Walk With Me (#49): Riding the Ghost Train

Asha Sanaker
4 min readJun 23, 2021

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An advice column for folks who don’t like to be told what to do

Photo by Floyd Cox on Unsplash

Dear Asha,

You write a lot about integrity and “living into our wholeness”, but how does that actually work? I mean, the “living into wholeness” part. Is that even really possible? It seems like I’m always just fumbling along, doing the best I can with what’s right in front of me before I get slammed by the next thing.

The idea of wholeness just leaves me feeling like a failure.

Partially yours,

FEM

Dear FEM,

I was thinking about your letter when I woke in the night last night and the idea of a ghost train popped into my brain. Not a train for ghosts (though someone should write that story, please), nor a train where every car is made of ectoplasm. What I saw, barreling down a track in my mind, was an actual train made infinitely longer by the number of phantom cars hitched to the caboose.

Everywhere the train goes the unseen, phantom parts get brought along for the ride. The ghost cars can’t be unhitched, any more than most of us (Peter Pan being the major exception) can unzip our shadow, allowing it to run around without us.

Some folks liken the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious to an iceberg. The unconscious is the underwater bit. It is much more vast than we imagine looking at the pretty part sparkling in the sun, and capable of sinking the unwary. It occurred to me, however, as I lay there in the darkness, that another way of picturing it is as a train that’s part “real” and part “ghost”.

Time and experience are more of a circle or a spiral, ultimately, so it’s not just a train on a straight track either. It’s more like a train steadily climbing through a mountain range, round and round. Sometimes there’s a tunnel and things get really dark for a while. Then you emerge again, higher and further along, with a new vista in front of you.

Here’s the thing about wholeness: you’re the train. Even if the part of you that’s at the front, that appears to be confronting the matter at hand, causes you to feel like you’re only dealing with things partially, the whole train is still attached, including those phantom cars, and is part of the forward momentum of your train.

You’re always whole. The notion of “living into wholeness” isn’t about becoming more “whole” ultimately. It’s about becoming more conscious, making more of the cars of your train, more of the cargo you’re bearing down upon the world with, visible.

Talking about it as a ghost train, and of the invisible cars as phantoms, might suggest that you have to do some kind of complicated, ritualistic, raise-the-dead sort of business in order to make those parts of yourself conscious. It’s not so macabre as all of that. Nor is it some sort of Night of the Living Dead zombie nightmare.

It’s just recognizing that as you’re fumbling along, or chugging along if we’re really going to beat this train metaphor to death, certain parts of you are visible (conscious) and certain parts of you are invisible (unconscious). You can make some of the parts of you that are invisible visible by going into those cars and rooting around in that cargo to get clearer (more conscious) on what’s in there. You can change the orientation of the visible cars to a certain extent — deciding how you want to meet the world, what parts of yourself are going to be the engine and the cars available to offer immediate fuel (yes, this is a Harry Potter-type classic, coal-fired, steam engine. This is my metaphor, thank you very much.)

No matter what, some cars are always going to be invisible. You may be able to go in and root around in them, but only in your dreams. What’s in there is still part of how you move through the world, though. Your invisible parts, just like the ghosts of your ancestors, always travel with you.

Here’s the other thing about wholeness. You’re the train, but you’re also the engineer and the conductor. You might say your Higher Self plays both roles — directing the train, moving between cars, managing the visible and the invisible sections. As you’re moving through your day, dealing with all the things coming at you, maybe you can worry less about whether or not you’re “whole” and instead focus on who’s driving and managing the train. Is it your Higher Self, or did your Higher Self get stuck back in some random car somewhere, and now one of those laborers (base emotions like fear, anger, happiness, sadness) who was just supposed to shovel coal into the engine is running the show?

Nothing wrong with emotions, mind you, but driving the train isn’t their optimal function. They’re too myopic — narrow-minded and near-sighted. Striving for a wider view than that will go a long way towards making you feel more integrated and whole.

If approaching your life with more integrity and consciousness is a goal, then I think removing the binary of success and failure will actually help. It’s a practice, a habit, which develops over time and goes better or worse depending on the day. You just keep chugging along, checking the far horizon periodically to make sure you’re on the right track and keep going. You’ll get where you need to be.

Thank you for walking this journey with me. Love to you and yours.

XO, Asha

Do you have a question about relationships, sex, parenting, politics, spirituality, community? Send them to me at ashasanaker@gmail.com with the subject line “Walk With Me”. Let’s walk each other home.

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Asha Sanaker

Asking questions, telling stories, giving my people information they can use to make change happen.