Ghosting

Soul Met

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Listen Here- Read by Author Podcast Style

The world of gods and spirits is truly nothing but the collective unconscious inside me.

Carl Jung

Photo by J.Millard

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Repressed

I tell a good story.
I’m very well read.
Yet am I bypassing?
Is it cognitive dissonance
I’m being self fed?
What still waits unread?
For a hand to see it.
For an ear to find it.
For a man to feel the story.
That skin has carefully hidden.
Till it had forgotten what it was.
Where it was buried in warm blood.
Below the basement floor
of a heart beating 
to the hooves of gills that fill
the lungs of ghosts
that haunt a life. Lurking
somewhere in a hole in the dark
bemoaning 
between bone and breath.

© Jamie Millard

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Ghosts!
The past year has definitely been a big growth year for me.
Last July, 2024, I wrote a piece titled Ghost Busting (linked). In this article I shared how I personally use poetry as a practice of healing. The metaphors and the reflective inquiry process of living into the questions is an act of resilience that opens up doors to transformation in my life. To quote Canadian poet Joy Kogawa, I asked the question, “Do we write to be free of our ghosts or to welcome them in”?

Ghosts!
These ghosts are those wounds that we carry through our lives as guests. They often hide in plain sight. Right in front of our eyes or hidden deep inside of our body. Buried in our blood and bones. We may not even know that they are there. Here. They just seem to arrive. Ghosts.

I have mindfully paid much closer attention to symptoms and synchronicities over the past year. I observed that in my life the new moon often brings on the ghosts and with them in the right conversations, the ghosts bring on the learnings. This kind of being ghosted brings on the revelations. The growth. The closure. I want to understand this pattern deeper. I am consciously trying to make sure that I am not bypassing the psychology and the depth of my own trauma. What is hiding in plain sight? I was given a great recommendation and I sought out some depth coaching and a therapist to grow with.

Therapy?
Yes therapy! Jungian analyst James Hollis says the word psychotherapy from the Greek literally means - listening to or attending to the soul. I was not seeking symptom management or a direct behaviour change. I wasn’t looking to be fixed or to be cured. I was looking to be met. Psychoanalysis. Soul met. Not for a return to who I was. A return to who I was becoming. To me that means growth. In that case why doesn’t everybody have a depth coach or a therapist for growth? For expansion. To be met. We all need a guide and a translator for what we can’t fully see. For what we feel yet cannot express. To meet at a sensuality and a language we don’t really speak. Maybe one we can’t quite remember? Beyond the words. In the cracks. In the spaces. Inside the bones of old boxes. Inside the blood of a memory. Trying to catch a glimpse of soul. To meet. Ghosts. To meet. Our-selves.

The new moon in June definitely met me. I was moving boxes out of a bat infested attic in an old cabin deep in the Ontario forest. We had placed the boxes there 33 years earlier. I was moving these boxes to take them to the dump. Out of nowhere I was revisited by scenes and emotions, feelings and memories, from something that had forgotten me. Something that I thought I had forgotten. It. She. Was only repressed. I remembered that 33 years ago, that same day that we had deposited the boxes in the attic, we came upon a horrific motor vehicle accident as we were driving back home. We were the first responders on the scene only moments after it had happened. I was 24 years old. I did what I could. The images I cannot bear to even write about. There was no time to think. Only react. We moved bodies out of vehicles just before the two cars exploded and were engulfed in flames. One young women did not make it. She died in my arms at the side of a hill beside a small narrow country road. She was covered in my shredded shirt. Ripped up in pieces to tie off as many tourniquets as I could. Covered in blood I held her. Was she holding me? An immense sense of helplessness was accompanied by something that told me not to let go. I held on. Maybe long after she was already physically gone. I held onto her til the rescue teams arrived. I held onto her until they told me I could let go. It felt like a forever. I never realized that I kept holding on.

Eventually, we drove away and life just went on. Almost as if it was just a part of our regular day. I never talked to anybody about it afterwards. I just buried it. I buried her somewhere inside of me. I never even knew her name. The three of us men in these 33 years may have muttered only a few words about it. If we did , it was over 30 years ago. None since. We all knew we did what we could. I thought I had let it go. Let her go. I realize now that I never truly did.

Moving the same old boxes down from the attic that day had brought back the event. Is memory an energy? Her ghost visited me just after I had started therapy. A coincidence? No way. An invitation. My soul felt ready to let the light fall back upon it. I believe something that is watching me that is still a part of me knew I was being supported and I was ready to let go. To be met. Soul met. Becoming. I shared the experience. I let her go. Consciously I let myself go.

As a part of my practice after every therapy session I write a poem. Far from an exercise of mastery. It is an exercise of mystery. In gratitude. In surrender. I write to remember. I write to let go. I write to forget. There are no shadows in the darkness. Maybe just some old boxes. Maybe just some old ghosts. I believe poetry comes from the darkness to shed some light so that we can see the shadows. So that we can see the ghosts. Maybe then we can set them free. We can set ourselves free. We can have closure. We can say thank you. We can share a goodbye. Maybe sometimes we can even truly let go.

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How To Say Goodbye?

I held somebody once 
who died in my arms.
I never talked about it.
Was I wrong to save her from the fire?
Did I intervene against fate?
Did I just act in the moment.
Was I trying to be a hero?
Was I just being a man?
Moving old boxes now I look back.
Ripped my shirt off to tie her wounds.
She left the world in my blood stained clothes.
I whispered to her at the side of the road
that she wasn’t alone.
I was never sure if she heard me.
Eyes wide open. Gasping to breathe.
33 years.
Why do things come back when the veil is thin?
What still wants to be found
from a dusty forgotten corner?
Ready to be seen.
To be heard.
To heal.
What still asks to be forgiven?
An old box torn open.
Inviting me to go deeper
into those unseen spaces.
Did I comfort her?
Was she already gone?
Where did I go
as I walked away?
I never ever thanked her.
I never even knew her name.
I never thanked that young man
for being human.
In the mirror I tell him that
I love him.
I tell that young man
that he was allowed to cry.
Maybe she just came back
to say thank you.
Maybe she just came back
to help me remember
how to say goodbye.

 © Jamie Millard

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Is the cosmic veil thinnest for me energetically around a new moon? A door to a dimension of transformation cracks open for me to pull - in - on. I see this now. I am learning to in-vite the in-tensions in-side. I am daring to go deeper.

This Cuore-odyssey. This journey. Is our home. All I can do is try to live an honest relationship to my own personal truth. Sorting and sifting in attics. Digging in basements. Growing and learning. Body. Heart. Mind. Letting go. To be Soul met. Its a process. Its a practice. A spiritual practice. A deep breath in.
I open up to Ghosting.
I invite in a little help from some signs, symptoms, dreams, patterns and projections.
I add in the assistance and guidance of a good coach, therapist and translator.
I meet my own testimony in a poem.

Poetry. A deep breath out. I do know that poetry finds me where I am. She meets me. She listens to me. She writes through me. She never leaves me the same.

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Thanks for Being - Here.
Poetry helps me explore my feelings and my memories. For me poetry expresses what mere conversation cannot do. Words can free me. Words can help me learn to forgive and and in the spaces between those words I learn how to heal. Poetry captures the essence of emotion and experience. Poetry allows me to set them free. An expression. Catching a glimpse of what I could not see or understand before. An expansion.

May you be Ghosted. May your own ghosts be set free. May you be soul met.
A good coach and therapist will definitely help shed some light on the way.
Your way. The only way. Home.

Blessing you Soulful travels.

Lots of Love,

Jamie

The Author Read Podcast Audio Can Be Found At The Top Of The Article