Announcer 0:28
Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's john.
John Moore 0:47
Hello, everybody. Hello, hello, hello. And you know, it's funny I usually I usually greet, begin these things with good morning because I'm usually 100% of the time recording these in the morning but it is not morning today
I decided to do this one I was traveling a little bit not too far, but I'm traveling to the next state over with my my children and my girlfriend this morning and just got home. And you know, I've been wanting to do this podcast for a couple of days and have just been busy with clients and life and everything else that happens to busy shamanic practitioners, life happens, stuff happens, you know that that kind of thing. I want to welcome you, wherever you are in the world. Whatever time of day, you're listening to this, whenever you're listening to this, it might be, I don't know, 10 years after, after I record it. If
you know, if podcasts still exists in the internet still exists. Or maybe we're all communicating telepathically by that period of time, when that'd be neat. If you could just tune into a telepathic top podcast anytime a day. But for now, I will use contemporary electronics to come to compile these and record them and distribute them. I've been thinking about today's topic for a little bit, it's come up a lot lately, and it's interesting to me. I always try to pay attention when things sort of come up in my life, repeatedly in interesting ways. And, you know, and one of the ways that that has happened, it was interesting, you know, in in spending some time with my my girlfriend of my kids and her daughter today we kept running into we're not running into but we kept seeing orange cars, which are a little bit unusual, but many, many places and like fancy orange cars like classic orange cars and way more than we usually would. We kept seeing octopuses we saw we went to one place and there was you know an image of an octopus and another place and there was an octopus necklace and then walked into a bookstore today and first book on the shelf is a is a you know, has a picture of an octopus on the cover and is a book about art. So you know that happened about 10 times today. And then we kept running into the the image of mushrooms. Specifically fly a garlic mushrooms which are you know, grow around the world are psychedelic and used by shamans in different cultures, particularly in the Sami culture uses them in in ritual journeys. And so it's just interesting that those three things kept coming up for us all day today, while we were together. And I pay attention to those things because they're they're odd occurrences. My take on them as a shamanic practitioner are, is that spirits trying to put something in our path? And so for the past, I don't know a couple weeks, lots of stuff about ancestors and ancestor spirits have has come up for me. You know, I, you know, I have had a couple of clients raise the issue of ancestor stuff with me. I had a you know, one of them at the time, I had a book on ancestor worship sitting on my desk. You know, at the same time, this client brought it up to me. And then you know, it's come up in lots of different ways. And then the other night I was with my my girlfriend and her family and they decided to watch The Disney movie Coco. And if you haven't seen that movie, I happen to like it a whole lot. I think it is a really well done movie. You know, it is if you're not familiar, it centers around this family during the day of the dead, the Mexican Day of the Dead, where they, you know, they do this ancestor worship they have a friend does, which are, you know, these altars to worship ancestors. And on Day of the Dead, the ancestors can cross over and have a meal with the family and, you know, and that sort of thing. So, ancestors have come up a lot for me, oh, I will, I will also add that I've been doing it, you know, a couple weeks ago, so I am,
you know, a good portion of my ancestry comes from Scotland, and there was a, you know, there was a Scottish festival here in my state and I went, and, you know, the first it was the first time I'd ever been, that the clan that my family belongs to was represented there. And so I got to talk to somebody who represented Mike, my Scottish clan, um, you know, and then, you know, got into doing some DNA research for my girlfriend who's Scottish and, and getting some answers. So many, many, many things have happened, I'm only mentioning a few of them, that have had ancestors on my mind. So I felt like, today, I should take the time and do a podcast about ancestors and why they're important. From a spiritual perspective, again, I'll be talking through the demonic lens, because shamanism is my path and my practice, and I will do my best to speak in a way that respects other cultures. So if you come from a culture where ancestor worship is a thing, and I miss speak about that, I apologize in advance and just take it as my ignorance and no offense meant, I absolutely respect your practices, beliefs and views, even if I don't know what they are, I would love to learn more, lots, lots more about different cultures, I am just absolutely fascinated by different cultures and how they deal with things like death and ancestors. And, you know, in the culture that is predominant where I live, sort of, you know, I don't know what would say white, European American culture. You know, ancestors are not worshipped, we sometimes do things like put flowers on the graves of loved ones, you know, and keep photos around the house of loved ones, but we don't have altars to ancestors, we don't do ceremony with them, we don't have special meals with them. We don't have special days that we celebrate them, unless you, you know, somehow celebrate Day of the Dead, you know, you somehow that survived to to where you are. So, you know that, and that's my, that's my culture. And and that is not the culture, that is not the only culture in the US. United States is very multicultural, right? Obviously, we have a very large Latino population, and many of those people are from Mexico, and they bring their customs with them. And we have people who may come from Africa, and we have people may come from Asia and, and other countries in Europe, that ancestor worship is still practiced, and still a, you know, an important part of their life. But just speaking from my culture, and the way that I grew up, we don't do that, in general, and death is, you know, death. So I'm talking about ancestors, you know, and I'll go through what I mean and how, and I'm going to try to expand your idea of what ancestors are, as well, a little bit, but, you know, generally we're talking about people who are deceased, that are in your bloodline, generally speaking. But we'll go a little bit beyond that today, as well, in talking about who ancestors are. I'm also going to talk about why we might want to put some efforts some thought into ancestor worship or ancestral healing or being in touch with our ancestry. I'm going to talk about the drawbacks. I'm going to talk about ancestral wounding, which is a thing and I'm you know, talk we'll talk about How do you handle it? If you have ancestry, you know, people in your ancestral line that you're not necessarily proud of? Right? How do we deal with that? How, for example, maybe you have ancestors who were, I don't know, slave owners, or murderers or, you know, participated in genocide or something along those lines, I'm going to talk about that, today. And how, you know, understanding that as is still important, and how we are the legacy of our, of our ancestors.
