We all have ancestors
And they're still about
We have ancestors. All of us do. If you didn't, you wouldn't be reading this.
Love them or hate them, your ancestors are the reason you're here. Their DNA is the reason for your body, for the complexes that make up your mind or personality, and more.
Ancient wisdom has it that we exist on multiple planes, including the astral plane, which is where ancestors continue to be after they leave the earth plane, ever ready to contribute what they can to ensure the wellbeing of their progeny and help them evolve past their ancestors' own failings and mistakes - if they're asked.
The materiality of our current age and the effects of the brutal colonialist tactics, predicated on the eradication of indigenous cultures globally as a matter of policy, have led to a forgetting of the ways and knowledge of the past among people who identify as indigenous; ways and knowledge that from time immemorial included practices and rituals aimed at sustaining the memory of their ancestors. The ritualized remembrance of ancestors rendered the ancestors powerful enough to be able to intervene on behalf of their progeny in this physical life in the form of miraculous solutions to problems, protection from malevolence and the sharing of multi-generational wisdom for sound decision-making, community-building, and sustenance, etc., on account of their being empowered, energized and 'fed' in the ancestral realm by the rituals conducted by their communities.
Some of us still remember
They're not just legends
For those who are today so far removed from their indigenous roots or who have so lost their ancestral awareness that they have forgotten these things entirely, this all sounds far-fetched.
Yet, for those of us who are still close enough to our own peoples' turning point from indigeneity to this homogeneous, soulless slurp we're forced to take in today that hides behind the misnomer 'global culture', we remember the impact that our families' ancestors were known to have had in our communities, the difference in the atmosphere you'd feel when you were in the city versus when you were in the village, and how the presence of the ancestors was strongly palpable in the latter. Even today, traces of this palpability still remain in places, though experiences of it grow fewer and farther between.
Perhaps you've heard the stories of some sacred places that by a sheer spiritual force, rejected the encroachment of the foreigner, leading to breakdowns of machinery, confusion in the rank and file of his minions, or even mysterious deaths amongst the profane (i.e. the uninitiated) as they would set foot where they had no business being. Perhaps you are aware of how the spirits of the ancestors were made to lose their force or power within their communities by way of some sellouts from among their own descendants who chose to willfully desecrate the sacred spaces of their communities or to insidiously participate in loosening of the grip of generational awareness (condescendingly called 'superstition' by the foreigner) on the minds and hearts of entire communities by aiding the foreigner in proselytizing their own people to the colonizer's beliefs and agenda; said awareness that had comprised the channel of communication between the living and the dead, the physical and the astral ancestral realms for eons, and that allowed the realms to remain in contact and the ancestral lineages to endure, unbroken.
By subterfuge, coercion, hook or crook, the seed of amnesia was planted in the invaded indigenous communities by the colonizers and it took firm root - this step being a known prerequisite to the invading foreigner's being able to have his way and to safely build a dam across a sacred river, raze a sacred monolith to the ground, or transverse sacred lands with his railways, for example. This is because, as the people remembered them, the ancestors lived on. And as the ancestors lived on they protected their own. Conversely, as a community's ancestors began to be forgotten, their progeny became exposed and lay vulnerable, and in time, ruin of their society ensued.
The big switcheroo
Who moved my ergegore?
Disclaimer
I mean no disrespect towards anyone's chosen religious practice. I wish in the most objective way I can to illustrate the dynamics at play when it comes to understanding where we have found ourselves, especially as indigenous or once-indigenous, neo-colonized, or once-colonized, peoples and the things that keep us stuck.
By way of mandatory education and forced religious conversion propagated and perpetuated by the colonizer, much of that which was known and had been known by previous generations - including the harmless rituals that my own people used in my own village to remember our ancestors - was forced out of the minds and hearts of the following generations. In my family's case, with the white colonizer only having set foot in my land around the turn of the 20th Century, this purge started from my grandfather's generation (My grandfather was the first teacher in our entire community), continuing through my father's and proceeding to this day. Indigenous knowledge was squeezed out of my father's generation, whipped out of them, sang out of them, and prayed out of them, leaving a dearth of spiritual power in its wake.
The proselytizing foreigner's religion, while curious in its form to the indigenous mind, and giving him a sense of acceptance by the colonizer as a 'brother' or 'sister' in fellowship, just gave him or her a mouthful of intellectual chewing gum, doing nothing for their soul. If anything it killed their soul and gave them a mental spirituality. It took away something quintessential and offered up nothing substantial in return. Religion turned the indigenous man and woman away from the acknowledgment and remembrance of their own ancestors and pointed them toward the acknowledgment and perpetual remembrance of a long-deceased - but, it is said, resurrected and now ever living - replacement 'older brother', along with his entire lineage of ancestors made up of a long, written list of 'who begat whoms'.
