Afraid to be psychic? Is there something to fear? Seeing ghosts and hearing voices? What to do

Hearing Voices and Seeing Ghosts

This isn’t quite a vent and it may get recycled into this week’s newsletter so you may see this topic again soon depending upon how inspiration this week goes.  It’s about ghosts and people hearing things and feeling things and seeing things that cause them to be afraid, fearful.  I get this all the time along with people who ask if I can rid them of ghosts or they want me to identify or confirm which ghost seems to haunt them.

What gets me most is when they say that some other psychic was able to rid them of a ghost or stop a haunting.  The mind can be a wild and crazy apparatus and here’s the thing:  anything can happen there if you’re not present there, minding the store so-to-speak.

I once heard a eastern teacher say that learning to meditate is to connect with the one that abides within, the presence.  I liked the way he described this whole business of being in control of one’s mind.  He said think of the mind as being a room that has only one chair in the room.  He said as others come into the room they have nowhere to sit.  Anything that disturbs the mind is a mental affliction and these afflictions have nowhere to sit down, so they have to go on their way.

Essentially, if we are present and have mindful awareness of ‘self’ then when anything that is undesirable shows up—whether it is a ghost or voices or anger or any other conflicting emotion or delusion–there is no place for them in the mind if “YOU” are present.  If you are there occupying your mind, then nothing else can!

Of course, many people don’t understand that all that is heard, seen, felt and so forth is in the mind–everything we experience is mind projected outward.

If no one is sitting in the room of the mind being present (if you are not there) and if you don’t have that ‘presence of mind’ then delusion can take a seat and cause all types of fear and suffering.

If there is no one home in the mind, unwanted guests can come and make themselves comfortable–they can sit down and eat and make a mess.  These ‘hauntings’ and crazy fearful ‘mentalizations’  happen because people don’t understand their mind and are not present there, believing they have no control over mind,  This is because they have not spent any time with ‘the one who abides within’ which becomes known during meditation and because they don’t recognize the way the mind reacts to fears which push them all over the place.

People come to me to ask about these things and I can feel how they are spinning around because they don’t understand their mind and don’t know how to be present within it; there fore they not know how to separate out what is there and what isn’t–the mind of the individual who comes to me in this way is lacking discernment and awareness of the inner self or what we could call ‘the self who knows’ or the inner wisdom.

How do you find the inner self or contact the self who knows?  You can start by visualizing that chair in the mind and sit in that chair during meditation.   Then post-meditation you carry that Presence with you wherever you go.

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Humor helps in dealing with stresses

Humor helps in dealing with stresses

Funny how certain things in life we simply don’t seem to hear, isn’t it?  I used to live on a fairly busy highway.  Even though people suggested to me before I moved-in that the sound of the traffic would be noisy or busy or a bother, I didn’t care.  I liked the house and actually enjoyed the moving traffic passing by.   Yet, if I hear a chain saw or anything that sounds like it or a human voice–it’s a totally different story.  It just is.  I’d rather hear a pack of dogs bark all night long that this loud Indian couple bantering and fussing for hours on end!  No really—they talk and talk and talk and then talk some more, non-stop hour after hour and on and on.  How about reading a book or SOMETHING? Anything!  (My current working theory is that it was a forced marriage and they are still hashing out whose fault it is–its just that the mind really wonders what they could go on about for so long and with such ….. well, lets leave it at that.)

I’m employing all types of tools and methods to deal with the stresses of certain sounds and noises these days.  Take for instance the other night.  Humor works and sometimes I can “crack myself up” as the saying goes!

The downstairs neighbors (a loud mouthed couple from India–pardon how I said that but it’s true) were getting louder as I was about to get into bed.  Great!  Here we go again!  My tried-and-true method to muffle into silence their Mumbai-mumbling-mouths involves turning up the fan on the central air unit, then putting the floor fan on high, AND the air purifier too for the benefit of THAT white noise as well.  All that, as sometimes happens, didn’t do it! I could still hear their very loud voices.   The task of drowning out the sound of their mouths completely was going to require the calling forth of the duty of the dishwasher!

Once it’s all going at the same time, the place is really rocking with white noise.   In fact, so much so that my apartment sounds like a jet engine!  Rolling off on that thought, as I kicked off my slippers, turned back the covers on my bed, switched off the light announcing, “Ladies and gentleman this is your captain speaking, welcome to cosmic airlines, we’ve been cleared for take off,  please fasten your seat belts, and enjoy your flight…”  I felt asleep laughing.  Humor helps dealing with stress.

