CRADLE OF AWAKENING
THE CRADLE OF AWAKENING
Stay in your living presence, feel all the life going on in you at once; feel the cohesion, the live presence of open awareness, here and now. See how you come directly to life. Come into living presence, more and more. We are called to remembrance of where we came from -- the cradle of nature -- to refresh the dream of mythic origins. Feel the rhythm of awakening to the lifeworld, the root pulse encoding our becoming.
Life Force
Contemplate the origin of the universe, the creation of matter, and the creation of life and reproduction -- "they who engender, they who create" -- evolution entering into time. We chart our legacy in a sea of ancestors with many shores. We navigate between our role-bound persona field and the mythic field, between our ordinary social lives and the timeless mythic realm, attentive to whatever comes to presence.
As we move forward in imaginal space with only our shadows behind, we find our passed lives in front of us. The serpent curls back to eat its tail. The personal and universal tale of psyche quickens and sustains us through cyclic emergence, death and resurrection, connecting individual destiny with transcendent humanity.
Genealogy is a dynamic expression and an experience of psycho-historical recovery of the self. It is our initiation into a deeper awareness, larger order, a greater ecology of Being. Embarking on our genealogical project is essentially a contract with ourselves to make a labyrinthine transformational journey through psycho-history and human development to complete it.
Our project is one of both ancestral and psycho-historical recovery. The fusion of history and psyche is a marriage of what we have been and what we eternally are. The shock of recognition is mediated and nuanced by our ancestors. Metaphor makes symbolic use of historical material.
We are each living metaphors. Our genealogy is our natural History. Our psychogenealogy is the natural history of our soul. The ancestors saturate our ordinary lives, as do successful rituals such as genealogy practice which are central to our lives. There is another kind of primordial human in us that responds to a transgenerational approach to the family tree.
This biologically encoded history of the human race is present in every person at the unconscious level as archaic traits. In this sense, the meaning of life is you. Gnosis (not Gnosticism) dissolves the idea that outer and inner or personal and cosmic distinctions exist, allowing phenomena to return to its basis -- the awakening ground -- as a single, uninterrupted continuum, as symbolized in our Family Tree.
Unlimited, Immortal Archetype
Jung called the primordial ancestor 'the two million year old man," the instinctive self, rooted in nature, who speaks the forgotten symbolic language of the unconscious. It encompasses the entire history of the human race. The age is arbitrary. In 1997 a 4.4 million-year-old human ancestor was found, the most primitive hominid species known.
Our unknown companion -- the 'Indigenous One' or indigenous root -- symbolizes the emergence of our species as a personal revelation. "Well now, I have within myself a “man” who is millions of years old, and he perhaps can throw light on these metaphysical problems." (Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 12).
Genealogy and depth psychology are both psychic archaeology, seeking elemental wisdom to reconnect us and heal our wounds. Both are a move from biological to cultural transformation. How can we know the unknowable, much less make friends and relations of this archetypal self as a mirror of our universe, this healing principle of our species from the beginning of time?
Our survival is mutually entwined with our instincts, connection to nature, and unforgotten wisdom. Giving up our roots results in a restlessness of the soul that leads to many forms of mental and emotional problems, the worst of which is meaninglessness. Sir Francis Bacon said, 'In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.' And, "wounds cannot be cured without searching." Our separation is painful because it is more than our souls can stand.
As Hermann Hesse noted in Reflections, "We each and all of us, contain within us the entire history of the world, and just as our body records Man’s genealogy as far back as the fish and then some, so our soul encompasses everything that has ever existed in human souls. All gods and devils that have ever existed are within us as possibilities, as desires, as solutions." All epochs dwell in us as the unconscious, timeless, creative matrix of the psyche.
Our genealogy reflects the metaphor of a landscape and travelers. The travelers obey inherited rules (archetypes) that determine loosely which routes are possible and which not, separating the feasible from the impossible. The rules are hidden, but are recorded in our charts and patterns, in the form of myths, stories, rituals, norms and other archetypal images. Surprisingly, even with vast correlations, only a few pathways (patterns) emerge. Each branch of the tree is a set of parallel landscapes, corresponding to different levels of being or consciousness, but all part of the same world (unus mundus).
