It is extremely critical today that we step up to heal the wounds of our ancestors. They are crying out to us to help them help us. Their stories are in our blood and bones. Their voices are in our DNA. Their lives are reflected in our personal and collective histories and in current events.
Every triumph and every challenge in our lives and across the planet shows us what they have done and what their dreams have been. We can see their failures, accomplishments, loves, errors, and joys. Their every act, every thought, whether peaceful and violent, loving or hating, has created a vibrational frequency that reverberates along the destiny lines of families, communities, groups, nations, and, ultimately, across the planet.
It goes even further biologically. If we are lucky enough or diligent enough to trace our ancestors backwards and then also imagine them forwards in linear time, the roots of our family tree expand exponentially. In the past, there are great, and great-great, and great-great-great, and on— grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles. Fanning out into the existing and potential future, there are our own children, aunts, uncles, and cousins upon cousins—first, second, third, fourth, and on.
At some point, as this tree reaches deep into the past and into the future, eventually, we are all related. It does not matter what religion, culture, race, religion, or any other marker of identity or geographic location, there is no doubt that all of humanity are relatives. Even western sciences has postulated that we come from a single woman whose remains were discovered in Africa called “mitochondrial Eve.”
This is why if we are to dream a new earth of peace and unity in diversity, it is imperative to tend to the unhealed wounds and grief of our ancestors. Without it, we will be doomed to compulsively repeat the same traumas over and over again. This is a biological, psychological, and energetic fact.
A physical wound is a cut or gash on or in the body that is a result of some impact whether intentional or unintentional. In a psychological sense, a wound can result from two possible sources—accidental or deliberate. A car accident or an argument with a loved one can create a distorted imprint in our mind and emotions. This then is mirrored in our energy body—that luminous garment, or aura, that surrounds and interpenetrates our physical form.
Because what is traumatic to one person may not be traumatic to another, when we speak of personal and ancestral wounds, there is no hierarchy of experience. Yet, we can probably all agree that more agregious forms of violence such as war, genocide, slavery, lynchings, murder, sexual assault, oppression, poverty, kidnapping, and more along the spectrum are highly likely to be traumatic—not just to individuals, but to whole groups, and even to humanity, as a whole.
It is sadly and generally true, as well, that the more sustained the event and the more chaos, injury, and assault is involved in a traumatic experience, the more likely it is that there will be no true healing for whole groups of individuals and people. When there has been a traumatic event or situation that is longstanding over months, years, decades, and even centuries, indeed, the possibility for the transmutation of the wounds is undermined. Unless the causes and conditions creating the external traumatic stressor is addressed systemically and deep change is made, the possibility for escape and transformation is continually undermined.
In westernized civilization, there has been a longstanding lack of appreciation for and understanding of the neurophysiological, psychological, and energetic impact of violence, even while violent and abusive behaviors have been unconsciously and consciously repeated and condoned. More even than that, healing has been misunderstood, undervalued, disdained, and ignored. People are afraid of admitting they still sustain negative impacts from difficult experiences and they are even shamed if they do.
What is the result? In the energetic, vibrational dimension of an individual, family, or group, an unhealed, untransmuted experience of suffering can be passed on through destiny lines. Our behaviors, thoughts, attitudes about self, life, and the world are powerfully affected by the conditioning we receive from our family, community, and society. And within the branching genealogies of whole families and communities, untranmuted wounds and grief become like a slowly developing poison that will ultimately breakthrough in mental and physical illnesses and addictions. It creates profound suffering in families and communities. It leads to cultures and even a world rampant with narcissism, suspicion, oppression, violence, and abuse.
We are seeing this unfold here, now today.
Nor is this just a biological or psychological reality. To humanity’s and the planet’s peril does the scientific and medical community refuse to accept the existence of a vibrational field through which experience, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are passed down within families and groups.
This energetic dimension of the cosmos is real. It is through this multidimensional, holographic matrix that we can not only effect powerful, transgenerational healing, but we can thus contribute to the creation of a truly peaceful world.
So what can we do? On an individual level, we can each seek out energy healing. Our own challenges and traumas are the doorway into transmuting transgenerational wounds. We can do sacred ceremonies and shamanic journeying with the intention to reach into any community’s, nation’s or humanity’s ancestral grid and bring in powerful healing energies.
When a critical mass of us pair energetic and spiritual medicine to the suffering of prior generations with actions in the outer world, we can literally have a nuclear effect blasting humanity out of the centrifugal force of the bloody stream of unending violence. Further, we then must also integrate this crucial, sacred with outer action in the world: volunteering to work for organizations seeking to ameliorate violence and build peace or writing an inspiring book or starting a spiritually conscious and socially progressive organization. Or working in politics. More voices are needed in government who understand the multidimensional nature of reality and who are speaking to the deeper causes and conditions ancestrally and systemically underneath the problems in our communities, cities, states.
The ancestors are increasingly calling to us to step up. They no longer want us to continue to do harm and be harmed. They want their wounds and the resulting grief to be healed. They want to be part of building a world that is abundant and fruitful for their grandchildren many generations hence.
And so it will be.
Rachel Mann, PhD is a sacred activist, social scientist, healer, and spiritual mentor. Through her Institute for Sacred Peacemaking, she provides an intensive 1-1 Mentoring Program and offers courses and retreats supporting passionate individuals with a vision to integrate the wisdom gained through their own healing and spiritual study into creative service to others as a healer/therapist, spiritual teacher, writer, artist, and/or socially conscious and spiritually awake entrepreneur. Through consulting and programs, she also provides businesses, NGOs, and nonprofits wishing to expand and anchor into the sacred values of positive inclusion, compassion, and a renewed, spiritual ethics with consulting and programs. Find out more at rachelmannphd.com.
