Softening Cords of Ancestry
“The nature of God is a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumferece is nowhere.”
Plotinus (The Essential Mystics, Poets, Saints & Sages)
Note: I have been writing this piece for several weeks now but am reminded of the importance of dialogue on systemic racism as yet more black men are murdered by white people in power (and privilege). Oppression, subjugation, and racism must be seen and acknowledged: we cannot stand on the sidelines and say “I’m not racist so this does not impact me.” Think again. It does. And we each have a duty to stand up for those amongst us who have the least agency- this is a fight that draws a line for you are either an active part of the problem or an active part of the solution (which starts with listening and introspection). I think most police officers, as humans, are drawn to the work out of goodness and the few do not represent the whole, but racism does continue to be a huge problem at all branches of law and government. May we heal. May we fight for our human brothers and sisters in equality. May we embrace diversity at all levels- in humans, in ecology, in our stories, on this complex earth.
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Ancestral cords keep coming up for me in this quarantine time, and also for many friends who meditate, share, deeply investigate, and have decided (by choice or very much not by choice) that the buck stops here so to speak: no more will I complacently live out of the pain patterns in my life only to circle back around to the same lesson again and again; no more will I react as my primary mode of action; no more will I perpetuate my brand of suffering because it’s familiar and therefore comfortable. I just can’t do it anymore.
No matter what it looks like or how it feels to re-live this material to the depth required for it to soften and release my heart, I will do it.
I will put on my bravery hat and gloves (an apt metaphor for this time) and clean out the mental cupboards of the dust and the cobwebs and give everything a good scrub at the mirror of the heart. So what if my bravery hat falls off once in a while or tilts sideways on my face, covering my eyes? I will correct course and continue to learn. Let’s call this spring cleaning for the ancestral soul that lives on in my body.
What are ancestral patterns? On an individual scale these are patterns of thinking, behaving, and living in the world that don’t feel like they come from you but that you see in those relationships that are quite close- in your parents, siblings, family members, and back through the stories of your relatives and their histories. On a large scale these are the patterns of tribalism that have shaped every conflict, war, and act of racism that has ever been committed.
These patterns can be subtle but often they are not- they are usually the huge waves that rock and push through us and guide how we relate to our children, our partners, our closest relationships.
If you have made it to this point in history as a human being I think it’s safe to say that your family line has suffered some serious trauma. War, slaughter, mass human displacement and exodus have impacted all of us to some fair degree or another through the thousands of years of human interaction on this little green planet, and especially in the last couple hundred years. The stories in the mind are different, but the pain in the heart is the same.
We are all in search of our own agency.
Agency to have access to education, jobs, healthy food, healthcare, and opportunities. In short, in order to become a mature human adult we must have our feet on the ground and secure walls around us and a working hearth and home. You must become someone first before you can become no-One.
Humans are deeply tribal. One the bright side of tribalism there is a dedication to family, to community, to sharing amongst friends. On the dark side of tribalism there is racism and all of the violent fallout of that dark, terrible notion that you’re either in my tribe or you’re out.
All of the problems people in the United States have with our current President Trump actually stem from his insane and uninvestigated tribalism. People who support him consider themselves as part of the tribe and the seeds of violence toward others (insert a really huge list of “other” here- Democrats, women in power, brown and black peoples, the Chinese, the deep state, etc), well those seeds of other-ism flourish.
If you look at the systemic racism today in the world you can see that tribalism and unconscious pain-ancestry is at the root of this phenomenon. Fiercely tribal peoples have always singled out others to war against, commit genocide upon, cleanse, and subvert.
When you have a different appearance, language, cultural flavor, and religion from your neighbor then the markings of tribe are quite clear. But this is not how tribalism and ancestral pain systems often work. Yes we go after the obvious other, but we also go after the almost-identical-but-slightly-different other.
Hitler persecuted German Jews first- people who were culturally the same, spoke the same language, attended the same schools, fought and died for their flag in World War 1 (only 20 years prior), considered themselves successful members of society- doctors, artists, businesspeople.
The Rwandan Genocide was committed by one neighbor group upon another neighbor group- the Hutus killing the Tutsies en masse, a part of a series of war and death that is a close second to WW2 in numbers and atrocity.
Even the great St. John of the Cross, the Spanish Catholic mystic who was so abused and tortured that he wrote the seminal work “The Dark Night of the Soul,” was abused by the same exact sect of Roman-Catholics, the Carmelites, that he was a part of because of his slightly more austere view of the Carmelite order mission was a hair off (or literally a shoe off) from the rest. The point here is that, sometimes, the closer we are to being similar to one another the more severe we are when faced with our differences. Taking off your shoes (“Decalced”) like St. John of the Cross did was enough to set him apart form his ideological peers.