So, let me begin, and I want to talk about you talk about you as an individual. And, you know, the same goes for me as an individual and everybody else who's who's an individual. And, you know, I like to have, you know, people I work with students or clients, what have you, I like to have them consider what an absolute miracle it is that, that, and I'd like you to do the same today. Just consider for a second, what an absolute miracle it is, from, even from a statistical standpoint, that you even exist today. Right? What had what things had to happen for you to exist in this body, as a spirit with a soul, all of these components, what things what astronomically improbable, things had to happen. You know, in hitting that in very broad terms, you know, the universe had to exist had to begin to exist, right, there was a big bang, we can argue whether or not that was kicked off by divinity, or, you know, the universe was created. whole cloth, I don't believe those things, I do think that there is always divinity in play. Um, and then imagine if any of the physical laws of the universe that we exist in, were slightly different. So for example, if, you know, the force of gravity were slightly different, or the force of you know, the, the force that binds the nuclei of atoms together was slightly different, like, the physical reality, we, we know, wouldn't even exist. Right. So it's, it's, you know, it is an absolute, you know, improbably bility to the infinite degree, that physical reality as we know it exists. So then what has to happen, right, so the universe gets created, and it's just a bunch of helium or hydrogen, such as a bunch of hydrogen, sorry. And then you know, the hydrogen kind of gets together and form stars, and all of the elements that we know, all the elements that we that are created are created in the, you know, the, these furnaces that are stars, so the carbon in our bodies, the nitrogen, that an oxygen that we breathe, everything, every element that we rely on to live was born in the belly of a star at some point. And that's pretty amazing when you think about it. So then, let's take life life on Earth, right? So we are, you know, we have DNA, this double helix of DNA that you know, and, and all life as we know it on earth is is DNA based. And if you took the, you know, I forgot if you took these strands of DNA that are coiled up in every cell in your body, and you stretch them out, and they'd be several meters long, and they contain so much information. And, you know, I think it was, I think it was Crick, one of the discoverers of DNA, who said something along the lines of four for light for DNA based life to form on Earth, the odds against that, the odds of that happening, are the same as a hurricane blowing through a junkyard, and assembling a fully functional 747. Like DNA base life is so improbable, and I forget their actual calculations about things like how hard it would be for like, if you had all The chemicals you needed to put together like the simplest protein that makes up the human body. how, you know, the odds of that forming an actual, the simplest protein that we use are, you know, one to a number that's greater than all of the star, you know, all of the stars in the known universe. So to me, there is some guidance, there's some engineering going on. And I realized that is a controversial topic.
from both sides, right, people think the universe was some people think the universe was created in 6000 years ago, and boom, here it exists. And some people think everything we are is a complete and utter accident and things just happened. I personally don't think either one of those things is accurate or could could be true. Neither one of those things makes sense to me, when I really think about it, when I examine it, and yes, while I am a spiritual person, and a shamanic healer, and a teacher, and I have, you know, paranormal experiences, and, you know, I travel in spirit when I'm doing shamanic journeying, and all of these things, and they talk whispers, all the things, I'm also relatively scientifically minded. Um, and I worked in the scientific field for over 20 years of my life. So I do have, you know, I do have a background in the sciences and math and all of those things. And I'm, you know, I am not a quantum physicist, or a geneticist, or any of those things. So those people know way more than I do. But everything I know, points to this being, you know, the fact that life even exists in the way it does, is quite a quite a miracle. So then for you to exist, you know, so life had to spring up, and, you know, probably, you know, single celled organisms, and then maybe funguses, and then, you know, animal life is, is very recent plant life has happened, you know, well, well before animal life sprung up. And then, you know, very simple animals, and then, you know, jumping forward, you know, fishes and sharks and dinosaurs and turtles and snakes and birds, and then mammals, and, you know, then primates, and then of all the primate families that we're finding existed from, you know, Neanderthals to Australopithecus to everything else. homosapiens is the only one that still exists, they all died out. They all died out 1000s and 1000s of years ago. So the human family that we belong to, is the only one that exists. And that fact that very fact should bring us together more, I think, right? We are, we are all the same family. We all have a common ancestor. You know, we all have, we all have a, you know, a woman who gave birth to our ancestors. You know, and if it weren't for her, none of us would exist. So we are all family. We're all brothers and sisters, maybe distant relationships, but we're all brothers and sisters. We're all family at a genetic level at a soul level. All of these things are true. So human life, okay. Huge, huge improbability. We've gotten through many, many levels of improbability, and by the way, you know 15 billion years is the estimated age of the universe. And that might seem like a really long time. But if you think about everything that had to happen, you know, when the odds against it happening and you know, the earth forming in a habitable zone with liquid water and all of these things. Although we know we're finding more and more planets, lots of planets around stars, it seems to be the norm and lots of them. Maybe in an area where liquid water can exist. And I imagine there's life. Lots and lots of places out there in the universe. I think the odds are that there just has to be. And also everywhere we look on the planets, we find life, you know, we look in these volcanic vents and there's microorganisms there that can survive, you know, boiling water and you know, just crazy things that we can't you know, we we can hardly conceive of that could support life we're finding life everywhere we look and you know, we find these these creatures These tardigrades, right, these little tiny, microscopic water bears that can survive the vacuum of space. unprotected, that's crazy. And, you know, there's some experiments that sent, you know, sent probes up into, you know, up above,
