This weekend I had a powerful ceremony in which I felt how inter-generational trauma can affect our thinking patterns, and especially our repeated behaviours.
We have many programmes and belief systems, handed down to us by our parents (and to them by their parents) or by society. Whether through our DNA, belief systems, or karmically, they impede us from knowing our true selves and realising our power.
For womxn and ethnic minorities, due to the historical events which affected our ancestors, these limiting beliefs, traumas and programmes are are stored within the consciousness of our bodies and wombs, even at a cellular level.
In a past life regression therapy I once connected to a past life in which I was part of a very strict, puritanical Christian religious order in 19th century Scotland. We were all wearing black, very covered-up, the clothing felt even restrictive. A physical symbol of our internal repression.
Women were taught to be silent and were subjugated to the male head of the house, and the church. We were all very afraid of life.
This could have been my female ancestor, it could have been me in a past life.
I am not sure to what extent past lives exist as individual to our own soul, or whether they are part of a collective human life blueprint which, due to the oneness of our essential nature, can be accessed and experienced by the individual. Probably both are true at dfferet levels.
Either way, before I knew anything about past lives I felt that one lifetime was too small and too short to even begin to understand the vastness of human experience, let alone perfect our souls.
In my own life, in my early 30’s I became very puritanical. Not in a Christian sense, but a yogic sense. I joined an extremist Tantric movement which, after 4 years, I realised was draining me of my joy of life.
I was, in fact, becoming very judgemental and afraid of much of life. Similarly to the Christian puritan girl, I was subjugated to male spiritual leaders who, I believed, were my only direct channel to the Source. I listened to them to tell me my place on this earth, and in that community,
.
This year I freed myself of that. Mother Earth helped me. Anything I bring my awareness to, and then release and offer wholeheartedly, with faith, to the Earth, or the elements, becomes recycled.
This can be done through fire ceremony, rituals with water, inner alchemy and meditation, or by simply offering it to the Earth.
It is then alchemised, and space is created for me to embody new and healthier belief and behaviour patterns in myself, and for future generations.