Tormented thoughts are like your own ghost haunting you. Imagine being haunted by the ghost of you! If you think of your thoughts as your own ghost you can see how you may at times be haunting yourself.
Your own ghost can trouble and taunt you, ridicule and thwart you. Spook you to paralysis, frighten and distort you. Your own ghost lurks and catches you unawares. When you forget yourself, that is, forget you are thinking, your ghost can creep up, seize the opportunity and step in. You could call your ghost ego; perhaps combine the two words and create eGhost!
The eGhost, the ghoul, is only ever as strong or frightening as you make it, because the moment you notice it, it begins to disappear, like waking from a nightmare. When you see the eGhost it begins to shrink; if you stop noticing it, it can grow again. Your thoughts feed the eGhost and also diminish it via awareness. The eGhost can only survive through your thoughts and in the absence of your awareness of your thinking. If you watch, listen and question, you’ll begin to shrink the eGhost until it fades away, like the nightmare you realise was only a dream.
If you can split your peaceful self, real self, true self, higher self, whatever you wish to call it, even momentarily from the eGhost, you’ll see it. The eGhost is afraid of shrinking; afraid you’ll notice it. What is the eGhost afraid of? Loss of itself; imaginary damage, illusory defeat, as small or as large as the significance it chooses to imagine via your thoughts. Imaginary impact; illusory gain or loss. The eGhost, the image, the inner attention seeker, operates through gain and loss, ever-changing, like iceberg’s, sometimes melting smaller, sometimes freezing to expansion.
How do you shrink the eGhost? Simply by noticing. I doubt you believe in ghosts, so there is no need to believe in the eGhost. No need to disbelieve it either, simply recognise it; be aware of it. Watch, listen and question. The eGhost can’t feed when you notice it and the beauty of it is that being imaginary, compassion can enter: seeing ‘reactions’, be it yours or other people’s as innocent, non-personal, temporary. The road-rage outburst, the knee-jerk reaction, the spout before thought all become less personal when you detach and consider that both you and others can say and do and get things wrong at times. Would you really expect other people to act perfectly all the time knowing that you yourself make mistakes? The eGhost may try to spook you and it does so through its own fear – it frightens and tricks you because it thinks that attack creates security and strength. Because it is an illusion the eGhost can’t be happy at yours or other people’s losses – it can only delude itself into thinking it is happier, bigger, better, stronger. The real you is far more content than the eGhost – the real you isn’t the craving you, it is the satisfied you – the truly happy you.
When you next sense the eGhost raising its ugly head be it in you or others, try recalling it’s a temporary haunting and you might be able to see it soon enough not to react. The quicker you notice the eGhost the quicker it fades away. Soon enough you’ll be able to stop haunting yourself, by shining your awareness and shrinking the eGhost before it rises. You’ll also sooner recognise when others let their eGhost out to spook themselves, others, or you. 🙂
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