The troubled spirit is an immature entity with unfinished business in a past life on Earth. They may have no relation to the living person who is disrupted by them. It is true that some people are convenient and receptive conduits for negative spirits who wish to express their querulous nature. This means that someone who is in a deep meditative state of consciousness might occasionally pick up annoying signal patterns from a discarnated being whose communications can range from the frivolous to provocative. These unsettled entities are not spiritual guides. Real guides are healers and don't intrude with acrimonious messages.
More often than not, these uncommon haunted spirits are tied to a particular geographic location. Researchers who have specialized in the phenomena of ghosts indicate those disturbed entities are caught in a no-man's land between the lower astral planes of Earth and the spirit world. From my own research, I don't believe these souls are lost in space, nor are they demonic. They choose to remain within the Earth plane after physical death for a time by their own volition due to a high level of discontent. In my opinion, they are damaged souls because they evidence confusion, despair, and even hostility to such an extent they want their guides to stay away from them. We do know a negative, displaced entity can be reached and handled by various means, such as exorcism, to get them to stop interfering with human beings. Possessing spirits can be persuaded to leave and eventually make a proper transition into the spirit world.
If we have a spirit world governed by order, with guides who care about us, how can maladaptive souls who exert negative energy upon incarnated beings be allowed to exist? One explanation is that we still have free will, even in death. Another is that since we endure so many upheavals in our physical universe, then spiritual irregularities and deviations from the normal exodus of souls ought to be anticipated as well. Discarnate, unhappy spirits who trap themselves are possibly part of a grand design. When they are ready, these souls will be taken by the hand away from Earth's astral plane and guided to their proper place in the spirit world.
I turn now to the far more prevalent second type of disturbed soul. These are souls who have been involved with evil acts. We should first speculate if a soul can be considered culpable or guilt-free when it occupied the offending criminal brain? Is the soul mind or human ego responsible, or are they the same? Occasionally, a client will say to me, "I feel possessed by an inner force which tells me to do bad things." There are mentally ill people who feel driven by opposing forces of good and evil over which they believe they have no control.
After working for years with the superconscious minds of people under hypnosis, I have come to the conclusion that the five-sensory human can negatively act upon a soul's psyche. We express our eternal self through dominant biological needs and the pressures of environmental stimuli which are temporary to the incarnated soul. Although there is no hidden, sinister self within our human form, some souls are not fully assimilated. People not in harmony with their bodies feel detached from themselves in life.
This condition does not excuse souls from doing their utmost to prevent evil involvement on Earth. We see this in human conscience. It is important we distinguish between what is exerting a negative force on our mind and what is not. Hearing an inner voice which may suggest self-destruction to ourselves or someone else is not a demonic spiritual entity, an alien presence, nor a malevolent renegade guide. Negative forces emanate from ourself.
The destructive impulses of emotional disorders, if left untreated, inhibit soul development. Those of us who have experienced unresolved personal trauma in our lives carry the seeds of our own destruction. This anguish affects our soul in such a way that it seems we are not whole. For instance, excessive craving and addictive behavior, which is the outgrowth of personal pain, inhibits the expression of a healthy soul and may even hold a soul in bondage to its host body.
Does the extent of contemporary violence mean that we have more souls "going wrong" today than in the past? If nothing else, our over-population and mind-altering drug culture should support this conclusion. On the positive side, Earth's international level of consciousness toward human suffering appears to be rising.
I've been told that in every era of Earth's bloody history there has always been a significant number of souls unable to resist and successfully counter human cruelty. Certain souls, whose hosts have a genetic disposition to abnormal brain chemistry, are particularly at risk in a violent environment. We see how children can be so damaged by physical and emotional family abuse that, as adults, they commit premeditated acts of atrocity without feelings of remorse. Since souls are not created perfect, their nature can be contaminated during the development of such a life form.
If our transgressions are especially serious we call them evil. My subjects say to me no soul is inherently evil, although it may acquire this label in human life. Pathological evil in humans is characterized by feelings of personal impotence and weakness which is stimulated by helpless victims. Although souls who are involved with truly evil acts should generally be considered at a low level of development, soul immaturity does not automatically invite malevolent behavior from a damaged human personality. The evolution of souls involves a transition from imperfection to perfection based upon overcoming many difficult body assignments during their taskoriented lives. Souls may also have a predisposition for selecting environments where they consistently don't work well, or are subverted. Thus, souls may have their identity damaged by poor life choices. However, all souls are held accountable for their conduct in the bodies they occupy.
We will see in the next chapter how souls receive an initial review of their past life with guides before moving on to join their friends. But what happens to souls who have, through their bodies, caused extreme suffering to another? If a soul is not capable of ameliorating the most violent human urges in its host body, how is it held accountable in afterlife? This brings up the issue of being sent to heaven or hell for good and bad deeds because accountability has long been a part of our religious traditions.
On the wall of my office hangs an Egyptian painting, "The Judgment Scene," as represented in the Book of the Dead, which is a mythological ritual of death over 7,000 years old. The ancient Egyptians had an obsession with death and the world beyond the grave because, in their cosmic pantheon, death explained life. The picture shows a newly deceased man arriving in a place located between the land of the living and the kingdom of the dead. He stands by a set of scales about to be judged for his past deeds on Earth. The master of ceremonies is the god Anubis, who carefully weighs the man's heart on one pan of the scale against the ostrich feather of truth on the opposite side. The heart, not the head, represented the embodiment of a person's soul-conscience to the Egyptians. It is a tense moment. A crocodile-headed monster is crouched nearby with his mouth open, ready to devour the heart if the man's wrongs outweigh the good he did in life. Failure at the scales would end the existence of this soul.
I get quite a few comments from my clients about this picture. A metaphysically oriented person would insist no one is denied entrance into the kingdom of afterlife, regardless of how unfavorably balanced the scales might be toward past conduct. Is this belief true? Are all souls given the opportunity to transmute back into the spirit world the same way, irrespective of their association with the bodies they occupied?