THE PREDATORY UNIVERSE
The only freedom warriors have is to behave impeccably.
Not only is impeccability freedom;
it is the only way to straighten out the human form.
CARLOS CASTANEDA, The Second Ring of Power
Now that we have laid the groundwork and learned the collective practice that is going to clean our energy field, it is time to look directly into the face of the monster and gain some appreciation for the magnitude of the problem as it relates to us and the world in which we live. We have developed an understanding of how we interface with reality and how we leak energy into our shadows through our reactions. We have learned that this is what creates the trance mentality, which makes us walk around like zombies, 90 percent asleep and constantly suffering on all levels. It is this leaking of our energy that opens us up to the “black market” of energy exchange. This is the predatory reality that has us feeding off each other and allows other entities to live off us all.
Recall from chapter 6 that we have the vertical “spiritual” axis of fire and water (figure 6.1). This axis fuses attention and intention with the central intellect that serves as the basis of our major alchemical work. We also have the horizontal “soul” axis of wood and metal through which the intellect tries to process the rising and falling circumstances of our lives (figure 6.2). It is through this horizontal axis that the intellect develops the ego, which in turn serves as a fortified identity to help us deal with day-to-day life. This is also from where we leak a great deal of our energy through our aversions and cravings. It is from within this horizontal axis that we “bleed” into our shadows. Through this process, we pump energy into the opposite polarity of whatever makes us uncomfortable, while we also reinforce beliefs and characteristics in our ego that help “protect” us from the way we feel about these things. Over time, we create clusters or families of these reactions that thematically join and form our fear-inspired beliefs and subconscious behaviors. These behaviors are subconscious by nature because they come from our shadows — the light of conscious awareness doesn’t see them, so they go unchecked. We, in turn, walk around in a trance most of the time. Then, we run into each other.
It’s bad enough having one zombie around, but what happens when there are more? What if almost everyone is asleep? Well, just take a look around you. In reality, we are all truly One, and the perception of separation is part of our ignorant sleep; therefore, we all affect and exchange with each other all of the time. We have a permanent, spiritual flu that keeps being endlessly passed from one person to another because everyone is unaware of the cure. The same way a thematic series of thought aversions bundle together to create a subconscious belief in own your shadow is how it happens within the shadows of others. In fact, we tend to attract like-minded people into our fields for good reason.
Think about this example: When he was a young child, John had a single bad experience with a schoolmate who happened to be black. That experience created a specific charge of aversion in him against that particular boy. Then he saw that boy hanging out with a couple other black boys, so he extended his judgment against “those boys.” He avoided them in the halls and tried not to sit by them at lunch. He then told his friend about this dislike, because every time he saw any of that group of boys, he felt uncomfortable. His friend said that his father told him to watch out for black people because they steal. John couldn’t help but feel vindicated. The energy in his shadow, which had already taken life from his own aversions before, had now taken on a new belief system — that black people steal. This happened easily because the original charge remained unexamined; therefore, the subsequent addition went straight through without any conscious rationale. John and his friend then found further vindication in their belief by talking to a few other boys, and suddenly they had all created a hostile environment for the black boys — who couldn’t even figure out why this was all going on.
Twenty years later, John moves into a “safe” neighborhood where they don’t let “those” people in, and he talks about how inner-city people are all lazy and that we need more prisons to contain “them.” Funny enough, somehow he has lumped Arabs, Mexican immigrants, and a few other races of people into his belief system over the years. “These people are not to be trusted. . . I’m buying a gun.”
This example can go on and on because every time John has an aversion to anything that pulls up the “race” theme, it gets filed into this folder and feeds the monster in his shadow. He develops a huge array of subconscious behaviors that he simply accepts as self-evident truths, but he has no real rational or conscious foundation for any of it. Does this guy sound familiar?
The fact of the matter is that we’re all involved in this game all the time, unless and until we wake up and understand how it functions within us. We do it with everything. We recruit people who share our likes or dislikes into our lives subconsciously, and we help each other reinforce these beliefs through “mob mentality.”
Puppeteers
There are the billions of people walking around this planet who are completely ignorant of their behaviors, and then there are those who have finally discovered the cure and woken up, but merely to a certain degree. There are only two ways to go once we start arising from the human trance: either we see the plight of your fellow humans and feel compassion, committing our life to somehow helping them and making the world a better place, or we see the inherent weakness in their vulnerable state and understand that we have leverage over them.
