Supposedly when a ghost crosses your path, you’re supposed to confront the ghost, acknowledge its presence, and release it, sending it on its way.
The same principals can be applied to our own internal ghosts. When we find ourselves being dragged down by those fearful, angry, frustrated, low vibrations, we must acknowledge, and then release the feelings if we have any hope of moving on.
Ignoring those feelings doesn’t make them go away. In fact, it can make them dig in, hunker down, engrain themselves in our being. The harder we try to gloss over them, replace our feelings with activity, the more likely they are to creep up in other areas of our life. They want so badly to be acknowledged they’ll come out at the most inconvenient moments.
There are times when we simply cannot confront our feelings. We must put them aside to deal with them later. If something happened when we were young, and we needed to simply survive, we bury our feelings because perhaps we’re not capable yet of dealing. If something’s going on right now, perhaps we’re not dealing because we haven’t figured out what to make of our experience. We haven’t “figured out” how to feel about it.
The best thing to do to “figure out” how to feel is to not do anything at all. In these cases, we should slow down, focus on the most basic function of our existence, our breath. When we focus on our breath, we come into the moment. When we are present, we can release the stories we’ve been telling ourselves. Releasing the stories can help because we can then get in touch with our reality and accept the way things are right now. When we accept the way things are right now, we can much more easily move forward.
A confrontation with our ghosts should be less of a stand-off and more of a loving acceptance. We can choose to cradle ourselves – or cradle our inner child or the part of us that feels most wounded, most abandoned – as we acknowledge our experiences and the feelings and fears they drum up. We can just say, “yes.” “Yes,” I acknowledge that feeling, I welcome that feeling, I feel that feeling, and I let it pass through me, like a wave washing on the shore. Or like a ghost.
