Dragon Loving

By Bholanath © 2004

The dragon is the aspect of the strigoi vii which feeds upon the energy of those around him. The unawakened and the novice have little or no control over their dragon: indeed, they may not even be aware of him.

The uncontrolled dragon can be a source of problems, particularly for the inexperienced strigoi vii. The dragon must feed. The dragon has no morals in that regard. If it does not find a ready source of appetizing energy, it willfully provokes a source. Not being selective, the dragon will prefer to feed from those who are the closest either in physical proximity or emotional bond. At best, this will leave those merely feeling weak or tired. At worst, the dragon will deliberately evoke fear, hatred, or other negative emotions from its prey before feeding. These people may not understand what is happening to them, but they may instinctively realize that you are somehow connected with their suffering. This may result in their passively attempting to avoid you or it may even result in active hostility and violence against you.

The unawakened doesn't realize what he has done until it is too late. Slightly better off is the novice, yet he may not understand how (or, possibly even, that) he can control the dragon.

I think of this and then I am mindful of the bully who grabs a kid's arm and uses the kids arm to beat the kid up, and meanwhile the bully tells the kid "stop hitting yourself". Of course, the way we usually look at this -- even the bully -- realizes that the kid doesn't have control of his arm and he isn't really hitting himself. But the thing is, that arm really is the kid's and he's just failing to control it -- so he really is hitting himself. And given time and will, the kid will develop muscles so (if the bully were to continue), he could not only stop hitting himself but give the bully a good thrashing besides.

So, how does the strigoi vii tame his dragon? The problem here is that the novice is still thinking of the dragon as something separate to be "tamed." The strigoi vii must come to realize the dragon is as much a part of you -- or even more a part of you -- then your arm. Just as you might exercise your muscles to develop strength and coordination, you exercise your dragon the same way.

You need to "get into" your dragon... When it is time to feed, realize it is time to feed and embrace this -- if you fight it, your fighting yourself. You can't win that way. Feel yourself doing the provoking and feel yourself doing the feeding -- and put your Will into it. Tell yourself that this is what you should be doing, this is what want to be doing.

Perhaps you have waited till you are hungry to go food shopping or to go to a restraunt? And then you just want to throw everything in your cart or order everything on the menu? It is the same thing with the dragon: if you wait until it is starving to feed, it is hard to exercise restraint or discretion... you just go ahead and "order everything on the menu" (ie, feed from everything you can create a link to)... so you don't want to let your hunger grow so strong... You should feed when you / your-dragon first tells you that you are hungry. Or even feed just because you want to and it feels good. Your dragon (which is you) will then learn to trust that it will be fed when it needs to be fed.

By working with your dragon, you strengthen it and gain control over it. Perhaps it will still be difficult to control if you should allow yourself to become famished... but as long as you feed on a regular basis, you should be able to exercise some restraint when your surrounded by food, whether it is of a physical or a metaphysical nature.