Have you ever had the feeling that you may have lived before? What about Deja Vu? Maybe you have actually experienced specific and persistent memories from a past life.
The subject of reincarnation has always fascinated me and I have long suspected that it has more to do with psychology, genetic memory and morphogenetic fields than Astral Planes, after lives and floating souls. So, I've just been reading Jungian psychologist, James Hollis's excellent book 'Hauntings - Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives'. In it he considers how we may all be living out certain impulses arising as a result of invisible, energetic forces (called complexes) that animate our four dimensions through genetic, ancestral and direct parental and cultural influences.
The interesting thing about these impulses is that they don't seem to belong to us at times and appear in our consciousnesses as inner voices, dreams, impulses, imaginings, sub-personalities and synchronicities. They are the occasional voices and ideas that pop into our heads out of nowhere and unbidden.
They can also be persistent patterns of physical feelings that rise up from within our bodies haunting us, by causing us to blush, twitch, sweat and tremble at the thought and sight of certain people, places and things. We can often be confused by these impulses, particularly when they lead to feelings of fear. Even though we may intellectually know a feeling or thought is irrational yet we are still driven to act on the impulse to flee or fight. In some cases these 'ghosts in the genes' can hold us back by preventing us from making important or necessary changes in our lives.
In the book James Hollis offers that there is a difference in the meanings of the words Fate and Destiny. According to Hollis our Fate is in the genes we inherit, and the experiences and effects of our cultural conditioning recorded by our body/mind system from birth to around 3 years old. However, our Destiny is determined by what we consciously decide to do with the physical, emotional, intellectual, environmental and social resources we possess and have available. He also offers some useful questions and exercises to help us understand the ghostly complexes and what life might be asking of each of us through them.
By consciously applying some focussed attention over a period of time we can begin to release the energy of these 'ghosts' and integrate them into our intentional dimension of self. As a result we will have more energy to create our destiny and consciously choose the impact we make in the world. I very much enjoyed this book, particularly as his insights support our model of the 4 selves.
Posted by Tom
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