The Demons Bow Back: Milarepa, Shadow Work, and the Paradox of Self-Acceptance

There's a peculiar thing that happens when you share your deepest shadows with someone who truly sees you. Not the sanitized version. Not the spiritually bypassed "I've integrated that" version. The raw, trembling, still-ashamed-after-all-these-years version.

[As I write this, White Tara's mantra is playing softly in the background, and I swear the afternoon light just shifted, like reality itself is leaning in to listen...]

When the Mirror Shows You Grace

Last week, my dearest friend and I did something that would have terrified me even six months ago. We held ceremony together—not with plant medicine this time, but with something far more potent: radical honesty. The kind where you share the shadows you thought you'd accepted but still can't speak aloud without your voice catching.

I went first. Shared things I'd seen in my cave in Peru (you can read about that particular descent into hell here), things I thought I'd integrated. Sexual shadows. Power dynamics from childhood. The ways trauma had shaped my edges into weapons I didn't know I was still carrying.

[My hands are literally shaking as I type this. Even now, even after all the work, the body remembers shame like a prayer it can't stop saying...]

She listened. No flinch. No pulling back. Just... acceptance. Like I'd told her about the weather.

"That's it?" her energy seemed to say. Not dismissive—loving. Like she was seeing past the shadow to the light it was blocking.

Then she shared hers. Shame she'd been carrying since she was three years old. Three! And as she spoke, trembling with the same fear I'd just moved through, I found myself thinking: "This? This is what you've been carrying like a stone in your chest all these years?"

The Song That Broke Us Open

Later, she was driving with her mom when Mayestra's "A Joyful Man" came on. She texted me immediately: "OMG this song is FOR YOU! It's about your unconditional acceptance of me!"

The lyrics hit like a dharma transmission:

"Bring, bring your intensity
Bring, bring your shame
Bring all of yourself to me
I have the space"

And then the line that broke us both open:

"You are already enough"

Not "you will be enough." Not "you're almost enough." Already. As in: right now, with all your shadows still dancing, with all your shame still tender. Already enough.

But then—and this is where consciousness gets quantum—she had a realization. "Wait," she said. "This song is also for ME. About how I need to see myself."

She went quiet on the phone for a moment. I could feel the shift happening, that moment when a teaching stops being intellectual and drops into the body like lightning finding ground.

"I've been so good at seeing you this way," she said, voice catching. "Holding space for all of you. But I just realized... I don't give myself that same grace. I can tell you to bring your intensity and shame, but I still apologize for mine. I can see you as already enough, but I'm still trying to earn my own worth."

[The phone line between us felt like it was carrying more than words—like consciousness itself was using our connection to show us something about the nature of love and projection...]

"It's easier to be the space for someone else than to believe we deserve that space ourselves," I said. And in that moment, we both understood: we'd been mirrors for each other, showing what was possible but not yet claiming it for ourselves.

[The synchronicity of it all... sometimes I think reality is just consciousness playing hide and seek with itself, dropping breadcrumbs back to wholeness...]

Enter Milarepa (Or: Why I Suddenly Understood Everything)

The next morning, I was praying to White Tara, listening to that song on repeat, when Milarepa's story suddenly downloaded into my awareness. Not the sanitized version. The real one. The one that matters for people like us who've walked through our own hells and still find shadows in the corners.

Let me tell you about Milarepa. Not because you need another spiritual teaching, but because his life IS the teaching for this exact moment.

The Man Who Murdered With His Mind

Milarepa wasn't born a saint. His name wasn't even Milarepa yet—just Thopaga, a boy whose father died young, leaving wealth that his uncle and aunt promptly stole. His mother, consumed by rage and grief, sent him to learn black magic.

Not metaphorical magic. The real kind. The kind that kills.

He became so powerful he could summon hailstorms with his mind. At a wedding feast for his enemies, he collapsed the building with sorcery, killing thirty-five people. Thirty-five souls, ended by consciousness weaponized.

[Even typing this, I feel the weight of it. How many of us have killed parts of ourselves or others with the weapons of our wounded consciousness?]

But here's what makes Milarepa different from every other shadow-worker: the remorse broke him completely. Not guilt—that's ego. Remorse—that's the soul recognizing its own capacity for destruction.

The Tower and the Teaching

He sought out Marpa, the translator-saint, begging for purification. But Marpa, seeing the depth of Milarepa's karma, gave him no teachings. Instead: "Build me a tower."

So Milarepa built. Stone by stone. Hands bleeding. Back breaking.

"Tear it down," Marpa said when it was complete. "Wrong location."

He built another. Nine stories high.

"Tear it down. Wrong design."

[I'm literally getting chills. This is exactly what shadow work feels like—building and destroying the ego's towers until there's nothing left but rubble and truth...]

Again and again. Different designs. Different locations. Years passed. No teachings. Just labor and destruction.

But Milarepa didn't leave.

Because he understood: the real tower wasn't made of stone.

The Cave and the Demons

When Marpa finally gave him the secret tantric teachings, Milarepa didn't start a monastery. He didn't gather disciples. He went alone into the mountains, into caves so remote that even yak herders wouldn't venture there.

For years, he lived in absolute solitude. No food supplies. No support. Just the dharma and the mountain.

At first, villagers would occasionally bring him barley flour. But as he went deeper into retreat, deeper into the wilderness, even those offerings stopped. He survived on what grew wild around the caves—mainly nettles. Just nettles. Day after day, year after year.

