Episode 61: A Haunted Mind

“The only way to handle danger is to face it. If you start getting frightened of it then you make it worse because you project onto it all kinds of bogies and threats which don’t exist in it at all. Whenever you meet a ghost, don’t run away. Because the ghost will capture the substance of your fear and materialise itself out of your own substance. It will kill you eventually because it will take over all your own vitality.  So, then, whenever confronted with a ghost walk straight into it. And it will disappear.” — Alan Watts Alex and Amanda explore how our mind and thought patterns seem to be like ghosts that haunt our lives. The more attention and focus the more real these specters show up in our experience. And as Alan Watts reminds us, the only reality of a ghost is our fear of it. If we never look under the bed, those monsters are far more real. Facing head on any feeling that arises challenges the very reality, the very substance we have embued upon it.