Ghost Whisperer

I am wondering why really awesome serendipitous things don't happen more often. Things like finding a winning lottery ticket discarded in the street or actually finding the celebrities that were rumored to be in Ketchikan when I was there in 2009, instead of stalking the docks in hopes of seeing a greasy Johnny Depp sunning himself in the unseasonably warm Alaskan sun.

The next piece of Beck's book is talking about intuition. People that she met that just seemed to trust their gut feelings, running with them and finding immense success in those hunches. About how to hone your intuition and test your psychic abilities. Many critical reviews of this book found this part to be out of place in a book that talks about practical ways of finding a destiny, but the idea is to trust the body, mind and spirit. When something doesn't "smell" right, a body cries out in its own way, the mind will give hints and intuition, however small, probably knows it. Basically, giving reverence to what the unconscious mind feels. Hippie shit; Listen to it.

I was thinking about this on my drive into work the other day. It takes considerably longer now with road closures and my general prohibitive malaise about my job as of late. I was crawling along the windy back road that leads me to work and I remember a time in later 2005 when I was hunched over in the parking lot of my first temp job - dry-heaving before I went to sit at my barren desk with my contraband framed photo of my friends in the Wal-Mart parking lot splayed out on the hood of a Saturn with promising smiles and uncompromising zest for life. Why didn't the sirens go off then to take my framed photo and get the fuck out of there? And I remembered vividly - money - safety, security, debt, shame, poverty, et cetera. Also known as fear.

Those with deeper root chakra/emotional wounding (more Hippie shit, bear with me) never feel safe. They distrust because they have had the experience that has lead to their basic needs being jeopardized - even if it doesn't seem so to outside casual observers or "family historians." When these feelings of loss or safety are not treated/acknowledged/rectified, a person's existence in relationship to any other situation or person is jeopardized as well. There is no way to progress to genuine emotional vulnerability and the authenticity and connection that it brings when the very means of existence seems threatened in every waking moment.

I think of it like the cat that sleeps always alert - the cat that seems to be so restful, until you make a noise and you see that ear turn. Never resting. Once, I saw my parents' sassy cat Miles sleeping on my bed so soundly that all of his limbs were totally at ease and he did not stir when I entered the room. I was so happy for him right then - knowing how hard it is for cats to feel rest, even though they're so often depicted as lazy and sleepy creatures.

I am more often than not the cat, but I have worked hard to bring my own sense of safety to my life, while believing in the impermanence of life and the compassion for humanity (I'm working on that second one). Bringing my health back from a place of willful ignorance about what I was doing to my body, digging out from a place of wholly untreated and unrecognized suicidal depression, breaking off and breaking out of unhealthy relationships with romantic partners, friends and family members, and setting 23049823049834 boundaries that seemed "mean" in the face of my undiagnosed codependency. But all of the work hasn't relaxed the limbs or kept me from the constant high alert. Not yet. 

The serendipitous part of the story (finally, right?) comes in when I heard Robyn Hitchcock sing, "Ghost in You," for the first time. I am not sure what I was doing in 2014, but what I wasn't doing was listening to this version of a Psychedelic Furs song that I have always enjoyed (because there is that part of me that was into New Wave as an infant - even if I didn't get to join in the hairdos, the clothes, the style and the accessibility to the artists that continue to enrich my life and make me feel heard as a stranger in this strange land). Hitchcock's version brings me closer to this song and the lyrics than I have ever felt (and I even saw Richard Butler's crusty body swinging to and fro and singing it in person).

When huge paradigm shifts are made in anyone's pysche/soul/behavior/attitude, there are plenty of people that will bring up the times that you were a turd. It is the cosmic embarrassing baby picture - except without a cute baby butt or the pass of being a jerky toddler. And those times are important to understand where you've come from (like it or not), but the rest are really ghosts in you, aren't they?

And much like the death of a physical body, there are plenty of people that won't get over the loss that they feel. Honestly, I suggest that not being that person. It rarely works out to pine for or lament about that impermanence for the sake of maintaining what once was.

It's hard to know if Butler was just trying to give in to the ethereal songwriters success of the time, but this hit me today with Hitchcock's vocal,

A man in my shoes runs a light

And all the papers lied tonight

But falling over you

Is the news of the day

Angels fall like rain

And love is all of heaven away

Inside you the time moves

And she don't fade

The ghost in you

She don't fade

Inside you the time moves

And she don't fade

What we once were never leaves us unless we put it to rest, right? Those thoughts of helplessness, vengeance, jealousy, confusion and despair - all of those that come from the fear that comes from the Root Chakra wounding some children (okay, me) endure moves through me and others don't fade. That is, without a proper burial. And the time and permission for grief.

Don't you go

It makes no sense

When all your talking supermen

Just take away the time

And get in the way

Ain't it just like rain

And love, is only heaven away

Inside you the time moves

And she don't fade

The ghost in you

She don't fade

...