Ancestral Medicine Ways
Gaining consciousness within the flow of the Spirit is the sacred purpose of Ancestral ways. Medicine is revealed when this consciousness is established. Discoveries that follow are from the participation with the Great Spirit and Mother Life. A carrier of these ways accepts the responsibilities, ethics, principles and records that are held accountable to all that exists.
Resolution or failure of an epigenetic crisis by a global historical figure can have potent consequences in their own age, and perhaps others, including their descendants. Psycho-history is full of such examples, especially in noble and royal lines.
We all have ancestors, both of blood and of spirit, and each of our lives rests firmly on the foundation of their sacrifice. They are as near to us as our breath and bones, and when related with in conscious ways, they can be a tremendous source of healing, guidance, and companionship. We can learn to accept life with all its imperfections -- unconditional acceptance of life itself.
The ancestors we choose to honor may include not only recent and more distant family but also beloved friends and community, cultural and religious leaders, and even other-than-human kin such as companion animals. Our ancestors bring vital support to fulfill our potential here on Earth, and, through involvement in our lives, also further their own growth and maturation in the spirit realms.
Like the living, spirits of the deceased run the full spectrum from wise and loving to self-absorbed and harmful. Physical death is a major event for the soul, a rite of passage we will all face, and the living can provide critical momentum for the recently deceased to make the initiatory leap to become a helpful ancestor.
Once the dead have become ancestors, part of their post-death journey may include making repairs for wrongs committed while here on Earth. For their sake and for ours, it’s good to spend a little time now and again feeding our relationships with the ancestors.
Direct contact with the spirits of the ancestors can be cultivated through ritual practices; however, communication may also happen spontaneously in forms such as dream contact, waking encounters, and synchronicity. When we have a framework to receive their outreach, their work is made easier and we are open to the enjoyment of conscious, ongoing relationship.
You don’t have to be an indigenous shaman or ghost whisperer to have a direct, intimate, and healthy relationship with your ancestors. We all have loving ancestors who want us to fulfill our destiny as happy and well-adjusted people, and in my experience, our ancestors are the ideal guides for family healing as they are invested in seeing their future generations thrive.
Just as in any meaningful relationship, our bonds with the ancestors call for care and renewal. By proactively engaging in simple actions to honor and feed these relationships, our ancestors can become a tremendous source of healing, empowerment, and nourishment in our everyday lives. Fortunately, these practices of tending are relatively simply and can be carried out by anyone with sincere intent.
http://ancestralmedicine.org/five-ways-to-honor-your-ancestors/
Going Nowhere: Ascending & Descending
As a whole, the Tree symbolizes the true self. Ancestors are among the most essential ways we have of participating with realities greater than ourselves. Our lines are full of ascending and descending currents we can follow to Source and Ground -- the One in the Many and the Many in the One. Genealogy is a metaphysical map of our personal paths back to the legendary and mythic layers of our being in connective boundary-transcending conscious events.
Consciousness is the alchemical prima materia, our awareness, our true selves -- the essence of the Great Work. The mystical marriage is the unification and transcendence of male/female duality. Conflicting drives originating on the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical levels create splits in the personality. "We can conquer unconsciousness by regular work but never by a grand gesture." (Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 31)
Jung says that, "The obvious analogy, in the psychic sphere, to this problem of opposites is the dissociation of the personality brought about by the conflict of incompatible tendencies resulting as a rule from an inharmonious disposition. The repression of one of the opposites leads only to a prolongation and extension of the conflict, in other words, to a neurosis."
Further, Jung said that "it very often does not depend upon the use one makes of an image, but rather upon the use the archetypes make of ourselves, which decides the question whether it will be artistic creation or a change of religious attitude.
I find that this "choice" is in many cases rather a fate than a voluntary decision.
I see that many of my pupils indulge in a superstitious belief in our so-called " free will" and pay little attention to the fact that the archetypes are, as a rule, autonomous entities, and not only material subject to our choice.