Simple rituals that involved, for example, among my people, randomly remembering one's ancestor by stopping by a ceremonial multi-forked stick planted firmly in the ground, offering a small token of one's choosing, and talking to them habitually as one left for the hunt or was arriving home from any other business, or 'just because' were vilified and dubbed demonic by the foreigner. They were banned, and, in short order, were replaced by stiffly formal and mechanistically scheduled gatherings called "going to church"; gatherings in man-made buildings in which they were to worship an imposed replacement ancestor in a pomp-filled affair accompanied by the singing of songs, self-deprecating kneeling down, the talking to the foreigner's replacement ancestor with one's eyes closed, the repeated hearing of some exalted (read initiated), authorized person tell stories about this replacement ancestor's virtues, miraculous powers, and his promise of a better life for all who would choose to abandon their own ancestry and 'spiritually' attach themselves to his, not forgetting the guilt-driven mandatory collection of a tithe or an offering - only in the form of money - in an offering bowl as a way of expressing thankfulness.
Week after week, as one's actual physical ancestors were systematically caused to be forgotten, shunned, and/or disrespected, and their power and influence diminished, the power of his new 'other' replacement 'spiritual ancestor' was rising exponentially, as he was remembered, revered, and worshiped. And we all what happens with egregores, don't we?
A side note about egregores
Egregore (also spelled egregor; from French égrégore, from Ancient Greek ἐγρήγορος, egrēgoros 'wakeful') is an occult concept representing a distinct non-physical entity that arises from a collective group of people. - From Wikipedia entry
"the egregore, an autonomous psychic entity created by a collective group mind. An egregore is sustained by belief, ritual, and sacrifice and relies upon the devotion of a group of people, from a small coven to an entire nation, for its existence. An egregore that receives enough sustenance can take on a life of its own, becoming an independent deity with powers its believers can use to further their own spiritual advancement and material desires." - https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Egregores/Mark-Stavish/9781620555774
With the missionaries' introduction to indigenous communities of a foreign god - the invader's 'God', whose identity, interestingly, was draped over whatever name the missionary found was in use at the time that was equivalent to that local community's concept of 'creator' or 'supreme deity', e.g. in the case of my culture, he was called 'Leza' - a powerful foreign egregore was introduced into them that began to block the once-free-flowing energies of the ancestral realms, which had been a part of the fabric of the life of the indigenous community. Still, the ancestors didn't leave. They never left. They remained where they have always been - present in the Astral plane. But, owing to the shift of conscious focus and the acceptance and ritualistic, regular worship by their own descendants of the powerful egregores of a foreign god -Yahweh/Jehovah/The Lord (the "jealous god") - and his son 'Yeshua/Jesus/The Christ' ("The way, the truth, the life") - the ancestors got cut off, and their ability to express themselves in and influence the physical realm as they had done for eons before was curtailed. The diverted consciousness of their progeny has rendered them less and less potent and is the cause of the ancestors' reduced involvement in the day-to-day life of their communities and descendants today. Your ancestors have been essentially been sent into a proverbial state of limbo because you have forgotten about them.
And now we're lost... Or are we?
As a result of these onslaughts, and because of our having lost our connection to our own ancestors, our sense of identity as indigenous peoples has gone into free-fall. We didn't know who we were anymore. Think about it. Before this shift you knew your generations. You likely knew the identity of your father's father's father's father and could access his ancestral energy or wisdom at any time; even if you didn't know him by name, because you'd have been properly introduced at birth or at a later initiation, you still knew that he knew you as the son (or daughter) of that son of that son (or daughter), and that he was ever present to support you. You were, as part of a remembering lineage, supported by its remembered members from across multiple generations. You could go into a ritual space and call that support in, any time, and your ancestors could do amazing things for you in the astral that would show up in the physical plane. But since the severing of ancestral links has been all but universalized these days, even though one might know his dad's name, and maybe her grandfather's (perhaps their great grandfather or great grandmother's too, if they're lucky) once these individuals have passed on from the physical plane, Good luck, you're on your own.