I'm going to probably describe this somewhat wrong. So forgive me, that sent probes either, like really, you know, balloons that could reach outside the area where microbes and things could exist, and found evidence of life, you know, in basically in space on the edge of space, and forms that, you know, in compositions and forms that we don't experience on the ground. So life everywhere, but human life, you know, one species, still existing after, you know, 4 billion years of the earth existing. And far less than that, where we're life actually sprung up on earth. And so even with human life, think about yourself as an individual, like, how many ancestors do you have? Going back? Let's say that the first homosapien woman who gave birth to human children, you know, what we consider human today was, I don't know, a million years ago, 2 million years ago, 3 million years ago. You know, I don't know if we know quite yet. We have estimates. How many generations back is that 100,000 generations? Do you know how many ancestors you have had in 100,000 generations. So many, right, obviously, way more than 100,000. So I like to picture each individual person as like the end of this giant funnel. All of these people funneling their genetic material, their their spiritual energy, their genetic memory, down into you as an individual. And for that to happen, all of these people needed to live long enough to have children. And that was not such an easy thing. For most of human history. most of human history was subsistence hunting, subsistence agriculture, not that long ago, actually, you know, 1010 20,000 years ago, hunter gatherer lifestyle, no modern medicine, no, you know, anything. So, you know, probably huge infant mortality rate. Even, you know, even a couple 100 years ago, the number one cause of death for women was childbirth. That means most women died giving birth to children. So the fact that all of your ancestors who survived long enough to have children actually survived long enough to have children, the odds against that are astronomical as well. All of that funnels down into you as an individual. And if you just take some time to think about that, and you think about what an absolute miracle it is, that you actually exist, listening to this podcast today, it's mine, it should be mind boggling. I hope it is a little bit, I hope, because what I really want you to take away from this is just an appreciation for how unique and special and what a miracle you are. And, you know, hold that hold that understanding. Think about it when you can. So many of us have suffer from low self esteem. And, you know, there's a lot of societal reasons for that. You know, society likes to knock us down a peg, keep us in order, keep us in our place. Tell us that we're not special. You know, there's billions of people on this planet and you're just one of them and you don't deserve whatever you're undeserving. And pardon my pardon my language, but that's horseshit. You're absolutely unique, special and unbelievable miracle that you just the act of existing. And I hope that you'll take that to heart at least somewhat. And and take that in and understand that So, you know, I've talked, talked a little bit in of ancestors and how that how this sort of filters down into you, right? Like how you're the product of, you know, people that survived great hardship,
and famine and war and doesn't matter where you come from. At some point in time, your ancestors survived a lot, a lot of stuff. Here is another thing that has brought ancestors to, to my mind. Right, a thing that has made me think about ancestors a little bit. So Tomorrow is my maternal grandmother's birthday. My maternal grandmother is turning 105 tomorrow. And that, in itself is a pretty amazing fact she is still alive, she's still absolutely with it. She lives with my mother. And you know, she is she's something else. My 105 year old grandmother. She was born in 1916. In the city of bath, Maine, they lived out not in the city they lived out in the middle of, you know, I guess what today would be considered suburbs that didn't wasn't really a thing. Back in 1916. And have a like, there's no electricity running water, heat. Do you know how cold it gets in Maine in the winter, you know, the heated with a wood stove. They took a bath once a week. And each child successively got into the tub that was heated by water from the stove. Each child had two sets of clothing, one for going to school and church. And the other one for everything else for play and household duties. They were not wealthy, they did not own an automobile. They didn't, you know, that wasn't really a thing then anyway, they didn't own a horse, they walked everywhere they went there in that time, in that area of the world, that country, or this country, and that that, you know that city there were not stores, there probably was a general store somewhere in the middle of town. But that was not was not convenient, and not having a horse or transportation or whatever, you couldn't go buy a bunch of supplies or, you know, go, you know, bring home groceries even. So everything that they relied on that they didn't produce themselves was brought by, you know, essentially traveling salesman, a milk with a milkman would drop off milk, there'd be a guy with a meat wagon that would come by where they would buy meat, there would be people who came by who sold things like thread and fabric for sewing the clothes that they had to keep in shape, because they only had to two sets of clothes each. When I think about how like compared to how easy My life is today, where I can pick up the phone or get on my laptop and order something and have it delivered to my house. Or I can go to get in my car and drive to a store 24 hours a day, and get anything, something to eat something to drink, you know, a newspaper, I can pick up my cell phone and call anybody in the world anytime I want to. So I think about how easy My life is and how my grandmother, you know, survived being born in that time. And her parents survived being born earlier than that, and so on and so forth. Um, it makes me appreciate things and it makes me appreciate how the genetic and spiritual legacy that has been passed down to me, you know, her husband, my grandfather, his ancestors came over from Ireland during the potato famine, the fact that they survived that is pretty big deal so that I could be eventually born. So all of those things, you know, all those things are quite a big deal. And chances are, you know, the your family story has similarities, parallels. You know, people that lived in harder times, and survived and thrived and whatever. And so the people who weren't tough and weren't, you know, Hardy stock, as we say here may not have survived long enough to have children. didn't become your ancestors, the people who are your ancestors were people who were survivors. Going back 1000s of generations,