(So does the fact that their VISA will run out soon and they will have to go back to India!  Hasta la vista baby!  Can’t happen too soon for me!  Meanwhile… humor!)  I know it’s NASCAR country here too and that Jimmy Johnson just won the Daytona 500, but I’ve developed a huge dis-taste for Lowe’s (employer of the Indians in this town).  I am personally boycotting Lowe’s as a way to make myself feel better about the noise, not that I really ever shopped there anyway…but still.  Opps… suddenly seem to have lost my sense of humor again! LOL  Change!  Grrrrrrrrr!!  Or as my Buddhist friend has said, “Om Dammit OM!”  (This blog is another tool in dealing with my stress as well.  And yeah, yeah, I know it’s all illusion or mental projection or just life as it is in the big city.  Still, I also know that a girl’s gotta’ do what a girl’s gotta’ do!)

PS — if some big exec at Lowe’s Headquarters reads my blog   and wants to buy me out of my lease, you can contact me through my website. What are the chances?  ha ha

Old Soul, New Soul or Simply Generational, Meditation-al Or Present Moment Living? Difference between Lonely and Serene

Is the person in this picture? Lonely or Serene? Your answer reveals a lot about you

Is there a difference between lonely and serene?  It depends on where you, yourself are coming from.  Here are a few thoughts about the different views of life that we could call ‘glamour’ versus simply attending to the moment.   Do we age to a point of wisdom or simply age?  What about ‘old soul’s’ and where do they fit in to this topic recognizing what serenity is versus loneliness.

Can meditation create a wise old soul within us even if we are chronologically born of a younger generation? Are old souls those who have learned to live in the present moment?  Like I said, here are a few thoughts.

Personally, I live from sun-up  to  sun-down  and  focus wholeheartedly on whatever is before me within that period.  That’s it.  And I’m happy this way but I would not expect everyone to understand that or be able to relate to it–and the fact is, most don’t.  And that’s okay.

I’ve noticed something about people who call another person an old soul.  What they notice about those that they label old soul  is a wisdom that comes from being grounded in the moment, a lack of angst or anxiety that comes from grasping, struggling, overwhelming desire for what is outside of self.   I’ve noticed when people tend to say that someone, usually of a younger generation, is an old soul it is because there is a serenity, calmness and lack of grasping or clinging to attachments that is visibly present.

The graspers (those who grasp at) and seekers of ‘outer-world-validations’ and materialization-s look at the one they’ve labeled an old soul and misinterpret their persona as loneliness or depression.  Really?  Seriously?   Lonely and Depressed?  Not on your life!

Generally speaking, many of the younger generation (younger souls?) don’t seem to be able to relate much to those of my generation (is this age related or some other category?).  That is unless the younger individual carries with them the energy of what people refer to as old soul energy.

Those who carry that energy seem to emanate wisdom that perhaps comes because they do not crave anything from the outer world–fame, fortune, glamour or any grass greener scenario.  A parent of someone like this who is of a younger generation but yet has ‘old soul’ energy many times become concerned because the child or young adult seems to have no huge external motivation or desires.  They believe the child lacks passion or drive and the young soul type parent worries in that way about the old soul type child.

Adults who misinterpret serenity for loneliness perhaps may not have yet reached the golden point in life when  one feels as if they have arrived.

Don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing wrong with ambition and passion and drive if that is what that person needs to experience at whatever age he/she is experiencing it, so be it.  But just don’t think that others who do not relate to your ambitions are confused, lazy, lonely or anything else that you may like to project upon them.

Getting back to my generation… some of us have, as a result living life itself, reached a place of  simple living.  Simply living out our day while wholeheartedly focusing on attending to the life in the moment. They/we seem comfortable with some type of  inner-knowing that our behind-the-scene-efforts will be appreciated when The Light shines upon them and no longer seek any limelight (stage light) from the outer world.

While younger generations are looking to the outer world for validation and experience, many of my generation are re-aligning once again with the inner spaciousness within the self returning in a way to how it was when we were born into this world.

Either way we look at it… whether an old soul or simply ageing, keeping awareness in the present moment ends the struggles with the outer world and allows moment-to-moment creative awareness. ‘Responsible happens’ meaning ‘able to respond’ because we are not distracted by outer world burning desires.

Your own level of awareness — whether it is centered in inner awareness or whether it is grasping at outer world desires will affect how you answered the question at the bottom of the photo.  If you are still grasping and full of overwhelming desires, you may decide the person on the bench on the photo is lonely.  Otherwise, you may have seen the person as being serene. 

Meditation will help anyone, no matter what the age, to achieve that inner spaciousness which makes one able to respond well (creatively and wisely) to anything that comes into their awareness.

And it  is living life in this way in which one is being most true-to-self and  most sincere-to-self.  

If you agree or disagree,  no matter–so are the thoughts that come before me today.  May they be worthy and somehow helpful to someone.