Handling the Three Demons with magic

On our way to magic, we're going to catch a glimpse of the three demons. As we do so, please notice how they interact with the three main ways we envision things. The first way we envision things is as if things have closed in around us. Second comes fighting with things, in an 'anti' pattern. Third is to force things with willpower. Willpower wins at getting things done, and often burns people out on the way.

1. Impatience. We want instant solutions. Instant fixes. Our focus and discipline are short circuited by a form of crisis called impatience. We should instead explore more, both within ourselves and into our outer world. Impatience leads us to frustration and then to reduced vision of what we, and our teams/groups, want to accomplish. We can't maintain or develop vision if our attention span is too short and fragmented. We simply want to get things done, but can’t bother developing the depth, the time and effort, to fully understand the matter. Instead we should grow and maintain relationships, holistically with others and with nature. We should take the time to ‘smell the roses’ in our relationships with everything around us. Which comes first, the short attention span, or the impatience?

2. Medication. Medication is treated as a magic bullet. A magic pill or crisis cure. It's used by those who constantly worry about failure/problems. Most short courses that people take are really a form of medication. It's also a way of suppressing part of ourselves instead of exploring our awareness. It's often a path toward learned helplessness, by reducing our choices along with increasing reliance on something external. You might consider it to be a form of conflict manipulation that is very common in social groups, such as working against nuclear weapons or against abortion. Such 'medication' is fear based, a form of negative vision, and very common. We routinely treat the symptoms and let the real problems fester in some way. All kinds of people develop problems that are suppressed with medications instead of being tolerantly explored for the growth experiences they contain. Rules and laws are a normal form of medication that separates instead of integrates. The fewer rules you have, the richer and more effective the culture you can develop, because you develop a living culture.

3. Fear of death. We fight it and push it away. Our society fights death, 'at any cost'. We automatically react to correct hazards that are seen as deadly, without exploring what is really happening and the potential opportunity in the situation. We seriously reduce our personal potential and our social potential when we willfully blind ourselves to the full spectrum of any situation. Moving across the spectrum, yin to yang, willpower is the most used and most successful way to get things done. But willpower is blinded by its own 'at any cost' willful push and doesn't interact with or mesh into or develop the richer personal and group aspects of any situation. We routinely have to do something now or in a certain way to ‘save’ something.

Instead we normally should explore and let the matter develop, both on a personal and on a group/corporate basis. This exploration enriches our understanding of the matter and improves our awareness so we can grow a cultural adaptation that biases away from knee jerk reactions. This is one of the roots for 'living companies' who live for hundreds of years, where most companies die within fifteen years.

I suggest that we should use magic as we explore developing things past the three demons. Magic has three elements. First is Vision, how we envision a solution or situation. Second is Willpower, that urge to get things done. Third, merging into the great environment. Merging here is awareness and exploring that environment, instead of relying on what we 'know' or a book or cultural values. Magic blends the elements, so stir them as you use them. Some see magic in prayer, that's fine as long as it gets the job done.

The name for the Three Demons comes from Arnold Mindell, as part of Processwork psychology. The three ways to describe our vision can be found in Peter Senge's “The Fifth Discipline.” This particular write-up comes from my book “Dragon's Play – the Diversity Awareness Toolkit.”