um, people who had to live off the land or learn agriculture or, you know, or starve to death, you know, people who had to survive wars or perhaps a genocide or perhaps live as slaves, or you know, what have you. So you have this incredibly powerful genetic legacy. It's not just genetic, though, it's also spiritual, you have a spiritual legacy, that is incredibly powerful. And that's the first and primary reason why we might want to pay attention to our ancestors in whatever, whatever way that takes shape. And I'll talk about how that could take shape in your life, if it's not something that you do now. If you come from a culture that has celebrates ancestors in some way has an altar to ancestors, you know, lights, candles to ancestors, or what have you have special days and feast, whatever, you're already in touch with that. And I would encourage you to keep that up, those traditions have been lost for many people. And I think that has not been healthy. For our society. We don't move through grief, like, like we used to, when when we had to deal with death. And we're very afraid of death, and we don't accept it. And it just, you know, it creates a lot of what we in the schmuck roll call, so loss, you know, there's intense grief, That's intense, fear of dying. Um, so that is the primary reason to work with ancestors on a spiritual basis is that they are a source of power, an incredible source of power that you can tap into. And that you're, you have genetic gifts, spiritual gifts passed down through your ancestors. At some point, if your ancestors were, for example, you know, worked in the capacity as a worker in some capacity as a spiritual healer. You know, we might call them witches today or something else. Depending on your culture, then that's something that you can tap into. That's something that you have the ability that is a spiritual birthright for you. Now, I, you know, my theory, I don't think it's just a theory is that every one of us has some, you know, people in our ancestry that came from a shamanic culture, pretty much every culture at some point, every human culture that has you know, and I realized culture is not a static thing. It's changing constantly. But, you know, when we look at like hunter gatherer tribes, and we look at prehistoric evidence and all these things, we see shamanic cultures, everywhere, everywhere, every continent where there are people, every place where people we see people practicing what we call shamanism today, and so I believe and I would firmly argue that shamanism is everybody's birthright if it's something that you're drawn to. You can practice shamanism, without some people may claim your you're doing cultural appropriation. I think that is an over sensitive overreaction to something that people don't really understand very frequently. Yes, there are people who are practicing shamanism, who may dress up I saw it recently, somebody you know, some practitioners were doing some sort of initiation with a boy in Portugal, I think, and the people who are conducting the ritual had dressed up as Native Americans including wearing war bonnets and outfits that indicated they belong to,
you know, a plains tribe, plains Native American tribe. And that's cultural, you know, without connection to those actual tribes like that's playing dress up and pretending and that's cultural appropriation, or I should say cultural misappropriation, all cultures appropriate. all cultures borrow from other cultures, all cultures are affected by other cultures, but You know, when people say, oh, cultural appropriation is bad, what they're really talking about is cultural mis appropriation, which is taking something that doesn't belong to you, or playing dress up or doing something in a way that disrespects other cultures. You know, it is not disrespectful for me to prepare Chinese food in my home, though I am not Chinese. Right? It would, you know, it would be disrespectful, if I perhaps represented Chinese cuisine, you know, if I cooked French food, and then sold it in a restaurant saying it was Chinese food or something along those lines, or if I, you know, if I dressed up in a stereotypical, you know, costume from a Chinese era, and pretended I was, you know, without some understanding of it now, I, I have decades of martial arts practice experience, and I practice Japanese martial arts. And I dress you know, frequently when I train, we dress in a uniform, that is a Japanese style of dress, the jacket is a kimono, the belt is an OB, those sorts of things. I'm not pretending to be Japanese, when I do that. You know, I, we sometimes use Japanese words to describe the things we're doing. It is taken as an homage to the culture. And Japanese teachers that I have met have no problem with this. I have never, and I've spoken to many people who have, you know, lived in Japan or from Japan. You know, whenever I've never spoken to somebody who has an issue with us, but if I made some sort of caricature or some offensive caricature of Japanese culture, that would be definitely misappropriation, and, and something bad. So shamanism, anyway, is everybody's birthright, we all have ancestors that were demonic. You do not exist today, if that is not the truth. That being said, Can I because I practice shamanism. Can I take some ceremony from some Native American tribe and call it shamanism and perform it for people for money or something? No. And I don't do that. And I never would do that. I don't borrow things like that, that I don't have a cultural connection with. I don't. You know, I don't get into arguments with people about it. I don't. You know, it's just not something I do. And people can argue ad infinitum about cultural appropriation, cultural misappropriation. And it's all somebody you know, it's all somebody's opinion, anyway. But I try very, very hard not to do that not to steal from cultures that I don't have a connection to, and I don't pretend to you know, some people get confused because they have these preconceived ideas that, you know, shamanism means Native American spirituality. That's not true. And not all Native American spirituality is shamanic, either. And nor is all shamanic practice, nor does all that come from Siberia or, you know, what have you. So, it's a complicated topic, and I don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole. But I'll just say that, you know, I honor my ancestors, I do not you know, I try to be culturally sensitive as best I can and respect my culture and respect to your culture or cultures, because many of us are, you know, our poly cultural as, as I am. You know, I am you know, I am very mixed in my background, you know, primarily, primarily European ancestors, but from all over the place. So, you know, having that connection to your ancestry, there's a lot of power there, you know, and some people will say, Oh, my, you know, my grandmother was clairvoyant and read cards and tea leaves and what have you.
