Ancestral Healing
In recent generations it has become very clear that we have forgotten who we are. Our ancestral stories and oral histories have been thrown out the window in favour of Netflix. Yet if you were really to ask? Or rummage around in the family history book what might we find there? In fact maybe that is why you are watching Netflix? Maybe it’s a bit to difficult to embrace our origins stories.
Are we uncomfortable yet?
Ancestral healing is pertinent right now as we sit here trying to figure out the rights and wrongs of the past. Where the ancestors might sit in that? What insights they might share from their perspectives if they could share their stories? What might they say about slavery, indentured servants, colonialism and/or capitalism. It’s probably as deeply personal to them as it is too all of us right now. I’m sure if there were a round table there would be a plethora of opinions playing out, where most may not even be heard. So here we are wondering what needs to be shared, released of embraced from the past in order to heal the future?
As we attempt to understand how our ancestral experience has informed our own. Just because ‘his-story’ got away with bad behaviour doesn’t mean that it’s impacts aren’t still felt in very deeply personal ways. It’s a bit disturbing to finally realise that your nice life still costs somebody else something. Whether in the here and now, in the historical and possibly even both. Shocker. You see our lives are unsustainable built on the physical and emotional labour of less ‘advanced’ economies. We need people to stay poor and dependent on the capitalist system in order for us to be safe. At this moment in time we are barely able to reconcile our current sins, misalignment and exploitative habits whether it be in the personal or the planetary. Now we’re being asked to fix the past with no idea how to fix the future. Here in the now the very presence we ascribe to being fully alive.
Our systems are inherited from the people that came before us that were both unable and/or unwilling to make the changes possible to live in and equitable and fair society. Systemic racism, perpetuates that trauma as does all systemic abuse. It stems from the point at which we drew our attention away from the human story that accompanies all our goods, services and even cultural practices.
We also inherit our DNA and within it unresolved inter-generational trauma. If you are the descendent of slaves it would be almost impossible for you to not to carry the inter-generational pain of that trauma in your very DNA. If you are finding yourself being branded in with privilege you’re probably wondering what did I do other than inherit the sins of the father? Well exactly.
Sometimes it blows my mind how disconnected we are from our own ancestry much less anything else. That somehow just because something happened hundreds of years ago we don’t have to ability to make amends. That because we ourselves did not commit the crime or weren’t involved in the wrong doing we can’t take steps to rectify those misdemeanors on behalf of something as abstract as universal balance. Isn’t it what we are meant to be doing anyways even in our most intimate relationships. The knowledge and acceptance that we often get it wrong and that we are willing to make it right. It’s the very essence of grace.
I call bullshit on that idea; That what’s done is done, and we just have to move on.
Right at the center of the conundrum lies systemic trauma that somehow we aren’t responsible for the wrongs of this world. That we are not complicit in allowing those wrongs to continue. That making amends seems to be a weird concept from another time and place. That something has gone so wrong for so long that nobody is responsible for fixing it in anyway and we should all just carry on as normal. This is literally the world we live in, racism isn’t my responsibility, the environment isn’t my responsibility, sexism isn’t my responsibility. Response-ability would anybody like to jump into some Polyvagal Theory here. Fight, flight freeze, fawn and I’ll add in my own face-off. FFS. Being unable to respond in a trauma response. Something I read only yesterday; ‘Just because you ignore the facts doesn’t change the facts.
It’s been extraordinary watching all the video footage of the racists online. Getting all triggered by the burning of flags, the destruction of statues and the uprising of the oppressed.
We know that attention and intention has the ability to alter and change things. Imagine that you became present in your life, turned off Netflix and just witnessed for while. You don’t even have to watch the news you can talk to your neighbours if you like? What’s going on. Event though your story is not my story how might I be able to to help you? How might we be able to fix this. In what ways can we help one another.
I wonder what The Great Council or The Karmic Board might say about all of this? As they sit round the fire observing this potent period in human history. I can imagine all the people that have come before us rubbing their hands together and reaching for the popcorn. How are they going to handle this? How are they going to wipe clean my wrongdoing. As the whole of humanity pick up the collective failings of his-story.
No matter which side of the fence you are sitting on right now, you got here. You just happen to be alive for this experience. It’s an extraordinary time to be alive. And yes you were sent to be better, do better, live better than anybody else before you.
I am the only one of me in the world. However there is a chance my soul is shared. View all posts by kimberleen
Originally published at https://thelifedoula.com on June 19, 2020.
