by Tanis Helliwell
Each of us has many kinds of ancestors, extending from our physical ancestors to those in our past lives, and to our original ancestry before we became the humans we know ourselves as today. Our ancestors are not only in the past, but are continuously present, here and now, influencing us in our daily lives—if we let them! In our western culture, lack of use and belief has broken the link between us and our ancestors
Ancestral memories reveal themselves when something in our inner or outer life triggers them. This could be a physical problem that cannot be cured by doctors or psychological pain that cannot be cured by therapy. Pieces of the puzzle line up and you will begin to see a pattern emerging. But all is not revealed at once. A complex puzzle requires your willing participation to bring the complete picture into focus. This is how the unconscious becomes known. As you participate in the journey, more light is shed on the image until you see it whole.
Epigenetics
We are at the beginning of the new science of epigenetics, which suggests that wounds we and our ancestors have suffered alter our genes. They leave molecular scars as memories that adhere to our DNA and get transferred to our descendants. Epigenetics lends credence to how alcoholism, sexual abuse, even genocide of our Indigenous peoples gets passed down. But hold on. We also inherit positive, emotional experiences in the same way, so, if we have received love and support from our family, this gets passed along as well as the other gifts and talents that we may have inherited from our physical ancestors. Talents in music, mathematics, having a strong and healthy body, for example. And the more we honor these gifts we have received from our ancestors the more fully these gifts are activated for our use in our present life. All ancestors gifts are available to us NOW.
Heal ancestral wounds
Let’s take a look at the importance of this quest. If you heal your ancestral wounds, even at the family level, this positively impacts all levels of the wounding, which can occur at the cultural, religious, or national level. For example, many children of parents who went through wars or residential schools have the same patterns of fear and wounding as their parents and grandparents. Other families carry the wounds of scarcity, divorce, sexual abuse, money or love issues and our ancestors help us to heal these to free both them and us to live the beauty of life fully. If the child can heal the wound, it rewinds through space and time to heal the ancestral wound. If you have difficulty believing this, you need to recognize that time, as we know it, does not exist. In the astral world where the ancestors reside, where we go in dreams and in between lives, past and future exist in the present. Again, this means when we heal our wounds, we heal these patterns not only for our descendants, but also for our ancestors. It is our responsibility and privilege to do this for our descendants, our ancestors, and ourselves.
Of course, we always have free will to do this or not. But when we heal a wound in our family, the effects are much greater than we imagine as it contributes to the healing of our tribe and nation. Just as our physical ancestors give us our physical inheritance, our spiritual ancestors work with our soul to assist us in fulfilling our purpose, not only in this life, but in all lives. As we honor our spiritual ancestors we reclaim soul fragments from past lives that we can then reintegrate back into the psychic flow that empowers us in our present life.
Receiving ancestral wisdom
The importance of the ancestors lies not only in the wisdom they offer, but also in the journey necessary to acquire it. It crafts us to make us worthy of receiving their wisdom; conversely, receiving their wisdom increases our worthiness. Ancestors reveal themselves piece by piece, letting us digest each morsel before adding another bit for us to consume. And like any tasty dish, once we start, we want to eat it all. Although we may not always be aware of their work, the ancestors are master strategists for our good in service to creating a conscious world.
Achieving our purpose
To fully achieve our purpose, we are called to unlock the doors to all parts of our unconscious. And the ancestors are here to help us. They often lead us in small, subtle ways, such as becoming aware of synchronicities. For example, my stepdaughter and my mother have the same birthday, and my adopted stepson shares the same birthday as his father. Another way ancestors nudge us is through recurring patterns. Do we marry…sometimes more than once…a person like our mother or father? Do we re-meet people later in life that we have known earlier? Do we fail whenever we do a particular task and always succeed whenever we do another task? If we pay attention to these “coincidences”, they will reveal ancestral links we need to explore. As we open up to these concepts, we travel more freely in the higher frequencies of the astral world and synchronicities increase, which gives us clarity about our destiny and what we are being asked to contribute to the web of life—now and eternally.
