How to Stop Feeding Your Hungry Ghost

In Buddhism the Hungry Ghosts are depicted as teardrop shaped, with bloated stomachs and necks too thin to pass food – representing our futile attempts to feed ego patterns. We can never find satisfaction. It's like drinking salt water to quench our thirst.

Below are excerpts from Creativity Coach Lezlie Laws' article published in The Florida Writer, Winter 2014 | Volume 7, Number 4, pp. 6-7: "Stop Feeding your Hungry Ghost":

       A woman came to me recently wanting to write a book about her recent travels. She was young and adventurous and had some fascinating experiences in her travel notebook. She thought she needed to learn specific techniques travel writers use – establishing a sense of place, using point of view effectively, incorporating scenes into her narrative summary, manipulating the chronology of events in her stories. All very important strategies for travel writers.

      But after an hour of conversation... I realized it was premature to focus on these technical issues. Because what I heard as our conversation developed was deep fear and a sense of insecurity about offering her writing to the world.
     My young client is not so unusual. I see these very fears and reservations in almost every person I work with, no matter what their age, or how much creating they’ve already done... Why do we do this to ourselves? We possess habitual patterns of thought that limit us when it comes to our creative lives... I [tell] my students I don’t really need to teach them how to write. They will figure out exactly what they need to do to express their stories to the world. But what they [need] from me [is] inspiration and concrete methods for quelling their own inner critics... 

     I ask workshop participants to look at their beliefs about their creative abilities through the Buddhist notion of “the six realms of being.” These categories are very helpful in identifying deeply entrenched beliefs about ourselves that inhibit our creative process. They become invisible barricades to following our creative calling...

The Hungry Ghost of Perfectionism: You strive always to be perfect. You don’t want to start a project unless you can do it perfectly. You label endeavors as futile and either don’t start them or drop them quickly.

The Hungry Ghost of Envy: You are always comparing yourself to others. You often compete to keep up with others. You sometimes feel trapped in a rat race of speed and constantly feel the need to catch up.

The Hungry Ghost of Insecurity: You feel incomplete and look for ways to fill that empty feeling, often with food, or mindless socializing, or useless busy-ness. You feel like you are missing out on something. You may feel like you don’t know enough. You are driven by a desire outside of yourself, like getting something that you think will make you happy. You tend to be nervous and your mind flits from thought to thought.

The Hungry Ghost of Habit: You lean on habits of stability that are boring and repetitive. You tend to be set in your ways. You find new ideas threatening. You can’t work creatively unless things are “just right.” Your body often feels heavy. 

The Hungry Ghost of Never Having Enough: You are not content with what you have. You fail to recognize what you have actually produced or accomplished in your life. You rarely practice gratitude.

The Hungry Ghost of Eternal Warfare: You are consumed with anger at yourself. You feel pain at your failures. You resent your inabilities. You see others and yourself as the enemy.

     ...As creatives, we watch ourselves; we get deadly honest with ourselves; we have compassion for our mistaken notions about ourselves; and we become hard-nosed about dropping those mistaken notions. Recognizing your Hungry Ghost profile is the first step toward coming to the happy conclusion that you are blessed with creative potential and you hold a powerful birthright to express that potential. In fact, it is the very reason you are here.

Mark Epstein, in Thoughts Without a Thinker, describes our Hungry Ghosts as "searching for gratification of old unfulfilled needs whose time has passed." As was true for Lezlie Laws, my clients often came to me feeling confused and disappointed in themselves when they hadn't been able to make changes in their lives they desperately wanted to make. 

It helps immensely to recognize these hungry ghosts as unconscious patterns of beliefs and behaviors we developed as children. Instead of trying to ignore or overcome old “bad” behavior, be mindful. Let the ghosts in with compassion and without judgment, see how they operate. This could be you: 

You: “I haven’t done as much writing this week as I’d like to. And I’ve been beating myself up about that.” 

Your compassionate self: “You wanted to do more. How did you beat yourself up? What did that look like?”

You: “Feeling uncomfortable, anxious, telling myself I’m lazy, disappointed in myself."

Your compassionate self: “So that’s been a pattern, not writing as much as you’d like, then beating yourself up. Anything else?”

You: “I feel lost in a way, like there’s no structure, no clear path for me to follow. I’ve always felt a little uneasy when I’ve only had myself to rely on.” 

Notice the lack of judgment in your compassionate self's responses. Exploring what your ghosts do and how they do it will encourage them to unveil more, bring the past into the present, and release attachments to outmoded, unnecessary patterns.