This is the most accurate depiction of stress I have ever read, and it is exactly how I experience it. Thank you for putting this to words (and incredible pictures) and I hope your demon will be excised soon!
I gave a lecture about demons last week at the Ritman Library of Hermetic Philosophy. It was also (not coincidentally) my first day of being a tenured professor. I’d asked chatGPT what I should lecture on to celebrate my academic freedom and it said I should give a lecture on psychedelics. Yeah, but demonology seemed to push the envelope just a bit further so there you go.
See Marsilio Ficino’s 1497 De Mysteriis for sources
Sounds like literary talk therapy...you’re on the couch and we’re listening...so on behalf of us readers...how did that make you feel?
Yes we hear you and we’re so glad your sharing this and it’s quite a journey you’ve had recently with all the changes and boy isn’t it good you do have so much control over your life and it’s not powerful forces bearing down on you.
You have it all in there. I absorb all your words like a real medecine. Medecine of the Soul like I call my substack. 💜
What I would add in the long list of possible reasons for this demon to come in - and be so generously hosted by you ! - is that you are also the container of all what happened before you -... what happened to your mother/father, to older lineages ...
Saying this might feel completely hopeless by the huge work behind ....but as you say yourself very well, once you know what the demon is made of, it usually dissolves...
It is also an amazing description of life with RA. I have a bunch of minor as well as an abundance of MAJOR ones that can simply irritate here and there all the way up to chewing up pain meds like Candy irritations.. stress follows right behind them in the same spots! Yipee for Stress!!
A lovely analogy and a great story. These little demons can also bee seen as angels. They bring early warnings of danger. If we listen to them, they might just end up being our best friends in the end.
I could feel the mental machinations of you working through it all!
It's funny, because I was just having a conversation yesterday with a researcher who is exploring some of these topics. Two very small excerpts from your piece jumped out at me:
"... I don’t think I did anything, other than talk and write about the stress."
It's a strange paradox that sometimes the less we do, the more we accomplish. For those of us who spend so much of our lives problem solving and ruminating, this can be a challenging realization to come to.
You also mentioned the idea it's possible these demons will never leave us. I think there's some truth to that. Some degree of stress is a part of our human condition. We can't eliminate our stress entirely, but we can choose how we interface with it. I recently wrote something on this topic that you might enjoy.
Anyhow, thanks for sharing. This was a wonderful description of how stress manifests itself in our lives. It really gets one thinking about the effectiveness of problem solving, action, and INACTION when dealing with this inescapable element of the human condition.
This is the most accurate depiction of stress I have ever read, and it is exactly how I experience it. Thank you for putting this to words (and incredible pictures) and I hope your demon will be excised soon!
I gave a lecture about demons last week at the Ritman Library of Hermetic Philosophy. It was also (not coincidentally) my first day of being a tenured professor. I’d asked chatGPT what I should lecture on to celebrate my academic freedom and it said I should give a lecture on psychedelics. Yeah, but demonology seemed to push the envelope just a bit further so there you go.
See Marsilio Ficino’s 1497 De Mysteriis for sources
Sounds like literary talk therapy...you’re on the couch and we’re listening...so on behalf of us readers...how did that make you feel?
Yes we hear you and we’re so glad your sharing this and it’s quite a journey you’ve had recently with all the changes and boy isn’t it good you do have so much control over your life and it’s not powerful forces bearing down on you.
...Oh sorry times up...see you next week :)
What a piece!!!! Yes!
You have it all in there. I absorb all your words like a real medecine. Medecine of the Soul like I call my substack. 💜
What I would add in the long list of possible reasons for this demon to come in - and be so generously hosted by you ! - is that you are also the container of all what happened before you -... what happened to your mother/father, to older lineages ...
Saying this might feel completely hopeless by the huge work behind ....but as you say yourself very well, once you know what the demon is made of, it usually dissolves...
🛶
It is also an amazing description of life with RA. I have a bunch of minor as well as an abundance of MAJOR ones that can simply irritate here and there all the way up to chewing up pain meds like Candy irritations.. stress follows right behind them in the same spots! Yipee for Stress!!
My left foot has been possessed for some time now. This post chimes exactly with how I feel.
A lovely analogy and a great story. These little demons can also bee seen as angels. They bring early warnings of danger. If we listen to them, they might just end up being our best friends in the end.
I could feel the mental machinations of you working through it all!
It's funny, because I was just having a conversation yesterday with a researcher who is exploring some of these topics. Two very small excerpts from your piece jumped out at me:
"... I don’t think I did anything, other than talk and write about the stress."
It's a strange paradox that sometimes the less we do, the more we accomplish. For those of us who spend so much of our lives problem solving and ruminating, this can be a challenging realization to come to.
You also mentioned the idea it's possible these demons will never leave us. I think there's some truth to that. Some degree of stress is a part of our human condition. We can't eliminate our stress entirely, but we can choose how we interface with it. I recently wrote something on this topic that you might enjoy.
https://open.substack.com/pub/ditabo/p/we-keep-zapping-godzilla-with-lightning?utm_source=direct&r=2eu029&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Anyhow, thanks for sharing. This was a wonderful description of how stress manifests itself in our lives. It really gets one thinking about the effectiveness of problem solving, action, and INACTION when dealing with this inescapable element of the human condition.