Halloween, Costumes, & Spirit
Halloween
Although I have not celebrated Halloween much in recent years, throughout my whole life Halloween has been my favorite holiday. Yes, I like Christmas too, but there is just something I find very appealing about Halloween. Halloween is actually the most blatantly spiritual holiday in our (my) culture–not the most religious holiday though. After all, it is the only holiday where people actually dress up as spirits.
Looking Through Costumes
In our normal everyday lives, our bodies act as costumes to wear over our true spirit. Our bodies are a kind of defense we hide behind in order to protect ourselves from a world that seems different, threatening, and outside of ourselves. When we look upon people merely as bodies, we can’t help but be afraid. For bodies emphasize difference. And that for which we cannot recognize as our self is something we tend to treat as different, outside of our control, and thus suspect.
The tradition of wearing Halloween costumes revolves around the idea of using them to scare away what we fear. On Halloween, when people dress up, it is fun because we don’t take it seriously. We know that people are just wearing costumes and so we know the forms they project are not true. Now, imagine if we took that same playful Halloween approach and applied it to the costumes people wear in everyday life: to the costumes of body and personality. The costumes of body and personality are very often used in the same ways as Halloween costumes in that they are used as a defense against things we fear as outside of ourselves. Thus, they are used as tools to emphasize the idea of separateness.
We actually live in a world of roaring, scared, little mice. And the mice that roar loudest are not the scariest but in fact the most scared. And all this fear is born of a belief in difference (separation). In other words, we take costumes seriously. We tend to believe that, instead of there being one common loving spirit shared by all under those scary costumes, there are real, individual monsters—monsters that must be stopped. And we try to stop those monsters by putting on monster costumes ourselves. Thus, the world becomes a group of monsters on a big monster hunt (or witch hunt) and we lose contact with the world that rest underneath costumes. And, in fact, we often deny that there is any world at all underneath costumes (materialism, cough cough).
The Mirror behind Costumes
If we were to strip ourselves of all our costumes, we would find that we are a lot like mirrors, and what mirrors do is they reflect. When mirrors simply reflect in the company of nothing else but more mirrors, the otherness upon which reflecting is dependent dissolves into a unified oneness. However, when mirrors try to limit reflection, duality is born.
Duality is born of the idea of a mirror that doesn’t completely reflect; it is a mirror that keeps something hidden, separate, and unshared. The result of this is shadow (incomplete reflection) and shadow makes form. We essentially cover up our true mirror nature with costumes made of shadow. And when we do that, we forget that all we are really seeing out there in the world are reflections of our own projected ideas—namely the ideas of duality, separation, and thus shadow. Costumes are the things we wear that are not reflective of the truth; they reinforce the idea of otherness; they mix in the dark side (non-reflection).
Inverse Costumes
Although the idea of dressing up like a ghost is a neat idea, and in a way a kind of inverse costume, a more meaningful inverse costume would be to dress up as a mirror. Ideally, to make a mirror costume, you would want some sort of mirror-like fabric that acts like a two-way mirror so that you could see through it. You’d take the mirror fabric, drape it over yourself, and your inverse costume would be complete.
Now imagine a Halloween party that took place in a mirror room where everyone wore this same mirror costume to the party. This Halloween party would be a symbolic representation of the nature of oneness—our true nature.
Conclusion
Our bodily costumes are a given. We can use them as monster costumes or mirror costumes. Which is to say, we can use our bodies to communicate fear, death, and separation, or love, understanding, solidarity, and forgiveness. What we communicate is what we learn and what we believe. So, realize that really, every day is Halloween and we can look at everyday costumes just as lightheartedly as we look at Halloween costumes. And when we do that, we are looking beyond costumes and thus beyond illusory difference and beyond fear to where we are all one.
Ghost Experiences: Have You Ever Had Any? I Have…
Believe in Ghosts?
When I was a kid, I had a handful of experiences that could be described as paranormal. And most of the experiences happened in two different old houses in Massillon, Ohio. Now, even if some of those experiences were false alarms, due to overactive imagination, I’m very skeptical that they all were. I had experiences of knocking on the wall and it knocking back multiple times. I heard a ghostly scream. I saw multiple doors close on their own. And I even saw a tall misty figure walk straight through a dark room.
Ghost Hunters
As I grew older, I stopped giving thought to ideas like ghosts, and it just so happens that I also stopped having paranormal experiences. Most of the research on ghostly phenomenon I knew of seemed under-skeptical. You’d see pictures of people’s camera straps claimed as being weird plasma phenomenon and specs of dust or bugs claimed as pictures of orbs. However, a few years ago, I started watching the show on The SciFi channel called Ghost Hunters and it rekindled my childhood interest in the paranormal. The approach of the people on that show is skeptical, and they sometimes collect interesting evidence. And unless they fake evidence, which I don’t think they do, there is some stuff they have collected that is very hard to ignore.
Pseudoscience
The worldview that simply dismisses the paranormal as pseudoscience and thus ignorable takes a real closing of the eyes and lack of imagination. Ghosts are one of those things that just because they are elusive and don’t fit into the common reality models doesn’t mean they are not real (or real enough). It seems to me that one of the major problems with evidence for phenomenon like ghosts is that there are haunted people as much as haunted places. Which is to say, some people are more tuned in to accepting ghosts into their reality than others are and so find and manifest them. It is kind of like how some people really believe in global warming while others think it is overblown. And like global warming, the people who are global warming doomsayers do as much disservice to the idea as the unmovable skeptics. You need balance and openness to explore these kinds of things. And you need to consider how your thoughts about something are often suggestive of your consequent experience.
I think proving scientifically the existence of ghosts is a wild goose chase (a treadmill run). Science essentially studies the corpse of the world, not its spirit. Spirit doesn’t fit into the criteria of the scientific worldview. Ghosts are one of those things that you are either open to or not, and your experience follows. It is my view that this universe is, at its core, not made of matter/energy, but instead made of thought (the material world is an effect of mind, not its cause). And in such a model of the universe, ideas like the paranormal are perfectly compatible.
Mansfield Reformatory
Last summer, on my annual trip to visit relatives in Ohio, I took a tour of the Mansfield Reformatory, which is where they filmed that great movie Shawshank Redemption, and also where they filmed an episode of Ghost Hunters–amongst other things. In the episode of Ghost Hunters that took place at the Mansfield Reformatory, they didn’t collect much evidence. However, different investigators had the same sensation of seeing something in the same prison cell. The first investigator who had the experience marked the cell with an X (see first pic) and it just so happened that a second investigator ended up seeing something in that same cell without knowledge of what the other investigator saw. It was all beyond mere coincidence.
When I went to the Mansfield Reformatory for myself, there was one strange experience I had. There is a specially painted prison cell where they filmed part of the Lil’ Wayne music video for Go DJ. There was a sign on a ledge marking the cell (see pic). Our tour group was standing in front of that cell facing away looking at the tour guide who was speaking. I was at the back of the group and out of the corner of my eye I saw the sign marking the Lil’ Wayne cell fly off the ledge and onto the floor—landing about three feet from the cell wall. It was as if a gust of wind blew it from behind, but there was no wind. Some kid picked up the sign and put it back. The other people in the group didn’t see what happened and dismissed the sign falling because of the kid standing near it. However, I saw that the kid didn’t touch the sign—he was too far away. It was a bit odd, but not enough to conclude that a ghost did it.
Conclusion
So anyway, what do you think about ghosts and the paranormal? Have you had a personal ghostly experience? Or, if you don’t think ghosts are real, what makes you so sure? And, oh ya, have a Happy Halloween!