Taming Monsters and Dragons

 I was always fascinated by monsters, I still am.  When I was very young I remember asking my mother where did the 4 witches stand?  I was learning the Pledge of Allegiance, probably in kindergarten (please say the Pledge now).  She loved to tell that story.  And I enjoyed hearing it.

I grew up in the 50’s so there was no end to these black and white monster movies.  I’m pretty sure they were mostly black and white, but who knew, we only had a black and white TV set.  

As I sit here, the one movie that comes to mind is this one where a big eye comes out the mysterious mist to kill people (The Crawling Eye!).  But my favorite movies were Dracula, Frankenstein, and especially the Wolfman.  I always wanted to be the Wolfman.   Better than Superman.  The Wolfman was edgier.  A good person with an evil monster inside.  So, you sure didn’t want to piss him off.  The Hulk is a better more modern example. 

I think the edgy superman-monster is all the rage now.  One of my favorite characters is Earl Harbinger, the powerful werewolf leader in Larry Correia’s series Monster Hunter.  And as an aside, Larry, bring back Earl’s redheaded girlfriend! 

Why does the monster so fascinate me?  I think it is the feeling of powerlessness we all have.  As a kid I really felt this sense of being without power in the world.  I assume that is why I took up martial arts. 

My parents are Holocaust survivors.  I’m sure there was some influence of the horrors they experienced, although, they never spoke about what they had seen until we were adults.   Things get transmitted anyway.  There are probably stray words spoken.  The child picks up on body language.   And there are other levels of transmission, limbic resonance, psychic connections, and other subtle energies (Scientific Heretic!).

For an example of these types of subtle transmissions outside the range of current accepted science I love to use the work of Bert Hellinger.  His work on family constellations is absolutely fascinating.  He takes an individual with a problem, depression, anxiety, and sets up a room of total strangers around this person.  Each stranger is assigned a role: The father, the mother, siblings, anyone of importance.  He then arranges these people in certain positions around the index client.  As the scene unfolds these total strangers seem to channel the individuals they are assigned to be.  Very therapeutic, and very outside the realm of science we currently accept (Heretic!).

When my son was a troubled teenager, although, maybe it was his family and our society who were really “troubled,” we went to a very insightful therapist.  She said that what she does is “Tame Dragons.”  We all have dragons inside us.  And we live in a world with people who have dragons living inside of them. 

So part of my fascination with monsters arises from my feelings of being powerless in the world.  Additionally, many of us also like to get a little creepy scare from movies.  Maybe we like them so much because of the truth that we all have monsters, dragons, inside each of us.  Further, we are surrounded by people who have monsters inside of each of them.  Think about Billy Joel’s song, “The Stranger.” 

Robert Bly in his book “Iron John,” describes a long black bag that each of us drags behind us as we travel through life.  We place in the bag the parts of ourselves we reject.  That bag gets heavier and heavier, unless we take these rejected parts of ourselves back out.  If we don’t acknowledge these rejected parts, if we keep the knowledge of their existence only in our unconscious, they will rise up and bite us when we least expect. 

The practice is to find them and take them out to incorporate them consciously in our current beings.  Not that they have to be active.  But, they must be acknowledged.  Perhaps even honored.  Given credit for the roles they did once play in our lives.  Some of these parts that we reject are our monsters.

By looking at these monsters, we tame them.  We can acknowledge and thank them.  But we also tell them they don’t need to be play their role as a monster right now.  They can be a sleeping dragon.  We will promise to call on them if they are needed, perhaps for our survival. 

So, turn around.  Look in your long black bag.  Take out a monster or a dragon, and thank it for what it has done for you.