And if your grandmother was good at that, the chances are that you're probably good at that too. If you work on it, and you develop it, because you were incarnated into a family line that had a certain spiritual signature, right. So I've said this before in other podcasts, but from a shamanic perspective, shamanism is very animistic we think that everything is a spirit, some things that our spirits Have a physical presence. Your genetics has a spiritual component there is a, you know, you have, you have a heart in your body, there is a spiritual heart as well. You know, if you're familiar with the chakra system that is one spiritual aspect of, you know, the physical representations, one map of the spiritual side of physicality, you know, it's much more, it's much more than that. But so your genetics, your genetic lineage also has a spiritual component, right, you can think of it as a thread, or a number of threads that run up your family tree, if you've ever done your family tree, if you have not, I highly recommend doing it, that's one really good way to get in touch with your ancestry. And there are lots of obviously, there's lots of ways to do that online. People used to do it old school, my, my, you know, before the internet, my grandmother did my family tree back, I think 13 or 14 generations behind me. And, you know, had to go to had to go to Europe to find, you know, church records, and family records and all kinds of stuff. Nowadays, you can log into ancestry.com, or whatever, and just find that stuff. And that's pretty cool. And so that's one way to, that's one way to get in touch with your ancestry. To is to understand it, right, I've found some shocking things in my family tree, you know, I one of my ancestors, you know, got off the boat. And what is now the United States in the 1600s decided to get married right away, was kidnapped by Native Americans held for ransom at his wedding. Quite a dramatic wedding, you know, some other other things that that happened during that, you know, during that era of my family that make sense to me now. So you have all of these, you know, you have all these human ancestors that, that live that survived that had special skills that had spiritual makeup, and you can inherit a lot of that stuff. And sometimes it needs to be activated a little bit, right. So if your grandmother read read tea leaves, or your great grandmother read tea leaves, and you don't ever try to read tea leaves, you're not going to recognize that, that skill. If you ever, you know, in my my opinion, in my experience in working with, you know, people over time with clients, and students, if you have skills show up that you have not practiced before, um, there's a couple ways that that can happen. One, you know, one way that can happen is through what's called a past life return, where in a previous life, you learned a skill, and you,
you know, like, that somehow gets, like a memory gets reinvigorated in your in your system. And you are what some people might call, quote, unquote, a natural at something. And another way that that happens is that it is a family trait that was amplified at some point in your family tree, and you've inherited some spiritual legacy there. And that can come through and we call ancestral memory, and things come up. I'll give you an example from my life. So when I first started training in jujitsu decades and decades ago, I'm my teacher, you know, actually, you know, just started training, like I was a couple weeks into training, you know, brand new, and he said, if you don't know jujitsu is in this case, a Japanese martial art. I know there are other forms of jujitsu, but I trained in Japanese jujitsu. And he said, Oh, you know, I was living in Boston at the time. And there were a group of teachers coming from the budokon, in Tokyo, Japan, and flying in and they were going to give a big demo. One night, but there were practicing the day before. And we had been we in a bunch of other martial arts schools had been invited to go practice with these masters who had flown in and what Geez, what a great opportunity. And so we showed up and there were people practicing Judo, which is traditional Japanese archery. There were sumo wrestlers. There there were people showing Judo and Aikido and You know, all kinds of different Japanese martial arts. And there were some, some people they're doing kendo, which is, you know, sword, Japanese martial art involving sword if you've ever seen the guys in the armor, you know whacking each other with a bamboo swords. That's kendo. So I'm like, Oh, you know, I've never really used a sword before. I'm going to go, you know, and I went with a couple of my friends from class. And we'll you know, we'll go train with the, you know, the kendo teachers, that will be cool. So we went over there and, you know, took off our socks and shoes and got on got onto the mat. And, you know, this instructor, you know, there were there were, there were a few instructors there. There was one instructor who spoke really good English, and it was sort of translating for the, the older, there was an older instructor who was clearly the senior person there, I would estimate he was probably 70 at the time 60 to 70. Anyway. And so all they're very, you know, somebody who'd been practicing kendo his whole life. So for, you know, six, seven decades been practicing kendo very respected teacher. And so this other, you know, this other teacher who was kind of doing translating for him because he didn't, so the teacher didn't speak English, came over and handed me the shehnai, which is the the bamboo sword they use in kendo. And, you know, I picked it up, and I held it in both of my hands. And it felt really good. When I held it. I was like, wow, this, you know, this just feels right. And the the teacher who didn't speak English said something to the other teacher very quickly, almost sternly in Japanese. And the, you know, the teacher who spoke English came over to me. And he said, you know, the teacher wants to know, where you learned how to hold the sword. And I said, I, I didn't, I don't know, where I learned how to hold the sword. I just held it. I just picked it up. And he said, Well, he goes, you're holding it correctly, and you're holding it exactly correctly. And that takes usually some time, some practice, you know, and we didn't give you an instruction structure, we just handed you the sword. He wants to know where you learned how to do this. I said, I didn't, I never learned how to do this. You know, what was happening is a past life return, I don't have as far as I know, and none of my genetic tests. I do have Asian ancestors, but not from not from Japan. But I have never, I had never before that time I never held a shin I never trained in Japanese sword.
