As most of us learned in health class, genetic information passed to us from our parents determines our hair color, eye color and physical build.
But we receive much more than just physical traits from our ancestors. Our maternal grandmother may have passed along her ability to love with an open heart. From our paternal grandfather, we may have inherited a wry sense of humor and a love of woodworking.
Energy in the form of unhealed wounds and unfinished business also passes to us from our ancestors. This energetic transmission through the family genetic stream is referred to in the shamanic world as “the red thread.” It explains why a family may carry a tendency for a certain addiction, disease or pattern of behavior.
Some common examples of ancestral energy patterns include:
· physical and mental illness
· suicide
· violence
· a certain injury, such as a head wound
· addictions
· abusive relationships
· incest and sexual abuse
· teenage pregnancy
· bankruptcy and relationship to money
· emotions such as fear, grief, anger, shame
Imagine a woman whose husband abandons her with three young children to care for. Her whole life becomes focused on working to feed her children, so the wound of being abandoned never heals. Her bitterness and anger become a pattern that continues even after her children have grown and left home.
If she dies with the wound unhealed, the abandonment, anger and bitterness enter the family genetic stream energetically. Generations later, the story of the original wound – how great-grandmother was abandoned by her husband during the Great Depression to raise three children alone – may be long forgotten, but the energy of it lives on in the family and passes to future generations.
Each family member may experience the energy differently, based on their gender and birth order. In our example, oldest sons may abandon their families, while youngest sons may become timid men who marry angry, bitter wives. The women in the family may show a pattern of being abandoned, or they may swear off men completely for reasons they don’t understand.
Until someone pursues healing, the energy continues in the family line.
Because of a concept called circular time, just one or two family members working to heal the original wound can break the pattern and heal the energy in the family line. The usual view of time here on Planet Earth is linear – first A happens, then B, then C, a chronological thread of past, present, future. But in the spirit world, the ordinary concept of time falls away, and time becomes circular. All time – past, present and future – exists at once.
By working in the spiritual realm on an energetic level to shift at the source of the original wound, we bring healing to the family line not only for ourselves, but also for our ancestors, the current generations, and the generations yet to come.
A weekend workshop on “Ancestral Healing: Healing the Red Thread” will be held October 20-21, 2012, at Healing Services on the River in Prairie du Sac, WI. For more information, email debramorrill@charter.net or call 608-279-4319.