The Daemon's Voice

Welcome,

I am an epileptic, non-convulsive but I have many, many tiny seizures every day, like 10 to 20 per hour. I have, all of my life since I was 5 years old, noticed that consciousness is very layered. As we have no lexicon for discussing such things, I resort to metaphor. Let us say Consciousness is like the reflection of a tree in a still pond. The main trunk is the first level of active thinking and problem solving. The next layer, which is more subtle and requires more effort to attend to, would be like the main branches and twigs of the tree. They are ideas and thoughts associated with the main trunk of your thinking, and they are activated by your conscious thinking. You can notice them easily, guiding what you are formulating to say next.

Then there is another layer, harder yet to discern. These are like the leaves on the tree. They are distant associations that tremble subtly through your awareness ephemerally, and you must really try to notice them. These thought leaves are still on the tree of your main thought trunk, but they can be most easily accessed through your emotions. They are more distantly attached to the main ideas about which you are thinking, forming the shade of mostly subconscious ideation that, while remaining unspoken, have power over your subjective experience, keeping you from the shining sun of your perfection. When you feel a strange emotion upwell, seemingly from nowhere, stop to ask yourself, “What is that feeling ‘saying’ to me?” By putting the feelings into words you have made the slightly subconscious, conscious.

These are the three most easily accessed layers of awareness, but sometimes the emotions come from old leaves on the ground or even dead leaves rotting on the bottom of the clear, still pond. You feel something strongly—a great drive that is irrational but it makes you frightened or fills you with longing to go someplace you have never been in this life—or someplace you were many years ago as a child. Or perhaps you feel hiraeth—a longing for a place and time that no longer exist and which you may have, in this life, never experienced directly.

To understand these feeling, you must look past the pond’s reflection which is like your most perfectly still mind when you are not thinking at all, but relaxing. It is now harder to plumb the depths because reflections on the pond’s surface distract your eyes/awareness. This level of awareness cannot be “taken”. It must be asked because it is its own keeper and maker. Working mostly through the right side of the brain, this intelligence is vast and creative, and the leaves on the ground and in the bottom of the pond are its thoughts of which we are only remotely aware. You must ask it what it feels, what it is saying, what it wants from, and for, you. Its answer will come, usually not in words, but in images and feelings and sometimes vast interlocking systems of associations. This level, again, cannot be intruded upon. You must ask it kindly and with respect to speak (in its wordless way) to you who want lovingly to give it expression. Out of this level of awareness will arise beautiful creative ability that will upwell spontaneously to consciousness. While you are in its thrall, your skin will rise in gooseflesh and your mind will dazzle, and your nervous system will crackle with pleasure so magnificent that, once you have felt this, you will want to stay in this forever.

There is one more level of awareness but almost no one can go there, yet it can be glimpsed. It is the pond itself which reflects the tree and the sky beyond. It embraces all, and knows itself as eternal, transcending many lives and straddling many worlds. This awareness is the source of your personal identity. I call it “The Daemon” because it is your eternal self which will, if you attempt to follow it, speak into your mind at the third level I mentioned before. You are one of The Daemon’s many lives and it loves you with a love both terrible and marvelous for you are sprung from its own wellspring of Being. It will guide you as you attempt to hear what is happening in the third level of awareness, where the leaves tremble on the branches and so are broken free by the gusting of The Daemon’s voice. The Daemon’s voice is like the gusting of the wind you cannot see, but it will stir the leaves on the branches and lift even the leaves that have fallen to the ground. They will rise in a whirling torrent of associations—your own thoughts which are related to each other thematically, comprising the gist of what The Daemon is saying. They “connect the dots” between events widely separated in space and time, revealing layers of insight that The Daemon chooses to share with you—its beloved. These are the vast interlocking systems of associations I mentioned and, when they whirl to awareness, ephemeral and yet shimmering with energy from The Daemon, if you follow them, The Daemon will begin to speak more often and more forcefully. Nothing enamors the Daemon more than to have one of its incarnations love it, trust it and look to it for guidance.

If you want to be more integrated in all the layers of consciousness, watch your thoughts. Do not be the thinker. Watch the thoughts and watch the thinker. Watch the way the thinker thinks. Ask The Daemon for guidance and insight and then be still mentally and the wind will rise and even the pond will churn and the leaves will be lifted to its surface.

This is all I can tell you. The remainder you must do. Learn to ask, to listen and be still. Watch your thoughts. There is something magnificent in you. You are its vessel and, if you but offer yourself to it, it will use you and your life and make something magnificent of you, and the walls of your awareness will shatter—and you will know your truest lover’s voice.

I hope this helps. The Daemon is a favorite topic of mine. I write of him often. If you would like to read more of this, there is earnestly not a lot to find. People who know The Daemon do not usually speak of him for others, they fear, may think them mad. Besides that, those whom The Daemon chooses will know His voice—as will those who determine to know Him. That said, if you google “hearing voices” you will find a long list of brilliant people who know their Daemon’s voice but do not know what it is. You will be surprised at those on the list.

If this answer made you, at any point, experience a rush of chilling fire, your Daemon is drawing your attention to it and encouraging you. Many people know this feeling and call it the “Witness” or “Holy Spirit”. It is your Daemon asking you to pay attention and inviting you to follow His call. When you get that chilling fire, pay close attention always and look inward to the third layer asking “What is that feeling saying to me?” The Great Work of your life, the crowning jewel of attainment, is to merge your tiny will and awareness with that of The Daemon, but the The Daemon will never force. It is The Daemon’s Will that your Will be done. It is a Will you have forgotten because of distractions in this world, yet The Daemon remembers that Will for you. It is your True Will, and what is not your True Will is but desire. Yet it is the desire of His beloved and so He honors it. The Daemon does not usurp your tiny will. Rather He ushers it into being so, thus tasting it, you may know it succors you not at all, and you will move on more quickly and thereby know, at last, your True Will. The True Will is the subject of my next article. For now, I leave you with a relevant poem The Daemon gave me in 2016.

The Shouting Tree

With roots within my heart dist grow

a tree that touched the sky,

and planted in its sapphire arch

the dream that never dies.

There, dawning in the afterglow,

the loved that filled your eyes

came raining down in another world

and fetched me to your side.

Sad hollow, the heart of the child who scaled

those boughs to come to Thee,

and shouted to Thee from their utter twigs

abandoned misery.

And thereby made she all she loved

and loathed--by naming

dist she see--and came at last

thereby to know:

We make our own reality.

Loving regards,

Callaghan Grant, 2016

“Love is the law. Let the Great Work begin.”