Greetings!
Recently a spiritual teacher and psychic said that I communicated with spirits. I said I could not communicate with spirits. He was adamant that I have the ability to do so. He suggested it might be I had an experience that scared me. I said I did not recall such an experience. At the time, something that happened long ago came to my mind, but I did not say anything.
In retrospect, I understood why I immediately said I could not communicate with spirit (or ghost). I had watched many shows of mediums on TV as well as on YouTube. The mediums saw / sensed the presence of spirits, and they communicated with them. Since nothing close to what I saw on those shows happened in my life, I felt I did not communicate with spirits. Most of all, I did not expect to hear that; I was more interested in learning other things about my spiritual path than hearing that I could communicate with spirits. (Oh, it is the fallibility of my (or our) human traits! We are often open to hear what we like to hear, and subconsciously block what we do not expect / want to hear.)
Below was the incident that came to my mind when he suggested that I might have an experience that scared me. It probably happened when I was around 5 years old.
One night, I was in bed lying next to my mother. My mother had fallen asleep, but I was not. Suddenly, I saw a man in his 20 s wearing a worn soldier uniform entered the room. I knew he was a ghost. (One might ask how I knew he was a ghost. I could not explain. It was a sense of knowing.) He looked around the room and saw me looking at him. He went to the table and picked up a brush. (It was the type of brush that we dipped in thick black ink to practice writing Chinese words.) He came and seemed to use the brush to write something on my forehead. Then he was gone.
I recalled my mother soon woke up. I told her what happened. She assured me it was only a dream that there was nothing to fear. It was natural for my mother to think that I was dreaming because I often woke up talking about dreams. My dreams were like real-life stories, colorful, interesting and exciting. It just came to me that I did not remember any other dream I had when I was small. It might be I shared them and let them go. However, I still remembered this incident or dream to this day. When I was a little older, I began to keep most of my dreams to myself as I observed my family was not that interested in hearing them.
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In my other posts, I had mentioned I could not visualize.
When I was small, I could easily form an image in my mind whenever I thought or heard of something. Of course, I did not know it was called visualization in English. In 2000, I began to read many spiritual books because I wanted to find some answers to the strange incidents that happened in the last quarter of 1999. When I tried to practice visualization according to the books, I was shocked to realize that I could no longer visualize.
When I joined the Thursday circle in May 2005, I was amazed to hear my friends' vivid description of the images they saw during group meditation. Meanwhile, all I saw was darkness when I closed my eyes. My friends told me it was quite alright because we all had different ways of knowing. I found what they said to be true.
Children liked to use their imagination. I assumed I might have stopped visualizing or imagining at some point of my life while growing up. As a grown up, life happenings did take up most of my attention.
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When the spiritual teacher suggested that I might have an experience that scared me, the above incident came to my mind. I felt it was irrelevant because there was no communication between me and the soldier. I also thought I was not scared. Upon further thought, it might not be true that I was not scared.
Here was something that happened when I was in elementary school. We lived in a building with two units on each floor, and the doors of the two units were side by side. We lived on the 4th floor. That meant I had to walk up the stairs and pass the lower floors to get back home after school. One year, the two families that lived on the 2nd floor had coincidentally experienced death in their families. Each family hung a big, big white lantern outside of the door to signal death in the family. (Most families kept to themselves. We did not know about the deaths until we saw the white lanterns. However, I would point out most families did not follow that old tradition especially in later years.) At the time, electricity was deemed very expensive. People used very low voltage light bulbs. That year I attended PM class. When I arrived at where we lived it was about 6:30 - 7 pm. I supposed you could imagine how eerie it was to walk on the narrow staircase seeing two big white lanterns in ghostly light; then you had to keep walking up the stairs, heart pounding, feeling chills behind your back, and yet you did not dare to look back. Later, my mother accompanied me to walk the stairs until they took down the lanterns.
Yes, I was afraid of ghost when I was young. When I saw the ghost soldier, it was likely that my whole body was frozen up. Therefore, I could not yell or wake up my mother. With this realization, I wondered if that incident had anything to do with my inability to visualize in later years.
Did I really see a ghost or was it only a dream?
Now that I knew the forehead was where the third eye was, I wondered what the soldier did with the brush. But, didn't people see ghost with their physical eyes and not their third eye?
Personally, I looked at the incident as the only time I might have seen a ghost. I had told a few others about it over the years. As for my fear of ghost, I was like my mother - she might not feel comfortable walking those stairs, but as an adult and a mother, she stood up tall for her daughter as if she had no fear. On a few occasions, I had stood up to dispel fear when I was with friends as well as my family. All of us had to stand up to face what was in front of us from time to time. That was how life was.
As for communications with spirits, some of us do talk to our loved ones on the other side every now and then. We may talk to them in our thought or dream about them. That is communication too. If you have time, please read my posts Why did he thank me? and The dream of three Japanese soldiers .
Peace,
Q of D
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