You know, it just sort of came natural naturally to me. So, you know, I've learned that later, through shamanic work and past life work that that was a past life return, or some skills kind of coming back to me. So that can happen. Um, you know, and, and certain things, certain things can definitely come back and come through, and that sort of thing. So that's another reason why it's good to get in touch with your ancestry. Um, so, you know, when I've talked to people about some of their ancestry, sometimes that causes a problem, because there may be people in there and in their ancestral line, who weren't such good people, right, they might have been criminals. They might have been, you know, war criminals or, you know, something that we would judge as bad people. Right? And people like, why don't you know, I don't want to have anything to do with those, with those ancestors. And I understand that, I completely understand that. Um, what I will say about that is, you know, if you think about that huge funnel of ancestors that became you, you know, all of those, you know, 1000s of generations back hundreds of 1000s of people probably there are going to be in every person's family tree. There are going to be some jerks. They're going to be some not so nice people. They're going to be people who didn't, you know, who maybe did some horrific things, you might find some horrible things about your, about your ancestors. And, you know, that is true for every single person, just the straight odds of that. The other aspect of that is culture. culture changes over time, and what was acceptable and normal and you know, perfectly fine 100 years ago and many different cultures might be horrific today. We might not even think about doing some of the things our ancestors did back then. But it was a norm for the culture. Right? Likewise, some of the things we made, like we can't even think of that now. Like, we think we're enlightened, and we're living in an enlightened age. But who knows, in 100 years from now, maybe our descendants will look upon us and go, man, those people were jerks. Look at how they live their lives, look at how they were, you know, polluting the earth. So it became an inhabitable, uninhabitable. Look at all of these things. So, um, you know, I don't know, I don't know what what will happen. But I do know that that's gonna be the case in everybody's family tree. And that's okay, you don't have to honor you have to honor the ancestors who were jerks, you should be aware of them. You know, and, you know, let's say, Ireland, let's say I find out that one of my ancestors was a slave owner. Um, I don't, you know, I have not found any ancestors so far that were slave owners? Well, I have to come to grips with that, right, because I did inherit from that I did, you know, inherit the riches that came from that in some way my, I benefited from from that practice, however, all of those people still came together to create a person who is horrified by the practice of slavery. Right. And so even though I have connected, I don't have connections to slave owners that I'm aware of, at this point. And I've done a lot of genealogy. My people, my people didn't live in areas in in. And at times were, in general, where there were, there were slaves, or at least I haven't found any I have found an ancestor who was who was a slave, but not anybody who owned them. But you know, I'm sure there are people in my family tree that did awful things that I would be horrified by. However, like, all of those people had still had to come together to create me a person who can work towards social justice and work towards making the world a better place and work towards not polluting and raising children who are socially conscious and environmentally conscious, and all of those things. So I can at least be thankful for having life and being able to be a positive force.
