We have just passed through a trio of holidays or holy days: All Hallows' Eve, otherwise known as Halloween, then All Hallows' Day, otherwise known as All Saints' Day and finally All Souls Day on November 2nd. Christianity attempted an uneasy substitute of pagan holidays with its hallowed saints and the like, but the ghosts of the past and Celtic Samhain still linger on to haunt us: either to scare, excite or inspire us, depending on perspective. Samhain, the Celtic New Year's festival, marking the end or death of summer and the coming of dark winter, offered thanks for the harvest gathered and was therefore a hopeful time. But it was also haunted by spectres of winters past and possible death, disease and starvation. Like a soldier returning home from war, Samhain gives thanks for life and survival. But the memory and images of dying comrades still haunts the soldier. Yes, there is a bit of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) about Samhain which may be why it has survived into our generally less uncertain times of plenty as a reminder of the fragility of life and of its more unwelcome partner, death, even if we do treat them both lightly with costume and candy. Like all New Year's celebrations, Samhain was a time of feasting and celebration. Candy and other treats have their place. For the kid intent on candy, the cartoon of The Family Circus this week worded it aptly: "Our Father, who art in heaven, Halloween be thy name!" That is one very hopeful kid!

There is a fourth day yet to come for Brits and that is Guy Fawkes Day on November 5. This celebration owes its official origins to Guy Fawkes and the failed Catholic plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. Theoretically we are all celebrating the ousting of Catholicism from Protestant Britain. However, it is interesting to note the bonfires, fireworks and burning effigies of Guy Fawkes and their resemblance to more ancient festivals around this time of year. If Christianity drove out paganism, then Protestantism, marching to the beat of the same drum, drove out Catholicism. But now V, from the movie "V for Vendetta", threatens to turn Guy Fawkes from terrorist to freedom fighter and drive out dictatorships and totalitarian governments the world over as V masks are being donned as symbols of freedom and democracy in most of the current revolutions and uprisings in the Middle East and elsewhere. Just like Edward Snowden, one man’s traitor is another man’s whistleblower. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Be careful of cultural and religious conditioning and belief! It is a slippery slope. It is founded on perspective only, nothing more but nothing less. Do not confuse it with anything absolute like truth. The teacher and writer, Helen Luke, used to talk about the quarter turn which begins to balance and change perspective. "I suddenly knew I was looking at it from the wrong angle and I gave the cloth in my hand a quarter turn. Immediately I saw a beautiful and coherent golden pattern…In wonder, the pattern had emerged, to be seen in all its beauty by those who would learn to make the quarter turn." (Helen Luke) If you want to alter your perspective on something, imagine your issue or conundrum at the centre of a circle. Then walk a distance around the circle and take another look at your issue. What are the differences? What are the similarities? You all know that there are different ways of perceiving events. Just think of the mixed, often opposing, eyewitness accounts that occur around an accident. Our system of law literally has to collect evidence from all of these perspectives in order to ascertain some semblance of the truth. Why should you do less with the challenges of your own lives? Nothing is cast in stone. Or, as Hamlet says to Rosencrantz, in arguing his notion that Denmark is a prison: "Why then tis none for you (Rosencrantz), for there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison." Hamlet acknowledges that it is indeed all a matter of perspective. So why does he choose "prison"? Why, for that matter, does anyone choose anything as painful as an illness, a thankless job or a broken heart? Hamlet’s answer to that is: "Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."

This brings us to a real slippery slope of perspective. Bad dreams! These come from the dark, hidden, unconscious part of your mind that is the receptacle of all your negative thoughts and emotions, even whole lifetimes of them. This is not just the "PTSD" of this life’s traumas of but "PTSD", as I like to say, from other lifetimes and experiences. You will need "tools" to work with these to help you find your quarter turn and a different perspective. You may need some new spiritual beliefs and practices. You may need therapy or other forms of healing. You will need some form of meditation and mindfulness. You need to become conscious of your negative thoughts and emotions, so that they do not haunt you from deep, unknown, unconscious places in your mind. You will need to confront the ghosts of the past, both from this life and from other lifetimes that give you bad dreams like Hamlet’s. Truthfully, we all have such bad dreams. And they are all based on some belief or perspective that is as ephemeral as time, as changeable as night and day, and as volatile as the weather. Do not keep yourself in the grip of such beliefs and fears. Do not imprison yourself in the past and in past judgements. Just look at what that did for Hamlet!

For our Halloween celebration this year we went to see "The Turn of a Screw" (Prime Stage Theatre at the Hazlett Theatre on the North Side, now on this next week or two). It is Henry James’ novel or novella, adapted to the stage and played very compellingly and dramatically by just two people. It is to my mind a drama that emerges from a repressed, Victorian Society and its shadow side. An isolated governess with a very sheltered upbringing, a lonely Gothic mansion, clandestine sex, suicides, ghosts and the like: these all emerge from the underbelly of the collective, Victorian psyche. Those Victorians and their beliefs! That's a mind blowing slippery slope, if ever there was one! Mind and minds are capable of creating horrendous dramas. And Henry James pictures just that. Are you seduced by it? In the theatre it is an exciting, if rather terrifying journey. But in life, these dramas can become your own personal nightmares. You need either to be more conscious of your mind creating such dramas or more able to see life as theatre, or both. Don’t let your mind run away with you, creating dramas where you don’t want them or perceiving them where they are not, unless you really like what they give you. As Gollum, from "the Lord of the Rings", might say: the mind can be "tricksy". Keep abreast of its tricks and keep watching its perspective, because none of it needs to be fixed or last forever. You can learn to change your perspective and, with time on your side, instead of your enemy, you can also gradually change how you experience life. You can choose differently. You can change your dramas or end them. A Course in Miracles words it: "Choose again!"