Honoring the ancestors is a lost practice. Our ancestors send us forth with wounds and gifts. This is an exploration of how we can begin the process of healing and learn to use the gifts we have been given.
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| The Ancient Ones |
Lets first get an idea of what exactly an ancestor is. Our relatives are people that are still living. Those that have crossed over are our ancestors. We have our blood, DNA ancestors, but what about our soul ancestors? What about the people who were our relatives in another life time. We have our body, blood, DNA ancestors and then we have our soul, spirit, past life ancestors. And yet still, what about the people that we have a soul agreement with that parent us in this life? The people that adopted us. Those relatives.... we can even have ancestors from those people.
We are all related. What comes to mind when you hear that? For me it means not just humans. It includes animals, plants, creepy crawlers and star beings. These are all our relatives. These are also our ancestors. From a science perspective, we emerged from the sea by following the plant life on to land. From a spirit perspective, if we can have a soul family in human form, why not in plant or animal form? Why not in rock or star form?
In traditional societies, how we are connected is very important. Even in what we in America call "The Old Country". In my Sicilian heritage when I meet someone who's family came from Sicily the first thing we establish is rapport. We want to know if we are related and if so how? Its a connection that is important to us. But sadly, we as a culture have forgotten our brothers and sisters the four legged beings, the plant beings, the rock beings and so forth. This is not as important to us anymore. When honoring our ancestors, they are included. We have been in contact with all of the elements and all of the beings on grandmother earth since the beginning of time. And we are the dreams of our ancestors. We carry both the DNA link to the past and the Spirit link to the past.
When we came through our mothers we brought with us all of the pain and grief that was experienced for life times. But we also brought the gifts and talents and inner knowing too. Have you ever watched a small child and thought, wow, this kid remembers! We are learned into forgetting. But our memories can be jogged and we can heal the past for future generations. Spirit and healing goes beyond time and space. One of the gifts we come through with is our intuition. This is an inner knowing.
When I was a child my mother had a pair of earrings. I adored those earrings. They were silver and I coveted them. She kept them in her jewelry box. I would take them out and hold them up to my ears. I had to have them. She never wore them, they stayed safely in her jewelry box. One day when I was about 15 she gave them to me. They had been a gift from my God Father. He had been a merchant marine and he brought them back for her from Egypt. Forty years later, I still have them and I wear them at least once a week. Way back then, I was having memories but didn't know it. Whether it was a DNA memory from my ancestors before they arrived on Sicily or if it was a Soul memory of a past life. I have always had a connection to North Africa. Even as a teen who knew nothing of the Continent of Africa much less the countries or cultures there. Fast forward a few years. I was working at a health food store in San Francisco. The owner of the store had a yoga and belly dance studio upstairs and the employees could take one free class a week. I chose belly dancing. The first time I heard the middle eastern music I felt like I had come home. Another memory. I continued to dance and learn about the cultures in North Africa especially Egypt over the years. There have been many more ah ha moments over the years. My point is when we are exposed to another culture and it resonates with us, it could be an ancestor is sending a gift.
These gifts awaken our memories on either a spirit or cellular level. Don't ignore it. Maybe this is an awakening for a spiritual practice you didn't know you had access to. Many modern people are resonating with traditional and indigenous spiritual practices. I believe this is our ancestors waking us up. They are guiding us to carry the medicine forward. They are guiding us to use this medicine to heal the patterns that do not serve us anymore. We can do this for future generations. The ancients are calling us to wake up.