I don't think if you learn about, you know, an ancestor, you're not especially proud of that, you should necessarily just bury that in your subconscious, right? Be aware of that, be aware of how you may have benefited from that, be aware of what you can do, to make things better make the world a better place that should push you forward. Like something, something, some small thing that might not make up for the bad, some good, small thing might come out that it may not make up for the bad, but it's at least a push in the right direction. So don't, you know, don't necessarily be afraid of that part of your family. Again, you know, there's going to be if you could go back to the beginning of humankind, you would probably find lots of people and everyone's family tree that did some pretty nasty stuff. Up until very recently, human beings, you know, you know, by comparison with our standards, like human beings really sucked up until like, very, very recently, for example, you know, is reading at one point in Roman culture, it was considered a sign of weakness to show compassion, for example, like, how horrible is that and that's why they had gladiatorial games and sacrificed Christians by feeding them to Lions as a public spectacle and, you know, ritually strangled, conquered kings to death and did you know things we would not think about doing today because of the culture of the time. So we can be a positive force in our in the culture that we're living in. Because our ancestors survived and we can make changes we can make up positive impact on the world because of all of that. So, you know, that's one way, sort of working with ancestors can go wrong. And another, another, not go wrong. But another way that things can can come up around ancestors that may not be the most pleasant thing in the world is that there's also ancestral wounding, wounding gets passed down from generation to generation. We know for a fact and again, you know, there's a spiritual component to every physical component. We know for a fact that the, we can detect epigenetic epigenetic changes in the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Right, so huge trauma. And that changes many generations down the line. And in animal studies, we have seen that for dozens of generations, you know, we haven't been studying it for long enough for dozens of generations of humans to have lived and died in a way that we could study it. But when we looked at it, we can see it. And so there are wounds that can be passed down, something happened, something traumatic warfare, famine, getting kicked off your land, all kinds of things can have trauma that passes down, genetically and socially, the remedy organically and spiritually, also socially, you know, if you belong to, if you belong to a traditionally oppressed culture, it can take centuries to get out of that, if ever, if, you know, if it ever happens. And we need, you know, we need to recognize that we need to recognize that people who have lived oppressed lives are still dealing with that oppression, whether we can see it or not, whether we're actively participating in the oppression, oppression or not, we need to see that, you know, a good example of that is our Native Americans that, you know, in both the United States and Canada, you know, the history there, there's, you know, people still dealing with genocide, and all kinds of stuff has not gone away, not in the least. And so, you know, we have to, we have to understand, understand that these, you know, so we have to understand wounding from that perspective, the social aspect of wounding, the genetic aspect of wounding the physical aspect, and the spiritual aspect as well. You know, these cultures that had their spirituality ripped from them, or that had such severe trauma that there was large scale, so loss, all kinds of stuff going on.
And wounds that, you know, these wounds that get passed down. You know, the best way and I obviously speak from a biased perspective, but the the obvious way to deal with ancestral wounding is to see a shamanic practitioner who can do ancestral healing with you. There may be other types of practitioners that work directly with ancestral healing. Um, I am not aware of it. I'm not aware of other like energy healers, or any be anybody like that, who works directly along ancestral lines. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, that just means I'm ignorant of that. Of that aspect. I don't know. So my recommendation because it's the only thing I know would be to go see a shaman or sramana or, you know, as I refer to myself, a shamanic practitioner, who, who does work with ancestral healing. Um, you know, that stuff is not, is not self care, it's not something you can do on yourself, I wouldn't do it on myself as a practitioner, there's some work I can do by myself. But that's not the thing. I don't do that I didn't do a soul retrieval on myself. And some other things, but that those things in particular. So that's where things can kind of go awry ancestor was not arrived. But some cautions, some things where there might be areas of concern that you can deal with. And it's not that it can't be dealt with. Because it can. But, you know, sometimes it might require an expert hand. So let's get to the practical aspect. How can you spiritually, work with your ancestors, let's say, I don't know, let's say listen to this podcast suffering like oh, yeah, you know, that's, that's kind of cool. There's all this power in my ancestral line, and I want to gather that up, but I want to be able to be the focus point of this power and, you know, have skills that you know, develop skills And all of these things, how do you go about that, and let's say, you know, let's start with a blank slate and say that you do not live as part of a cult, you know, in a culture where ancestor worship, ancestor reverence is a thing. Right? is, you know, we're, we're, that's generally not done in the culture and the culture that you predominantly belong to. If you do belong to a culture that does ancestor worship, keep up the good work, that's my advice there. and maintain that as best you can. Those are wonderful traditions, fantastic traditions. I love you know, again, watching the movie, Coco, I love the representations of Mexican Day of the Dead. And you know, what, how meaningful that is how important that is, in, you know, to some people in that culture. And I just think it's a beautiful thing. So, you know, one, one aspect is you can find out, you know, and again, this is a, this is a thinking thing, but this will help you create these better connections. One aspect is that you can find out more about your ancestry, you could do research on your family line, you could do genetic research, right, and find out where your family came from. And the more you know, in my experience anyway, the more you know about your industry, the closer you feel to them, and learn their stories and learn where they came from, as best you can. There's only you know, there's only so much information in the world. And hey, you might find some long lost cousins that happened to me recently. You know, when people are turning up better genetic matches with me that are on fourth of six cousins, sometimes it's pretty cool to think about their, you know, people out there where we have a common ancestor that are still somewhat removed for me, but it's pretty neat. So you know, if you can, you know, DNA research is good. Family Tree research is good, so you can get in touch that way. Another way is, you can, you know, and I did a podcast recently on creating altars, you can have an altar to worship your ancestor, so you'd have some representation of them on there, you might have pictures of some of your ancestry, you might have pictures of, you know, if you're living in a place that is not the country, or area of the world where your ancestors are from, traditionally, you might have some representations on an altar or in your home. That is another way to get in touch with your ancestral line.
