Healing the Ancestors

After healing our physical bodies, our souls, the inner child, and our former lives there is still one more aspect left that has been sadly neglected and disconnected in our times.

Most of us have forgotten that we all have genetic ancestors, and that our connection to them is as important as every other aspect of us!

Most of us are descendents of immigrants who crossed oceans to start a new life.

This also includes indigenous people, because they also have ancestors that came from somewhere else. In any case the connection to at least some of our ancestors has been cut off with more or less disastrous finality.

Disconnection From Our Ancestors

Like it or not, we all are the result of our ancestors in some way, and the lack of connection to them can leave an emptiness that is indeed in many cases a potential cause for illness and depression.

This is especially true for adopted (even unadopted) children who spend a lifetime searching and wondering where their genetic roots might be.

Or how about descendents of people from Africa, who were abducted in their homeland and brought across the Atlantic in chains and then sold like live stock.

What a horrible loss of ancestral connection!

Family Karma

I remember crying when I watched the miniseries “Roots.” In fact, it still can make me cry when thinking about the film. But it sure hammered home how important our connection to our ancestors is!

Not all the problems we are having and which are in some way ancestor related, are the lack of connection.

As the bible already says: “The sins of the fathers.” I guess we’ve all heard the line. But have you ever thought about it? There is a lot of awful family karma around: alcoholism, all sorts of violence, crime, murder and suicides.

Or less disastrous but every bit as painful: fighting among siblings, cheating on spouses, overeating, lingering feelings of guilt or uneasiness, and genetically passed on diseases.

Working with Ancestors

Well, where does it all come from? It must have started somewhere and some time and for some reason!

I have been doing ancestor work for a few years now, and in my drumming circle we did countless shamanic journeys trying to connect with ancestors and trying to heal old wounds from way back when they first started.

Some powerful stuff has come up, and we worked with what arose extensively.

I also had clients, whose problems were ancestor related and their wounds also could only start healing after I had journeyed back in time and helped heal the wounds of an ancestor.

Now how can this be done?

Well, you either need a shaman to do the work for you, or else you need a shaman to help you journey back in time to do it yourself. In either case, the results are not immediately obvious, but sooner or later a healing will occur.

There have been some very spectacular journeys and pretty horrible stories related to me by members of the drumming circle and also by clients.

But needless to say, these stories are privileged information. As an example I can only tell my own story, which is interesting enough, I believe. And it didn’t all come out in one journey, in fact, it took months to get the whole story.

Here’s My Story

I put out the intent to meet an ancestor who needed healing and whose acts have been affecting my life.

Then I relaxed, got my spirit crew to stand by and help if needed, and I journeyed out into the unknown past.

At first I saw nothing. Then that nothingness turned dark blue. And then the blue formed into the purple-blue coat of a king sitting on a throne wearing a crown and holding a scepter.

Wow, I thought, I have a king for an ancestor!

But this king didn’t notice me at all.

I went to the upper world to fetch my mother, who had died a few years back.

She was waiting already and we went together to look at the king. He looked into space as before and didn’t see us at all. But mother and I stood below the throne, giggling and looking at each other. We both thought: “What do you know, we are of royal ancestry!”

Turns out, this wasn’t the issue at all!

No matter what we tried, we couldn’t get his attention. Mother finally had enough of this and left. And then I offered him a large luminous ball.

The result was quite amazing. I did get his attention, but not the way I had expected!

He took one look at me, and with an expression of total horror moved backwards until he almost fell off his throne!

That’s when I saw a very agitated man screaming and yelling at him. And this time I even got a name: Per Svenson — and he was NOT my ancestor!

Per was a farmer and a soldier in the 1400s in Sweden.

He was sent out to fight in a war for (naturally ) a good cause of some sort or other. While he was away, his beautiful wife caught the king’s eye. And the king, of course, was not out there fighting,– after all, he had to rule the country.

But when Per came back, there was a child that didn’t quite look as if it could possibly be his. I didn’t find out, whether there were other children, but the fact remained, Per was not happy about this to say the least.

An enormous chasm of discord opened in this family, and “guilty, guilty, guilty!” was the verdict for wife and child from then on, even though apparently more legitimate children arrived afterwards and the family stayed together.

It was time for a healing.

I found Per and thanked him profusely for having raised my ancestor. I also told him that he was a good man and that I basically considered HIM my ancestor, and that probably thanks to him we all turned out good people as far as I know.

We hugged and we both cried a lot of healing tears.

Then SHE appeared. She was very petite, very blond and indeed very beautiful.

I got the two of them to hold hands and to forgive each other.

It was also time to make peace with the king, who apparently had almost lost his throne over this matter. We all held hands, we hugged and we cried. It had taken a long time, but now there was peace and forgiveness at last.

All this gave me a lot to think about. I thought about the discord among siblings and parents in my mother’s family, that had always been a mystery to me.

There was also an ever so slight touch of arrogance in this family, along with a bit of a noble air. And guilt feelings?

Well that isn’t strange to me at all! Having grown up in post war Germany with “guilty, guilty, guilty!” rubbed in all my life — without really having done anything to anyone, Yep, guilt feelings come easy to me!

But after this ancestor healing sojourn I am now free to drop those feelings of unfounded guilt.

I can at last refuse to take the blame for other people’s deeds and live my own life. Mistakes and all.

We are all related. We have kings and beggars for ancestors who deserve our respect regardless. All of them helped make us become the people we are now.

They affect us more than we realize, – and we affect them in some ways too. In fact, — like it or not — our own actions now will surely affect our descendants in the future! We are not alone! We are all part of the whole picture, affecting each other back and forth in more ways than we can ever imagine.