[I'm sitting here with my green smoothie feeling like a wellness tourist. This man ate nothing but wild nettles for so long that his skin literally turned green. Not metaphorically. Literally. Green.]

His body transformed. Not just the color—everything. He became skeletal, his hair grew wild and matted, his nails long. Villagers who stumbled upon him thought they'd seen a ghost or a demon. Some ran in terror. Others left offerings and fled.

But Milarepa wasn't trying to punish his body. This wasn't asceticism for its own sake. He was so absorbed in the nature of mind, so deep in meditation, that the body became secondary. Food was just another attachment to release.

He sang to the emptiness. Spontaneous songs—called dohas—that arose from realization like steam from boiling water. Songs about the nature of mind, about suffering, about the joy hidden in the heart of samsara. The mountains themselves seemed to listen.

But here's the part that matters for us: the demons came.

Not metaphorical demons. In that liminal space between form and emptiness, every shadow he'd ever cast took shape. The murdered. The guilt. The shame. The power-hungry sorcerer he'd been. They filled his cave like smoke.

He tried everything:

• Mantras to banish them (didn't work)

• Rituals to purify the space (they laughed)

• Meditation to transcend them (they got louder)

Finally, exhausted, he did the only thing left.

He bowed.

"Welcome," he said. "Stay as long as you'd like. This cave is your home too."

[This is where I started crying when I first heard this story, remembering Peru. Because I'd done the same thing with my own demons, and here was confirmation across centuries that the path through is the path of embrace...]

And the demons?

They bowed back.

Some say they disappeared. Others say they became his students. But I think both versions miss the point: they became integrated. No longer demons, no longer teachers. Just parts of the whole, finally home.

The Paradox of Accepting Others vs. Ourselves

Here's what my dear friend and I discovered in our ceremony, what Milarepa knew in his cave, what maybe you're discovering right now:

It's infinitely easier to accept others' shadows than our own.

Why? Because when we see others' pain, we see the suffering behind it. We see the child who was hurt, the soul trying to protect itself, the confusion that led to unskillful action. We see with the eyes of compassion.

But with ourselves? We see with the eyes of the judge. The one who "should know better." The one who's "done so much work." The one who's supposed to be beyond such things.

[Even now, after glimpsing Bhumi 6 in June, after all the ceremonies and clearings, I still catch myself judging the judge who's judging the shadow. It's mirrors all the way down...]

The Last Tower Falls

Since Peru, I thought I'd integrated my shadows. I'd fed my demons (literally—if you want to know about that practice, I wrote about it here). I'd achieved what Milarepa found in his cave: the demons had bowed and become allies.

But there was one shadow left. The meta-shadow. The shame about having had shadows at all.

It's like Milarepa after he received the teachings. The tantric practices brought great light, yes—but they also illuminated every corner that had been hiding in darkness. The brighter the light, the sharper the shadow.

Until my dear friend and I dove in. Until that ceremony. Until I watched her receive my darkest truths like gifts and realized: if she can accept me this completely, what am I still fighting?

The Practice for Two Who See Clearly

So here's what I want to tell my dearest friend, and you, and anyone else who sees others with compassion but still wages secret war against themselves:

Milarepa's greatest teaching wasn't the magic. Wasn't even the songs. It was this:

The cave of the heart has room for everything.

Every shadow. Every shame. Every part of you that you've exiled to maintain the image of who you think you should be.

And here's the practice:

1. See your shadows the way you see your beloved's: with understanding, context, compassion

2. Bow to them: not in defeat, but in recognition

3. Invite them to stay: integration isn't eviction, it's homecoming

4. Sing to them: Milarepa sang because song carries what concepts cannot

5. Let them bow back: this is grace, and it comes not from forcing but from allowing

The Final Teaching Hidden in Plain Sight

There's one last piece to Milarepa's story that only makes sense now, after my dear friend, after the ceremony, after the song.

In his final years, Milarepa's skin wasn't green from nettles anymore. It glowed. Not metaphorically—literally. The light that had always been there, once blocked by shadows and towers and trying, finally had clear passage.

He didn't transcend his humanity. He included it so completely that light could move through him unobstructed.

[As I finish writing this, that same light from earlier is now golden, streaming through my window like approval. Or maybe that's just my imagination. Or maybe imagination is how light learns to see itself...]

This is what I want to tell my dearest friend: We don't need to fix ourselves. We need to include ourselves. All of it. The way we already include each other.

The demons will bow back.
They always do.
They're just waiting for us to stop pretending they're not holy too.

Your Turn to Enter the Cave

Have you noticed this paradox in your own life? How much easier it is to love others' shadows than your own? What would happen if you looked at your deepest shame through the eyes you use to see your beloved's pain?

And that thing you're still hiding, even from yourself—what if it's not a mistake but a teacher, waiting for you to bow?

Share your experiences in the comments. Sometimes the cave feels less dark when we know others are singing in theirs too.

Until next time, keep bending light and hacking minds,

• Cian

P.S. If you're curious about the song my dearest friend shared, find "A Joyful Man" by Mayestra. Listen to it twice: once thinking of how others see you, once thinking of how you could see yourself. Notice what shifts. Try listening to it whlie considering the shame you're dealing with - let those words penetrate to it's depth and see what happens.