Soul, Holiday Haunting, and the Blues!

The holidays are coming, and so are the blues. They hit when everybody around us is so happy. All of a sudden a pit opens up inside you and you're there. Depressed.

A depressed soul is a haunted soul. James Hollis in his book, Hauntings: Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives, notes that the greatest haunting we suffer is a lost relationship to soul. When the relationship to soul is lost something has crept into us and taken its place. Traumatic holidays, dysfunctional families, toxic religious experiences are ghosts that can come haunting during the holidays.

"Christmas for me was like being forced into a religious straitjacket," remembered  a particularly insightful young man. Another person added, "I dream of huge Christmas trees and everybody is very, very happy. It's denial. Holidays bring stress and everybody goes into super happy mode with their huge trees and expensive presents to cope...to deny."

Chances are if you're holiday anxious you could be haunted. Anxiety and the holiday blues go together. It's called agitated depression holiday version. Bad memories pushed away, present day stress denied, trigger a host of destructive spirits, negative and anxious attitudes. It's the holiday blues.

Holiday commercialism is rolling down the highway like a sixteen wheeler mowing down anyone in its path. Department stores are staying open for Thanksgiving and Christmas. It won't stop. So, best thing to consider is to stop ourselves. Stop and move into self and stay there, sequestering the haunting and the blues!

Dreams as Prophet!

Dreams tell of the past, present, and future. This is frightening, to be able to peer into the nature of things with clarity. This is much more than looking through a glass darkly as the New Testament writer proclaimed. If we want to see, really and truly see, then we can see with startlingly acuity in our dreams!

Problem is, then change happens. Change inspired by dreams prompts intrapsychic and relational transformation. It might mean divorce or marriage or moving or staying put. It always means deepening. When we see from and within the world of spirit then the illusions of the everyday world of ego consciousness drop away. We're left with truth, enlightenment, shock!

If we understand the dream, then we're shaken. Dreams don't come to tell us what we know. Dreams don't waste time or energy. They are expedient. And, in accord with a pragmatic depth psychology, they are practical. They directly affect our living of life.

Prophets can end up dead. People not infrequently kill them. Ego consciousness gone awry struggles with and murders the prophetic message of the dream. It strangles what it does not want to hear or see. At the very  least, we may push it into the background so the dream is seen only dimly, as through a glass darkly.

One sincere soul related, "Dreams take my breath away and at the same time they make me awake and leave me gasping for breath." Dreams take away old and stale breath. They infuse us with inspiration, fresh spirit. Dreams are the prophets that clear away the old and make room for the new.