Anchored

“She’s watching me.”

I find it interesting when people like Zack Owen, who are boring to the core, think someone is watching them. He tells me this while sitting in front of me, filled with a misplaced amount of self-importance and fear.

“I know she’s watching me, just before she died, she told me to be good.” He jerks his head upward to the left, forcing his feathery blond hair to part and exposing his pale blue eyes to the sun, which causes him to squint. “Why won’t she leave?”

“In order for her to leave, she has to be there in the first place.” I offer, but I know he is too turned inward to hear me. He sits there still staring up and squinting, searching for an answer in the light.

I know Zacks condition. He is a stationary soul with a wandering heart. He is anchored to the energy of a specific location. But his physical self needs to move, it craves a room with a different view.

As a result, he is continually stressed.

And he wants my help.

Most people with his condition relieve the stress with alcohol or drugs. Some attach themselves to others hoping the other person will be strong enough to pull them away. But all that does is create more tension and eventually dissolves the relationship. Their soul needs to drink from the original source and will do anything to pull them back.

We underestimate the importance of location.

One of the side effects with a stationary soul is the feeling of being watched. Stationary souls require more time to graduate once the physical is gone.

They linger…and watch the living.

“Be good, what’s that supposed to mean?” he looks down at his hands and starts biting his fingernails. Most people look gross doing this, but Zack looks like an adorable otter, cleaning himself. “I can feel her, she’s in the corner, on the ceiling, watching me.”

Zack thinks he is feeling one form of energy, but he is feeling many. The death of his mother has pushed his development and lowered his defenses. The defenses that protect our mortal mind, keeping us safely tucked in our physical world.

I’m not sure if telling him that the “she” is not his mother but many structured identities waiting to exhale. They spent their physical existence in one spot and now they must mature. Like fruit that isn’t quite ripe yet.

I’m not sure how to explain this in a way that reduces Zacks fear.

I like Zack. He is someone who always says hello, which is important to me. I enjoy the tiny niceties of our world, they restore my faith in humanity, briefly. Whenever I have spoken to him, he displays a positive view of things, if I were to wear my negative hat, I would say he is simplistic, but I think he is simply boring. Frightening boring, like a person you might avoid unless you had the energy to look interested.

I enjoy his upbeat energy, it reminds me of a more civilized time, before cynicism was the new intelligence. But he is no longer the Zack I knew, the one who held a positive version of life in his beautiful dull hands.

“Look,” I tell him. “When we die, we take everything with us. Everything that colors us with the personality we cultivate while we are here.” He takes a break from snacking on his fingers and looks up at me. “Your mothers’ physical agenda is over; she has no desire or need to watch you. When she said to “be good” it was just a suggestion, not a warning.”

“She’s not watching you.” I repeat. “No one is.” …I lie.

Zack stops shacking his right leg. He flicks his hair away from his eyes and I am amazed, again, how unevenly we are gifted.