Italo Calvino said: The more
enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.” So what
enables us to become enlightened and why, or does this, create an oozing of
ghosts? To become enlightened is to
develop the ability to give spiritual or
intellectual insight to self, and some would say to others. Being
enlightened is about being present. it is about developing the spiritual
practice of releasing our attachment to the material world and all things which
seek to cling to us or to which we seek to cling. It is about becoming in tune
with all human experience, which enables one to understand our connection to
all of life and humanity.
Perhaps that is why this image was selected to go with this quote. One can look at this house and see it as empty and free of anything which might challenge us to become attached materialistically. At the same time, one can look at this house and see life being restored, an air conditioner, fresh air circulating through, rugs to be laid out. Whichever way we choose to look at this house and experience it is about us. We are free to determine our own lives and our own reality. This image is nothing more then an image. What we see in it and how we experience it can affect our understanding of reality. Like with anything else in life, we can experience things in a way that cause our understanding of reality to expand and contract. It is like breathing, our lungs expand and contract as we inhale and exhale.
While there are many things one can do to become more enlightened. It is really about the process of making the unconscious conscious. It is about achieving a state of mind in which we are aware of the intent behind all that we think and do. Buddhists would suggest a study of the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. Don Miguel Ruiz would suggest it is about mastering awareness and detaching ourselves from the Dream of the Planet and that in our Book of Law with which we no longer agree. Overall, however, it is a process of living with virtue, concentration on our being, and the acquisition of wisdom from the teachers who have come before us.
As we move to this higher level of being, that which was inhibiting us will ooze out and no longer become a part of our way of being in the world. The ghosts may not be people from the past, but parts of our consciousness which are rooted in our past and are no longer part of the present in which we are choosing to live, or the future we are creating for ourselves.