The scariest ghost

Our fear of ghosts started early in life. As children we were told to go upstairs immediately after supper, before the ghosts would gather under the stairs and grab our feet. We were put away early and so our parents were able to watch the evening news without us little imps jumping and tumbling about.

As we were growing up we began to have a hint of our parents' trick. We were bigger and brave enough to check under the stairs and discovered that the haunting dark forms that appeared at night were really just shadows. Our parents laughed as we proudly pointed out how their "ghosts" quickly disappeared in the first rays of daylight.

Yet even as we become more mature and smarter, we continue to be haunted by thoughts of these shadowy beings which we knew didn't exist. They had only left the dark spaces under the stairs and have since been dwelling inside us. Deeply beyond the capacity of our mind to comprehend, ghosts continue to wield a certain power over us.

At least, the ghosts that our parents invented worked, for us as for them. Because of those ghosts we took more time for studying our lessons and doing our school assignments. We slept for longer hours too, which was good for our physical growth. For their part, our parents enjoyed undisturbed calm for relaxing after a day's work. Then, after a while, those ghosts slackened their grip of our lives.

It's the ghosts that we create ourselves that are more adamant, more hideous. They make us inexplicably pestered and frightened, sometimes to the point of endangering our psychological balance. No matter how much our sense of reason squabble with the idea, our own ghosts are ever there - scarier and harder to conquer.

These ghosts are actually masks our guilt wears. It is not the dead people that haunt us. It is our own self-contempt for failing to give the departed our kindly affection and support while they were still around. It is the forgiveness that we withheld or were too proud to ask from them that now burdens our heart.

Yet we can make these ghosts, no matter how bothersome and stubborn they may be, teach us something important about our own lives. The distressing experience can compel us to finally heed what the prophets and the sages have been preaching since the beginning of time - to love one another.

We can make our ghosts as instruments to strengthen our faith. The horror that they bring in our lives can make us seek the arms of the Almighty for our ultimate refuge. Fright can dispel our delusion of invincibility, and bring us down on our knees for divine deliverance from our own dark side.

We don't fully inhabit the vast galaxy of our own inner consciousness. There is a part of us that remains unconquered by our own willpower and intellectual might. We are not totally in control. The high walls of arrogance and conceit 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. Sometimes we 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 terrorism, come directly from our lack of spiritual insight.

We need to return to our true purpose in life. If we persist in our selfish and coldhearted ways, they can be the scariest ghosts to bring us eternal torment. But if we awaken from our spiritual slumber and mend our decadent ways, we will rediscover the way we were meant to live - fully, joyously, and full of love.  (e-mail: [email protected])