The first category of people is interested in your own further awakening and embracing of the universal love of the life force, channeling it through themselves to help you see clearly — even if it might only be for a moment. These are the great saints and teachers who have come and gone. They are also the millions of people who are committed to helping humanity to some degree and on some level. These people don’t have to be fully awakened to have their heart in the right place. Sadly, the great majority of them still carry a polarized charge in their shadows. Because of the nature of the shadow, these things are unconscious by definition, and it often leaves this whole class of people open to being manipulated and coerced.
The other category is that group of people who can (to varying degrees) see through the behaviors of others and who understand how to invoke archetypal arguments and “mob mentality” in order to leverage people into fulfilling their own desires. There are people who are very skilled in the esoteric arts who are quite active in this realm, but they are not alone. We all do it unconsciously. Like a good judo fighter, we learn to see weakness in each other through our subconscious processes. We throw and get thrown — always engaged in some wrestling match all the time. Unfortunately, those who get quite good at this are often the ones who are the most “successful” in worldly affairs. Because they are the ones who comprehend and execute this manipulation the best, they have leveraged all of society to see things their way.
If you create a monetary system and lend it to governments of the world and if that “money” is considered the currency of freedom, power, abundance, and value in our culture, then he with the most is at the top. Who is the one with the most? How about the one who created the game and who issues the money in the first place? A number of individuals have gotten this game down and have billions of people globally buying into their way of living life. Because people are completely asleep, they can’t even question things — “It’s just how things are.” This system works all the way down as well. When a car dealer sees a middle-aged guy on his lot staring at a red sports car, he knows the exact angle to leverage this guy into getting his money. Let’s see . . . wants to feel desirable again . . . has some money . . . wants to impress girls . . . is feeling insecure. Easy — convince him that this car will make him feel better and fulfill his myriad desires.
The advertising industry is essentially built on the exploitation of human emotions: fears, desires, insecurities, and beliefs. You have to buy this home alarm system because the world is not safe, and someone is going to get you! Because we don’t have conscious awareness of what is going on within ourselves, many people all around us have learned to feed off the energy in our shadows and get what they want. In fact, the virtual “black market” of energy is where most people go to get their daily fix. The great majority of their conscious energy has been ripped off, so they need to get into the game and get more. Either you become a predator, or you lock yourself up with depression and anxiety and avoid people and the “rat race.” Because we have lost so much of our personal power to our shadows, we feel tired and drained. Because we need to keep functioning in our day-to-day jobs and lives, we need to get the lost energy from somewhere. So we drink stimulants and start to drain energy from each other. We have become a culture of vampires sucking life force from wherever we can every day, just to get by.
Money and Sex
Money and sex are two of the biggest hang-ups for people in our culture when it comes to leaking vital energy. They hold pivotal spots in people’s consciousness and carry deep-seated anxiety and fear-inspired beliefs, which lead to harmful behaviors. Let’s start with money.
We live in a culture where there has been a strange juxtaposition of beliefs on the subject of money. The religious heritage of many people has inserted a deep-seated “money is evil” program that is always running in the background. Along with this comes thoughts like, Rich people all gain their wealth unethically, or I don’t want money to corrupt me. This type of programming gets superimposed on the reality of the economic system in which we live. In the United States, money talks. Commercials are constantly prodding us to buy new products or change our look in order to be desirable. We have forces pulling on us from all sides trying to get us to spend our hard-earned cash, and, in the end, most of us do. I need this new car because I deserve it, and This purse is so outdated, so I need a new one, are common types of thoughts. These things cost money, and we are happy to pay or finance our way into getting the stuff that we desire. Fine. Make money and buy what you desire.
The problem is that most Americans have learned from their government and are too happy to borrow and get into deficit spending. Everyone is stressed about money, and the subject occupies way too much of our daily mental energy. In order to be free of this pathology, we really need to balance our personal budgets and be more mindful about our expenditures. There is nothing inherently wrong or evil with money; it is our relationship with money that creates profound stress and anxiety in our daily lives.
Sex, on the other hand, is a broad and sensitive subject that needs to be teased out here a bit. Sex sells. It is the driving force behind so much of our culture and our consumption-based economy; it is literally everywhere. Makeup, clothing, cars, music . . . you name it — there’s some aspect of sales that ties in sex. Why? Sex is the fundamental energy that drives our species. Sex is our connection to our immortality and all our life force. It defines who we are, and our egos are leveraged by it. Our “sex appeal” is really important to us because it ties into some deep primitive mammalian genes. People are so lost in their mental sexual meanderings that they can be leveraged by people who understand what’s going on.
