The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. Today’s class focused on intergenerational healing. We contemplated our place in the river of time: who and where we came from. We journeyed back to find a human or more than human ancestor who could offer us wise counsel. We contemplated the ancestral places and inhabitants whose qualities we want to bring forth in our lives. May we listen so that ” . . . we may learn all the ways to hold tender this land.” The healing work we are willing to do today helps us to live with caring, compassion and love. These are the qualities we can give today and bequeath future generations.
We drew inspiration from Dr. Judith Rich’s article Healing the Wounds of Your Ancestors. Judith’s background is in Jungian and Archetypal psychology, also known as the “Psychology of the Soul”. Judith believes: “If we break the chain of addiction, violence or other inherited, limiting beliefs, our children and their children and those who follow them are given access to possibilities not available to the ancestors. And thus, the entire lineage evolves.” You can find more of her writings at her web-site.
We heard from bell hooks’ poetic book: Appalachian Elegy. bell was a life long social activist in the fields of class, feminism and antiracism. She was a professor, a poet and described herself as a “Buddhist Christian.” You can read about her fascinating life in The New York Times article: bell hooks, Pathbreaking Black Feminist, Dies at 69. You can also find a series of her articles and interviews at Lion’s Roar magazine. She is remembered saying: “The practice of love is the most powerful antidote to the politics of domination.”
Guided Reflection
We are sitting on Earth’s body. Breathe and feel grounded. Allow the breath energy to descend into your roots. Imagine your roots growing deep and wide. Free your imagination and know yourself as the woods, and the land and the mountains, the meadows and the seas. Feel your sense of belonging. Imagine your body’s cells and atoms at one with Earth. Experience deep time.
We are sitting here together taking our place in the river of time. In stillness we can open our awareness to the human and more than human beings upstream: our ancestors. We can follow living currents moving downstream to those we have brought into being. They continue to flow after we hae become part of the greater energy of life. Experience relational time.
You are related to many ancestors: your mother and father and the generational lines of grand-mothers and grand-fathers. Their cultures and stories are part of you. Ancestral lands, plants and animals are part of you. Their energies live in your body, cells and influence DNA. Take some time to reflect on who and where you’ve come from. You can think of your human family and more than human relations.
Imagine you could travel freely on the river of time until you find a healed ancestor. Find a being whose heart wisdom and life qualities you wish to bring forth today. As you can sense or visualize this being you can ask for wise counsel. Take some time to open your heart to the wisdom that surfaces. If there is silence, you can rest in the open space of awareness. You might sense or visualize particular lands and waters: mountains, forests, prairies or deserts; lakes and rivers, bays, wetlands or oceans. What qualities do they possess that would nourish your spirit? How would these qualities help you on your life’s journey? Imagine receiving the gifts of wise counsel and the qualities you need to live with caring, compassion and love. Notice how it feels to accept this wisdom or these healing qualities.
Contemplating the guidance your heart seeks is a worthy practice. Reflecting on your place on Earth, in its deep time can offer an awareness of relational being and belonging. Poet and social activist bell hooks’ book Appalachian Elegy is such a contemplation of ancestry, place and belonging. Here is the beginning:
1.
hear them cry
the long dead
the long gone
speak to us
from beyond the grave
guide us
that we may learn
all the ways
to hold tender this land
hard clay direct
rock upon rock
charred earth
in time
strong green growth
will rise here
trees back to life
native flowers
pushing the fragrance of hope
the promise of resurrection
2.
such then is beauty
surrendered
against all hope
you are here again
turning slowly
nature as chameleon
all life change
and changing again
awakening hearts
steady moving from
unnamed loss
into fierce deep grief
that can bear all burdens
even the long passage
into a shadowy dark
where no light enters
3.
night moves
through the thick dark
a heavy silence outside
near the front window
a black bear
stamps down plants
pushing back brush
fleeing manmade
confinement
roaming unfettered
confident
any place can become home
strutting down
a steep hill
as though freedom
is all
in the now
no past
no present
4.
earth works
thick brown mud
clinging pulling
a body down
heard wounded earth cry
bequeath to me
the hoe the hope
ancestral rights
to turn the ground over
to shovel and sift
until history
rewritten resurrected
returns to its rightful owners
a past to claim
yet another stone lifted to
throw against the enemy
making way for new endings
random seeds
spreading over the hillside
wild roses
come by fierce wind and hard rain
unleashed furies
here in this touched wood
a dirge a lamentation
for earth to live again
earth that is all at once a grave
a resting place a bed of new beginnings
avalanche of splendor
It is good to rest on Earth’s body, the ground of our ancestors and the future of our descendants. Our own embodiment is an expression of those who have come before us and those who will come after. Rev. Chris Michaels reminds us that: “[We] are a link in a chain of causation that stretches before and after our [lives] for a thousand generations.”
We can reflect on what we inherited and what we wish to pass on. We can take some time to consider both the gifts and the burdens that we carry from the past. What have our parents and their parents given us? We can consider the gifts of body, heart, mind, culture, place, technology. There are so many threads in the greater tapestry of being. What is speaking to your heart today?
Notice how you are relating to what is revealed. What do you recognize? How does your body, heart and mind respond? Can you be with these feelings, sensations or thoughts? How does it feel to be open or vulnerable? There is no need to solve any problems now only to open to this awareness. In time you might recognize what hinders and what heals. You might discover an inherent wisdom in distress or struggle. You can ask your heart – “How do I care for this distress? What is needed? What supports freedom?” You might nurture yourself in a larger field of kindness: imagining the stability of a mountain, the resilience of a majestic tree or the tranquility of a woodland pond. You can find a place you relate to – that is larger than you – in which you find solace.
In these inquiries and imaginings we recognize our kin: the greater kinship between humans and more than humans. What choices, habits and practices strengthen kinship? How can we live in ways that do no harm? How can we participate in the healing and regeneration of the wounded world?
It is good to remember that we are not alone; the Earth supports us. We can do this healing work together. We begin with our intention and the powerful gift of loving awareness. Again from bell hooks’ Appalachian Elegy:
5.
small horses ride me
carry my dreams
of prairies and frontiers
where once
the first people roamed
claimed union with the earth
no right to own or possess
no sense of territory
all boundaries
placed by unseen ones
here I will give you thunder
shatter your hearts with rain
let snow soothe you
make your healing water
clear sweet
a sacred spring
where the thirsty
may drink
animals all
6.
listen little sister
angels make their hope here
in these hills
follow me
I will guide you
careful now
no trespass
I will guide you
word for word
mouth for mouth
all the holy ones
embracing us
all our kin
making home here
renegade marooned
lawless fugitives
grace these mountains
we have earth to bind us
the covenant
between us
can never be broken
vows to live and let live