding, freedom and growth will happen.

I have a lot of fondness for my particular betrayal demon. He’s not pretty or particularly cuddly but he did protect me for a long time and we both got something out of the deal. My view of him was that of a winged creature–all black–whose leathery wings were spread protectively over me like a mother bird on her nest. I was numbed to the pain and he could feed off the energy of betrayal. It was a win-win for us both. Nothing evil about it. And I have no wish to be free of him; however, I perceive that he’s transformed now and is at least partially free of me. We’ll see how things go from here.

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