Feeding Your Demons

Liberate yourself from your Obstacles or Demons.

“An Obstacle or Demon is everything that stands in the way of our Liberation”.

After many years of searching for a perfect, powerful method to give purpose to life, to transform suffering and to heal relationships, I found this method.
It offers an incredibly effective and loving way to grow.
It reveals the base on which your behaviour and character are founded – things you took to ‘simply be that way’.
All the kinds of suffering (Obstacles/Demons) which you are haunted by, which cost you energy and prohibits you from living a tranquil and happy life can be transformed into a nourishing and reviving power to aid you and the world around you.
It is possible to disengage from convictions, prejudices, expectations and conditionings that you are burdened with and which keep influencing your life negatively.

What are “Obstacles”, Demons?

The Obstacles or Demons are powers within ourselves which we attempt to combat.
It is that which we fear.
They are the aspects of ourselves that lurk in our shadows.
They are part of our mind and know not of an independent existence.
We often attempt to project these fears onto others.
If we pay close attention to what we condemn in others, we can perceive our own Obstacles.
This is why we often criticize others who embody the very thing that we try to oppress within ourselves.

Obstacles/Demons originate from desire.
When we give in to our desires, we enhance our Obstacle’s powers.
However, factually we should investigate the desires of our Obstacle. What does it really need?
When we supply the Obstacle with what it desires, instead of fighting it, you nourish the Obstacle with what it really needs, causing it to disappear.
For example, if you give in to your desire to smoke, you enhance that Obstacle.
If you would decide to use this process to investigate the Obstacle’s desire that is behind your desire to smoke, you will often encounter a longing for love and affection.
The same theory applies to eating excessively or too little, and behind alcohol abuse.
Should you decide to provide this love and affection to the Obstacle, you will find that the Obstacle disappears together with your desire to smoke.

We often feel we should resist or mask bad characteristics, or combat fears and anger.
The more we fight those, the stronger the Obstacles becomes.
Because you in fact combat yourself, and so reinforce that which you attempt to conquer.
Often, all the Obstacle wants is compassion, love and acceptation.

In our society, it is considered ‘valiant’ to combat ‘evil’.
The gap between good and evil has become a justification for the sacrifice that we must make with agression and violence against yourself and the world.
Likewise, we also do not try to understand illnesses, but rather fight them.
It would be much better to establish a link with it and transform it into a healing and reviving ally.

Origin

Machig Labdrön (1055-1145) was a Tibetan monk.
She found an approach to give shape to demons (a Tibetan word for Obstacle) and nourish them instead of combating them.
It is the only method ever to have been invented by a female Buddhist.
She called this process Ch’od (pronounce: Shot) which means transforming/dissecting.

Tsultrim Allione made this technique suitable to Western thought.
She studied Buddhism in India, Nepal and Tibet for forty years.
She translated the Ch’od technique to an simple yet effective 5-step plan which she called ‘Feeding your demons’.

Personally, I found that people are somewhat afraid and reluctant to approach the matter from this point of view. After all, ‘feeding a demon’ doesn’t sound particularly appealing.
It is about releasing, feeding and healing the oppressed, unrecognized demon and not fighting it, rather than keeping it imprisoned.
After their healing, they can be transformed into powerful allies/protectors. Because of this, I prefer to use to term “Heal Your Obstacles”.

The Process

The process involves five steps:
1. Find your Obstacle (which, what do you want to alter, where in the body is it located).
2. Personify it and ask it what it needs.
3. Become the Obstacle.
4. Give the Obstacle what it needs to nourish it and become familiar with your new ally.
5. Rest in presence/emptyness.

The main difference when compared to Western psychotherapeutic methods has to do with the dissolving of the body, the nourishing of the inner enemy (instead of combating it) and the ‘non-dualistic meditative state’ of the fifth step.
Especially the feeling of liberation and inner peace that is associated with the final step is particularly strong and it is therefore in fact that most important phase. Within this phase, one can experience what it is like to live freely.

In the ‘downloads’ section, you can find an extended description of the process.

Effects

By using this method, complaints, negative emotions, fears, addictions and pains can disappear or be significantly reduced.
Sometimes the results are instant, sometimes they come more gradually.
We become free from our convictions, expectations, prejudices and conditionings.
Because of this, we become less sensitive to influences from our surroundings.
And we become more free and happier.
We find that we become more ‘ourselves’.

Also important is the fact that the surroundings are also affected.
Because we perceive life differently and treat the same circumstances in a different manner, the surroundings will respond differently to us.
By dealing with issues self-confidentely and by transforming our suffering, we in effect also give others permission to do the same.

On a different level, the liberation from our suffering also aids others.
If we assume that everything is connected to everything, it must mean that our change also affects everything else.
Healing our own suffering means healing all living creatures.
The most miraculous thing about this is thus, that others who also did this process, without actively interfering, will find that the environment around them changes in a similar fashion.
Relationships around us and with us are healed by our personal healing.
Strange, but true.

Give your Obstacles a GREAT EMBRACE.