As I’m wrapping up The Four Agreements, I came across a section that describes the spiritual journey of the warrior. Don Miguel Ruiz describes the warrior as one who is a war with the parasite of the mind. In the margin I wrote: I am a warrior. Because I am not only fighting a parasite named Drinkie, but I’ve been consciously fighting his kind since at least 2010.
2x Zero+ ; Deuce & Triple ; M: 141 ; C: 104 ; P/U: 2x 65 ; W : 2x 4 mi
Health R.O.S.
- Weight: 204.3
- BMI: 27.6
- Fat %: 21.0
I didn’t call it a parasite back then when it’s presence became known to me through a series of recurring and often disturbing dreams. It didn’t know what to call it. I just felt its presence and its power. I was subject to its hidden manipulations.
The Mountain Road
The recurring dreams where the parasite first made itself known started off innocently enough. Every couple of weeks over the course of ten months, I’d have this dream where I’d drive up the same windy mountain road at night to a spooky old Victorian House. Think Adams Family. Upon arriving there, I’d park, get out of the car, and do work around the yard until I woke up. But I never entered the house itself.
That was until one fateful night. After roughly ten months of riding up that mountain road and doing yard work, I finally found myself standing on the house’s broad front porch. Suddenly, the door opened, and a well dressed preppy sort of college student invited me in.
As creepy as the house was on the outside, the inside took it up several notches. It was musty and dark. There wasn’t a light on anywhere. The only thing I could make out was a dim staircase winding up along the wall to my right.
Let Me Show You The Computer
The preppy student motioned that I should follow him and began climbing the staircase. I obliged. A few steps up, he stopped and turned back to me and said the only thing he’d ever say to me: “Let me show you the computer.”
When we reached the landing, I rested my left hand on a dusty handrail. Before us was a long pitch black hallway. At the very end of this hallway was a closed door outlined by bright light piercing through the cracks and crevices. You know, the kind of poltergeist sh*t they have in horror movies.
Against my better judgement, I followed the kid down the hall past several closed gray doors until we stood in front of the poltergeist door. He turned the knob and gently pushed it open.
Suddenly, I found myself standing in a brightly lit, clean and tidy, college dorm room. It had a neatly made bed in one corner with bright white sheets on it. Opposite the bed was a desk with big tube type computer monitor, keyboard, and mouse resting on it.
My First Encounter With The Parasite
I told the kid that I’d be happy to look at his computer and sat down at the desk. The kid left, closing the door behind him, and leaving me alone in the room.
“I just need to press Control Alt Delete,” I said to myself, but when I did nothing happened. “It needs a hard reboot,” I thought, but as I reached for the power switch, an invisible force threw me back in the chair. It slammed me all the way back to a full reclining position. The parasite pinned me there and held me down with its enormous weight.
Though I fought with all the strength I could muster, I could not budge its suffocating weight. It pressed down on me for what seemed like an eternity before finally releasing me all at once.
I sprung up out of that chair and raced out of the house. When I arrived on the front porch, I sat up in bed with a start, dripping with cold sweat.
The Parasite – Final Showdown
A few weeks passed without a recurrence of this dream sequence. Yet that nightmare’s vividness was seared into my psyche. I’ve had very few dreams in my life where I could remember every detail, but this was one of those.
Then, one night without warning, just as the effects of the first dream were finally wearing off, I found myself back in that house. But this time I stood in the center in an enormous medieval style kitchen with gray stone walls and black cast iron ovens.
The parasite was there to welcome me. It took the form of a dark cloud floating above me. Suddenly, all of the glistening sharp carving knives, forks, and cutting utensils lifted off the counters and swirled around me in a tornado type maelstrom. Round and round and round, hissing as they sliced through the air.
A voice of pure evil bellowed: “F*ck You!”. But I would not be intimidated. I would not let it pin me again. I shouted the same in return as loud as I could before taking mental control of all of these flying instruments of death and gently laying them back down onto the kitchen counters.
Once again, I sprung awake drenched in cold sweat.
The Parasite Is Diminished
While the parasite hasn’t been quite so bold as to haunt my dreams of late, I’ve been aware of its presence ever since these nightmares ended. I’ve reflected much on my experience and have come to recognize the parasite’s new quieter role in my life.
The parasite plays the role of the Judge and my old friend Drinkie. The former is always trying to beat me up for a past I cannot change while the latter is constantly planning my next binge drinking episode to numb my feelings of helplessness and guilt. But they are slowly losing their power over me.
At this point in my meditation practice, both voices have quieted themselves considerably. Particularly the Judge. He just doesn’t seem to come around all that much anymore. Drinkie is losing a bunch of steam as well. Negative thoughts in general just don’t occupy the kind of mental real-estate they once did. And when they try to hook me, I RAIN them away.
But, the parasite has been with me a long while, since way before 2010, my whole life actually. It has seen to it that:
- I did a lot of stupid things
- Said a lot of stupid things
- Constantly reminded me of my life’s sum of doing and saying 1 & 2 (Judge)
- Made me feel like sh*t about it (Victim)
- Created this pain and then offered myriad ways to numb it (Drinkie)
- Mixed and repeated for the first 50 years of my existence.
It’s becoming quite clear to me now that the fog, mitote’, maya, and illusion are lifting. Now it is up to me to route out and exile the last vestiges of the parasite and his cohort. I feel I am making tremendous progress, but as any warrior knows, this is a fight with no end.
