Meditations on Evil & Daemons

Jung was right... we greatly underestimate the primordial energies of the volcanic unconscious...

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”

― Carl Jung

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

— Carl Jung

“The divine primordial power is blind since its face has become human. The human is the face of the Godhead. If the God comes near you, then plead for your life to be spared, since the God is loving horror. The ancients said: it is terrible to fall into the hands of the living God. They spoke thus because they knew, since they were still close to the ancient forest, and they turned green like the trees in a childlike manner and ascended far away toward the East.”

— Carl Jung, The Red Book

"Man shall differentiate himself both from spirituality and sexuality. He shall call spirituality mother, and set her between Heaven and earth. He shall call sexuality Phallos, and set him between himself and earth. For the mother and the Phallos are superhuman daimons that reveal the world of the Gods. They affect us more than the Gods since they are closely akin to our essence."

— Carl Jung, The Red Book

[For more incredible Jung quotes, see this tremendous collection.]

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Carl Jung was really onto some next-level shit.

I’m now reading the book Facing the Dragon by the great Jungian analyst Robert Moore, and it’s given me vast food for thought that has helped me crystallize some of the insights I am about to share in this post…

Grounding Down After the Volcanic Eruption

It’s Tuesday, April 19th as I write this…

This morning I'm feeling the most grounded and in my heart of any recent day since the beginning of the ‘Dragon Power’ saga about ~8-9 days ago.

I woke up and spent a long time barefoot in nature with my 8-month old daughter Lila, which was great for grounding and heart-opening. Lila’s doing fantastic, by the way. She’s so beautiful and we love her so much. She’s our wise teacher.

My current sense/analysis of what happened to me the past ~8-9 days can be summarized as follows:

I experienced an explosive volcanic eruption of long-repressed primordial Kundalini/Dragon energies that were so powerful that they basically “took me over” to a substantial extent, for a period of time.

Seeing this clearly is actually helping me to identify past occurrences of a similar nature in this lifetime, virtually all of which occurred on/after psychedelic retreats.

In all such cases, I experienced massive empowerment. Great depths of my own power—which I had sealed off within myself—once again became available to me. Dormant circuits ‘switched on.’

At the same time, in all such cases, I also did damage. Thankfully, I always maintained enough control/mastery/awareness/heart-connection to channel these energies at least semi-skillfully, such that nothing physically violent or overly crazy ever happened… yet nonetheless, my arrogant, disconnected behavior on some of these occasions, including this most recent one, definitely put a strain on some of my close relationships.

[Literally just now as I’m writing this, a sizable lizard walked across the skylight of our stone cottage in the Azorian forest. Hello, dragon synchronicity…]

I continue to gain a new level of respect, caution, and reverence for these primordial energies—and for the psychedelics which can rapidly trigger their volcanic eruption. I understand now why some people fear Kundalini.

When it comes to psychedelics and the primordial energies of the unconscious, most people have no idea what they’re getting themselves into. I certainly didn’t. We greatly underestimate the primal, raw volcanic force of that which lies dormant in the unconscious.

I feel over the past couple years I have at times gained a firsthand visceral understanding of the reality of (daemonic) “possession.”

(And I feel most people would not be ready to “pull back the curtain” and understand just how “possessed” most everyone actually is, to varying degrees.)

Interestingly, in ancient Greece, “daemons” were not purely “evil,” but of a more ambiguous nature. A daemon was considered to be “a divinity or supernatural being of a nature between gods and humans.” They could be benevolent, even angelic, or tricksters, or malevolent.

A cursory look at the Wikipedia page on “demons” suggests that this ambiguous nature of daemons may be more common in earthly religion/mythology than the rigidly dualistic (Christian) model that many of us were probably acculturated into (i.e. demons = bad/evil/devils).