They are, as a matter of fact, dominants up to a certain point. That is the reason why one is confronted with an archetype, because we cannot undo it by merely making it conscious. It has to be taken into account and that is the main task of any prolonged analysis. The deviation from the dominants causes a certain dissociation, i.e., a loss of vitality, what the primitives call "a loss of soul." (Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 625-626)
Conscious Relationships
An integrated approach roots us in both past and present, as a common model for real life and consciousness that fosters transgenerational bonds, transformation, and integration. Both Transgenerational Integration (TI) and genealogy are full of rich themes to explore, including family ties, legacies, parenting, matriarchy and patriarchy (Gaillard).
https://books.google.com/books?id=_8xCBgAAQBAJ&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&dq=Rooted+in+the+Present,+The+Emergence+of+the+Self+By+Thierry+Gaillard&source=bl&ots=sgePs-mKEu&sig=hz8-_otrO0u3ve0lHsusWYC7gHM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi63I7Eg8HKAhUCsoMKHVf3BocQ6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&q=Rooted%20in%20the%20Present%2C%20The%20Emergence%20of%20the%20Self%20By%20Thierry%20Gaillard&f=false
"It is possible that a certain historical atmosphere is born with us by means of which we can repeat strange details almost as if they were historical facts." (Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 39.)
In The Undiscovered Self, Jung poses a challenge that is relevant to psychogenealogy and the urgency of recovering our ancestral heritage:
"We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a “metamorphosis of the gods,” i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science."
The Transgenerational Integration movement is developing such awareness for both therapists and the general population. Part of that school of thought is an active psychological approach to genealogy and the ebb and flow of life itself, whether self-initiated or in the therapeutic relationship.
TI has its own genealogy rooted in the works of Freud, Jung, Fromm, and other methods, such as Gestalt, Transactional Analysis, and Metaphor Therapy. It also draws on established conceptual models from family therapy, including the genogram, a map of the family system that discloses the deeper forces that unknowingly influence our thoughts, behaviors and emotional experiences.
Stay in your living presence, feel all the life going on in you at once; feel the cohesion, the live presence of open awareness, here and now. See how you come directly to life. Come into living presence, more and more. We are called to remembrance of where we came from -- the cradle of nature -- to refresh the dream of mythic origins. Feel the rhythm of awakening to the lifeworld, the root pulse encoding our becoming.
Life Force
Contemplate the origin of the universe, the creation of matter, and the creation of life and reproduction -- "they who engender, they who create" -- evolution entering into time. We chart our legacy in a sea of ancestors with many shores. We navigate between our role-bound persona field and the mythic field, between our ordinary social lives and the timeless mythic realm, attentive to whatever comes to presence.
As we move forward in imaginal space with only our shadows behind, we find our passed lives in front of us. The serpent curls back to eat its tail. The personal and universal tale of psyche quickens and sustains us through cyclic emergence, death and resurrection, connecting individual destiny with transcendent humanity.
Genealogy is a dynamic expression and an experience of psycho-historical recovery of the self. It is our initiation into a deeper awareness, larger order, a greater ecology of Being. Embarking on our genealogical project is essentially a contract with ourselves to make a labyrinthine transformational journey through psycho-history and human development to complete it.
Our project is one of both ancestral and psycho-historical recovery. The fusion of history and psyche is a marriage of what we have been and what we eternally are. The shock of recognition is mediated and nuanced by our ancestors. Metaphor makes symbolic use of historical material.
We are each living metaphors. Our genealogy is our natural History. Our psychogenealogy is the natural history of our soul. The ancestors saturate our ordinary lives, as do successful rituals such as genealogy practice which are central to our lives. There is another kind of primordial human in us that responds to a transgenerational approach to the family tree.
This biologically encoded history of the human race is present in every person at the unconscious level as archaic traits. In this sense, the meaning of life is you. Gnosis (not Gnosticism) dissolves the idea that outer and inner or personal and cosmic distinctions exist, allowing phenomena to return to its basis -- the awakening ground -- as a single, uninterrupted continuum, as symbolized in our Family Tree.
