Note: If this article challenges your spiritual or scientific beliefs, I invite you to read it as fantasy or science fiction. I base some of my own understandings on Michael Newton’s interesting book Journey of Souls.
Something was wrong.
Deep into a Matrix session, my client was at her father’s death bed. We’d done a fair bit of tapping on her younger self and it was working. There’d been shock and overwhelming feelings underneath – intense grief, anger at the hospital, anger at her father for dying, and guilt over not taking her father’s depression seriously.
With both my client and her younger self feeling a lot calmer, I suggested we invite dad’s spirit into the picture. This is my standard protocol. The spirit of the loved one simply shows up and there’s a powerful opportunity for healing, reconciliation, closure and sometimes an agreement for on-going connection. This always works. Even if my client is a hard-core atheist, it’s crystal clear that this really is their loved one - that they aren’t just making this up in their head. It’s a beautiful thing and it never fails. It works every time.
But not this time.
Something is definitely wrong. My client is frowning – “I see my dad but he looks confused and sad. And worried. This can’t be his higher self”. I have to admit I was taken aback. She was right, of course. This clearly wasn’t her dad’s spirit self. The spirit self is beyond all the worldly drama and concerns. So what was happening here?
When in doubt, go with what you know – “Can you take your dad’s hand, in this picture, and ask him ‘What are you feeling?’” Dad answered “Sad, lost, confused, depressed.” So that’s what we tapped on. Right away it seemed to be helping him, at least somewhat. But it still didn’t make a lot of sense. Were we really tapping on dad? Why was he showing up that way?
That’s when it hit me. We were tapping on her dad’s ghost. That realization actually gave me chills.
So what do I mean by ghost? Normally when someone dies they leave their body behind, leave Earth and go to an in-between place. Here they reunite loved ones who’ve died and begin the process of remembering who they really are on a soul level – which is far greater than can really fit into a human personality. Once this process is complete, they are free to return to their loved ones on Earth and offer support and guidance. These are the spirit selves who routinely show up for my clients.
A ghost hasn’t left and gone through that process of remembering. They don’t seem to realize they’ve died! Often they have some very powerful emotional attachment – important unfinished business that keeps them stuck. So instead of radiating love, serenity and forgiveness, ghosts are apt to be confused, unhappy and frustrated.
I have to say I was a little nervous suggesting to my client that we were tapping on her father’s ghost. I needn’t have been. This made perfect sense to her and she reminded me of certain key factors that confirmed my suspicions. Her father died under unusual circumstances. While in the hospital recovering from a fairly routine and successful operation, he suffered a massive paralyzing stroke. After some days of confusion and unable to speak or communicate with his family, he lapsed into a coma and was put on full life support.
Even for the doctors it wasn’t clear when exactly he died! But at some point he clearly had and the hospital wanted to pull the plug with the family present. This was the picture we’d stepped into, two weeks from dad’s initial operation. He’d never said goodbye – he never realized he was dying.
My client also described her father as being the pillar of his large extended family. The eldest of 8 siblings and with his own father absent, he’d been hyper-responsible his whole life. He was the rock. A dedicated father and also a community organizer and social reformer. Over 100 strangers showed up at his memorial.
It was easy to imagine he had important unfinished business. And given the confusing manner of his death, that he might not have realized that he’d died. Indeed, my client tried to draw her father’s ghost's attention to his dead body laid out on the hospital bed but he couldn’t seem to see it.
There was one other interesting factor – her father had been a staunch lifelong atheist. She thought it extremely unlikely he’d expect any sort of survival after death. That might well add to his confusion.
So what does one do with a ghost? Tapping, of course. We tapped on his attachments and confusion. He’d been uncharacteristically depressed before his death, so we tapped on that – the feeling that his life had been a failure, that he hadn’t accomplished his dreams. That he hadn’t made any real difference in the world. And we offered the reframe that once he’d left and remembered who he really was, he’d be able to come back and actually be helpful.
We encouraged him to leave – to find his way to the light. We invited in his mother and deceased brother to come and help him. My client had been very close with her father all of her life. His death was devastating for her. She’d told me that in the two years since his death, her own personality had changed – and not for the better! She realized that somehow she’d taken on the negative mood and traits her father had been feeling before his death.
I half-jokingly suggested that she was being haunted! Or that her experience of life was being contaminated in some way by her father’s ghost energy. I wasn't entirely serious, but my client was struck by the idea.
Unfortunately our session had to end before we had any clear success in helping my client’s father cross over. However a lot of her own stuck grief and anguish seemed to be gone, and I believe she’ll be able to shake off her father’s negativity and get her old joy of life back.
Copyright Rob Nelson, 2015.
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