“The Ghost With Consciousness And Potential”

“The Ghost With Consciousness And Potential”

by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

“One day a ghost paid Ari a visit. She had long blond hair and wore a banana-colored satin nightgown. Even though she had the power to interrupt and to come and go as she pleased, she arrived between sessions as a gesture of respect and good will.

"I never got to use my talents!" the ghost wailed. She floated about the room, agitated and unable to alight. "Now I'm dead and buried!"

"You can't create where you find yourself these days?" Ari asked the miserable ghost.

"No!  I just wander the universe, pointlessly and aimlessly!"

"But you sound like you still have a brain?" That seemed to surprise the ghost. She shot out of the air and sat down suddenly.

"That's true," she replied.

"And you can talk to people?"

"Yes."

"Then why not be a muse?"

"A muse," she murmured. For an instant she looked happy. But then a new thought creased her brow. "Since I never manifested my own potential, how can I help others?"

"Just by telling the truth. Are ghosts more honest than the next person?"

"Not particularly."

"Too bad. But that was an honest thing for you to say! So it appears that you can tell the truth. So, if I were you, I would think about why I hadn't been able to create while I was alive, I would learn the painful truth about that, and then I would visit people who are despairing and help them."

The ghost fell silent. "I'm drawing a blank," she finally said.

"About?"

"About why I avoided creating my whole life long. Not that it was such a long life!" she interjected suddenly. "I died at thirty-nine."

Ari nodded. "But if it had been sixty-nine or eighty-nine-"

"No, you're right. I was not on the path to creating. I could have lived another fifty years and I wouldn't have accomplished anything." She flew off the chair and circled the room ten or fifteen times. Ari, watching her, began to get dizzy.

"Come down here!" he cried. "Settle down for a moment!"

The ghost dove to her seat and sat there hunched and moody.

"For a lifetime you couldn't create," Ari said. "Why should you be able to figure out the reasons for that in a split second? Don't you think it's going to take a little time?"

This cheered her. "Well, all right. But how will I learn?"

"Picture the thing you always wanted. What was it?"

She had the answer on the tip of her tongue. "To spin stories like Scheherazade," the ghost said with real passion. "To hold audiences captive. I knew Scheherazade. She had something I didn't have. Some spunk. Some fire. A gleam in her eye. Something!"

"No!" Ari disagreed. "She manifested something that you didn't manifest. There's a difference. Don't you have a fire burning in you?  Of course you do!"

"She was also beautiful," the ghost continued.

"That's no way to think!" Ari leaned forward."Your mind is brooding about the accomplishments of others. You're thinking about Scheherazade, not about you. You're making yourself into a failure by thinking about her successes. Your despair flows from your envy."

"Thank you!" the ghost said bitterly.

"Plus, you didn't hear me."

"What did you say that I was supposed to memorize?" she said, the irony in her voice perfected in the coldest reaches of the universe. "What was so damned important?"

"That you have potential," Ari replied. "You have all the genetic material you need. Just not the mental health."

"Mental health!" the ghost exclaimed. "I've been insane for hundreds of years!" The ghost flew up out of her seat and began circling the room at breakneck speed. She seemed out of control and bent on crashing into walls and objects. But, strange to say, she had no accidents whatsoever.

"You came here because you wanted to change," Ari said softly, so softly that the ghost could not have been expected to hear him. Yet she did.

"Maybe," she said, still buzzing about.

"You do want to change. I know that."

"Change! How can a ghost change!"

"You keep running from the obvious. You can still think. But you won't. You have retained consciousness but you are not willing to grow in awareness."

Tears trickled down the ghost's pink cheeks. They fell from the air and dotted the small table between Ari's chair and the chair reserved for clients.

"Even a ghost can heal," Ari said. "If she can love again."

"Love?" the ghost whispered. "Have we been talking about love?" She stopped in midair. "You mean- ?"

"Love yourself. If you can accomplish that, then you will begin to love others. The desire to help will well up out of that self-love and that other-love. One day, without noticing what a tremendous trip you have taken, you will have become a muse."

A new fluttering filled the room. Then silence descended. The ghost had vanished, her disappearance accompanied by the tinkling of bells. For a moment Ari wondered if a ghost had really visited. He sat quietly, feeling for shifts in the universe. In a while it came to him that a little more love was present in the universe, which he took to be proof of the ghost's visit and of its successful outcome.

MORAL: You can make yourself anxious in all sorts of ways. The answer is to love yourself and, out of that love and devotion, demand that you do whatever work is necessary."

- http://www.dailyom.com/