Ghosts by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

 Recently  I attended a weekend workshop on Death and Dying Consciously. It was held in the Beacon Yoga Ashram in Beaconsfield, a  southern suburb of Perth and run by a beloved mentor of mine. That place was full of ghosts for me. My own ghosts, the ghosts of the place and the ghosts of the workshop participants.

The ashram was established by a yoga teacher and friend of my parents named Nancy. My parents ran the Yoga School of Perth and both taught yoga. I helped clean up the building when a  twenty three year old and attended satsungs and other such things. Nancy converted to Hinduism and took the name Swami Lakshmi. She was a devotee of Swami Venkatesananda from Rishikesh, India. Swami  Venkatesananda had first visited Perth in 1956 under the auspices of the Divine Life Society. My mother had gone to a talk and yoga demonstration of his. He helped my parents and another person set up the Yoga School of Perth when I was four years old, and visited us practically every year, so I grew up with him in my life. He was kindly towards me and as a little child I sat on his lap.

My brother and I definitely had an unusual childhood. We were surrounded by those who saw themselves as enlightened, or if not quite that, on the road to enlightenment. We had to learn to sift through all that stuff. And, I suppose, this is why I now work in psychotherapy: a job that requires a lot of sifting, sorting and identifying the real from fantasy. And yet, I, as we all do, still have to do the work of consciousness, of becoming aware.

Remarkably, given the propensity for things to come and go rapidly in this country of ours, the Yoga Ashram is still there  50 years later and looks grand these days. The building previously, I think, was a nursing home  or possibly a children’s home of some kind but in the early 1970a was very run down and unoccupied. Now the gardens are beautiful with roses and flowering plums and the rooms are well kept, with air conditioning. All very comfortable, at least on the outside. It is, though, full of ghosts – all concentrated there. There are numerous pictures of Swami Venkatesananda (who died in 1982), his teacher Swami Sivananda Saraswati, Lakshmi, Krishnamurti, and others – even Jesus (the enlightened and the ordinary Joe Blows of us all). There are corners with religious objects, incense, a statues, altars and hangings everywhere. The place is full of stuff. Just like all of us.

Before our workshop began, someone asked me if I felt a rush of energy from Swami Venkatesananda. I replied, no I didn’t. He was a good man, but he was not holy. Kindly, intellectual  (a Sanskrit scholar and author) and a good speaker, but that’s it. He was, though, a prime mover in getting a lot of people to consider consciousness. A very useful first step.

What are these ghosts of which I speak? These are not the disembodied  post-death entities floating around still attached to the earth that we consider in the West, but ghosts as Tibetan Buddhists see them. They are projections of the people, attachments we all have to what we identify as ourselves, our ego, our beliefs about ourselves, of past suffering and trauma, memories, of feelings of longing and desire. 

It's very interesting to know that in Traditional Chinese Medicine acupuncture, they speak of ghost points. These are thirteen specific acupuncture points designed to treat disturbances of the mind, trauma, psychological blocks, addictions, sleep disturbances, and the like – recognizing that the matters of the mind are found in our bodies. Ghosts materialize literally in ourselves.

The work, then, is not to identify with the ghosts but to recognize that they are there, and there and there. But we are more than ghosts. We are becoming awareness.

Looking for the Self by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

April 2026

I’d just entered the water at South Beach, South Fremantle and saw a man with a metal detector scouring the seabed. I asked him what sort of things he finds and he said, rings and coins. He paused, and then said that  he has  yet to find himself. I said something along the lines of, “Just keep on looking.” Naturally this conversation got me thinking, once again, about life and coming to know oneself. After all, it’s all a bit of a mystery.

Do we ever find ourselves? What are we referring to when we ask the question? Is there a thing called ‘self’ or, maybe, it in the searching that we are a self? 

C. G. Jung, the founder of Analytical Psychology,  called the process of discovering the self, individuation. But is that a thing? Let’s examine more closely what he was referring to. For Jung, individuation was the process of becoming a self-actualized person, distinct from the collective psychology of society (family and the broader community), distinct from what he called ‘the collective unconscious’. It was the process of becoming conscious. 

It is interesting that Jung’s concept actually doesn’t refer to the thing called ‘self’ in the way it is often depicted: that is, a thing to be found, as one might find a golden treasure, but a process of growing clarity around the assumptions of community psychology. But this I’m referring to assumptions about gender, race, size, age, social status, money, etc that all communities around the world have about people.

The substance of myths, of which Jungians are very attached to, can lead us up the garden path to misconceptions about the individuation process. And to get caught up in an idea, rather than understand it all as an ongoing process of discovery.  The search for the Holy Grail is a classic example. The Grail is a sacred vessel of legend. It is traditionally thought of as the cup or chalice used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper and used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch Christ's blood at the crucifixion. The image comes from 12th century French literature and is an Arthurian motif symbolizing a, usually unattainable, object of quest, divine grace, or immense power. In other words, it is a symbol of something never to be found, only sought.

The Grail cannot be found because it isn’t a thing; it’s an idea, an image powerful enough to attract us to search for it. All the metal detectors in the world won’t, however, find either the Grail as metal object nor an object called ‘the self’. 

