The idea of ghosts may give us goosebumps. “Ghosts” are spirits. The etymological derivation is interesting:
Ghost < Old English gast, breath, and < proto West Germanic, gaistaz; source also of Old Saxon gest, Old Frisian jest, Middle Dutch gheest, Dutch geest, German Geist “spirit, ghost.” This is conjectured to be from a PIE root gheis-, used in forming words involving the notions of excitement, amazement, or fear (source also of Sanskrit hedah “wrath”; Avestan zaesha- “horrible, frightful;” Gothic usgaisjan, Old English gæstan “to frighten”).Ghost is the English representative of the usual West Germanic word for “supernatural being.” In Christian writing in Old English it is used to render Latin spiritus (see spirit (n.)), a sense preserved in Holy Ghost. Sense of “disembodied spirit of a dead person,” especially imagined as wandering among the living or haunting them, is attested from late 14c. and returns the word toward its likely prehistoric sense.
Ghosts in our ancient stories represent the elusive gossamer twinges and fleeting imprints of what seems vaguely, puzzlingly familiar while otherworldly at the same time. Ghosts seem able to flow between the spiritual and material worlds, hovering in that “cosmic intertidal zone” that Cynthia Bourgeault calls the “imaginal realm.” They appeal to us because they are quantum dwellers, matter and energy, wave and particle, this-ness and that-ness. Theirs is a heightened awareness of the intimate connection of life in every realm, while our awareness remains sadly limited and shrouded in the tendency to focus on the self. Think miserly old Scrooge, cold and alone in his counting house, deriding the “idiots” who celebrate a “Merry Christmas … Bah, humbug!”
At this time of year, Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol tells the wondrous tale of the redemption of old Ebenezer Scrooge who was visited by four rather persuasive visitors, the ghost of his long-dead partner, Jacob Marley, and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. Together, they represent the visionary wise ones who help Scrooge find his way out of the hellish isolation of hateful separation and division that his life has embodied and help propel him back into the bosom of the wider “We.” Being haunted by ghosts turned out to be his salvation. Maybe it’s time for us to tune into our own ghosts of 2020, ghosts of bone-crushing fear and anxiety, isolation and separation, ghosts of battle lines drawn, exclusive circles and hierarchical towers that keep coming back to haunt us.
Sufi master Llewellyn Vaughan Lee reflects on this phenomenon and reminds us that our fractured sense of reality, our current experience of radical division, rampant lies, conspiracy theories presented as reified fact, and total disconnect from creation as a whole is an opportunity for us to consider ourselves as living the “Ghost’s life.”
“And what does this mean to our collective story, our shared journey together, whether through this present pandemic or into the coming disaster of climate crisis? How can we find the ground under our feet in this swirling fog of disinformation, where nothing is real except this manipulation of our attention? How have many people become so alienated from any real sense of community or belonging that their only home is in conspiracy theories? This contemporary feeling of living as a rootless exile in a broken world is aptly described in the Chinese Buddhist text No-Gate Gateway, a koan collection from 1228 CE, as living ‘a ghost’s life, clinging to weeds and trees.’ This Buddhist text suggests that the ‘ghost’s life’ is due to our being ‘radically separated from the vast outside of empirical reality, together with a suspicion that it needn’t be this way, that some kind of immediacy and wholeness is possible.’ While one can recognize the world of internet memes being outside of any tangible ‘empirical reality,’ the more vital question is whether today there is an open gateway to return us to a direct experience of life’s wholeness. Or will we drift further and further into this rootless viral world?”
— Llewellyn Vaughan Lee, “A Ghost’s Life,” Emergence, https://emergencemagazine.org/story/a-ghosts-life/
What Lee suggests is that there is indeed an open gateway that can propel us back into an experience of wholeness. It is the miracle of the web of Life, the miracle of being fully alive, of reaching out and being fully present to the wider “We” of creation: “I need these older stories, simple, essential, in order to keep some clarity, some sense of connection. I do not know if our present civilization has to die like this, like a hungry ghost, even as refugees drown trying to reach land where they would be unwelcome. Life’s wholeness is all around us, in every dawn chorus, every flower turning towards the sun.”
As we prepare to celebrate the profound Mystery of Christmas and Love made flesh, our ancient stories can heal us if we let their Truths fully enter our hearts. Ghosts are all around us, their message clear: We are all One! We must reach out to welcome, cherish and forgive as we are welcomed, cherished and forgiven. There is no return to wholeness without Love. Love is the Energy, the Spirit, that infuses everything. It connects us as profoundly as each Breath. If we can see the Love, the Energy that connects us, we can perceive wholeness. If we can see it, we can be it.
Open. Open. Open.
And then, Rejoice!
—Laura Weber, Prairiewoods associate director and retreats coordinator