Unlimited, Immortal Archetype
Jung called the primordial ancestor 'the two million year old man," the instinctive self, rooted in nature, who speaks the forgotten symbolic language of the unconscious. It encompasses the entire history of the human race. The age is arbitrary. In 1997 a 4.4 million-year-old human ancestor was found, the most primitive hominid species known.
Our unknown companion -- the 'Indigenous One' or indigenous root -- symbolizes the emergence of our species as a personal revelation. "Well now, I have within myself a “man” who is millions of years old, and he perhaps can throw light on these metaphysical problems." (Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 12).
Genealogy and depth psychology are both psychic archaeology, seeking elemental wisdom to reconnect us and heal our wounds. Both are a move from biological to cultural transformation. How can we know the unknowable, much less make friends and relations of this archetypal self as a mirror of our universe, this healing principle of our species from the beginning of time?
Our survival is mutually entwined with our instincts, connection to nature, and unforgotten wisdom. Giving up our roots results in a restlessness of the soul that leads to many forms of mental and emotional problems, the worst of which is meaninglessness. Sir Francis Bacon said, 'In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.' And, "wounds cannot be cured without searching." Our separation is painful because it is more than our souls can stand.
As Hermann Hesse noted in Reflections, "We each and all of us, contain within us the entire history of the world, and just as our body records Man’s genealogy as far back as the fish and then some, so our soul encompasses everything that has ever existed in human souls. All gods and devils that have ever existed are within us as possibilities, as desires, as solutions." All epochs dwell in us as the unconscious, timeless, creative matrix of the psyche.
Our genealogy reflects the metaphor of a landscape and travelers. The travelers obey inherited rules (archetypes) that determine loosely which routes are possible and which not, separating the feasible from the impossible. The rules are hidden, but are recorded in our charts and patterns, in the form of myths, stories, rituals, norms and other archetypal images. Surprisingly, even with vast correlations, only a few pathways (patterns) emerge. Each branch of the tree is a set of parallel landscapes, corresponding to different levels of being or consciousness, but all part of the same world (unus mundus).
Ancestral Medicine Ways
Gaining consciousness within the flow of the Spirit is the sacred purpose of Ancestral ways. Medicine is revealed when this consciousness is established. Discoveries that follow are from the participation with the Great Spirit and Mother Life. A carrier of these ways accepts the responsibilities, ethics, principles and records that are held accountable to all that exists.
Resolution or failure of an epigenetic crisis by a global historical figure can have potent consequences in their own age, and perhaps others, including their descendants. Psycho-history is full of such examples, especially in noble and royal lines.
We all have ancestors, both of blood and of spirit, and each of our lives rests firmly on the foundation of their sacrifice. They are as near to us as our breath and bones, and when related with in conscious ways, they can be a tremendous source of healing, guidance, and companionship. We can learn to accept life with all its imperfections -- unconditional acceptance of life itself.
The ancestors we choose to honor may include not only recent and more distant family but also beloved friends and community, cultural and religious leaders, and even other-than-human kin such as companion animals. Our ancestors bring vital support to fulfill our potential here on Earth, and, through involvement in our lives, also further their own growth and maturation in the spirit realms.
Like the living, spirits of the deceased run the full spectrum from wise and loving to self-absorbed and harmful. Physical death is a major event for the soul, a rite of passage we will all face, and the living can provide critical momentum for the recently deceased to make the initiatory leap to become a helpful ancestor.
Once the dead have become ancestors, part of their post-death journey may include making repairs for wrongs committed while here on Earth. For their sake and for ours, it’s good to spend a little time now and again feeding our relationships with the ancestors.
Direct contact with the spirits of the ancestors can be cultivated through ritual practices; however, communication may also happen spontaneously in forms such as dream contact, waking encounters, and synchronicity. When we have a framework to receive their outreach, their work is made easier and we are open to the enjoyment of conscious, ongoing relationship.