Don’t think that because you are interested in spirituality and self-inquiry that you do not exhibit your own brand of tribalism, even as a joke or as a subtle slight toward others with whom you do not relate. Spiritual arrogance is yet another form of tribalism even if your markers of inclusivity have to do with consciousness as opposed to race, religion, belief, or sex.
Is it wrong to be deeply tribalistic? Should we blame and “other” those who exhibit those tendencies? If we do are we not simply reinforcing the same pattern? Think about it. Putting down this human trait is the problem that got us there in the first place.
How tightly is it ok to hold on to our individual stories of pain? For some of us the ancestral trauma that we identify with feels very alive and present. I can feel the pain in my father- a male who was raised in the Jewish ghetto in Turkey during and post- World War 2, a dominantly Muslim country. His family came from Galipoli, across the strait from Troy. For 500 years, since the Spanish Inquisition displaced all Sephardic Jews, my father’s tribe of Jews lived in isolation, speaking the same Ladino language of medieval Spain, weaving and fishing and praying in the way of their ancestors. I was raised speaking Ladino with my grandmother, but that’s gone. Replaced by Spanish which is similar enough, I suppose. Galipoli is gone as a homeland- the Nazis killed all the Jews through Troy, just across the water from my own father’s village. There has undoubtedly been a deep churning of humans, language, culture, and craft in the past century for many peoples.
I believe the land wants to be heard. Stories want to be heard. This place wants to be seen in its own right- in its own language of beauty.
I think these stories are important because they remind us that we are functionally the same at the heart- we experience grief, fear, pain- so much pain- anger, joy, peace, love. The diversity at the mind that reveals the commonality at the heart is important and remains one of the great entry points into Self Realization.
Diversity in all ecological systems is important- is a marker of a healthy ecosystem. As a trained nutritionist I actually can’t understand how people think that we can remove this human body, go to Mars, or colonize another planet? How? This body needs the biodiversity of the earth.
We need to breathe in microbes, stick our hands into rich soil, interact every day with a complicated and vast microbiome. How do you remove a human body from the earth that creates, sustains, and churns it? The famous Artistotle quote applies here: “the sum of its parts is greater than the whole.” This applies to nutrition, psychology, philosophy, human diversity, the human body, and community building.
Diversity in humans is important. Diversity in our stories is important- it makes us ecologically stronger, more robust, more complex. It makes the commonality of our hearts all the more rich and profound.
So we must share, listen to each other, and validate the experiences of our friends who are in pain for themselves, for their lands, for the things and the places and the people that they have lost and the ways that they have been overlooked by me, by you, by your town, your country. Yes- let’s honor this.
Validate, then investigate deeper.
At the point of the heart, we look at the kernels of pain that are in my family, in your family, in your neighbor’s family, and say to each other- there is pain here and I won’t ignore it or wash it in a veneer of New-Age-all-is-love thinking. To say that everything is love requires a whole lot of personal responsibility- awareness of the atrocities of this world; awareness that we are ourselves, each of us, creating and perpetuating those atrocities in our own minds, bodies, and hearts. Are you ready for that kind of responsibility?
Here is the human paradox to which I am referring: diversity in systems reveals the commonality of the web of life, especially at the heart.
It’s like we’re all on the same spiderweb but this spindle looks a little like this and that spindle looks a little like that. As the stories cross and recross, grow, shift, break, and change, will we stop looking at the movement of the thread and how it spreads here and there and begin to look at the substance of the thread itself? For we all know- spider thread is stronger than steel, soft as silk, fine and delicate as it is wiry and predatory.
We’ve been looking at the patterns as they move and break, the image is seductive enough, but we have overlooked that the pain thread is the same for me and you.
If we want to see that we are one human consciousness then we have to see that fundamentally the patterns in all of us are the same. The way you hold information in your body is surprisingly similar to the way I hold information in my body.
The cult of individualism says “the gender, culture, religion, or diet that I identify with is what matters.”
Practice mindfulness in every moment. We are all connected. No, that’s much too far separated from how close we are to Truth, but it’s a step in the right direction. This is when Kali becomes Saraswati: thank you. When the clouds part and you see sunlight: thank you. When the ego that you have been trying to analyze and annihilate becomes your greatest ally in directing you toward your karmic irritations: thank you.
Let us be comfortable in the furniture of the house that breaks, the stuff that we hold precious or that our near-ancestors and loved ones held precious long ago at some faded moment; that we are afraid to break and that we tiptoe around, but don’t know quite why; the overstuffed stuff and the under-dusted surfaces. Let us be as welcoming in these crowded rooms as we are in the bright spaces when the sunshine bursts through the window causing us to throw open all the doors and breathe sweet air.