Hungry Ghost

Hungry ghost is a concept in eastern traditions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and folklore.  In Sanskrit they are called Preta.  Hungry ghosts are supposed to occur from very unfortunate situations.  Like someone leading an evil life.  So here we have yet another form of punishment system to make people behave.  Another form of the Christian hell.  What is really going on here?  Stick around and you will see it all has to do with your time in this life.  

Just like all religions people are taking these stories literally.  They believe hungry ghosts come from violent or unhappy deaths.  The neglecting of ancestors and evil deeds such as stealing and sexual misconduct will cause a soul to be reborn as a hungry ghost.  Desire, greed, anger and ignorance are all factors in causing a soul to be reborn as a hungry ghost.  When one is reborn as a hungry ghost  they do evil things to others.  Their spirits take many forms like moths, bird, wolves, foxes, tigers and, my favorite, snakes.  Some will even take the form of a beautiful man or woman, so they can seduce people.  They can also take possession of people, like a demonic possession, and cause a person to do evil.  

There are many festivals and celebrations where it is believed that the spirits are allowed to return to the world of the living at a certain time of the year, hungry and ready to take from there, if the people don’t give them sufficient offerings.  Families pay tribute with food, money and trinkets representing material riches. All to keep the hungry ghosts from bringing misfortune.  Are people really dying then coming back rioting, luting, stealing, burning things down and causing other misfortunes?  We have enough of that with the living.  So I can see why people might do this, but what really are these hungry ghosts?  What did the ancients know that we have forgotten?  Time to enlighten.  

Magic and the western traditions talk about a rebirth or death.  I have showed in previous posts that the age of forty is typically when this rebirth or death happens.  It is different for everyone, but forty is when it happens for the majority.  In simple terms, you live out the first part of your life learning and around the age of forty if you wake up you are reborn, if you don’t you are said to die.  This is where walking zombies comes from.  Most don’t wake up and they are walking zombies.  See my post Magic for more.  The death the hungry ghost is referring to is not the death of the body, but the death of your spirit not waking up.  

In a sense this hungry ghost is like the negative aspects of Karma, but I will need to bring it out in laymen terms.  You take an action and if that action has the seed of energy of higher perspective, the energy of abundance and the energy of the bigger picture, then it will move you up.  If an action has within it the dense energy, the me.. me.. me energy, not getting enough energy or the energy of scarcity then it will move you down.  Even if it seems to be moving you forward often times it is actually moving you down or backwards.  Actions that contain higher perspective and are brought about through that perspective will make things better in your life, but at the same time your inner state will transmute into a higher state.  You go into a higher vibration.  When your actions are too much in the ground, you make things harder for yourself.  An example is when someone does something to hurt you and you do something to hurt them in retaliation.  Then they retaliate and you retaliate in a never ending argument.  What happens is you set yourself in a negative state of mind and everything becomes negative to you.  This happens all the time in fights with family and close friend.  Things are going so awesome in the world, but because they keep triggering each other they can’t let themselves win.  There is that addiction to being stuck in place.  They are self sabotaging with their own set points.  

I can see it in peoples eyes.  People who are open to the world and see the greatness of it will let the gift in.  It is a softness in their eyes, but the ones that are closed to the greatness of life have a closed or hardness to their eyes.  The criticalness of what I am telling you is that when you give, it prepares you to receive.  I explain how this works in my Magic post too.  Too much of selfishness does not prepare you to receive.  It makes you want to take.   That is when you go into the land of the hungry ghost.  The hungry ghost always needs more because they are selfish and greedy.  They don’t understand the karmic consequences of their actions.  Actions that you take that are based in selfishness, in the short term they appear to help, but in the long term in blows up in your face.  

The actions you take will attract  people who resonate with that action.  If you are someone who is petty then you are going to attract others who are hooked on that same pettiness.  When you attract others like that it is dangerous because it is self reinforcing.  If you are a hungry ghost you will attract other hungry ghosts!  In order to bust through this you need to stop fueling the pettiness and greediness.  Start fueling a higher perspective and hanging out with higher vibrating people.  It can be hard because even when you commit to moving up, someone will come along and poke you with the one thing that triggers you, but you have to stay focused.  Be aware that it triggers you, but don’t feed it.  Be committed to moving up. It will mean disconnection with the other hungry ghosts in your life, but it will attract higher vibrating people and an openness to how good life really is or can be.  

Hungry ghosts is another term for walking zombies.  They are people who live in scarcity and are all about me.. me.. me!  Whatever your thoughts and actions are it will it feed the inner self.  If you are a selfish, greedy person who commits selfish greedy acts you will need other people to feed your hungry ghost or you will feed it yourself by any means necessary.  People will have to give you money, food and material things all because you think life is not fair and you should not have to work for it.   If they don’t give it to you, then you tear everything down and take it.  Hungry ghosts lives suck, so everyone else’s life should suck too.  Ask yourself, “Are you a hungry ghost or are you vibrating on a higher level?”  Hungry ghosts have nothing to do with reincarnation.  They are right here, right now.  Are you feeding the hungry ghosts or are you banishing them?