Soul Haunting and The Dream!

Dreams, especially nightmares, can be loaded with haunting! Exactly...you did read the right words, just as I wrote them. Nightmares have lots and lots of juicy psychic stuff for insight, enlightenment, and soulful growth in the form of haunting. Thing is, we're so often afraid to listen to it, to the haunting. To listen to inner disturbance as it comes out in nightmares means facing the ghosts that always bear tidings of one sort or another.

Halloween and All Souls Day proclaim the existence of an unseen world. The veil between the world of waking and sleep, the realm of the deep unconscious mind, the spiritual world, thins. Spirits are real. People have reported dreams and waking visions of seeing spirits. I have a colleague, a psychotherapist, who is also a trained shaman. Unseen souls can inhabit homes, place, generate havoc! She's the one to call to exorcise the spirits so the home will sell. It's worked countless times for countless folks.

In the world of soul, the unseen world and the spirits that populate it bring messages into the world of consciousness. They haunt us till the message gets  through. They help us to grow, if we're willing. The spirit that appears by our bedside at night, the nightmares that haunt sleep, the dark events that come out of nowhere can shock us into consciousness...inspired change!

I had a rip-roaring nightmare last night of a literary demon. He was trying to force me into the mainstream literary establishment. I'd be abandoning my writing in dark fiction. It was frightening to say the least. A complete abandonment of self, of soul, was what the demon demanded. I awakened knowing that I had to remain true to my writing, true to myself.

Listening to the message of the nightmare, the spirits of the unseen world, means partaking of organic soul food and not Halloween trick-or-treat candy. Symbolically, candy can refer to a sweetening up of what's bad so that we don't taste it, feel it. Halloween tricks or treats...pass them up in favor of contemplating the haunting, the candle in the center of the carved out pumpkin head, its flickering, its eerie and unrelenting soul meaning.

Horror as Healer!

Old blues players say they play the blues to chase the blues away. Stephen King, master horror writer, has written that scaring is caring. It all comes down to facing fright to get the fright dealt with. You face the ghost or it stays with you and haunts you. That doesn't sound too good to me.

Reading a novel like The Unholy sets religious horror smack dab in front of us. We can't run from it unless we stop reading. If you read The Unholy it may affect dreams, bring bad religious experiences back to consciousness. Horrid stuff stays locked away in the basement of our minds unless it's brought out into the light of day, consciousness. It grows rancid there, psychically smelly, grotesque.

I watched The Conjuring last night, a really decent horror flick. Terrible things happen in families and are pushed away. People try to force forgetfulness. Ha! It's locked in the basement. And, it knocks, bangs, on the door and gets out. Way, way scary. An exorcism is needed. Finally...you let it out then call it by name and cast it out and back into the miserable realms that birthed it.

We finished the movie, slowed our hearts from racing, sighed, and said "Good movie." We felt relief. It let loose hidden tensions and in ways not immediately discernible cleared out our heads. It was a good story. Horror heals, blows out clogged psychic tubes, chases horror away, and ultimately unleashed, as in The Unholy, insights, changed perspectives, and intense emotions stored in the basement of our minds.

Religious Abuse and The Quickened Soul!

Rigid religion deadens the soul. Reading in depth psychology and spirituality I was doing this week emphasized that rigid religion defends against genuine religious experience. During a Healing Event/ Book Reading and signing for The Unholy I shared the psychological adage when rigid religion comes in the front door spirit leaves out the back. The dark side of religion abuses the soul, leaves the soul spiritless.

Soul quickening requires an emotional and spiritual infusion of energy. This isn't an intellectual change, it comes from the heart and from within the heart, the soul. For some people, soulful quickening means busting loose of formal religious strictures and institutions; others report being able to navigate their way through religious dogmas and demands and still feel spiritually intact and enlivened. What matters most to the furtherance of consciousness is soul quickening whether within the confines of organized religion or freed of them.

Thus, soul quickening heals abuse incurred from the dark side of religion. As William James, father of American depth psychology noted, religious instinct is the most deeply rooted and deep seated of all human experience. It does not need to be formalized and certainly not rigidified. Soul quickening, a renewed feeling and passion for the spiritual, jettisons us out of the mucky muck of the unholy, toxic religious rigidity, and into the realm of restored passion for the deep psyche and its always evolving path.

Empathy Not Religion!

"You don't need religion to have morals. If you can't determine right from wrong, then you lack empathy, not religion." This quote came from a social media post from one of my friends who struggled for years to come to grips with the difference between a good, spiritual human being, and the person within who had been scarred by old time rigid religion. Old religions pull for allegiance to outer doctrines and rigid dogmas. Inner spirituality leaves one free to be a naturally empathic and spiritual being.

Parents tell me quite a bit that they're thinking of getting into religion so as to pass on morals and values to their children. I have to echo the words of this anonymous writer that what needs to be passed on is human empathy, modeled by the parents, not religion. We can't look to an outer source for something that needs to come from inside the human heart and from inside the family.

Depth psychology is about turning within and cultivating sensitivity without in the realm of relationships. William James, the father of American depth psychology, wrote of God as intimate soul. Spirituality is instinctual, God as intimate soul. God seeping into the exquisite realm of love and loving. Empathy, not religion, cultivated in the home and in one's life brings forth the fruit of intimacy with soul and those that we cherish and love.