Hungry Ghosts....how things work

A long time ago, I was graced to meet and work with a wonderful older woman . 

I still regard her as one of my wisest teachers.   

The one core lesson she taught was that "Everything is energy....  

As soon as you learn this one thing, you will understand everything easily."   

Over the years, this has proven to be true..  Remarkably simple.

That idea is very helpful for our discussion and  it will help to clear up a lot of confusion.. 

Let's talk about this story in the light of that understanding... 

I have a friend who lost her mother at a particularly vulnerable age.  

"Lost" her mother is a phrase we take for granted.  

Words have the power to guide our minds.  

In our culture we believe that loved ones that pass out of life are lost to us.  

People suffer terribly because of their belief in those words. 

What if we were given too simple-minded an understanding of things?  

What if everything and everyone is simply energy?  

What if what we experience in the passing of a person is simply a shift in energy?

Energy vibrates...and it vibrates at different rates.  

Take water, for instance. Depending on its vibration, it can go from ice to slush to water

and then to steam.  More widely dispersed, it is simply humid air...invisible...but present.

A human body is largely comprised of water vibrating at a certain rate, along with 

a certain percentage of other matter vibrating slowly enough to become visible to the eye.

Rock, for instance, is vibrating very slowly.  It is dense and heavy.  

Much in the same way that a heavy, muscle-bound weight lifter is dense in comparison

to a ballet dancer who is light and airy in their body, seemingly weightless at times.

We each have our own energy vibration, our own signature that is distinct from all others.  

We are similar, yet distinct.  

I once knew a man who was born into a family of psychics....which is simply another way

of saying that one has finely tuned perception.   

He took a group of blind children and began to teach them how to perceive with their other senses. 

The 1st exercise was to teach these children how to perceive color by means of perception of vibration.

He chose various colors of felt squares and taught the kids how to feel the different vibrations of each color

by passing their hands a few inches above the felt.  They did surprisingly well. 

If this seems implausible to you, try this little exercise: turn your TV off and pass your hand 

across the screen from several inches away.  You will feel a crackle of electrical energy.  

Experiment with how far out you can hold your hand and still feel the energy. 

We are surrounded by unseen energy in the form of electricity, sound waves, solar, microwave

and many others.  We deal with energy constantly without understanding everything about it.  

So...back to the blind children...

Another exercise was to learn how to perceive the energy of their classmates.

Everyone has a certain 'feel', a certain vibration.  The kids readily picked up the skill! 

It was a successful exercise. As he continued to expand their capabilities they were eventually 

able to perceive space... and then to perceive finer vibrations within space.  

These children were eventually able to run laps in a gym without bumping into the walls 

and then without bumping into walls or their classmates!

We all have these abilities.  It is just a matter of focus and practice.

So...going back to the so-called loss of a loved one...

What if the spirit of a person simply shifts vibration? Think about it...

When we are free of the heaviness of a body, our vibration would be faster...and intensely alive.

We feel something similar if we are heavy, sleepy and dull after a huge meal 

as compared to the lightness and rapidity of life when we set food aside for a fast, for instance.

   

In the same way that you can feel the approach of a loved one or that you can sense danger 

or feel an impending storm system, you can feel anyone who has passed out of their body.  

Many  people have caught the scent of an old fashioned perfume that is associated with a grandmother long since passed, for instance...a visitation...   

Or you hear a song playing in your mind that is connected to a time, a place, a person.  

Many times that is a sign or a clue of a visiting energy.   

You may experience an emotion or seemingly random memory.  

What if it is not random or haphazard?  

What if all of these....were comforting evidence of their presence?

Going back to the woman who lost her mother as a child...

Her mother had been a pastry chef.  She loved to make wedding cakes and fancy french pastries. 

Her expression of love was to prepare special sweets for them after school. 

That was always their special together time.

She died an early death of cancer, leaving 3 small girls behind.  

Their mourning was not handled well.  

Their mother was quickly replaced with a stern, uncaring stepmother.  

Their grief was ignored and the new situation confused things enormously for the stricken children.

  

The spirit of their mother hovers near her children, but because of their erroneous teaching about death

both from the overculture and reinforced by the church, they grieved her loss.

