I believe in ghosts.
When I say ghosts I don’t mean half-living spirits (I’m not opposed to the reality of such things, but that’s a discussion for another day). These ghosts aren’t transparent beings with malevolent intent that haunt us from beyond the grave. They are memories – remnants of past experiences and pain - that haunt us no less than the apparitions we see in Hollywood horror movies. They make up so much of the way we view the world and interface with society, and most of the time we don’t even realize it. Let’s take a look at two of these ghosts and how they’ve shown up in my own life.
The first ghost is resentment.
When I think about the major resentments I’ve had in my life, I can trace a direct line to a set of associating beliefs or viewpoints that emerged from them. When I was in grade school, I had a major resentment towards the most popular kid in the grade. We’ll call him Jimmy. Jimmy had his growth spurt earlier than the rest of the boys, was a sports star, dated the most beautiful girl in the grade, and was an asshole. I resented him with every fiber of my being. And the resulting belief was that I hated anyone I deemed popular, and I thought that I was different from everyone else and should be the center of everyone’s world. This kind of thinking followed me for many years, “haunted” me, if you will, and led me straight into the loving arms of drugs and alcohol. They, at least, understood how unique and special I was.
When I was in my early twenties, my then-girlfriend cheated on me with one of my best friends. They both incessantly denied it, but I had a strong feeling in my gut that I just couldn’t shake. Two years later, I found out that I was right, and the betrayal and gaslighting birthed another ghost in me. Not only did I hate them both, but I found myself incapable of trusting women. This ghost haunted me for many years (and often still does), and in turn I hurt a lot of good women who simply wanted me to trust them. They deserved that trust, but I ran. Pain always breeds more pain.
The second ghost is shame.
Shame is a form of resentment, pointed at oneself. It works in the same way and has the same effect. When I was grade school, I was ashamed of my body and my acne. I was ashamed to be in my own skin. And this birthed the ghost of unworthiness that still haunts me even as I write this. This ghost tells me every day that I’m not enough, that other people deserve happiness more than I do, that I’m generally defective. Similarly, when I was using drugs and alcohol, I was ashamed of myself daily. Not only of the things I did and didn’t remember, but of the way other people would look at me when I took it too far. They knew I was taking it too far. I knew I was taking it too far. But I couldn’t stop, and the shame continued to grow until it became a part of who I was without me knowing it. I hated myself, and my ghost made sure to remind me of that. Relentlessly.
More often than not, the ghosts we create have something in common – they all want to move on. They do their haunting in hopes of one day passing the threshold to their final resting place. Aren’t our own resentments and shame the same? They haunt us because we hold onto them, because there is something familiar and comfortable about the pain they bring. But all they really want to do is move on, and it’s our choice to keep them or let them go. In my own experience, I’ve been able to set many of my ghosts free through different means – recovery, fitness, music, prayer and
meditation, but it has always started with my desire to let them go. Without that, I allow them to haunt my mind, rent-free.
I ran into Jimmy later in life and he turned out to be a normal, nice dude. I made peace with my ex-girlfriend and mended my broken relationship with my best friend. I forgave them. I put daily work into improving my mind and body to keep the self-deprecating thoughts at bay. And – what made this all possible – I finally put down the drugs and alcohol. I made a decision to let those ghosts rest in peace, and I continue to do so on a daily basis.
Are your ghosts still haunting you? If so, I have a little magic trick for you. Try it out and let me know what you think. It’s from a Big Blue Book I’ve grown quite fond of:
“If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free…Even when you don’t really want it for them, and your prayers are only words and you don’t mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks and you will find you have come to mean it and to want it for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate understanding and love.”