My Current Model of Daemons & Evil

For myself, I won’t claim to know how exactly this ridiculous reality works, but I’ll tell you my current model, based on many years of deep adventurous exploration of life, a long study of esoteric literature, and many direct experiences of gnosis, ‘enlightenment,’ mystical union with God, and “astral” beings/phenomena:

Reality ultimately is beyond “good” and “evil.” All energies and phenomena ultimately serve the Highest Good Which Has No Opposite. Nothing can happen that does not ultimately serve God, the One Infinite Creator. Nothing is apart from God-energy. God-energy is ultimately all that there is. All things come forth from it, all are comprised of it, all return to it. In the final analysis, all is Love. And in the final-final analysis, God is beyond these words, beyond what they point to, and beyond anything we can ever say or think or even gesture toward.

Is this bolded statement “true” or “false”?

Well, if you’ve followed my work you probably know what I’m going to say… : )

Both, neither, far beyond either!

Is it starting to get annoying when I say that? Lol… it actually kind of annoys me, because my mind wants to pin things down, but whenever I apply “both, neither, far beyond either” to any dualistic question and look closely at it, there is always profound wisdom there.

The both-neither-far-beyond-either-ness of reality befuddles the thinking mind, because the truth of this reality is beyond the pay-grade of the thinking mind. What appears as paradox to the thinking mind, is no problem for the infinite intelligence of God.

So… what I’ve written above in bold is a pretty good summation of what I would consider to be “the highest truth” or “the truest truth,” in my current model.

Yet… as always… there’s levels to this shit.

The issue with non-duality is that it so often fails to integrate duality, ironically. Reality always transcends and includes, as the great Ken Wilber saw. Reality transcends and includes both duality and non-duality.

So if we attempt to latch onto “the Absolute” and see nothing other than that… we’re going to overlook a lot of the gorgeous-terrible, tragicomic richness and complexity that makes this human experience so multi-dimensionally fascinating.

And the fact is, evil is very real in human life.

Unthinkably torturous brutalities, violent perversions, and ferocious atrocities happen all the time, at this stage of our collective human development.

Sure, you don’t have to call these things “evil.” You can call them imbalanced or distorted or pathological or dysfunctional, and you wouldn’t be wrong.

Yet, at the same time, something about the word “evil” seems particularly useful to me, as it has a certain gravitas. It actually sorta begins to capture the primordial, terrifying, “You don’t know what the fuck you’re dealing with,” dimension of shit that can happen in our human experience.

Because let’s be honest: Shit can get disgustingly, abominably horrendous on this planet. Life gets insanely scary and painful sometimes. This is a universal reality that all of mankind grapples with.

So for the hardcore pseudo-Advaitans to fixate the Absolute and sweep all evil under the rug, claiming one should just “wake up” and then one will no longer see any “problem,” is rather absurd and not at all useful for huge portions of mankind. (At times I have certainly been ‘guilty’ of this pseudo-Advaitan tendency.)

Cut the pseudo-Advaitans some slack, though… life is incredibly scary and painful and they’re just using non-duality as another (highly effective) protective mechanism to shield themselves from the colossal weight of our collective suffering—similar to how addicts use their drug of choice, for example. We’re all just finding our own ways to survive and cope with the great traumatizing gift of being human at this flabbergasting historical juncture.

So, anyway, my feeling is that it’s vital to acknowledge: Yes, evil exists.

And then it’s even more important to ask these follow-up questions:

What actually *is* evil, though?

Where does it come from?

Why is it here?

This is where things get really interesting. And this is where we bring “daemons” back into the mix.

For me, to speak of “daemons” is another way of speaking about some of the most primal, primordial, animalistic energies of not only the human being/psyche, but of Creation as a whole—or, at least, this level of Creation. These (archetypal) energies are unbelievably powerful—and intelligent.

Note a key point here: Daemons are part of us. They are not separate from us. They are (often hidden, rejected, repressed, lost) aspects of our own selves. In my view, nothing in all of Creation is apart from you, for in truth it is *all* You.

