The Ghosts We Harbor

At some point in our lives, we all grapple with the issue of ghosts. Shadowy forms sent us to bed early when we were small. Upon growing up, many of us unwittingly begin to welcome them deep into our being.

I used to carefully check under the stairs before going up at night, making sure there were no ghosts there to grab my feet. Once in bed, I'd spend indeterminable minutes staring at the ceiling for possible cracks through which ghosts might sneak in. I dreaded dark places; there always seemed to be something there watching me.

Later on, though, I slowly learned to come to terms with my ghosts. I was bigger and wiser, and braver to confront every menacing dark form that appeared to me at night. My growing faith in God helped a lot, as well.

But many people, although they have become more mature and smarter, continue to be helpless preys of ghosts. Worse yet, their shadowy tormenters had only left the dark spaces under the stairs and have since been dwelling inside them. Deeply beyond the capacity of their mind to comprehend, ghosts continue to render them restless and frightened.

An old neighbor died last July, of complications from a stroke several years before. It was something that the family knew was forthcoming. And, somehow, they were quite prepared when it finally came.

Just the same, the death brought grief. Family members who were already living abroad were quick to come home for the funeral. One daughter in particular wept all the way from the airport.

But to my real surprise, this very daughter refused to sleep alone in a room all the nights she was here. She was scared, she admitted, that the ghost of their deceased parent might appear to her. I began to doubt if her spectacular display of grief was genuine or a mere show.

The ghosts that parents invent to make little children behave properly are easier to conquer. It's the ghosts that grownups create for themselves that are much harder to get rid of. No sense of reason will do; these ghosts are ever there and even seem to take on more power with every effort to drive them away.

I support the position of human behavior experts that ghosts are actually masks that our guilt feelings wear. It is not the dead people that come back to haunt us. It is our own self-contempt for failing to give the departed our affection and kindly service while they were yet here. It is the forgiveness that we refused to give or were too proud to ask them that burdens our conscience afterwards.

Yet, horrible as ghosts certainly are, they can teach us something essential about our own lives. The disquieting experience can move us to finally heed what the prophets and sages have been preaching since the beginning of time - to love one another. Then our hardened hearts may be turned into a fertile ground for compassion and charity to blossom.

Our ghosts can be an instrument to strengthen our faith in God, too. The horror that they bring can make us turn to the Almighty as our ultimate refuge. Fright can dispel our own delusion of invincibility, and humble us into seeking divine deliverance from our own dark side.

Also, maybe we just need to be haunted by ghosts to be reminded that our worldly lives have spiritual implications. Most of our social problems, from drug addiction to violence, come directly from a lack of spiritual vision. Aside, of course, that it is found to be at the root of many psychological disorders.

We don't fully inhabit the vast galaxy of our own inner selves. There is a part of us that remains unconquerable by our own willpower and intellectual might. We are not totally in control.

The high walls of pride and indifference that we build around ourselves do not make us kings. They make us prisoners, instead, for they limit our grasp of the truth about ourselves. We are spiritual beings mutually dependent upon one another; our residence in these individual biological machines that are our bodies is only temporary.

It is our vain and coldhearted ways that create the ghosts that haunt us. We need to awaken from our spiritual slumber and change. Our ghosts will disappear, one by one. And we will have peace and happiness - not only in the here and now but, perhaps, also in the hereafter.