The Demon Teachings: Three Voices Diagram

In attempting to describe the Three Voices teachings succinctly, I thought to myself, How do I express something that’s nonlinear? It’s not like step one, step two, step three. It’s more of a territory. I thought, well, maybe I will try to make a diagram.  

I’m going to try to do this. This is my first time doing it. Maybe it will be a big rubber chicken moment. Maybe, especially with your help, it’ll be kind of cool. I’m going to screen share.   

Here is the self. You might not recognize it as the self, but there it is. Here is the Big Heart, a fairly ragged version—it feels that way some of the time, right? And here’s the demon voice.  

The self is full of so many things. It’s got desires. It’s got needs. It’s got unanswered questions. It’s got wounded places. The big question is, what am I going to do with all this stuff that’s in my self?  

It could be a desire. I have a desire; what am I going to do with that desire? I could go into one of the popular non-healing states.  For example, I can turn to myself with it, and I can analyze it, and get very good seeing all the angles. Okay, that’s one thing I could do.  

Or I could dissociate, and just not even admit that I have a desire at all, and be very outside of my body. That’s another possibility.  

I could be a pain artist about my desire, and make an emotional smokescreen with a lot of drama. I could write songs; I could do art; I could sing all the time; I could complain; I could make a big scene just on and on about it, until it’s not even clear anymore what the desire was in the first place—but I’ve really expressed myself. So that is a possibility.  

I could give myself a hell of a lot of advice. From within me, I could just say, “You should do this, and you should do that. Why don’t you just work out more, and why why why?” I could tell myself these things. That’s also from the self.  

It’s worth getting to know your own self strategies when you have a desire, a need, an unanswered question, or a wound.  

You could try blame: Don’t look at me. I’m pointing all the arrows away. That’s a good one, too. 

Ultimately, we have all of this in us—desires, needs, unanswered questions, wounds—and we really can’t deal with it on our own. We try and try and try and try, and the varieties and possibilities of how we deal with it on our own are pretty much endless. It’s great to know what our leading strategies are.  

Oh, I have a desire—
What do I do? 

Oh, I have a need—  
What do I do?  

I have an unanswered question— 
What do I do?  

I have a wound—  
What do I do?  
What should I do?  

When I am reliant on myself, and that starts to falter, and it’s not getting me what I want, or what I need, or getting an answer to the question, or healing the wound this leaves an opening for something else to come in…  

You know what happens when, for instance, we take the desire, and we turn it towards the demon voices. We say, “I really want—whatever it is—money, a partner, a different career.” As we turn toward the demon voices, they turned back towards us, and there develops a bigger and bigger two-way street. They’re gonna be telling us what will break our heart. They give us suggestions that are going to destroy us, like, “If you want to make money you’re going to have to…” something soul killing. “If you want a partner, you’re going to need to…”  

Or even worse, they start telling us “You’re never going to— You can’t— It’s not— You’re too stupid— You’re—”  You know that whole world really well, right?  

It’s the same thing with the needs. When we turn them towards the demon voice, they give advice that is sounds rational, but it’s cold, and it’s gonna hurt. But you think you have to; the voices say, “You have to da-da-da.”  

Or it goes straight in for the jugular: “You stupid creature, you wreck, I can’t believe you’re so needy, or…” all those kinds of things. It gets very, very acute, very, very fast. 

When I have an unanswered question, I start opening up this two-way street between my unanswered question, and Demon Land. The longer I stay in that conversation, the wider and thicker that road becomes.  

It’s the same thing with the wounds. If we turn to the demons, we may even get some temporary numbness. What comes back from Demon Land is maybe some of the best anesthetic, like anger, and hatred, and blame, and the unsolvable universal rages. That can be nicely anesthetic for a little while. But what’s getting in underneath is despair.  

To summarize: When we are working with the questions and the wounds, and when it turns towards the demons, we’re in trouble, and it gets worse and worse and worse.  

If we turn towards the big heart, for instance, we can start with a desire: “I really want a partner. I really want a nice home.” We are turning it towards the Big Heart, and what’s happening is that, as we turn it towards the Big Heart, there is a backflow that comes back from the Big Heart. That road widens, and we start having more and more input from the love and the loving truth into the desire, such that the desire becomes cleaned.  