The thread of continuity - carried forward in time through ritual - that once upon a time anchored the pubescent and youthful energies of each indigenous community's new generations and directed them into a productive, generative flow as the expression of the continuation of the ancestral lineages of their parents- was lost. The sense of a the grounded maturation and responsibility that followed on the heels of a youth's initiation into adulthood - and with it, the communion of the ancestors - ground to a screeching halt.
The indigenous person's daily, hourly, minute-by-minute awareness of their ancestors - those who had come before them - that had been a way of life to them before invasion and colonization, gave way to indoctrination. Day after day, week after week, year after year. the foreigner's agent - a priest, a pastor, a teacher - in the name of bringing enlightenment, taught them about an Abraham, a David, a Joseph, and many others of lineages alien to their own, perpetuating the illusion that indigenous people, having been forcefully severed from their own ancestral lineage could, somehow, miraculously, be grafted into an unknown, physically dubious family's spiritual lineage like genetic orphans, and there, in 'the bossom of Abraham' find peace ,and find their identity again.
Regardless of clever word play, indoctrination or forced amnesia, every man or woman's own ancestors continue to be at the core of their identity. DNA is DNA. Lineage is lineage. It's not a mental construct and is non-transferable. Our DNA bears testament to our actual lineage forever, and so long as this remains, there is hope for every man or woman who wishes to know who they truly are and live as that.
DNA, the unbreakable link to your eternal
ancestral lineage
Why reconnection makes sense
Remembering who you really and truly are because of who you are descended from is possible. All the info is locked in that wonderful body of yours, in that amazing thing called DNA. You may never be able to speak of specific names and tell specific stories about specific ancestors, but the kind of remembering we're talking about - and that leads to a reconnection with your ancestral lineage as a whole - does not require that level of detail.
Every one of your ancestors - over millions and millions of years - has deposited something of theirs into the future expression of their ongoing life as perpetuated through their progeny; this expression at this point in time and space being you, whoever else or whatever else you may think you are. Their individual deposits may be in the form of a smile, a quirky laugh, a mole on your butt; or something deeper like an ability, a knack for something, or a grand mission. Their collective deposit is the unique multidimensional being I'm addressing and have been addressing throughout as 'you'.
Being the wonderfully complex beings that we are as humans, it is amazing how little of what makes us, us, in the here and now, has anything to do with our own contribution. You didn't choose what kind of body you'd have, how you'd wink (if you even can), whether you'd be a perfect 10 or just perfect. It's all on your ancestors. All of it. And whether you will come into the fullness of the expression of your being in this life, and be or do what you're actually here to be or do, likewise, is something you cannot - with your finite view of time, your skewed view of yourself, and your very limited access to your own rich inner resources (it's like a virtual inexhaustible platinum mine deep in there) - accomplish without some help from those who know you better than you know yourself. And who could possibly know you better than those of whom you consist?
See why it makes sense to reconnect with the ancestors? They have the blueprints. They formulated this incarnation of you. They can help execute the plan for its successful completion. Your ancestors are ever available - in the astral plane - and ever ready, should you find a way to make your intention to work with them clear, to anchor you in your true 'you-ness', to grant you the benefit of their age-spanning wisdom, and even fight battles for you in the astral if necessary, all with visible, palpable effects you will know and feel in the physical.
And, unlike any individual found on some random list of Judaic ancestral names recorded in an old book of unknown authorship, your ancestors have skin in the game. You're the skin. If they don't show up they look bad. If they look bad, all the generations are put to shame. And out there in the astral, that's an eternal shame.
So, naturally, it stands to reason that they are eager to reconnect. If you are ready, they are too.
Isn't it time you stopped running from your own peeps?
Register for the Webinar here
Join the resurgence of ancestral knowledge
That's why I invite you to explore the topic of ancestral reconnection with me.
I'm not claiming to be some big expert on the subject. All I know is that when I stopped running away from my ancestors everything changed. When I started acknowledging them, everything changed. When I started listening to them more, everything changed.
And it can change for you too.
I'll be sharing my story in a 1-hour-long webinar on the date you may be aware of it you came here by way of some kind of communication I put out. If this is how you got here and you wish to attend, just click on the RSVP button.
I'll also be sharing:
-
Understanding the Ancestral Realm
-
Overcoming the fear of the unknown
-
Embracing the reality of our time here
-
Setting up an ancestral shrine
-
Communicating with your ancestors
-
Tapping into ancestral resources for balanced and abundant living
If you happened to get here by chance, though there's no such thing you know, then you might want to consider dropping me an email so I can let you know when I'll be conducting the next one.
Either way, I look forward to spending time with you exploring this topic.
See you soon!