How we poison ourselves

If we think life is a battle to be won, we will find the world a lonely place. In suspecting everyone and everything we practice the evil art of self preservation. We become nasty, bitey creatures, getting angry at every opportunity. We do the d-evil’s work!

The demon of destruction – Yama mara. Yama mara; instead of destroying what needs to be destroyed – ego games – evil obliterates everything. Trungpa Rinpoche wrote, “We begin to get inspired in the wrong way, and uproot the whole tree… and that is the karmic quality of destruction gone wild, unnecessarily”.

We create situations for others to oppose us, so that we can strike back – it’s a set up. In so doing, we perpetuate poisonous activity. The internet has allowed this to escalate: a hurtful word here, a nasty tone there, an old biased resentment brought up again and again, with the purpose of dividing.

However, not only do we poison others in this way, but we become poisonous, poisoning ourselves. The negative energies amassed to hurt others create poisonous energies within us, causing that long-lasting churning feeling in our gut and mind, long after the argument is over.

If there is are powers in this world who feed off destruction, which is the expression of evil, all they want is for evil to be self-perpetuated by us doing their work for them.

Stupidly, they do not realise that this poisonous activity is poisoning them as well. We become demons by feeding poison to others. This doesn’t bode well for our next incarnation does it?! Even if we don’t believe in reincarnation, this still has a detrimental psychological effect on us now.

Whichever we choose, it is still a banal, sleeping state, when we could awaken to our true nature of unconditional compassion. In this banal state, how can we expect to reach higher states of consciousness, allowing peace and wisdom to arise?