Ghost

Wandering in the forest I meet the ghost
He captures my imagination as he swirls around me
Filling my body with feelings of excitement
As it creates its magic out of thin air

Impressed by the appearances I forget where I am
And soon I find myself lost in the forest with nowhere to go
Yet the ghost keeps on animating me with its stories
Soothing and comforting words and images appear

As I start to worry the ghost suddenly screams out loud
“WE’RE LOST AND THERE IS NO WAY OUT OF HERE!”
All I can think about right now is
I want to get out of here and just disappear

The ghost starts to become unbearable to be with
It wont shut up and is totally out of control
No matter how hard I try to escape it
It finds me quicker than I can find my own shadow

So now stuck in this dark forest of illusion
Looking for a way out even though I’m afraid
Lying on the ground I begin to lose hope
While the ghost seems to be laughing at me

Full of desperation I wonder to myself
Why did I ever started this endeavor?
To travel alone into the dark woods
Trying to find the source of life

Epilogue

The ghost in this story is the mind, untamed and wild. It captures us with its creations of magic and we’re very impressed by the power and capacity of the mind. Its imagination is so bright and colorful, that at first its very much fun to follow the mind. At least in my case it was. After a while, as i plunged deeper into the creations of the mind, i got less and less comfortable with what i met. I could not rationally understand it, but i also noticed that this wild and untamed mind was not something within my control. It forced me into places where i didn’t want to be.

As the years passed and i got stuck in habitual patterns to shut myself of from inner fears and insecurity, the mind still was running free. There was no place where the mind was not there. And so it became unbearable to live with that mind. I started looking for answers, reading tons of books. All just to get a glimpse of how it would be like if that mind would be calmed down or as i say in the poem shut up. In reading, thinking about this issue, i learned a lot but i did not quite found what i was looking for.

I was always interested in life and the meaning of this existence, but also at the same time wondered how it was that people could go through the days hardly ever noticing the mystical of existence. I wondered whether it was just me, that i missed out on something, but as the years passed, i realized that it was not just me. There was more to it all, i just had looked at the wrong places. So at that point i found myself stuck in the forest, entangled in my mind’s illusions. I had created patterns upon patterns of thoughts and concepts, that i had lost track of life’s simple flow. All because i was longing to find the source of life itself. As a dog trying to catch its own tail.

Pieter