This post is completely out of the blue and rather different from all my other posts...

My friend B has never come across to me as an incredibly religious or spiritual sort of person. But today he mentioned that he felt as if a bad spirit had been following him of late. I cannot even begin to comprehend or understand what it might feel like to be followed by a "bad spirit" but i will agree with him that recently, his life has been dogged by rather negative happenings and events.

Having had enough, he's off to get his soul "cleansed" at a temple and it dawned on me whether ghosts and spirits are really just a metaphorical symbolization of something of the mind. Could it be that something was weighing heavily on his mind and heart that it manifested in the feeling of a metaphorical ghost or spirit? or could it be that he actually felt a strange eery presence about him?

I then enquired as to whether such ghosts and spirits came about as punishment for having done something bad, or whether it was just something that mischievous spirits did when they were bored. Of course, i wasn't met with a definite answer, but then the whole concept of afterlife and reincarnation came into my mind.

I wonder if there is really life after death, and whether those poor "bad" spirits are those that have been left behind in a world not quite of earthly proportions, but not quite the afterlife - sort of like the world that the character played by Patrick Swayze in Ghost existed. Some people like to think that there is a greater purpose and a more meaningful world after life on earth, and some just refuse to believe that an earthly death is the end all of all existence.

I'm not sure what i believe in, but I do sometimes feel (and more recently of late) that I have a guardian angel up there who has been looking after me the last few months. My little prayers and wishes have been granted, and it feels that there might be someone helping me out up there. I'm neither a religious person or a spiritual one, but one thing i do hope for is that perhaps my little guardian angel does exist (and I hope that it's that someone that looked after me when i was little, and continues to look after me from above)...