The solution to this pathology is actually quite easy: learn Tantra. Tantra is the ancient spiritual art of personal cultivation that teaches us to harness, control, and work with our sexual energy. The aim is to raise and refine this energy to the spiritual centers of the brain and to learn to harness and control this force. This is the path to an ultimate source of power and realization that cannot even be described. The leaking of sexual energy is equal to spiritual suicide in the Tantric sense. This energy must be understood, cultivated, and, more important, celebrated once we realize the beauty and magnitude of it.
Vampires and Demons
It’s not hard to create an artificial demon. Here’s an excerpt from the Western Hermetic tradition:
How are demons engendered? As with all generation, that of demons is the result of the cooperation of the male principle and the female principle, i.e., the will and the imagination, in the case of generation through the psychic life of an individual. A desire that is perverse or contrary to nature, followed by the corresponding imagination, together constitute the act of generation of a demon.1
Let’s look at this excerpt closely and piece it together in the language we have learned in this book.
• A desire that is perverse or contrary to nature is a reaction to a thought or emotion that reflects an aversion or a craving. In essence, nature unfolds for us in a particular way, and our reaction results in a desire “away” from this flow.
• The male and female principles are the will, which is the zhi housed in our kidneys (female, water, yin), and the imagination, which is the attention or shen housed in the heart (male, fire, yang).
FIGURE 11.1 How We Create Demons
• We have a desire or reaction on the horizontal axis, and we use the vertical axis to create in accordance with this. Therefore, when we have an unnatural desire, we use our creative principle to create an artificial demon.
This is exactly what we have been talking about since the beginning of this book, but I have avoided using the aggressive nomenclature until now. The energy we pump into our shadows that breathes “life” into our aversions and cravings actually creates artificial demons that take on a life of their own and begin to influence our mind and activities. This mechanism is illustrated in figure 11.1.
In this faulty model, our mind and emotions have an abreaction to whatever reality is presenting, and, using our creative faculty, we polarize the energy and literally breathe life into demons we have created that live in our shadows. These demons then influence our thoughts and create similar situations for us in life that draw us into similar abreactions, which, in turn, continue to feed these demons. This is what is called an internal possession in Taoism. The way we conduct an exorcism in this situation is exactly how we have been doing it all along in this book.
• We acknowledge the behavior and bring the light of consciousness to it.
• We stop engaging in our habitual pattern of reinforcement through aversions and cravings.
• We drop into our heart center and forgive the person, situation, or thing that is causing our internal reaction.
• We “watch” as the energy deflates and dissipates while we hold it in love and withdraw the power we have put into its opposite polarity.
• We search our consciousness for similar energies or demons and perform the same process.
Essentially, we get in and exorcize our own internal demons, because if we don’t, they will keep drawing us into unhealthy unconscious behavior until our last moment in our earthly bodies. In fact, once our demons have enough power in our shadows, they constantly drain us of our vitality. This, however, starts to diminish their source of energy, so that one of three things happens:
• We continue to get drained and, at a certain point, become devoid of essential vitality. Our ying (nutritive) qi becomes compromised, and we get ill and eventually die unless an intervention is sought.
• We learn to “import” energy from the outside world, at first through stimulants and drugs — anything to squeeze more energy out of our present situation. Eventually, we learn to take energy from others, and then we become vampires (unconsciously) as our internal demons find ways of having other people give us their power.
• We gain awareness of this cancerous cycle and stop feeding our demons. They kick and scream for a short time and then wither and die off. The more qi gong we practice and mental awareness we have, the easier we are able to clear ourselves of these parasites.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in the first two categories listed above and precious few in the third. Now that you are this far into this book, it is your responsibility to step up and clear your parasites. By bringing vitality and awareness to your energy field, you will dispel all your own internal demons and then become very aware of the vampirical/predatory nature of the world around you. You can then illuminate this behavior and help the people around you snap out of it. With enough people waking up, the cycle is broken, and humanity is freed from this trance.
