Why We Have Ghosts

This is the last post in this small series about ghosts’ origins, intentions, and motivations. It would be a very big post if I could go over everything I’ve ever learned about souls and ghosts in general, so I am going to try to control the length here and focus on why ghosts are ghosts.

I’ve never actually spoken with Source about why souls want to stay and why they do what they do, but I have spoken directly with souls through meditation and the spiritboard. It’s pretty self-explanatory. Human psychology persists in the afterlife. If you’re roiling in rage or encumbered with guilt over a past experience and have no intention of accepting help for your struggles, chances are you are going to carry that with you in some form from experience to experience.

It is hard to let go, and how often are we ready to accept help?

From recorded accounts and discussions from both the living and the dead, there are certain things that persist into the afterlife when we die:

• Our relationships
  • Not every relationship will be rock-solid. Some fall away almost immediately after crossing, and some persist for several lifetimes.
• Our traumas, resentments, passions, and emotional attachments
  • The more emotionally charged the event or attachment, the more it echoes and resonates in us after death.
• Our belief systems
  • Our beliefs shape our realities.

This is not an exhaustive list, clearly, but these are the biggest factors for the origin of hauntings and past life traumas.

Not every haunting is a horrible one. Passion and love are also very strong emotions. The love of a house, a tree, a knitted blanket can keep us wanting to return to it. If you read the first post of the series, you may recognize the persistence of energy in these items that we love. Others may hold them as well and feel the same. Call them mini-portals if you wish. (Mini-portals are cute.)

In direct opposition, rage, anger, and resentment can easily anchor us to people and places that we guard jealously or with malignancy. Guilt and fear can make it difficult to move on, too. Fear of being persecuted through your belief system can make you hesitate to move on or seek help. Guilt about circumstances surrounding your death can lead to self-oppression. Lastly, the physicalities of life that excite and addict us, such as drugs, sex, alcohol, etc., can keep us from leaving, especially if our belief system tells us we will no longer be able to enjoy those things otherwise.

Ultimately, you don’t have to go, and there is absolutely no obligation to. We have total free will, even if it is to our detriment. It becomes a problem when we try to exercise our free will to antagonize other souls, especially those who are confused and feel oppressed.

This is a two-way street. The living antagonize the dead as well. It’s important that we express the same understanding to those who have died as we would to the living and not mythicize them as creatures from lore but preserve them as the kin they are.

Through the spiritboard, I met many souls who felt guilty. This affected their experiences in a pretty significant way. Take Peter who wouldn’t visit his mother because he felt guilty about dying young in a car accident while intoxicated.

Me: You don’t visit your mom because you feel guilty?

Peter: Yes.

Me: Well, she’s not mad at you, is she?

Peter: W… [goes into thought]

Me: Could you finish spelling that word really quick? Peter, I don’t think you should feel guilty. She’s still your mom. She still loves you. I don’t think —

Peter: [slower] Early.

Me: What’s “early”?

Peter: M —

Me: Because you died when you were so young?

Peter: E.

Peter: Early… [He gradually becomes slower and slower.]

Richey: Feels really heavy.

Me: Yeah.

Peter: … Fault. [Planchette struggles to reach letters.]

Me: You don’t need to feel guilty about passing away so early. You really don’t, and um — I know you probably believe you had a whole life to live, and you probably did. And you’re regretting that, but… In the end, we all go to one place, and where you are now is where we go.

Peter: No. Mom. Time lost.

Me: Oh, you lost time with your mom.

9/4/2011

(Ironically, I chose that session without realizing it was 10 years ago today.)

There is a common experience that many people have had during near-death experiences regardless of their belief system: life reviews. During a life review, the individual who has died has an empathetic overview of their experience. It is like a massive download of not only their experiences but the experiences of those they’ve interacted with.

I have often wondered about the necessity of this. Self-reporting experiencers of NDEs have described feeling guilty for some experiences they reviewed. Upon being revived, it gave them the opportunity to reassess their lives.
Then, I thought about cognitive behavioral therapy, and how few of us have access to the tools that help us assess our feelings. We never discover how we got where we are or learn how to move forward from there. It’s possible that life reviews are our collective way of processing these experiences. It is not the only way, but it may be the start.

Again, we are not obligated to undergo this review, and we are certainly not obligated to change.

Me: Ryan, do you stay on Earth?

Ryan: Yes.

Me: Why do you stay? … [about the planchette] Is it off the board? Ryan, why do you stay on Earth?

Ryan: Why you?

Me: Because I have to — I mean, isn’t there somewhere else?

1/8/2011

If I could offer any advice to future ghosts, it would be to take time to heal here on Earth before you go. If you don’t have the opportunity, accept the help that is offered to you when you leave. Let go of that which you long to control. Learn from past mistakes but don’t hold on to old experiences, relationships, and even objects that don’t serve you anymore. Pursue love and joy.

I’ll leave you with this:

Me: … Is there anything you would like to tell us?

BR: No stress.

Me: So, um — are you saying that you are quite content where you are now?

BR: You.

Me: You telling me to not be stressed?

BR: Both.

Me: Both of us to not be stressed. We appreciate you telling us that. It’s a good advice to take, actually.

9/11/2011

Take it easy.