I begin this post with an excerpt from my book

“The Bridge Between Two Worlds. A Shamans View Of Schizophrenia and Acute Sensitivity. 

Befriending the Dark.

From earliest times people have believed that the dead can return from the grave to visit their loved ones. Certainly an evil criminal or someone, who has been the victim of such a one, can return after death as a ghost. These tormented souls can haunt the world of the living until someone helps them to find peace.

 

                        Molly Perham (ghouls & monsters)

 

As children, we often remember our elders telling us that there was no such thing as a ghost, and the thing hiding under our bed scaring us silly is simply not real.  Our parents would tuck us in and reassure us that we were completely safe, we felt protected from the bogeyman (momentarily).

 

As adults many of us have grown out of being afraid of the dark. The fears of today are ones we all seem to have in common, war, abuse, bankruptcy, relationships breaking down, destruction of ecology, our children being abducted or disease and death of a loved one. In general humans fight what they fear. This may seem to work in the physical dimension. However as many sensitive people know, when you fight what you fear, you are doubling the chances of its manifestation. You are feeding your fear, instead of acknowledging and embracing it.

 

Do you remember the original Star Wars trilogy? While studying philosophy at university, we were given an example of the battle between good and evil. The darkness of Vader and the emperor against Luke Sky-Walker, the Jedi Knight. In the final confrontation the emperor encouraged Luke to hate him and feed his anger so that he would join them in the darkness. The Jedi replaced his hatred with compassion for his father. As the darkness was attempting to finally destroy what light was left, Darth Vader found a glimmer of light beneath the darkness that had consumed him and chose compassion as his friend once more…. Hence he was released from the torment of the darkness. There is an old saying, you can take a candle of light into the darkness, but you can’t take the darkness into the light.

 

I have realised that hating what is tormenting us leads to greater torment. We can choose to be a warrior of light as Luke did, but he only became a true Jedi when he acknowledged and accepted both qualities inside him…only then was he free. All of us are born with both the qualities of light and dark. Each person will experience his or her darkness in this lifetime. It is just dressed in many different clothes, but it comes down to the same thing. Feeling a separation from the source of love. A feeling of disconnection.

 

Tormented entities that dwell in the astral plane are like Darth Vader; they are simply lost in the world of the darkness, just as you may be. These energies are trapped in the darkness. However malevolent they seem, they only know the ways of imbalanced living. Having left this plane of consciousness, these beings and fragments are trapped in the world of the astral and have not moved on for various reasons. They have no idea how to free themselves and believe there is no escape. Entities can also form from a build up of negative thought forms over many years. Eg someone who is angry for many years may manifest a dark angry entity that shadows them wherever they go and feeds there negative feelings.

 

These entities become so used to the existence of imbalance that they appear to not want to be anywhere else but in the world of limbo. The Acute Sensitive needs to work on befriending these spirits/energies and setting them free everyday, until they are at a point of inner core strength where a simple clearing meditation can be a part of daily practice.

 

Embracing the darkness does not mean becoming the darkness yourself. It means loving it as Jesus, Buddha, the Divine Mother would a child that is lost in the forest of the dark. You are not without these qualities, no one is. If you feel you must fight the darkness with fear and anger, then you will be the one to lose, you will find yourself drained and exhausted by the battle. I suggest you see yourself as a warrior of love, fight with the sword of justice, compassion and light.

 

Let them know that you know who they are, and why they are here. Indirectly, they have come to you to be set free. Send them back to the source of light with compassion and love, they are here to teach you to be strong inside yourself.

 

One of the main challenges in relationship to the darkness is, when we are in the midst of it, we are certain it will never end. We think there is no light at the end of the tunnel. The more we believe that the darkness will continue, the more the darkness stays with us. When we can smile at the darkness and say, ‘ hello my friend what have you come to teach’ we will be on the road to freedom from suffering. The darkness will then become a signpost not a hole that we fall into all the time…

 

 

Over the years since I wrote this chapter of my book I have noticed that my particular recipe for dealing with many challenging feelings and experiences has come from somewhat detaching myself from the energy that I am confronted by and dealing with it and understanding it from the view of it being…..an entity.

 

I have overcome the invasion of voices and dark terrors in this way. Since that time I have confronted many challenges including massive psychic attack, possible breast cancer, malevolent energies attached to others that come and visit me in the night, left over energy of drugs that others have taken, lost souls that are stuck between worlds and need to move on,  house hauntings and more.

 

Most recently I have been looking at the state of Depression in people. I myself come from a melancholic disposition but have always been able to push through those times and come out much like the phoenix with a bit of a burnt tail. As spirit is guiding me I am coming to see the ‘Entity of Depression’ and how all-consuming it can be. Another analogy of that would be the death eaters in Harry Potter. As J .K Rowling stated they represented depression and how it completely sucked the joy out of life.

 

I woke very early one morning recently and spirit guided me to write and draw about the ‘Entity of Depression’ What I noticed in my writing and drawing was that it took form very easily. It was easy to draw. It had a funnel where it sucked the life out of people, much like the death eaters and all the life force that was taken was not used. It just drained out of the creature. It was an all consuming hungry ghost energy.

 

In traditional shamanism every illness or malady was seen as having an entity attachment. This is how I overcame so many challenges in my life, by treating what ever I was confronting as an entity that was here firstly to teach me something and secondly how to stop it from draining me. I can clearly see now that depression has its own entity as well.

 

There is a great deal of collective depression in the world and all these though forms can create entity like energies that feed off people. We are not helpless. We can work with this. There are tools. There are ways to bring in the witness to step out enough to be able to work with the darkness that depression can bring. Depression is a brother of the dark and both can be approached in the same way.

 

No matter how bleak it gets your soul is connected to Great Mystery, the source of all that is. Within you is a force that can match any shadow. It’s not a force forged on battle, it’s a force based on compassion, love, acceptance and healthy boundaries. Don’t give up on yourself, if you are reading this….you have what it takes.

 

For further info on books, tools and support please go to my website

www.contemporaryshaman.net

Blessings on your journey within and without.

Odette Nightsky