Human transference is the most common form of possession out there. It is rampant in the United States and gets carried through from generation to generation. We see it in sexual predators and pedophiles, as well as in those with addictions and in perpetrators of domestic violence. It occurs when the demons are so empowered that they draw someone into an action that they would not otherwise do. Many of these people often claim that “something came over me” or “I just couldn’t stop myself, even when I knew better.” This is a classic example of the shadow having more energy than the conscious part of the energy field; this is when we are no longer in control, and, frankly, there’s trouble. When this happens, a person who has left their psyche and their field “unchecked” for years infects another person (or group of people) through their actions. For example, we know that the majority of sexual predators were molested in their past. Like a mental virus, it carries on from the perpetrator to the recipient/victim and plants the seeds for further growth. If the victim does not heal the trauma and forgive the situation, then they harbor this “infection” in their own shadow. When they become weakened at some point, they may find themselves expressing this demon — much to their own surprise.
We do this with everything. We transfer belief systems and ideas into each other’s subconscious minds because we are unaware of their existence. (Again, this is how advertising and political campaigns work; in fact, these two professions have this down to a science.) Many of us are unaware of our demons and have unexamined shadows; when we are in a “sleepy moment,” our shadow is able to overpower our conscious actions, which allows these demons to express themselves. Just like a virus, they have taken on a life of their own, and they feed off our energy; to survive, they must infect the next person they come in contact with. The more culturally appealing these demons might be, the quicker they can spread into more host bodies. They have been called memes in popular literature, and there is a good deal of discussion arising on the subject; for example, look to the 1996 work Virus of the Mind, by Richard Brodie, for a more detailed account. We are unconscious to this transference and become the willing agents of this process through our ignorance.
We have spoken of people manipulating each other for personal gains and of internal demons taking on charge and manipulating behavior for their own survival and proliferation. Now, we must talk about a more insidious energy — external entities that are disembodied.
Many of the entities that fall into this category are former humans that, for one reason or another, were “trapped” in our dimension after losing their bodies. Either they had something that held them back from willingly leaving, or, more frequently, their death was so jarring or quick that they don’t believe they are truly dead. These are often ghosts of relatives that are reported in houses around the world. There are thousands of these stories all over, and anybody who has actually encountered one of these entities will not be convinced by anyone who says that they don’t exist. These entities are actually relatively easy to deal with; just like the internal demons, they need a source of energy to live off for survival. If we stop feeding them, they lose their power and must move along. Now, very much like the feeding of our internal shadow energies, we feed these entities through our minds and our emotions.
Having a human body is quite special, and it is the ultimate source of infinite power, once we know how to tap into it properly. Disembodied entities can latch onto us or our ideas and live off them for long periods. Haunted houses are a good example because the entity oftentimes inspires fear, which is a powerful, raw energy in the people around the house. The more people who acknowledge that the house is haunted and that this entity exists, the more energy is available to it. Dead relatives also will provoke such strong emotions because they have to stoke the fire of their own memory in their living loved ones in order to “drink” the energy that is given off from the ensuing grief or fond feelings aroused. It is important to remember that most of these entities do not want to be trapped here and that we can release them by acknowledging what they are and then creating a portal for them to return back to the Source. These entities have no power outside of the power we give them unconsciously. And please remember, they are us. Love them and give them the space to find their way back home.
There are also more insidious energies out there that come from other planets or dimensions or that are created by dark masters here on this planet. They were called archons by the early Gnostics or jen by the Persians, and they have been classified into many subclasses by various cultures around the world. In fact, every culture somehow alludes to them in some way. These entities often have far more dangerous intentions and are to be avoided at all costs. All of these entities feed off the energy of fear the easiest, so it is critical for us to stay in our hearts and bring the energy of love and grace into the room. Nineteenth-century French poet, Charles Baudelaire’s maxim applies today: “The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.”2
There is very special training that goes into Taoist exorcisms, which is beyond the scope of this book. It can be very easy to try to blame some outside agency/energy for the way we feel or possibly blame someone closer to home — perhaps we believe that Mom and Dad are the culprits. However, this blame game is not the way to fix anything! Again, we are responsible for our own awareness, and we are the only ones capable of cleansing our energy field. The more we reclaim our own power back and return to our center, the less our internal demons have leverage over us, which means the less we are in trance and the more we will be able to move toward positive energies and opportunities in our lives. When we wake up to our true potential, no demon, internal or external, will be able to influence us or get in our way ever again.
