Demons

Jung proposed that at the unconscious level, there are no individuals. This is why he suggested that in dreams, every character, every archetype, is you. In a world that increasingly makes very little sense, Jung’s concept resonates with me. I feel some truthiness in it deep down in my core. If the unconscious is where every dream, every archetype, every perspective lies in waiting… the conscious mind is the place where this can all be authentically seen and explored. But there is a third state where these archetypes and dreams find shape and are enacted in the world: the subconscious. From my perspective (based on my own personal experience and observation of myself and others), the majority of humans are living subconsciously. It’s a zombie-like state, neither fully conscious nor fully unconscious; a kind of dreamlike, purgatorial, right below the surface, existence (sometimes heavenly and sometimes hellish).

I first became fascinated with the subconscious mind when I went to see a hypnotherapist in 2018. I was mesmerized (cheesy pun intended) that we could somehow tap into our subconscious and make changes. The second I quit priest-play and abandoned organized religion altogether, I went back to school and received my certification in the art of altering the subconscious mind. The training I received at HMI (Hypnosis Motivation Institute) was invaluable. It gave me a foundation and from there I learned hundreds of techniques and tools to help clients change/distract their subconscious minds about behaviors and thoughts they perceived as hindering or destroying their lives.

For about a year and half my hypnotherapy practice allowed me to explore, play, learn, and practice all of these techniques I’d learned, all within the context of helping people. I helped many people commit themselves to a whole host of areas ranging from quitting smoking to finding inner courage to speak their truth to their employer or their partner. I know how to use words that provoke, inspire, and/or liberate. So it’s safe to say that when a new client finished a first session with me, they either felt like I changed their life or they were totally turned off by my practice. My perception is that ambivalence is not how most people feel about me, in the rare case they happen to be thinking of the person they believe me to be. 90% of the clients I saw were looking for a miracle. They wanted me to perform an exorcism. 10% wanted exoneration and permission to get on with their lives. The truth is, my office was a great space if you wanted your demons to come out to play. I no longer identified as a priest, so I had no interest in exorcising anyone’s demons. In fact, I’d quit believing in a literal hell, Satan, and demons long before I ever became a priest.

Allow me to give some honest, albeit cynical, context. I was only asked once to perform a direct, personal exorcism. I had a parishioner who was convinced their relative was demon-possessed. They asked if I could rid their loved one of this demon. I replied, “Sure!” I had zero training in such things but that never stopped me before. I’ve always had this character trait that is a strange brew of bravery, stupidity, and arrogance. This has afforded me a lot of opportunities over the decades to try new things, fail, and learn. I wouldn’t trade my life experience for all the riches in the world. But this trait in me really isn’t much fun if I don’t use it consciously. So while driving many miles to this person’s residence, I listened to an exorcism script taught by an Eastern Orthodox priest on his podcast designed for clergy like me. I’m tempted to say, “you can’t make this shit up”… but it’s all made up! I arrived decked out in my Clergy Halloween costume, with all the usual props you’d find in any exorcism film you’ve seen, only to find a frightened, depressed, and anxious young man. I took off the costume and dropped the act. I simply listened to him, prayed for him, and gave him the crucifix hanging around my neck; my one-and-only, expensive crucifix given to me at my ordination. I was secretly thrilled to part with it.

Outside of this one experience, it was my regular duty to rid the demons from the obvious places they love to hide. First and foremost, we were taught that demons love to hide out in infants. Makes sense, right? Everyone knows how nasty and vile those innocent-looking creatures can be because they come prepackaged with any assortment of demons. We had to get the monsters out of those little monsters preferably within a week after they slithered out of their monstrous mothers. The next place demons love to hide is in teenagers and adults, specifically in their thoughts and sexual organs. These kinds of demons keep coming back for more, so they required monthly or quarterly confession. The truly annoying and persistent ones required weekly confession. This exorcism was folded into the Sunday Magical Mystery Tour given the uninspired name: The Mass or Holy Communion. This weekly surgical procedure was so masochistically painful, so like all obedient priests I said hocus pocus over some bread and wine and offered my parishioners/patients/sheep a magic, eucharistic potion of body and blood that was metaphorically part morphine and part cocaine. Alas, metaphors are only helpful when you are fully aware they are only metaphors.

