Dancing With The Demons.
“All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.”
When I was in the throes of my toxic relationship with alcohol, I never indeed danced with my demons. To have danced with them implies, for me anyway, that there was some partnership or camaraderie. There wasn’t. It was more of a melee in which they had nightmarish weapons, and I had the equivalent of a satin pillow. They ran amok within the castle and kingdom of my psyche.
Alcohol had begun as a way for me to cope with the anguish of feeling trapped. I knew I desired to be more, but that meant risk, sacrifice, and struggle. It meant that I could fail, and at that point in my life, my prevailing thought was, “Why even try?” Alcohol kept me comfortably numb by allowing me to cope with such a depressing thought until it didn’t.
Alcohol became another contributor to an already unhealthy state and unleashed devils of a kind that came from living the unexamined life. I was caught in a self-destructive, self-deceptive parasitic process. I had somehow created a place where I felt a loss of agency. This led to a reciprocal narrowing of options as to who I could be or how the world could be. It was like a downward spiral keeping me small and separate from any potential I had.
But, if there is a downward spiral, there is also an upward spiral. When reversed, the same thought process that narrows our scope and makes us susceptible to self-deception and parasitic thinking is also the same process that makes us so adaptive as humans.
Let’s find the courage to look deeply into the cause of all this self-made anguish. Let’s be honest about who we have become and where we want to go. Let’s become curious about the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that drive us.
That journey is not over; the lessons are always presenting themselves. As I make my way along my path, I realize that all the gods, demons, and hells are always going to be a part of me. The trick has been to open the sealed-off corridors where I had kept hidden to those demons and bring them into the light of the great hall to be heard.
Here, I can ask what they want and what purpose they serve. I can then be grateful for them and appreciate their part in my life. I can prepare a place for them at the banquet table and treat them as honored guests in the court.
Once all have had their say, the tables can then be cleared back to make way for the merriment. We can then freely dance with one another, eye to eye, and understand the role we all play. That, to me, is genuinely dancing with my demons.