Farmers vs. Hunters
Taking into account all of this predatory activity and the nature of our horizontal leaching off of one another, it becomes important to hold a new frame of mind when encountering people and engaging in the outside world. We are surrounded by millions and millions of what the Buddhists call “hungry ghosts.” They are devoid of their own power and are seeking to partake of some of yours in order to get through their day. They are lost to their internal demons and are trying to enroll you in their dramas. They are being led by the puppeteers into voting and buying the way they are told, and they are also after your money. But wait. They are you, and you are they!
Before we get into a reactive polarized “us versus them” mentality, let’s realize that these are our brothers and sisters and that we are all in this mess together. The good news about waking up is that it can happen rather quickly and that it is the birthright of every human being on this planet. So, before we start to build walls around us and freak out about vampires and zombies attacking at the gates, let’s gather ourselves and get into the work.
When I was younger and had just created my integrated medical group, there was a great deal to learn and lots of different models to emulate. I hired a business consultant whose “vibe” I liked (and he also came well recommended), and we got to setting up systems so that we could efficiently help as many people as possible. One thing that he taught me early on was that most business people in the United States act like hunters nowadays. They are out to pull down their daily feast, thinking that tomorrow is a new day with new quotas. Their lives are filled with lots of excitement and lots of stress — always trying a new angle to get the sale and win people over. Farmers, on the contrary, take the time to develop their relationships (crops) and to water and nourish them. At first, things start off slowly, but then, the yields get greater and greater, and the farmer ends up with an abundance of crops that keep rolling in. In regard to a health-care practice, this farming attitude meant creating a “family practice” environment where we cultivate our relationships with people and establish rapport and trust for years to come. In the perspective of the conversation at hand, being a farmer means moving out of the predatory frenzy of the horizontal axis and literally farming our energy field — tilling the soil and pulling weeds constantly.
Now that we have conducted a semantic “full circle,” let’s take a moment to examine the words we are using in this practice: energy field. A field denotes a space that is fertile and is to be cultivated. The field is yin in nature, taking seeds (yang) and nurturing them to grow. It is the space where water and nutrients mix to hold the space for life-forms to grow and evolve when activated by sunlight. The healthier the field, the better the yield. However, some fields are more fertile than others because they are endowed with rich nutrients from a volcano or are in a river delta where water and silt are abundant. This is much like our body. Some of us are born with strong jing/essence and have a lot to work with, while others, like a barren desert, have more challenges to keep things growing. Either way, after a number of seasons, if there is abuse or neglect from the farmer, the field starts to get compromised and cannot support the life and growth it used to. The soil needs to be turned, and weeds need to be extracted. It takes a good amount of work to keep a field healthy, but the rewards are immeasurable. This is exactly the same with our body.
Our energy fields are a direct reflection of the state of health of the jing, qi, and shen. If the energy is flowing smoothly and the diet and lifestyle are healthy, then there is a strong energy field, and the Light Body begins to take hold. If there is a disconnect in any of these parameters and if we are being drained by ignorance, then our shadow demons become fast-growing weeds in our fields. The crops we choose to grow are the dreams and aspirations of our heart, but the ones we end up growing are a result of the noise in the shadow. All it takes is fear-inspired desire or the charging of an aversion, and there we have it: another weed sprouts. The more we water that weed with our leaky energy, the more of our field we lose, and the more of a mess we have to deal with.
FIGURE 11.2 Unhealthy Energy Field
In a flat, unhealthy energy field, as shown in figure 11.2, we have very little of our total energy available to us when the energies of the shadow are still being fed. Once we begin the Great Work of Tao and start to tend to our fields daily, we can pull the energy out of the unconscious shadow processes and allow it to nurture our healthy core.
As we gather more and more personal power back within our conscious grasp, we are able to use more of it to pull weeds and exorcise our demons. We, at this point, are feeling better and better about ourselves and have the energy and vitality to address issues and meet life head on. With our continued practice of qi gong and the mental, emotional, and spiritual practices we have learned here, we continue to refine and clean until the Great Tao is finally in the driver’s seat, instead of all the noise. The “I” that was created by the ego as a defense mechanism gets softened and dissipates in charge, and we surrender ourselves to the joyful manifestation of reality as it unfolds in front of us — and we watch ourselves unfold with it.
At this point in the book, we have sufficiently defined the “problems.” From the next chapter on, it is time to really put things together and delve into the essence and meaning of this esoteric practice. It is time to really grasp the light at the end of the tunnel and to set our sights for nothing short of complete enlightenment and the full activation of our Light Body.
