Our family deals with ghosts.
This sounds like something coming completely off of the left field, and you’d be right: there’s a reason I don’t talk about this side of me anymore. It’s not because I’m ashamed, it’s not because I don’t think it has value; it’s because the more I talk about this, the more it has the unintentional tendency for people believing that it can be the “cure” for them.
When you and I work together, I may do hypnosis with you. I may do coaching with you. I may do past life regressions or spirit releases with you. I may also do somatic work or shadow work. But the end destination of my program is never any of those things. When you work with me, the end goal is for you to understand the dharma of the Buddha: looking at the world and seeing what it is, instead of your perceived idea of what it is.
But with that said, there’s no reason for me to not explain my understanding of it both from what I learned from my dad and grandma, and what I studied via my resources.
Premise: Realm of Belief
You may be surprised to find that I respect your view of the afterlife and prelife. You may believe in reincarnation or a deity who sends you to one eternal destination based on the life you lived. I have nothing to say to that because anything unverifiable through the truth is in the realm of belief.
What happens inside of a black hole? A black hole is literally a black hole because you can’t observe what happens inside. The expanded universe is larger than the speed of light will allow us to look, so there is guaranteed to be some place in the vast space where we have no idea what exists. So in that realm, inside a black hole, your guess is as good as mine; this is what I mean by realm of belief.
Is post-death peaceful? Or is it the same shit, different plane of existence? Who knows? So your belief is as good as mine. You may be interested in my belief but just because I believe something doesn’t mean it’s more true, and vice versa.
Why this is important to note first is because we’re talking about people who already died. If you want to get scientific about it, of course it makes no sense; we’re dealing with things that aren’t observable in the real world. A ghost may be impacting my life right now, or an invisible flow of karma may be impacting my life right now. Those things aside, what’s real to me right now is I have a life with an observable aspect to it so I choose to live my life focusing on the observable reality.
In other words: the dharma of the buddha and the hypothetical metaphysical world can coexist.
Frequency Theory
So this is where it gets pseudo-science super fast, but entertain this idea for a second. All matter have what is called natural frequency. Of course when we’re talking about the natural frequency of something we’re talking about the natural frequency of one “thing”, like water or a salt molecule. But turns out, humans also have a natural frequency of about 5~10Hz.
But now, think of frequency as a waveform that is unique to every individual. When I’m me, steadily me with no external influences, suppose I vibrate with a certain wave signature. I will interact with the world and tend to attract things that harmonize well with my wave and repel things that clash with my wave.
There’s no good unique wave or bad unique wave, per se; my wave and my dad’s wave are just different, one isn’t superior over the other. My wave and Donald Trumps’ wave are just different, one isn’t superior over the other. My wave and my friend Amitabh’s wave are just different, one isn’t superior over the other.
BUT!
When a spirit attaches on to you, it starts exerting its wave onto your wave, causing a disturbance in your unique wave. Although the resulting wave isn’t objectively good or bad, the important thing is that it’s not YOUR wave.
When you live life, you want to live life YOUR way. But the interfered wave, it will continue to jam at critical points or get you in a funk where your normal biorhythm gets weird (like you can’t get up on time, or you’re having a period of sickness when there’s no reason to get sick).
There are lots of literature that treat spirits as bad entities. Of course we could look at it that way and engage in what some might call exorcisms, but that is a shaming way of looking at spirits and as shamans we try not to do that because even when dead, people deserve dignity and respect. The frequency theory helps you understand that it’s not necessarily “bad”, it’s just not you.
Influence of Possession
Possession makes it seem like you’re going to arch backwards and start puking green pus, but it’s not always that extreme (sometimes it is, but at that time it’s more observed as schizophrenia rather than possession). What happens when you’re possessed? For one, we have the examples from the previous point: you can’t get up on time, or you have a period of sickness when there isn’t a good reason to get sick.
But there can be long-lasting effects, like serial failures in business or constant health battles. My dad always looks for one key phenomenon, and it’s “feeling like it’s not me”. Well, duh, you might think. But the nuance of it is that this feeling is compulsive and you cannot rationally stop the feeling from manifesting into follow-up actions.
There are times when you get angry and lash out, and regret. “Oh man, I totally freaked out just then. I really gotta work on my temper”, you might think. Possession anger is like, “what the fuck just happened? There was no reason for me to act like that”. This sense of foreignness to your own actions is a good indicator that you might be possessed.
