Seven Simple Laws of Total Mastery type books, because it only has one recipe in it, namely “empathise and explore”. And yet I do suggest certain guidelines along the way – such as the distinction between tough and tender approaches. These are, however, not laws, algorithms or formulae, but simply guidelines, and must be recognised as such.
Compare them with signposts. If you are in Cheltenham and you take the road signposted to Stroud as if it was a formula for Stroudness, then you will be quite upset after ten minutes when you find yourself not in Stroud but a place called Brockworth. Don’t give up. Trust me. But when after a further fifteen minutes you are now in a place called Pain-swick—no more Stroudlike than either Brockworth or Cheltenham—then you will probably decide the signpost was ‘false’ and give up. Guidelines, like signposts, are not laws or formula that are liable to such objective testing, they are always dominated by the reality of the situation in all its objective and subjective aspects.
So, back to that problem. You have happily accepted my analysis into tough and tender approaches, you have located a demon and begun the most tender reconciliatory approach to it, and it has turned into a snarling monster. What has gone wrong?
It’s so obvious.
Think!
All that has happened is this: the demon has been reading this book too. Over your shoulder.
Put yourself in its position. You are like a long-term marriage partner. No matter whether the marriage has been comfortable or unhappy, how do you react when you find your partner reading a book about how to improve their relationships. Does it mean they are not happy with this relationship? Or that they are wanting other relationships? Maybe you welcome this attention to the relationship, but shouldn’t they have told you they wanted to explore further before making a unilateral decision to buy this book?
And so on. Simply by reading this book you have added a new factor to your relationships with demons, and that in itself will undermine any rigid formulae I might have chosen to provide in this book.
The tough/tender distinction is still valid, and will prove its value in the longer term. But apply it only with awareness and understanding of the actual situation as an ongoing, developing whole.
CHAPTER FOUR
VARIETIES OF DEMONIC EXPERIENCE
You don’t learn about people from books. Discuss.
The first point is that it is not true—of course we learn about people from books. I’ve never met Aleister Crowley, so most of what I know of him has come from biographies.
The second point is that the sentence, although not strictly true, does contain a truth. Although I gained most of my knowledge of Crowley from books, I also learnt something about him by talking to others who had met or worked with him. Without the greater depth of empathy and understanding this personal contact provided, my knowledge of him would have been more brittle, fragmented and stereotypical. The added input had a bigger impact on the quality of my understanding of the man than on the quantity of my knowledge.
I also believe that we learn more about our fellow humans from fiction than from non-fiction books, and this is because stories encourage us to enter into the scene described and empathise with or ‘become’ one of the characters. In imagination we are no longer reading a book but participating in a drama.
This is not to say there is anything innately wrong with non-fiction books about people, but simply that they are labouring under a disadvantage as long as they simply present facts and do not weave stories that engage the imagination and encourage the reader to participate.
So the opening sentence should be replaced with this: We learn most about people by living among them and interacting or observing them in a receptive manner. We also learn something from books, especially when the books manage to emulate the experience of human interaction.
The same applies to demons. You will, I trust, learn quite a bit about them from this book, but will only really understand them insofar as you work with them in your own life. Meanwhile I will attempt to increase the teaching potential of this book by giving a few examples based on real life to illustrate the process in some of its diversity.
I won’t go as far as to weave stories from these examples, I will simply seek to distil from them a few useful guidelines for the next chapter.
DEPRESSION
Depression is a recognised medical condition, and I believe it is possible to be permanently depressed. In this example, however I am using the word in a more popular sense to describe a feeling of despair, pointlessness and utter lack of energy or motivation that can descend upon one’s life and then lift again.
It may happen for a reason – an unhappy love affair or loss of job – but it may also just descend for no obvious reason and cast its shadow over a period that could otherwise be a high-point in our lives. This can be even worse – what is wrong with me, one asks, that I should be feeling like this when I have so much to be grateful for compared with others less well off in life?
When in this state of despair, it is hard to imagine that any other state could exist for oneself – happiness seems like a prerogative of other people. It is important, then, not to exercise the imagination but rather the memory. Give imagination a rest and focus on the fact that one has been in this state before, and that one has since been out of this state. The condition comes and goes. Therefore, however unlikely this might seem, there is reason to suspect that one might again be happy at some time in the future.
This can be a very useful revelation. I began the chapter with an example of a sentence that was not true, yet contained a truth. It illustrates an important principle, namely that most people are not demons yet they contain demons. In this case there is enormous pressure of temptation to identify with one’s black despair and see it as ‘me’ rather than something that visits me and departs again. Instead I encourage the depressed person to detach from the condition – and remembering that the condition has come and gone in the past is a very great help towards achieving such detachment.
If depression is a recurring problem, it deserves also to be addressed in those times of relative joy between visitations. When feeling good, it is tempting to turn one’s back on the depression of yesterday and throw oneself into life again ‘making up for lost time’ in a frenzy of fun. Instead I suggest you invite depression to join you at times of hope: when feeling confident and optimistic, think back to the arguments you used to convince yourself that there was no future, that you were a loser and there was no hope. Don’t work yourself back into that state of depression, simply converse with your memory of that state, take its arguments seriously and give them the respect of a serious refutation. Take those arguments apart gently. And next time you are depressed, think back to that inner conversation and invite it in turn to participate in your depression.
Note my wording: when I say that the depression “deserves also to be addressed” I am beginning to anthropomorphise the state. Then I invite it to join a conversation. What I am in effect doing is seeing the condition as a demon that visits rather than simply a change that comes over one.
But how much respect should one allow for such an unwelcome visitor as this?
The answer came to me when visiting a friend in a nearby parish. As we chatted over tea he looked out of the open door and said “Oh God, no. Not Jules.” A moment later a small, fussily dressed old man entered and proceeded to bore us with his conversation until my friend invented a dinner date as reason to flee his presence. In truth, I did not find Jules boring at first—he