Many children innately know that death is a bit of an illusion.  Many children can still see or otherwise

perceive other vibrations or what we call 'worlds'.   

Unfortunately, adults dismiss these things...simply because they do not see or perceive them

They teach children to shut out a whole realm of what is there..

This is much needed information.  We were born with it!.

So children come to rely increasingly on the guidance they receive from the adults around them.

They learn to fear and suffer and grieve and steel themselves against the change that is called death.

They cannot receive or communicate normally.  

They are cut off from their former larger real experience of life.  Their world shrinks to fit.

They lose their vision.  Whatever is not concrete now is labeled fantasy.

They grow into adults and are now steeped in their grief and loss.  

So their mother signals them in the ways that she knows that they will recognize...symbolic language!

The symbolic language of luscious, comforting pastries!    

Now that she has passed, the daughters unthinkingly go and load up on sweet junk food and desserts 

on their way home from work, much to the detriment of their health, unfortunately.  

When they are feeling especially vulnerable, they go into a kind of food trance and eat soul-numbing 

amounts of gooey desserts to assuage their loneliness.  

What they have now created or drawn to themselves is a hungry ghost...a familiar spirit!

But not the spirit of their mother necessarily... They are stuck in a loop of painful unreality.

Like a deeply worn groove in a record.  A deeply worn groove in the brain....

What should be a positive signal becomes a negative, self-destructive and painful response!

What they cannot see is that their mother has either drawn near or that they are calling her in 

via the vibration that matches their closest and happiest memories of her.  

They are evoking her...but in an unaware state.

Better to have a cup of tea and a small sweet cake with her in spirit than to gorge on love lost.

If they could grasp what is really happening...the signal of her very real nearness...

they could experience her loving presence. 

They could exchange a very real and current experience with her.  

Their relationship is alive...it is just very much skewed.  It is half-hidden in the behavior...

This is another experience of a 'hungry ghost'.   

Once we are able to make the leap and catch the clues that they are sending us, 

we can dispense with the clue, whether it is eating or drinking or acting in various other ways.

We can then recover and  resume our relationships with them.   

It is only a matter of getting the information.  Then the clue is no longer needed. 

In the case of these daughters, if they could recognize the approach of their mother 

in their quiet moments, they would be able to recognize the clue and receive her love.  

We re-enact many behaviors until we 'get the information'... until we 'get' the clues.

It is remarkable the way our lives will shift as we decipher these clues.  

It is dramatic, total and seemingly miraculous.  

It becomes a great game of understanding and discovery once we begin to perceive the world 

a little differently...a  little more accurately...energetically!.

Instead of heaviness, despair and self recrimination...instead of being stuck in a downward spiral,  

there is a lifting and re-orienting of all things in life. 

An aha moment that relieves all suffering...

It is needless suffering.  In an energetic world you cannot lose anybody...ever. 

It is just a shifting of energies. Life goes on, spirit goes on..

'Spirit is just a way of saying  'unseen by fleshly eyes' that perceive less.

Think of an eagle or a dog.... their senses are keener than ours. 

We can sometimes lean on them for information that is not ordinarily available to us.  

So, too, some people have ability to perceive beyond the norm...much like other people 

who have musical or math abilities.  

We should value their contributions to our lives and learn from them, so that we can experience 

more of our own latent potentials....

Imagine this from the other side of material life...

Can you imagine the effort and distress of those that have passed out of body trying to reach us 

to comfort, help, love and guide us through life?  

What if you went to your mother's house all day long and tried to get her to answer her door or phone

and she sat inside, unresponsive, somehow sure she was just imagining your knock or the ringing of the phone?   What if she had been told that you were gone away...a phantom?

Or that you now lived in a distant place or that you are lost to her?

If we could but relax into the knowledge that we are all experiencing life still...just a little differently.  

It is not much different than living life in Paris or Bangkok or on a midwestern farm.  

It's not like you can give them a hug daily if they live in a faraway place, but you find other ways 

to communicate your love.

It is sometimes hard to relate to or imagine their very different life, but it is just as real.and meaningful... 

If you can, take your eyes off the behavior of over-eating or drinking, etc. for a while.

Stand back and see if it has another meaning or message for you...

Go behind....

Go underneath...

Your answers are many times right there...just under the mind...