You don’t have to be an indigenous shaman or ghost whisperer to have a direct, intimate, and healthy relationship with your ancestors. We all have loving ancestors who want us to fulfill our destiny as happy and well-adjusted people, and in my experience, our ancestors are the ideal guides for family healing as they are invested in seeing their future generations thrive.
Just as in any meaningful relationship, our bonds with the ancestors call for care and renewal. By proactively engaging in simple actions to honor and feed these relationships, our ancestors can become a tremendous source of healing, empowerment, and nourishment in our everyday lives. Fortunately, these practices of tending are relatively simply and can be carried out by anyone with sincere intent.
http://ancestralmedicine.org/five-ways-to-honor-your-ancestors/
Going Nowhere: Ascending & Descending
As a whole, the Tree symbolizes the true self. Ancestors are among the most essential ways we have of participating with realities greater than ourselves. Our lines are full of ascending and descending currents we can follow to Source and Ground -- the One in the Many and the Many in the One. Genealogy is a metaphysical map of our personal paths back to the legendary and mythic layers of our being in connective boundary-transcending conscious events.
Consciousness is the alchemical prima materia, our awareness, our true selves -- the essence of the Great Work. The mystical marriage is the unification and transcendence of male/female duality. Conflicting drives originating on the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical levels create splits in the personality. "We can conquer unconsciousness by regular work but never by a grand gesture." (Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 31)
Jung says that, "The obvious analogy, in the psychic sphere, to this problem of opposites is the dissociation of the personality brought about by the conflict of incompatible tendencies resulting as a rule from an inharmonious disposition. The repression of one of the opposites leads only to a prolongation and extension of the conflict, in other words, to a neurosis."
Further, Jung said that "it very often does not depend upon the use one makes of an image, but rather upon the use the archetypes make of ourselves, which decides the question whether it will be artistic creation or a change of religious attitude.
I find that this "choice" is in many cases rather a fate than a voluntary decision.
I see that many of my pupils indulge in a superstitious belief in our so-called " free will" and pay little attention to the fact that the archetypes are, as a rule, autonomous entities, and not only material subject to our choice.
They are, as a matter of fact, dominants up to a certain point. That is the reason why one is confronted with an archetype, because we cannot undo it by merely making it conscious. It has to be taken into account and that is the main task of any prolonged analysis. The deviation from the dominants causes a certain dissociation, i.e., a loss of vitality, what the primitives call "a loss of soul." (Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 625-626)
Conscious Relationships
An integrated approach roots us in both past and present, as a common model for real life and consciousness that fosters transgenerational bonds, transformation, and integration. Both Transgenerational Integration (TI) and genealogy are full of rich themes to explore, including family ties, legacies, parenting, matriarchy and patriarchy (Gaillard).
https://books.google.com/books?id=_8xCBgAAQBAJ&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&dq=Rooted+in+the+Present,+The+Emergence+of+the+Self+By+Thierry+Gaillard&source=bl&ots=sgePs-mKEu&sig=hz8-_otrO0u3ve0lHsusWYC7gHM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi63I7Eg8HKAhUCsoMKHVf3BocQ6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&q=Rooted%20in%20the%20Present%2C%20The%20Emergence%20of%20the%20Self%20By%20Thierry%20Gaillard&f=false
"It is possible that a certain historical atmosphere is born with us by means of which we can repeat strange details almost as if they were historical facts." (Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 39.)
In The Undiscovered Self, Jung poses a challenge that is relevant to psychogenealogy and the urgency of recovering our ancestral heritage:
"We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a “metamorphosis of the gods,” i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science."
The Transgenerational Integration movement is developing such awareness for both therapists and the general population. Part of that school of thought is an active psychological approach to genealogy and the ebb and flow of life itself, whether self-initiated or in the therapeutic relationship.
TI has its own genealogy rooted in the works of Freud, Jung, Fromm, and other methods, such as Gestalt, Transactional Analysis, and Metaphor Therapy. It also draws on established conceptual models from family therapy, including the genogram, a map of the family system that discloses the deeper forces that unknowingly influence our thoughts, behaviors and emotional experiences.