The other night I put my oldest son to bed after a typical long day; we did our whole routine, which between the teeth brushing, book reading and song singing has somehow become a rather long event. I walked out of his room, confident that I’d gone the extra mile to send him off to dreamland with no hesitation. I went outside, where the night air was cool and soft, to lock up the chickens, and when I came back inside I heard him crying. It was late, the baby was already sleep, and although I was exhausted myself I still had dishes in the sink and a kitchen that needed to be tidied up before I could climb into bed. I gave him a minute, hoping he would stop and fall asleep on his own. As I tended to the dishes, I could feel frustration mounting; if you’re a parent you know that the only real time you get some peace is when your kids sleep, and after a long day, you look forward to that respite. I placed a few dishes in the cupboard. Take a deep breath, I said to myself.
And then something interesting happened, not unusual, and certainly not rare, but interesting. I heard a still, calm voice inside me say, Don’t go in there right now. You’ll be angry. Immediately following, really, instantly following, I heard another voice, a loud, jittery voice, a voice that rushes when it speaks so that you’re less likely to pause before acting on its commands. It’s a voice that grabs you by the throat, but somehow makes you feel like it is your throat. It said, No. You should be angry. As in, I had done all the steps and now he shouldn’t be crying, and I had a right to be upset.
The first voice felt like the air before a storm—quiet and gentle and light. The second voice felt like the storm.
So what did I do? I listened to the voice of the storm, of course. I went, windswept, into my son’s room and sternly asked why was he crying. I reminded him didn’t we read books? Didn’t we sing songs? It was time for him to sleep. I closed the door behind me. There was only the one loud voice now, and the voice was satisfied. The other, too soft, too gentle voice had retreated minutes ago.
Back in the kitchen, I heard the silence I felt I deserved as my son stopped crying, which was immediately followed by a wave of painful regret. I dropped my face into my hands. That’s not how I want to be. I shouldn’t have done that. He didn’t deserve that. Before regret completely consumed me, I walked back into his room to apologize. But he was already asleep. And the pain doubled in my heart, for sending him off to sleep in such a way.
This isn’t a post to mom shame, not myself and not you, who have likely had many similar moments. Parenting is really hard, and we’re human. We all have times like this one, and we have to offer ourselves a bit of mercy and forgiveness, even as we strive to be and do better. What I want to talk about is the voices.
This duality—the voice that whispers versus the voice that screams—is a fixture in the human condition. It appears in countless religious traditions, folk stories and proverbs. The most recognizable, of course, are the dual forces of good and evil, God and the devil. They wage inside of us, jockeying for more than our attention: They jockey for control. We see the duality portrayed everywhere from ancient texts to pop culture, with the famous devil and angel sitting on each shoulder, both whispering in your ear (if you watched “The Simpsons,” you saw this happening to Homer quite often.)
The spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle calls the loud, shaky voice our “pain body”—a force that lives within all of us, and also a force that we share collectively when we react to one another’s pain bodies, that feeds off suffering and can (and will) ruin our lives if we allow it to. Tolle writes, “The pain-body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence, and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it.”
What he describes sounds awfully like a demon, or the devil we so-called modern people have been told no longer exists. He offers a new perspective on an age-old duality. These are energetic entities that exploit our pain and unconsciousness in order to multiply. And these days, they’re all around us.
An old parable, often attributed to the Cherokee, tells of a battle between two wolves that live inside each of us. One of the wolves is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, self-pity, guilt and so on; the dark and evil traits of this world. The other wolf is peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, empathy, generosity and so on; the loving, light-filled traits of this world. In the parable, a grandfather is telling this story to his grandson, and at the end the grandson asks, “Which wolf wins?” To which the grandfather replies, “The one you feed.”
In Romans 7, Saint Paul writes about this duality, saying, “For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.” His “sin” here is Tolle’s pain body. What do I want to do? I want to be gentle and kind with my children; what do I do? I become frustrated and harsh. In these moments, which you’ll notice occur most often when we’re weak, as in when we’re tired, distracted, run down, our pain bodies are in control. The whole world goes round this way. If you don’t believe me, just turn on the news. It’ll tell you all you need to know about which wolf modern people feed.
The light of our awareness, the good wolf, delivers us from the suffering our pain bodies cause. The gospels, of course, call this light Jesus, and for christians, He is the way to the light of consciousness. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this duality, which could perhaps be why I paid such close attention the other night when my bad wolf took control. In a world where men and women sell children to be sexually violated, in a world where drug companies poison our children with impunity, in a world where everything from the rain to the rivers are toxic, in a world where young people are being preyed upon in all manner via smartphones, and no one seems to be doing anything about any of it, how can we define our spiritual state as anything other than demonic? We’re sick with darkness, and very few of us seem able to call it by its name. Which, of course, only strengthens it.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately of what it takes to be a light in this world; of how the forces for good are needed now more than ever. I’ve been thinking about how I can start with myself, and let the light begin in my home, in my family, with the hope that it emanates into the vile, sad world around us. Like you, the future scares me. From artificial intelligence to government spying to the sick, polluted state of our food, minds and bodies, the small, still voice seems not to have a single chance of being heard.
And that’s the thing about the voice of peace—it won’t jump into the ring with the bad wolf and fight for your attention. It doesn’t operate that way. It arises, gentle as its nature, and if you don’t listen, it recedes as quietly as it arrived. To hear it, you need to meet it where it is. You need to be gentle yourself. Gentle and slow.
You’ve probably heard the saying that the devil’s greatest trick has been to convince us he doesn’t exist. Nowadays, we laugh at the provincial idea that evil is real. You may have even squirmed a little, reading those antique words that I used in this essay. It’s so old school, so outdated, so…biblical. The devil? Give me a break. We’re so much smarter than that. We’re free, after all, aren’t we? Liberated from such old world ideas of angels and demons. And then we live crippled with anxiety, depression, perversion, anger, rage, illness, strife, pollution, all the rotted fruits of his work, and can’t understand where it all comes from. We try to legislate it away. We try to medicate it away. But it remains, its tendrils growing stronger and deeper with each passing decade.
Oscar Wilde famously said, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” We can’t escape the world, not completely, but some of us can reach for the light, for the transcendent, and live above the muck line. Living consciously and peacefully, cultivating beauty as if our lives and homes are a piece of a great, shared garden, is not just salve for ourselves. When we do this, we offer salve to the world.
Thanks for being here with me, truly.