In truth, daemons are rejected aspects of our own selves that try to get our attention because they want to return Home. They want to return to Wholeness. They want to be viscerally reintegrated into the human being, the psyche, and into the very Wholeness of Creation. They want to once again feel themselves to be at One with their true nature—the Highest Light Which Has No Opposite.

Remember a couple days ago when I mentioned the “exorcism” that took place for me in 2019 after the ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica? When “I” was nowhere to be found and there was like an archaic old-man-Gandalf voice coming through me?

Well, the voice lasted a while in a less-pronounced way, it was there for a few hours, and I just remembered that at that time I recorded the following piece of audio speaking about transmuting the dark energies that were being released from my system at that time:

As I say in the clip:

“As I was dispelling these dark energies from me, I loved them, brother. I melted them in Love, and I told them to be free, for they had been trapped for far too long. I freed them, and they were thankful. The darkest of dark things are thankful when we dissolve them back into their Essence, which is also Divine Light. The Highest Light. The Highest Good Which Has No Opposite. The Light of God. The Father-Mother Mind.”

Kinda sheds a different light on the meaning of “exorcism,” no?

We typically think of an exorcism as an event when a dark demon or evil spirit is banished from the body that it is possessing. In my view, this is a kind of half-truth or psychologically immature reading of what is happening.

Simultaneously, we can also see an exorcism as a moment when a rejected, trapped primordial energy/daemon finally erupts to the surface to be seen, felt, transfigured back into the Wholeness of the One Light. If we are capable of loving these trapped, contorted energies when they erupt, this allows them to more rapidly melt back into their Source—to be integrated in a healthful way.

It’s not really surprising that our long-repressed daemons often appear vicious, wrathful, or violent when they erupt to the surface. It’s not so surprising that they try to “take us over” and make us do hurtful things (before and/or after erupting in an obvious way).

How would you feel if you had been rejected, hated, and trapped in a cage in a dark basement for decades, centuries, or lifetimes?

An image of Gollum from Lord of the Rings comes to mind, along with an image of long-abused animals.

‘Gollum’s Journey Commences’ by Frédéric Bennett

In truth, these daemons are the parts of us that are screaming out for assistance, most in need of our unconditional Love.

Recall how Gollum’s entire being-ness gradually begins to transfigure as he receives genuine kindness from Frodo…

This also relates to what I’ve been saying about the integration of the yin-yang pair of Love and Power. Gollum was without Love for decades, alone in a cave with only the Ring of Power, and it turned him into a goblin-like shell of his former hobbit self. Without Love, this is what Power does to us—and to itself.

Our “daemons” are essentially primordial, raw, sexual, animalistic Power. When welcomed, appreciated, held in Neutral Loving Awareness, and healthfully integrated, these energies are sources of tremendous joy, sensual connection, passion, creativity, and warrior strength. They become great gifts—almost like angels.

How fascinating that various mythologies often assert that “evil demons” are “fallen angels”—i.e. angelic aspects of ourselves which, due to being hated and rejected, have contorted themselves into an ugly form.

This is precisely what happens to our primordial sexual-daemonic power when it is rejected, condemned, and left dis-integrated:

It rots. It boils. It stews. It contorts. It doesn’t know what to do with itself. It starts trying to mess with us and get our attention and take hold of us in various subtle and then less-subtle ways. It bubbles, lava-like, pressurizing more and more, until one day…

It explodes.

How interesting that I presently find myself on a literal volcanic island and that Tanja, Lila, and I lived inside two different volcanoes for the first eight weeks here. Hell of a place to do some deep shadow work, eh? 😅 The perfect place, apparently.

[Sidenote: I’m also gaining an even deeper appreciation of the ancient science of astrology in Azores. For the past month, I’ve been an “Aries in Aries in Aries,” the ultimate FIRE recipe (sounds about right!), because I was born March 25th, during Aries season, this past ~30-day period was Aries season, and my astro-cartographical chart places my Mars/Aries line close to Azores, closer than any other line of mine. Today is the beginning of Taurus season, an Earth sign, and voila, I’m way more grounded. (Knock on wood!)]