Much like crime investigations, possession investigation usually studies people with motive. This means immediate family members and close relatives are the first in line to question, which is why my dad always starts his intake process by taking a detailed family history. Sometimes family members pass away from an ailment and that specific ailment can be copied over to the possessed individual as well.
There was one client of my dad with a significant case of the coughs for no apparent reason. One session with my dad and a ton of releases later, the client went home cough-free for the first time in ages and it never came back (to my knowledge at least). This also happens in past life regressions as well, but feeling the presence of the deceased in a hypnotized state and sending them to the light — that’s a healing experience like no other, if you’re able to experience it. Turns out the family member drowned.
Target of Possession
So why would a spirit target YOU, of all people? Spirits usually stay in this realm instead of moving on to the light because they have unresolved business. Their unique wave was never heard or felt by anyone and they yearn for the expression of their wave. Which is tragic because, even when you attach to a living human being there is no way the resulting wave is going to be uniquely yours. But nevertheless, spirits are desperate and look for a target that will make for an easy attachment.
And that easy attachment is people with unique waves that are weak and unpronounced. Their waves have very low amplitude and their frequencies / harmonies aren’t that well defined yet. So when a strong spiritual wave looks at such a wave, doesn’t it make sense that they’d want to latch onto that wave?
So what actual real-life quality accounts for a weak hypothetical human wave? It’s typically people with:
- Low self-esteem
- Low resilience
- Little to no boundaries
- Low personal power
- abruptly interrupted life patterns that haven’t had the time to recover
Basically, think of someone with a strong, pronounced personality with a lot of “presence”; you can feel them coming into the room without even seeing them enter. Now, think of the biggest push-over you’ve seen from a television show. When comparing the two, whose “wave” would be more pronounced and distinct?
There’s a Korean term to describe headstrong girl-boss type women, and it’s “gi-sseda” which loosely translates to “strong chi(ki)”. It is believed that these “gi-ssen” people will deter ghosts, although they may be generally disliked by society (hello misogyny!); that’s why Korean shamans typically tend to be females.
So if you’re the opposite of that, then it’s likely that you would be the target of possession. This isn’t to be mistaken with quiet people with strong resolve; quiet people generally tend to have less of a personality, but it’s totally possible for you to have a loud voice and big self expression with a lot of self-doubt inside.
Spiritual Cold
The last point in the above bullet list says “abruptly interrupted life patterns that haven’t had the time to recover”. This basically means traumatic incidents. My dad always says spirit attachment is like a spiritual cold. You don’t get cold when you’re well rested and full with a belly with a nutritious meal; you get a cold when your immune system is generally down.
Abrupt events tend to suddenly shock your system and can lower your immune system, both physical and spiritual. So most people experience some kind of spirit attachment at least once in their life and then they recover thanks to their immune system picking up.
The people who come to my dad are people whose immune systems have been so weakened they can’t recover on their own. And the longer this goes on, the longer they lose their own wave; my dad may send the spirits to the light, but there’s no guarantee that the next spirit will latch on the next moment.
This is why my dad always ends the session with a strengthening of the inner unconscious world. You need to be loudly playing your wave into the world, even if nobody may be listening. Your wave may be interrupted, but it can’t be stopped. Your heart automatically pulses to a certain beat (I learned today at my physical that my heart rate is 42 bpm); the goal is to believe in yourself so strong that even when you’re not conscious, your heart plays your wave for you.
Spiritual colds have to be kicked off by your immune system. The longer they stay, the more they become spiritual emphysema. Which leads to collapsed lungs and who knows what else? Reduced oxygen to the blood leads to heart and brain problems, and so on. Spirit release is like a high-dose vitamin C shot. The real cure is being healthy.
That is how spirit attachment / release works in a nutshell. Much of this writing comes from my dad’s research of William Baldwin’s work (please give recovery of soul fragments a read, it’s fascinating if you’re into shadow work) and his lifelong personal experience as a shamanic guide to the dead (he’s actually well known in the Korean ghost community, apparently lol). Hope that helped, and remember: there’s still time to register for MY holding trauma workshop, and you can work with me 1:1 for 6 months! Email me at billy@julylifecoach.com for more information.