What I know is that religion didn’t cut it for me, metaphorically or literally. The silver lining for me each Sunday was that whatever bread and wine was left over at the end of the liturgy was my responsibility/privilege to consume. And damn, it was delicious. The homemade bread was typically baked by various parishioners who knew what they were doing and a local friend made his own port and donated it to us. I enjoyed getting a little tipsy afterwards and felt I more than deserved it for all the clerical shit I had just put up with the previous week. The eucharistic music we chanted varied some from week to week, but the lyrics were always some tedious blend of “Loser” by Beck, “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd, and God Bless the U.S.A. by Lee Greenwood. The common denominator in all of these exorcisms was a crucifix and holy water. Apparently all demons, just like vampires, are terrified by both. Unfortunately I was never given any tools to ward off other priests, bishops, or zealous parishioners.

By the time I got to play the hypnotherapist character, I was beyond done with the whole horror/drama genre of mea culpa, forgiveness, and penance which kept the most typically neurotic people locked in a prison. While they didn’t create the prison, they willingly chose to live in it. The worst offenses of the people I tried to serve could be boiled down to this: they had a powerful inner desire to fulfill their creative and sexual dreams/fantasies, and instead of personally taking ownership and responsibility for those dreams/fantasies, they took out their suppression and frustration on their family members and occasionally their friends and coworkers. I now wanted to serve people in a different way. I wanted to help them face their unconscious fears and discover that those fears were unfounded. That the most beautiful and wonderful things about them were hidden deep down.

By the middle of 2022, I became aware of two issues that were causing a serious glitch in my personal matrix. There were bugs in my new code and it was crashing my system virtually every evening. My first realization was that while every human faces neurotic challenges, there are enough of us who are facing psychotic challenges. I had one client in particular that nearly crashed my whole program immediately. I thought they were dealing with some severe neurosis. Turns out, they were struggling with some devastating psychosis and abusing a mix of substances just to survive. Once I realized what was going on, it was too late. I should have never started working with them in the first place. My arrogance clouded my judgement. I thought I could rescue them. That priestly part of me hadn’t yet been integrated. I still saw myself as the guy whose name was just one letter T short of being Christ in the flesh. I ended our third session abruptly and referred them to a psychotherapist I trusted. They flipped me off on the way out and then spent the next week slandering my character with lies on Google and Yelp before taking their own life about a month later. I am secure in the knowledge that I am neither responsible for what was going on in this person’s life and how things played out. And yet I am still haunted by what happened. I have forgiven myself for my poor judgement.

Soon after this, my second realization hit me in an equally humiliating way. I’ll spare you from more sad details, but I was asking clients do the very thing I wasn’t willing to do myself, even though I knew the truth: in order to live and enjoy one’s life fully, the unconscious must be made conscious. Heaven and hell must be integrated. The subconscious is a great doorway to this work. I demanded every client do this work, without surrendering to it myself. I’m not saying I didn’t go to my own hypnotherapist often. I did often. She is still one of my favorite mentors. I’ve never done well with instruction. I hate it. In my life, it’s mostly men that have tried to teach me. When it comes to learning from others, I learn best by modeling what I see in others. I call these mentors. There is a reason why all of the truly wonderful mentors in my life have been women. But I went to her for the same reasons my clients came to see me: I was banking on a miracle. A get-out-of-jail-free card. But this card only exists in the game of Monopoly. And while there may be a winner and a bunch of losers, no one actually wins all the money and no one actually goes bankrupt or to jail. In the game of Life there is no easy way out. The game is played for fun and longevity, and this requires personal, playful, joyful, and at times, dangerous work. Everyone eventually has to do this personal work in their own way, on their own terms, and in their own timing.

I’ve spent the last year trying to imagine what my life could look like outside of the context of helping others exorcise or manage their demons. It’s how I’ve seen myself, how I’ve presented myself to the world, and how many in my life have viewed me. I’ve been a great attractor of people who would like to project all manner of things on me, from traitor to healer. It’s been a source of great pride for me to be seen as a wizard of healing. The truth is, this feeling hasn’t gone away but I’ve had to accept it as a part of me. I’ve been integrating it into who I am becoming. I know of no one in my life who is always becoming as much as I am. I believe this is my life’s purpose: to just be me and accept that I am a never-ending work in progress. I don’t actually believe I can heal anybody from anything. I do believe that people struggling with psychosis have a 50/50 chance of relief if they get connected with the right help. I know I am not the help they need. But neurosis is a whole different matter. I like neurotic people, because to bring this back full circle, neurosis was the other side of Jung’s reality. We may all look similar but no two people think, feel, dream, act, speak, sing, dance, and create alike. I think one of my primary gifts is that I inspire people, through/with/by my unique neurosis, to embrace theirs. It’s pretty much the whole point of this site. If you find my particular kind of neurosis boring, I hope you can find your people. My only aim is to write and speak about things that inspire and provoke more life and love in me. These days I’m hell bent on playing this game of life that’s been handed to me as dangerously, joyfully, lovingly, and creatively as I possibly can.