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Writer's pictureKatharine Donovan Kane

When Ghosts Appear in Dreams

katharinedonovankane, www.kdkane.com, dream walking

Autumn is that time of year in the northern hemisphere when the days are shorter, darker. Cloudy and overcast are the best. Personally, I like this season. I know. I know. Some of you who love the brighter, warmer days think I have it wrong. But it’s always been this way for me. These quieter, cooler, mysterious days are when my body and mind cocoon. This slowing down is when I can more easily hear the creative inner voice.

 

Not only is there a personal transition into rest and reevaluation but nature’s seasonal shift is doing the same. Like the blue crab in the Chesapeake Bay, I sense that it’s time to burrow into the sand for winter. It’s not a surprise, then, that in this quieter period the presence of ancestral energies is felt.  

 

I opened the October session of Dream Circle reading the poem Ghost by Cynthia Huntington. Her bardic expression beautifully helps us reimagine those subtler moments when…from somewhere…we hear soft whisperings of a familiar voice, sniff a certain perfume lingering like a breath, or inexplicably recall a memory long gone…of something or someone. “You must have felt me watching you,” Huntington writes of her ghost. Yes, I thought as I read her poem. I have felt that kind of presence before.

 

I shared this poem to highlight the importance of the season, a time when it’s said that the veil between the worlds is thin. When ancestors can readily access our world. I’m curious about this elusive “veil” of between-ness. I wonder if the so-called separation of “worlds” is an illusion. Are these worlds only two faces of the same reality?

 

Watch for Synchronistic Signs

When paying close attention to the season’s energy, I’m ready for synchronicities. Being open and quiet allows the unexpected to begin to appear. In a moment of awareness – sparked by silence, a chance encounter, or a poem – insights emerge from the inner wisdom.

 

With musings poking around in the mind, synchronicities serve as a confirmation that you’re not alone as you explore what’s unfolding.

 

It happens quite unexpectedly. A wisp of a suggestion from the poem, “…did a thought scurry across the front of your mind…,” and then suddenly you drift into a pensive place of curiosity and wonder. It’s a moment in time when the presence of inner wisdom and an encounter intersect to create a brand-new awareness.

 

Like the magic of synchronistic moments, dreams and visions

are portals through which our inner wisdom,

our creative voice, speaks.

 

What is your style of dreaming. Do you dream like a writer, a dancer, a visual artist, a scientist? What time of day or night do you experience dream-like messages? Journaling dream words and visuals are important so you can go back later and see what’s lurking there.

 

The Dream Ghost

Recently, I had a dream with an indefinable presence. I found this figure when I went back and paged through my dream journal. I saw him there…the ghost in the dream.

 

Surprised to find him, I wondered why this elusive presence waited until now to materialize. Did the colder days give me the quieter space to see? Was the ghostly subject of the poem that I chose for the Dream Circle a synchronicity prompting me to notice? Was the veil so thin that I sensed a presence of something or someone appearing from the otherworld of the dreamscape. Huntington’s poem said it best, “you must have felt me….”

 

And, for all the Jungian trained dreamworkers out there like myself, it took a while to stop analyzing and interpreting this dream presence. I told myself to wait. Pause before jumping to what seems like a logical conclusion. To figure out the dream. Instead, allow whatever wants to emerge to step forward in its own way, in its own time.

 

So. There it was. In the dream…a presence standing over my shoulder, just out of sight. I felt someone there but couldn’t see who it was. I just “knew” he was there. Meanwhile, in the same dream, my old childhood phone number appeared as well as my current cell phone. In my dream I said, “…it looks like she is trying to get in touch with me.”

 

Who is getting in touch? There’s a connection from childhood to now, but what? Who is the supportive presence standing behind my shoulder as my dream-self sorts out what’s happening? All these reflections and more from the dream are there waiting. Waiting for me to take the quiet time, to relax my mind, to cocoon so that I can listen more clearly.

 

If I rush to figure it out too quickly there might be an important message missed. So, I take a deep breath and ask the ghost figure to help me understand.

 

When ghosts appear in dreams, “on the edge of your vision” as Huntington puts it, then it’s possible that the veil between the worlds is thin. Allow it to be possible. Notice any synchronicities trying to activate sparks of insight. The otherworld held deep within is hoping to emerge into your waking awareness.


Blessings on your quest.



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