Another way is to honor the cultures that, you know, if you're multicultural, or I don't know anybody who's unique cultural, but let's say you are honored those, participate in cultural events, learn cultural things. If you're Scottish, I mean, I'm Scottish. I haven't learned the bagpipes, or Scottish dancing, but I do own a kilt. I do go to the Highland Games. And I do go to Scottish festivals, and I listen to Scottish music, and I learn about the country so you can learn about things, this will create the sense of closeness for you. Take pride in your ancestry. And yes, you might have some crummy people in your ancestral line, you don't have to be proud of a serial killer if you find out that one is in your family, but there are other people in your family that you can be proud of. Be proud of your ethnic heritage, you can be proud of your national heritage. Okay. Where that goes awry is when people become racist or nationalistic. I do not support those things in any way. Okay, so some of my ancestors are Norse. From the region of Scandinavia I've Swedish and Norwegian ancestors. And there are some people who are neo nazi white supremacists who have borrowed heavily from traditional Norse and Scandinavian culture. And it it ang, you know, not a lot angers me, that angers me. Because now if I want to, you know, in some ways celebrate that part of my heritage. I have to explain to people that I am not, in fact, a bigot. I'm not a racist. I don't you know, I'm not a white supremacist in any way, shape, or form and they don't support that message. So don't be racist. Don't be a nationalist. You know, don't be those things. You can take pride in everything that you are, without having to put anybody else down see anybody else as inferior. Or, you know, be afraid that people are taking things away from you. You can celebrate anything. Spent a lot of St. Patrick's days in, in Boston, and Gosh, everybody in the city is Irish on that. But, yeah, so but that doesn't mean you know, the Irish part of me says that French people suck or, you know, whatever, I'm part of French too. So that would be terrible if that happened. Um, I don't have to look at anybody as inferior to feel pride in my culture or nation or family or ancestry. So, so participate in cultural cultural events, learn about them, spend some time in your culture, if you are not learn the language, if you are, you know, if you don't know, though, you know, if I live in I live in the United States. English is the primary language here, there is no official language, and you know, people think there is but there isn't. But English is the primary language spoken here. And, you know, I have learned some French because I have French ancestors and I have I haven't really taken a stab at gala cat, just a little bit. And it is, it's been so hard, I haven't progressed much but learn the language. If you're not speaking the language of your most recent ancestors, learn some of that, that would be a good idea. Um, you know, keep I talked about keeping an altar, participate in cultural events that are ancestor based, so if there are special feast days or something along those lines, okay, so learning about your ancestors, respecting your ancestors, finding their graves, you know, if you can, paying homage to them, praying to them, if you're a praying person, if you do shamanic journeying journey to your ancestors, I have ancestral helping spirits that I journey to. And you will derive a significant healing from that healing, you'll derive some power from that you might get knowledge from that you might get skills from that. It's, trust me, it's worth it. The payoff is huge. Even just the sense of cultural connection can be really huge. It's big for me.
You know, I can, I can remember as a kid kind of growing up, and being a little bit jealous of people who were, for example, Jewish and got to celebrate Hanukkah and go to temple and learn how to speak Hebrew and have a bar mitzvah. And I was like, wow, all that stuff is cool. We don't have you know, we had sure we had Christmas, we celebrated Christmas and Easter. All that stuff. You know, it wasn't really connected to it was connected to going to a certain church, but it wasn't connected to a culture. Or you know, somebody who was you know, Hispanic celebrating kinson era, right when a girl turns 15. That's pretty cool. wouldn't have anything like that. So when I finally started to get more into my ancestry, and celebrate some of my heritage, there was this greater sense of connection, the sense of belonging, the sense of participation, a cultural richness that I love, I love I still love it. And I love sharing that with people and going to, you know, going to events that represent my culture, and still exploring other people's cultures as well, because I have great respect. Fantastic. cultures, like it's fantastic. There's so many cultures out there, and so much to learn about them and explore and Gosh, think about all the food. I love to eat. I'm a foodie, I will admit it. And I love gosh, I love ethnic food. And by ethnic I mean maybe that is very ethnocentric to say ethnic food. What I mean by that is food that comes from ethnicities and cultures other than my own. So I love everything. You know, if I think about all of the different types of foods that I've gotten to try over the years, from Ethiopian food to Moroccan food and Chinese and Japanese and Italian and French and you know, Indian and Korean, and all you know food from all over. I just love it. I just think it's fantastic. Celebrate your culture. Take pride in your culture. Take pride in your heritage. Take pride. And your ancestors, but don't think you're better than anybody else. Because we're all in the same boat. And ultimately, we're all brothers and sisters. Your culture is not better than anybody else's culture. My culture is not better than anybody else's culture. They are what they are. They're different. There's equal, there's equal good and bad, and every culture, things to be celebrated, and things to not be celebrated and to try to change. Um, that being said, I have talked for it says an hour and 10 minutes now. But this, you know, this, I think, hopefully has been a good talk has been something I've been, I'm extremely interested in. It has been coming up as I said over and over again for me in the past couple of weeks. So with that, I will leave you. I will talk to you next time. I love you all. I hope this has been useful. And I hope to hear from some of you.
Announcer 1:11:24
You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, John Moore. For more info or to contact John go to MaineShaman.com that's maineshaman.com