Living Among the Spirits: Spirit Etiquette

In my last post, I wrote about moving back to my home area of Western North Carolina and running afoul of a spirit community that was here before our house was built.

In today's post, I'll write a little more about the etiquette of living among the spirits.

In addition to the angry Fair Folk whom we'd managed to piss off by entering their territory uninvited, we also encountered some Earth elementals who were pissed off for a similar but different reason.

After the terror of the Fair Folk had subsided, we began connecting with the spirits of our home and its surroundings. One of the first set of Beings we came into contact with was a family of Beings who lived in the hill into which our house had been set. My best guess is that these are Beings similar to what we know as gnomes from folklore. They were pissed. And sad, and scared. Not at us, specifically, but at all humans in general. When the house was built, they dug into their hill to create our basement. The back wall of the basement is below grade, so the humans cut into their home—literally their living room—to create the foundation for our house.

Spirits have a different sense of time than we do

Time runs differently for spirits and for residents of the otherworlds. Even though we were not the ones who had destroyed their home -- we bought the house when it was almost 40 years old -- the gnomes still blamed us and lumped us in with the humans who did.

When we moved in, I had made my office in the downstairs studio in the basement, and I began becoming aware of the sadness and anger that I was experiencing when I was downstairs. Only when I was downstairs. Once I began tuning in, I became more aware of them and their plight.

To be good neighbors, we began a conversation with this family of Beings. We made offerings, and now that I was alerted to the fact that I was sharing space with others, I made an effort to keep my emotions steady and calm.

Spirits can be deeply affected by our emotions. And vice versa.

It is a little-known fact that some spirits can be quite sensitive to the strong emotions of humans. Even emotions that we don't consider very strong nevertheless radiate out from us and permeate our spaces. Some of these are very difficult for other spirits to endure. The same is true in reverse.

Our emotions saturate our spaces and can be felt by anyone who tunes in.

It is good to be mindful of what we are putting out there.

Over time, my perception has changed, and things have mellowed. Helping the gnome people to understand that not only was I not responsible for the destruction, but that I also wanted to make things better for them, helped a tremendous amount. Over the past eight years, life has become much easier, and I no longer have a sense of their agitation. We have encountered many other Beings who live here, including the spirit of our mountain itself, a 'young' spirit to our Inward eyes who is very present and who is delighted to witness everything. There are spirits and Beings who come and go. And there are the ones who are rooted here, the trees, the rivers, and the stone Beings, some of whom live deep in our mountain. We've also encountered some ancient, 'mythical' Beings, but that is a post for another time. Be kind. You never know who is here listening. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they can't see you!