Anyway, I imagine you’re starting to get the picture I’m trying to paint here…

In my view, nothing and no one is inherently evil.

To me, the essence of all beings/forms is God, and the essence of God is Love, Peace, Innocence, Wisdom, Power, Perfection, and that nameless All-Embracing Silence which is beyond all these…

Yet evil acts occur, due to volcanic eruptions of lost, contorted, rejected energies/parts of our own selves, emerging with a vengeance to cry out for our attention.

When these energies have been for so long rejected, trapped, and allowed to boil, boil, boil in the dark basement of our psyches…

It is no surprise that their volcanic intensity “takes us over” completely or to a great extent, when they finally do erupt to the surface.

We then become distorted/imbalanced, gripped by a (transpersonal) primordial energy/archetype at the expense of other vital, healthful energies/archetypes, such as the Lover, Parent, Family Member, Community Member, Friend, Heart-Led Man or Woman.

Some beings, such as Adolf Hitler or other mass murderers, seem to become vessels for long-rejected collective primordial energies and become a kind of lightning rod instigating a mass expulsion/exorcism of these energies. If this were not a collective/transpersonal phenomenon, people would not have resonated with Hitler’s energy and formed a mass movement behind him. When you really see this, you begin to realize what a monumentally grim, horrible, yet dare-I-say necessary service Hitler and the Nazis signed up for by incarnating into those lifetimes. If it wasn’t them, it would’ve been someone else, for somehow those energies had to be expelled/exorcised from the human collective; that black mirror had to be held up for the world to see itself more clearly.

We created Hitler by hating and rejecting our own selves. Thus, it was necessary for him to show up to show us what violence we had actually been doing to ourselves.

I realize what I just said is ridiculously controversial. I don’t expect everyone to just take this on. I invite you to sit with it, though. Feel into it. And see what kind of compassion it might open up for people like Hitler, Stalin, Dahmer, Mao, Genghis Khan, Atilla the Hun, and so forth—the Voldemorts of the Earth-realm who took on the unenviable karmic task of holding up the black mirror… and who took upon their own souls inevitably massive hellish suffering by doing so. Ponder on this, and keep this in mind when/if you listen to the final song on my upcoming album, the album that was birthed during the past week…

The Path Beyond Evil

So…

What do we do?

For me the answer lies in that which saved Harry Potter from Voldemort and enabled him to defeat him in the end:

Love.

It might sound trite or cliche, but this is actually the most hardcore, heroic task imaginable…

If we wish to move beyond evil…

We have to actually learn to collectively Love and Forgive all parts of ourselves.

That includes the Voldemorts, the Hitlers, the Dahmers, and so on…

We have to come to see them as nothing other than lost parts of our own selves.

We have to open our hearts and find compassion for those most evil of humans.

We have to open our hearts and find unconditional love for every last aspect of our own selves, every last aspect of all of Creation.

Guan Yin, the Taoist Goddess of Compassion, is often depicted riding a dragon.

This depiction is symbolic of the fact that only the loving compassion of the Heart can tame and integrate the raw primordial-sexual Power of the dragon.

We have to see that the inner dragon only becomes violent, wrathful, and perverted when he is hated and rejected—when he is not acknowledged and appreciated for his tremendous gifts and beauty.

We have to love this inner dragon that is in all of us.

We have to love our inner Slytherin House.

All of our inner Hogwarts must be integrated as a unitary, symbiotic Whole…

Led by the Unconditional Love of the Heart.

When every last one of us has done this, the world will know Peace.

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And then when we’ve lived Peace for a while…

We’ll probably start the whole dance over again…

Because even Heaven gets boring after a time…

And variety is the spice of life.

“In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”

— Nietzsche

😉

Love,
JB

P.S. Read Part Two of this series here.

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JB is integrating, grounding, opening his Heart. Dive deeper by following me on Telegram, Twitter, and/or Instagram.