Because some of our desires were learned somewhere; they are not really our desire. They are not true. We think we ought to want it; we’ve been socially tricked into the idea that this is what we want. But we don’t, actually.  

We may think, “I want everybody to like me.” Then we turn to the Big Love, saying, “My beloved Big Heart, I want everybody to like me,” and a backflow from the Big Heart starts coming back that is loving and truing.  

Soon the nature of the desire itself begins to change. Just by being in that back and forth, conversation, we start realizing, “Well, yeah, I do want people to like me, but not the way I thought I did. Actually, it’s more about my deeper integrity, and their deeper integrity…”   

The conversation could go in many different directions. But the love trues us, and helps us feel for the bottom line desire that was made in my soul as part of my true nature—the desire that I am here to live out, the way that an eagle wants to fly. This is what I want because I’ve been designed, in my health, to want this.  

Through my whole being because of this conversation with the Big Heart (I’m calling it a conversation, but it has no words; more like an ongoing exchange), I’m being loved and trued in that area, and given hotter hotter colder colder feelings about it.  

I think I might have a simpler way to say it: We are full of all kinds of stuff. Most of the time, it’s covered over, twisted, unclear gobbledygook, and we don’t know what to do with it anyway. Whenever any of it turns towards the Big Love and says, “I’m bringing this to you,” there is an opportunity like when you turn towards the sun; the sun can shine on you. We turn towards the Big Love with all of this inside us, so that the Big Love can turn towards you—so that it can get in, can pour into all of this stuff inside of us.  

Under those conditions, we become our real selves. Our desires become true. Our needs become true. Our questions come into relationship with truth. Our wounds also are cleaned, and trued, and loved, and brought back to who and what we are here to be. 

This works on a preventive basis as well. The degree to which we are turned towards the Big Love, in saturated communion, is the degree to which we are not turning the other way, and not going round and round inside of ourselves. It’s the way to be healthy and stay out of trouble.  

What we are working with, by any means necessary, is that everything inside of us be referenced towards the heart, as a way of life. Then we are not just out of trouble; we are being cleaned and trued and nourished and loved. Thus, when something other than that is happening, i.e., when we are wrapped around our own axle and under the influence of the demon voices, the most important thing is going to be awareness that this is not normal—that this is not just the way it is!  

The biggest and most difficult trap, whether we are analyzing absolutely everything, or turning to the demons, is feeling as though “that’s just the way it is.” It’s just the way I feel. I’m just in this mood. I’m just an anxious person. I’m just confused. It’s just really really hard. All of that seems incredibly self-evident when we’re in it: “I’m just really really hurt, because…” self-justifying blah blah blah.  

OK, I’m really really hurt. Set up three chairs. That’s definitely step one. Next is looking at the whole map, so that I can feel where am I on this map, and which seat to hand the microphone to first. It might be a little bit variable; you might have to run on hunch for that.  

There are three chairs, and I’m really really hurt; you hurt me.  

You might want to first just question, Do you remember that love exists? Is there even such a thing? Can we help you find that, so that you’re really really hurt but you’re also remembering that there is love, and starting to feel it? If that’s already starting to happen, it starts pulling out some of the barbs. 

When the demon voice is starting to occupy us, it’s doing its best to crowd out any possibility that the love could get in. When we are with the love, even if it is rudimentary, it starts to crowd out the possibility that the demon voice could get in. So, which end do we tug on first? Try something. Find out.  

I like to try helping people connect to the Big Love first, because if they can do that, it cuts through a lot of crap pretty fast. Like if the person is in “I’m really hurt, and you really hurt me,” and under the sway of the demon voices, when I am in that state what I’m really saying is, “I’m feeling more and more justified to spit fire back at you. I now feel allowed to speak to you quite harshly and hurt you back because you did this thing.”  

The moment I’m more in touch with the love, I can feel that there is actually something underneath that is just in pain; that’s just hurting in there. And the demons back off.  

Okay. I was starting to lose the feeling of all of you. I need to just stare at you for a moment. I’m in recovery right now, from having gotten lost in a diagram. 

Would you like to learn more? If you’re a prior Whole Heart Connection Intro student, join Thea at her WHC Making Connections Demon Voices workshop.

To join the discussion, find us on my Perennial Medicine discussion listserv (all are welcome)