GHOSTS, TREES & SKYSCAPES

by T Stokes

Some years ago I was part of a counselling team that would take disadvantaged city kids who had been in trouble with the law to spend a few days in the countryside.

Some of these youngsters could not relate to undeveloped areas. Shrubbery grass, the wildness of the open spaces and clear skies represented something quite strange and alien to them.

Some of these city kids did not know what sheep or cows were, some thought that trees were to be broken down, and plants to be kicked up, it took several days of pointing out that trees, just like people, were from different countries, and that every form of life had its place in the scheme of things and deserved respect.

Once these youngsters realised that they could survive without their games consoles and their instant burgers and coke, and that the countryside was not boring or threatening, their eyes began to open to another world, the world of the natural environment.

“Once seen never forgotten” runs the saying, and at the weeks end, to see kids who could now recognise stars in the sky, every species of tree, and understood their value as the lungs of the planet, that each tree was as individual as a person, was very heartening.

Just as those kids had never noticed trees, once alerted to them, saw them everywhere, so it is with ghosts.

My paranormal awareness class would amazingly, often contain many who claimed never to have seen a ghost, but like the kids with the trees, once alerted to them, they saw them all the time.

I recently on a visit to an old town, went on a ghost walk, the talk was good but I realised that no one there was actually aware of ghosts.

If we consider the sheer numbers of people who have lived and died before us, there are actually more dead people than alive around and among us, and often seen as wispy vague shapes out of the corner of the eye then gone.

Whenever I am interviewed I am always asked for the scary dead people stories, but most stories are non scary and just of slight human interest, and there is nothing to fear at all, most of the dead are not interested in us, the word dead is only short for “disembodied” and that these people on the other side are only in another form of life.

So we must occasionally remember that there is nothing to fear in either trees, or ghosts, or time spent away from our games consoles, and that we must continually respect the planet and our place within it, for fear erodes our self worth. We humans have a tendency to destroy what we fear, be it the earth, the sky, or the trees, we pollute our inner landscape with burgers and coke, and the violence of our games consoles.

For drugs, violence and wars may be all around us, yet we must stay apart from their influences, and recognise our spiritual health is paramount, for surely did the master say, “love thy neighbour as thyself”.

Copyright 2006, T Stokes, lecturer in paranormal studies.
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