Training in Compassion 18: Five Virtues: Reproach Your Demons

To train ourselves in compassion calls for growing the five virtues: Determination, Repetition, Owning Your Nobility, Reproaching Your Demons, and Aspiring to the Impossible. Today we look at: Reproaching your Demons.

There’s a popular saying, “embrace your demons.” And, yes, it’s helpful to accept the reality that they exist, and acknowledging that in some ways they may have done some positive things for you. But if, on balance, they are doing you more harm than good, reproach them for that.

If we are honest we have to admit that we have a lot of bad habits that keep appearing over and over again, despite all our good intentions. Underneath that, we have a sacred noble human nature (as we know from last week’s Training in Compassion, “Owning Your Nobility”).With that knowledge we can correct what needs correcting.

Your bad habits like greed, anger, selfishness can be thought of as demons who come to visit you more often than you’d like, and you can reproach them (“Hey, you did it again! Cut that out! Stop that!”) and still maintain a gentleness and sense of humor.

First, try to become as familiar as you can with some of your most popular bad habits. Study them. Be intensely curious to know about them. How does it feel? How does it cause you to think and want to act?

Your demons aren’t you. They visit you, and you are responsible for dealing with them. A gentle reproach won’t prevent them from recurring – but it reduces their dominance. You can have a much more flexible and even humorous attitude toward yourself and your many faults than you ever thought possible – and then everything becomes much more workable.
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