To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away…
— Hughes Mearns
In our modern world. There’s a theory that no communication is also a form of communication. Communication does not stop even in silence. So even silence communicates something. Such a theory extends to objects as well. A fire alarm that does not sound off in a fire suggests that it is spoilt. The only thing that stand in our understanding is whether are we getting what he is saying or simply saying what we think he is saying.
The Invisible Lover
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheDailyEnlightenment/message/462
As I was walking up the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
I wish, I wish he’d stay away. -Hughes Mearns
I have a friend who misses an invisible lover. No, not talking about unseen spirits here. She yearns for the arrival of her ideal lover into her life. Sometimes she is optimistic of meeting this dream lover eventually. Sometimes she is wistfully unsure whether he will appear. Sometimes she wishes he never came to mind. Like the person in Mearns’ poem, she lets herself be haunted by the “presence of his absence”. Surreal indeed, as she searches and sees fleeting traces of him in different guys in the crowd. “So far, so bad” – she ends up disappointed each time. Much ado about nothing… and there is nothing else she can readily do to find him. As if tormented by a real lover who spurned her, she often feels incomplete and loveless.
I didn’t want to burst her bubble, to tell her she was obsessed with a “ghost lover”. Afterall, there was no way to tell whether he exists. As long as she clung to him, she misses the real people around her. Maybe her dream guy’s appearance is not that she thinks? Maybe he looks better. Beyond looks, maybe he IS better. With her attachment to her absent love, she has become an absent person to the rest of the world. Living an “unreal” life, she herself becomes a ghost of sorts. Who are the absent people who haunt you? If mere thinking does not exorcise these ghosts or make them real, why not let them go and live fully now for those around you? The ghosts of our desires cannot be had and held. If you deserve their manifestation in real life, they will appear. In the mean time, look beyond form, for we are all physically and mentally shape-shifting beings. Just remember how many times you misjudged someone by their appearance. Just as we wouldn’t like others to judge us by our appearance, let go of your preconceived ideas and see others as they are. It’s only fair to everyone.
In Buddhism, hungry ghosts represent beings who have neurotic craving for what they cannot get. Metaphorically, human “hungry ghost lovers” are those who crave for physical and spiritual fulfilment beyond themselves, seeking qualities missing in themselves in each other. Starved for love, they have forgotten that they can be complete persons in themselves. Are you living a ghostly life seeking a ghostly lover? Only you can make yourself whole. The love you have, be it from yourself or another, is spiritual only when it shows you that!