Part of a series recounting the backstory to the dream of the parsonage, first written down in spring 2023. https://katharina-kaintz.com/en/the-parsonage-story/the-pond/
He has been wandering around my room for years.
Sometimes he sits prominently on my windowsill. Then he has his eye on me — and I on him.
Sometimes he stands on the bookshelf. From there he watches me meditate. I feel his piercing gaze at the back of my neck.
Sometimes he overwhelms me, and I banish him to his styrofoam coffin.
But I never go so far as to let him disappear into some drawer.
I had been searching for him for a long time. The others were too obvious, too crude, too Christian…
Finding a symbol for your own devil is extraordinarily difficult, I discovered.
I finally found mine through a Gothic mail-order catalogue. Some dystopian figure from a novel. I had forgotten his name the moment I pulled the small creature with bat wings and a kraken-tentacle beard from the shipping box.
He is simply “my devil.”
It was a slow, painful process of drawing closer.
When I descended into my depths like Orpheus in search of Eurydice — back then, when my world fell apart — when I pressed the coin into the ferryman Charon’s hand so he would carry me across the Acheron, I was certain I would encounter a monstrous devil in the Hades of my inner world.
All my life I had been convinced that I was, at my core, evil.
Wicked.
Corrupt.
I wandered for days and nights through feverish fantasies and tormenting nightmares, through the silent darkness of my inner abyss — and found nothing.
Simply nothing.
I am not evil.
The realisation was as astonishing as it was liberating.
When I surfaced again and began sorting through the wreckage of my self-image, giving new meaning to myself, my past, my family history, my devil remained a blank.
I was not evil. So what was I?
The matter is complicated, I discovered. “Evil” is simple. I had been constantly occupied with making amends for my imagined wickedness. It had exhausted me completely, weakened me, kept me small. But it had been a clear concept — something that structured my thinking and actions at the deepest level.
After submitting to the radical cure of Zen — learning to let go — that way of thinking had collapsed in on itself.
Suddenly I was confronted with the fact that every moment counted: every thought, every emotion, every action.
And that “good” and “bad” were not workable principles for ordering my new world.
Zen has no morality and no ethics. Every moment, every encounter with oneself and with others, is fresh — never happened before. Every breath is new.
“Good” and “bad” are simply concepts that cut us off from life.
I found this truth hard to accept. I resisted it vigorously.
When I finally gave up — another collapse — I met my shadow for the first time.
He is a shape-shifter, I learned.
He operates on the same principle as the Boggarts in Harry Potter. He takes whatever form the moment offers — shimmering, surprising, unexpected — occupying in each instant whatever space is made available.
He is pure energy.
He is always there.
There is no breath without him.
Perceiving him requires a particular art of seeing, I learned.
A gaze of equanimity, of complete openness.
And the courage to acknowledge that he is mine.
He has been mine since my first breath — he will be mine until my last.
There is no escape, no redemption, no liberation.
There is no victory over one’s own shadow. Even the notion that this might be possible is simply my devil in a new guise.
This is what I am thinking as the Thuringian Forest passes by outside the ICE window. Between the bare trees, the snow is thawing.
Read the next part of the series: How Tantra Gave Me a Parsonage – Part Two: Hypnotized
Read the introduction Part of the series: How Tantra Gave me a Parsonage – Introduction
Curious about working with dreams and inner guidance? Learn more about my approach: https://katharina-kaintz.com/en/how-i-work/
