Hungry Ghosts and the Grasshopper Story.

In the Chinese tradition, I learned while reading Lisa See's novel Peony in Love, when a person dies and does not have completion of their life's mission they are called a hungry ghosts. And their energy hangs around until fed and then completed. In Hebrew Wisdom this is called a dybbuk, an entity that stays around the living whom it is connected to hoping for a resolution that will send it's soul on it's way. It seems it is the emotions that remain unfettered.

While reading Jason Shulman's Kabbalistic Healing I learned about the emotions in the world of Yetzera that need to be integrated in order to be able to hold the paradox of opposite emotions and to be clear in the thinking of the world of Beria.

The emotions that I seem addicted to I am now calling hungry ghosts and I decided that if I fed them, gave them attention, perhaps they would not need to keep hanging around and distracting my energy from getting what I want.

So as I noticed the flickering of an emotion that I would have typically tossed aside I instead started paying attention and drawing the ghosts and naming each one for instance: 'the need to look good hungry ghost', 'the never enuff hungry ghost', 'the fear of failure HG', or 'I want to be special HG'. Instead of keep tripping over them I have decided to stop denying their presence and just 'feed them'. Once day I even made a plate of food and put it outjust as the people in See's book do.

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is what I call the grasshopper story when ten of the 12 spies Moses sent to check out the holy land return saying that there were giants over the Jordan and the giants would see the Hebrews as grasshoppers and the Hebrews would also see themselves as grasshoppers. When G!D heard this an immediate decision was made, no one with those thoughts could go into the holy land and the years of wandering began.

So with the strength of a giant I am facing my hungry ghosts, feeding them and sending them on their way so I can get into the holy land sooner rather than latter. Why not? Only G!D knows how much time I have on this earth and I have too much to do to get hung up on any of these grasshopper moments.

Blessings of the Vav: to be clear of heart and mind a whole picture must be viewed and including all emotions: I am sad and happy about leaving and going all in one breath.