What we bring into the world of the noncorporeal is a degree of awareness and brightness, darkness and texture. Just as we experience spirit as the prickling of hairs down our spine, and as we will at times feel them as a cold spot, the spirit world of Okami absolutely feels and responds to us in return.
They are, in many respects, a more aspected and at times more or less nuanced version of a thing, like a thought taken to a particular extreme or an emotion experienced with great intensity and fervor. In this, its a little bit like Uncle Iroh meeting Korra in Legend Of.
When she, as a child, meets this old man we know as a peaceful liberator of his own, she's confronted with just how much harm that could do in that space. She was, in no uncertain terms, capable of changing and redefining their world...annnnnd it turns out that spirit can do the same in return.
So as you're sitting with, feeling, moving through and using big emotions, let them transform! Use it as an offering and make a point of digging into the harmony of it all. If you do, you'll find the stilled river of the self begins to move, as it cannot help but not.
-T's system (group effort) ;)