My Father 1922 – 2016

Is it possible to be in healthy relationship with our divided and wounded world? Responsible spiritual embodiment is a viable pathway to such a relationship. For many of us, this involves the soul discovering its authentic calling or ground in the world. Soul contact is essential for healthy spiritual relationship. This is especially true now, as old world structures collapse and new, more collaborative energies emerge. Soul’s deep presence becomes a steadfast compass as new life possibilities emerge and habitual structures dissolve. 

Soul’s movement is often felt as a quickening in the nervous system as new possibilities land in our awareness. As authentic soul-individuation raises the energy of our nervous system, it also reveals slower, unintegrated shadow patterns. As we consciously embody these slower (uncomfortable) patterns in our nervous system, we might discover them to be ancestral energy patterns. Strictly speaking, they are not ours, but ours to include and bring home.

Contrary to what we might imagine, conscious inclusion of our ancestors does not involve “looking back.” It has more to do with presencing ancestral gifts and shadows as our nervous system’s substance or matter. This can be difficult because we are trained to navigate life through mental habits rather than the subtle awareness of our nervous systems. Being alive within life is the embodiment of our soul’s authentic belonging. Including the ancestors while transcending the limitations of time heralds the soul’s arrival in our bodies, emotions, and heart in every moment. 

By “including,” we are free to transcend because embodied spirituality is about being here. We are not so much seeking the light as honouring (through sensate presencing) where the light is not … where our ancestors lost contact with the flow of light in their bodies. Until a felt awareness touches our frozen ancestral blockages we, like them, will attempt to manage life rather than relate to the difficult parts. Our relationship with life becomes an abstraction from rather than a living with, and its dire consequences are increasingly apparent. 

The buildup of denied shadow in our collective energy field is challenging to resolve on our own. Small group practices such as the Inner Constellation Mobile help us to experience our nervous system as not simply “ours,” but as a multi-generational evolutionary intelligence living through us. When given space to be as it is, wounds and all, life becomes an intelligent flow with immutable and sacred laws. As the hardness of our individuated self begins to soften, the more relational “soul” individuation comes into view. Our bodies, hearts, and minds become compost for a new life purpose as we digest stored ancestral trauma.

Unintegrated trauma precludes soul individuation because mysterious synchronicities exists between the soul and the world in which we live. As our soul’s belonging grows, so does our capacity to authentically host the world. We learn to include the repetitive nature of unintegrated trauma through our ancestors and the collective. 

Nervous system attunement is essential for Soul’s embodiment because the body is a truer expression of life than the mind—at least at the beginning. Deep intimacy, respect, and trust in the course of life develops as we experience life as an intelligent process that includes us as we are. This radical change in perspective allows us to feel spacious gratitude even when we may not understand or like what is happening. Courage is a grounded heart that can authentically engage in life and initiate us into a larger whole.

A direct and felt relationship with the ancestors is an intimacy that deepens our soul’s individuation and purpose. The heavy collective trance of our conditioned individuation has taught us to project difficulties onto the world rather than feel our unique relationship with those difficulties. Conscious inclusion of pernicious unconscious defense structures is nothing less than a re-writing of history and the birth of a new future. Together, we walk the ancestors home with a new human story.