Something Wicked This Way Comes…
Ours is a dark world upon which exist billions of human beings whom have fallen prey to their very own shadows. Our fear has become so great; we have anesthetized ourselves with our own anxiety, drama, worry and oblivion. Our reality is seemingly so severe, confronting and threatening, we have fashioned a self-induced slumber within which we merely survive. Yet, even in our illusory lives, we are haunted by the nightmare of what is and what may have been. It is too difficult for the majority of us to identify, accept or even be with the wicked and insidious nature of the society in which we are immersed.

Our nightmares are filled with the horrors of our broken commitments, potential, purpose and destiny. These are our only true gifts that allow us to create a thriving life for ourselves and our families. Our experiences are littered with the shards of the shattered dreams we sought, to build a better tomorrow for our future generations. Our visions, intentions and actions have been hijacked by a social media-driven, global vortex. A system engineered for the sole purpose of sponsoring our addiction, diversion, repression, deception, disempowerment, assimilation and imprisonment.

The Darkness Without:
It lurks within the shadows, just out of our sense and sight. It taunts us with the mere possibility of its arrival and impact. The impending doom of its presence and our realization of its approach plays upon our nerves like a distant, archaic violin down a darkened alley. The very echo of its noise spirits a fright within us that keeps us on the run for our lives. Our hearts race as the stress of our fear heightens to intoxicating levels. It renders us paralyzed; inebriated within the warm buzz of our endorphins as they compensate for the waning strength of our confidence, courage and reason.

We begin to grow accustomed to the insanity around us. We attempt to deceive ourselves into believing that what occurs around us is somehow a part of us, or even beneath us. We desensitize, conform and integrate ourselves into a diminished role society provides. We adopt a conviction that success and survival will be found in competing with others to become something we were never meant to be. Eventually, we succumb to the tides of influence that ebb and flow as a murky sea. It pushes and pulls us from one circumstance to another until we are worn down into being the very thing we have always feared.

The Darkness Within:
Evil is not what or how it is so commonly represented in our contemporary culture. It is not an ancient, timeless entity that stalks, haunts, hunts or defiles us. It is not a presence that eternally defies and opposes our every pursuit and intention. Evil is a subjective figment of our darkest imagination. We give our power over to our own shadows when we allow our perceptions to become more powerful than our vision. The nature of our personal observation most often is inaccurate and does not serve our greatest benefit. We side with our chosen perception much as most cling only to their dying breath.

We are so clever with ourselves that we devise rackets to which we are unaware and by which we are run. We invent our own “bogeymen” to avoid the natural expressions of our authenticity, love, integrity, purpose and destiny. This ultimately authorizes and justifies our errant, destructive, inhumane and cruel behavior. We desperately seek to distance ourselves from the monsters we become in our struggle to survive and advance in a violent and obsolete society. The greatest darkness we will ever encounter is not the one that shadows us from without. It is the evil we deny and enable within.

“All that is left unseen and untended
shall forever be that which enslaves us with our very own fear.”

Creature Feature:
We condition ourselves to be intelligent in the ways of society. This pales in comparison to the craftiness of our ego and its insatiable hunger to gain dominance over the multi-faceted dynamic of our being. A silent, internal conflict rages within us all. It is a tireless battle between the transcendent expressions of our heart and soul and the terrestrial impulses of our mind and body. Our ancient, reptilian heredity keeps us embroiled within an eternal duel that claims the quality of our vision, health, perception, relatedness and state of being.

We view the world and our lives through the filters we adopt and allow to distort our vision. We fabricate and act out fantasies distinct from the realities of our life experiences due to our apathy, fear, indifference and unwillingness to create our destiny. We believe we cannot be with the accountability, integrity and responsibility required to claim our possibility, purpose and personal power. We allow ourselves to become a product of the social norm, a creature bred for accumulation, attraction, destruction and distraction. We become the antithesis of life and endure this walking sentence of death.

The Ghost Life:
We rarely live at the cause of our lives. We settle to survive at the effect of our seemingly random circumstances and reactions to coincidence and casual occurrence. The more we become habituated to an accidental lifestyle, the more we engage in the two-dimensional experience of the three-dimensional hologram we perceive as “reality.” With every breath we unconsciously draw, we surrender our forsaken, personal power to an authority we obey as being more qualified to make our choices for us. Our relation with our heart and soul is sacrificed. We become ghosts of our lives.

The perceptions we adopt and project in our pursuit to be heard and accepted by a misguided and misunderstood society costs us our connection with our intuition. We are driven to seek our worth in the external world instead of establishing our own truth, stand, purpose, expression and love. We have existed so distinct from ourselves for so long; we mistake our drama, hardship, politics and professions for the true experience of life. We are shadows of the lives by which we were once inspired and empowered, seduced by the dangling carrot of our vanity, desire, intelligence and entitlement.

We are all ghosts of our lives. We haunt the empty halls of our being in a futile attempt to find the long lost treasure that has always been right before us. We morph into the ghost of our self when we shift our vision and intention away from the enlightenment of our soul. It is our truest destiny to transform our fear from the frightening echo down the dark alley of our mind into a radiant love that illuminates, inspires and empowers our every breath. It is our universal purpose to make an extraordinary difference in our life and the world. The greatest expression of our being is claiming and sharing the essence of our soul.

http://www.zengardner.com/ghost-story/