So, what is the purpose of looking? Why bother? Such a question inevitably ties to the purpose of psychotherapy. Yes, for sure, people seek therapy because something in their lives isn’t working, and they are not happy. We can certainly treat symptoms of discontent, but is this enough? The whole school of cognitive behaviour therapy is all about symptom control, and that’s perfectly alright if that’s all a client is interested in. Psychiatry, likewise,   manages symptom control with medication. Most clients, however, in my experience are searching for something much more profound, and I get it. Like the man with the metal detector scouring the sea bed, we want more than a few coins. We search for more. 

Identifying, selecting, deciding, rejecting, sorting, feeling happy about this versus that, and finding comfort and peace within ourselves is part of this process. It’s also sorting through family and cultural expectations about what constitutes a good life versus how I feel about it and why do I search for more? There is something very essential, something very fundamental about the drive for our own authenticity. Hindu philosophy has the phrase neti neti (not this, not that) which is a foundational method of self-inquiry used to uncover one’s true self. The method systematically negates all transient illusions of body, mind, thoughts, and emotions to find an unchanging self. What it boils down to is witnessing awareness: we are not this, nor that, but we are that which witnesses. In other words, here, is consciousness which is process, not a thing.

Seeing consciousness as a rolling ball by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. of Counselling, PhD

Dec 2012 

      Imagine a beach ball rolling around in a swimming pool, or in the ocean. The top surface of the ball rolls to below the surface of the water and then rolls right over so that what was previously on top returns there. The ball rocks a bit in relation to small waves, rolling again, rocking once more. Maybe you are imagining you are the rocking ball in the water, maybe you are not. Maybe you can sense the water around you; maybe you cannot sense the water. Maybe…, maybe not? Whether or not you are the ball or are watching the imaginary ball, its rocking and rolling motion in water has a nice calming quality to it. It’s hard to resist.

      This scenario could well be part of a hypnotic induction process where relaxation and yet concentration and focus allow for some profound changes to take  place at a holistic level in the person being hypnotised, but it also serves to illustrate how non-psychodynamic, non-psychoanalytic theorists  are thinking about consciousness. The rolling  ball image contrasts with the image of the iceberg where the conscious mind is illustrated as being the small bit above the surface of the water with the unconscious mind the huge iceberg below. Psychoanalysts, following Freud, think of consciousness in terms of an iceberg; non-psychoanalysts view consciousness more like a ball in water. I much prefer the rolling ball metaphor. There is fluidity here, fluidity and flexibility, and endless shifting change. 

      There are implications for therapy according to how we see consciousness and unconsciousness. For iceberg theorists and therapists, the work is always about ameliorating suffering at an unconscious level, as what is viewed as the conscious mind is only the “tip of the iceberg”, and a symptom is seen as coming out of  “the unconscious”.   “The unconscious” according to those following psychoanalytic thought is an actual place;  a cauldron of psychic energy which fizzes out in uncontrolled bursts in neurotics. I realize I have lots of mixed metaphors here, but they are only metaphors, which we can make up however we please and according to how we see the world.  The cauldron of psychic energy metaphor was that described by Freud (1856-1939), following his interest in the new technology of steam engines. Neurologically, there isn’t an unconscious mind nor a conscious one, but of course, the mind isn’t well accounted for in neurology. That aside, I want to promote consciousness in terms of the rolling ball analogy because I believe it is a very useful one.

     A rolling ball theorist/therapist has a view of consciousness that sees consciousness as that which is visible now and invisible next and visible again. Notice how this analogy does not talk of an unconscious as an entity. Here is a view of consciousness that is visible sometimes and invisible sometimes as well. This is a consciousness of awareness and unawareness that is always relational to actual contexts, memories, and ideas. There is no storage place of  unthought thoughts, but emergent or forgotten thoughts and emotions that under the right circumstances are remembered. These remembered thoughts and emotions and experiences may or may not be objectively or forensically verifiable, but have a veracity for the person involved. It is this sense of truthfulness that matters and can be brought into therapy, or not.

      My work is with what is and what next emerges in my conversation with my client at that time. There is only what presents itself  in our interaction. Insights arise on both sides, for me and for her. These are insights that enrich and expand my client’s awareness, as well as my own. This contrasts with a psychoanalytic approach where the therapist sits in a position of power and decision working with what they decide is important. The client’s input is restricted to what the therapist considers important, just as the image of a solid iceberg (clearly not one melting under the impact of climate change) restricts an understanding of what consciousness is actually capable of: in this view, fixed and inflexible.

      The rolling ball view of consciousness has changed how therapy is done substantially and it has also changed how clinical hypnosis is practiced, just as a matter of interest. No longer a swinging watch on a chain, no longer a “look into my eyes,” no longer “you are going deeper and deeper,” no longer a maestro controlling a patient; instead there is now a gentle collaborative process with a recognition that the client will hear what is important to them and make meaning according to their own experience, that a good hypnotist and therapist will change the course of a therapeutic session according to what is reported by the client and what is observed as present by the therapist. Hypnosis and other forms of  non-psychoanalytic psychotherapy becomes a nurturing and change making process. 

     What emerges in therapy and hypnosis can be extraordinary and a powerful generator of change at  a habit reducing level, the level of psychological and physical pain, for managing obsessive behaviours, for lack of self confidence, and a number of other debilitating issues, as well as bringing a greater number of choices to every day life. The beauty of the rolling, rocking ball in water analogy is that we can choose, or not choose, what we want to change.

Copyright @ 3013 Dr Elizabeth McCardell