I’ve been reading quite a few novels lately, sci-fi, of course. I love science fiction. It’s such a great teacher. A new insight never fails to appear, opening possibilities previously not on my radar screen.

Last night, towards the end of the seventh volume in the series I am reading, the author introduced the likelihood (not confirmed yet) that the demons who could take any shape they desired, the antagonists in the book, were actually parasites, and it triggered the recognition of a non-literal parallel.

Like in the book, only not actual demons, the current administration is profoundly parasitic, stealing the resources, the energy, the happiness, feeding off our inner parasites: the fear, old trauma and heartbreak, feelings of inadequacy and stories of what should have been.

That’s one of the reasons to experience our joy, our community, our unity, to seek out proof of aliveness, to admit happiness into our lives. The more we focus on our anger, our fear of what is happening, on what it will mean if we don’t unseat hatred, the more that parasite is able to feed off of us. Fear is the parasitic feeding trough.

In the book, in order to move through the manifestation, the darkness swirling within, that which was keeping them from moving forward, from altering the course of history, the characters had to go where they most feared to go.

At first, they thought it was a physical place and expended a lot of time and energy on adventures filled with struggle. Of course that was great for the plot line in the book. What would life be like if it was a straight line from ignorant to enlightened?

We zig and we zag. We bury our heads under our pillows and pull them back out. We move a step forward and take two steps back. We glimpse movement out of the corner of our eye while our feet remain stuck in the mud. That’s what we do. We have our very own plot lines. mostly to avoid that place we fear to tread.

Of course, the place we don’t want to go, is never a place in time and space. If you’ve traveled the spiritual path for more than a day, you know that place is deep within.

It is home to the protective layers you’ve built up over lifetimes to safeguard the heart of you, shielding the exquisite tenderness within. It is the unsubstantiated site where your very beingness is neatly tucked behind murky films layered over crystalline wall, fortifications so multi-dimensional, so intricately hidden that you rarely know they are there before you begin to excavate.

Back in the 60s Leary said, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” It was about doing your own inner work and that doing so would take care of the world. At the time I always thought more like Nike, “Just Do It,” but not in terms of what Leary said, but do something damn it; don’t stand back and watch, don’t be complacent.

It isn’t complacency I am pointing to, but it is the pivotal pause. Before you muddy the water with your own stuff, your untended trauma, your hidden fears, make sure you know what’s there, make sure you’ve met your own inner demons.

Violence, even the kind that is packaged in the form of words and thoughts, beliefs and pictures of what should be, holds within it the seeds of the next violence. There’s a reason that few revolutions have truly lasted. The heart of the matter didn’t change.

When you can work for change without attachment to what that would look like, without seeing the other as demon, with an open and peaceful heart, then real change is possible. In fact, real change will have already happened … in you.


Amaya is the author of 7 books, the latest Actuality: infinity at play. It is available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and IngramSparks and others. Link to B&N https://bit.ly/4bXLFie

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