Ancestral/Generational Issues

​Ancestral/Generational Issues and Disempowerments
 
Just as we receive specific physical attributes from our parents on a DNA level, we also receive imprinted soul patterns that come along with that DNA. Ancestral patterns are passed down from generation to generation, and can show up in many different ways. 
Let’s begin by going over the nature and origin of ancestral patterns.
Ancestral patterns come into existence when one of our ancestors experiences an unresolved trauma or issue that affects them on a very deep level.  You may have known people who have incurred a serious loss or trauma, either from life circumstances, abuse, natural disasters, or even near death experiences. Often, even though they get through the event, something about them looks physically different immediately following the trauma. That’s because something has indeed changed deep down on a cellular and soul level.   When something like this happens and remains unresolved, the trauma can be passed down to following generations on a soul level. An ancestral pattern may have come into existence dozens of generations back, or just a few. We can begin to identify and heal ancestral pattern sources with or without a basic knowledge about direct lineage. 
I will give you some examples. 
If your ancestor fought in a battle decades or even centuries ago, he came back a different person, carrying the weight of sorrow and anguish, even survivor’s guilt. He was literally a changed man. He then had a son. That son inherited not only your ancestor’s eye and hair color, but also some of the war trauma-related energy, since it was unresolved.  Years and generations down the line, that inherited trauma will no longer show up directly as war trauma. It might show up in the form of an unhealthy coping mechanism such as alcoholism, as depression (diagnosed or undiagnosed), or as an inability to open up emotionally. However it presents, it will appear most prominently in the men of the family, since the original trauma was experienced by a male ancestor.
Let’s take another scenario. Imagine the wife of a sailor who was lost at sea. Imagine that wife was pregnant when she received the news that her husband was lost in the storm. We know now from our science that the mother’s chemical reaction to her stress would absolutely be experienced by her unborn child.  Nobody would question that now that we know how pregnancy works.  But the mother’s actual grief and sorrow can also be transferred to the unborn child at the soul level.  Regardless of whether the child is male or female, the child comes into the world already carrying a heavy sense of abandonment, without even knowing why.  Through an ancestral pattern, this sense of abandonment, if left unresolved, will be passed down to the children of that child.  Generations down the line, their descendants may always have a sense of being alone in the world, with no allies, abandoned and alone even in a room full of people who love them.  Or they may always feel like “something is missing” even if there’s nothing obviously out of place.  They may struggle to fully invest in relationships, because they can never bring themselves to commit, being fearful of how much it would hurt if the relationship ends.
Some families have an ancestral pattern that shows up for them as a streak of what they think of as “bad luck.”  Perhaps there is a pattern of strange accidents or incidents involving fire.  This may very well stem from an ancestor whose life was destroyed by a fire.  Perhaps they lost loved ones, or lost all of their possessions and had to start their lives over without any means.  Other families may experience a similarly unexplainable pattern of events that involve water instead of fire.
You may have an ancestor who committed a crime and carried the guilt, and so you have inherited a sense of guilt even though you’ve done nothing to feel guilty about.  Perhaps you can never really shake the sense that you might have caused harm, regardless of your actual behavior. Or maybe you have an ancestor who was the victim of a crime and carried a victim mentality for the rest of their life.  Perhaps this allows you to be taken advantage of by others, or contributes to you playing the role of the victim as your native state, even though there are no practical limits to your empowerment.
There may have been an arranged marriage, with no love ever developing between the husband and wife.  The children born from that arranged marriage enter life sensing at a soul level that they lack love.  Even though they are loved, they still carry that energy of constantly being in a love deficit.  Maybe they have a general feeling that they aren’t good enough, have no love to give, or are incapable of accepting love. 
I have seen ancestral patterns show up in countless ways.  I can’t list them all here, but I hope these examples give you a general idea of how ancestral patterns work, and in what ways ancestral patterns may be taking away power in your life today. 
There are many innocent people who are affected by the actions and experiences of their ancestors.  Most ancestral patterns will affect all of the men in a family, or all of the women.  For example, if the trauma occurred with a male it most likely won’t affect his daughter, but it might affect his grandson. You may start to see commonalities between your mother, grandmother and sisters, or your father, uncle and nephews. Even if you can’t think of a particular pattern or occurrence, you can still successfully resolve a pattern that might not be obvious, because it has become “normal” to you. But if you look at it with ancestral patterns in mind, and you learn about your family heritage, you might start to see their commonalities in a different light.
Ancestral patterns can be identified and healed in a Shamanic Healing session.  Ancestral Patterns existing in you personally can also be addressed and healed through enrolling in the Personal Empowerment training series.  Some students have continued on through to the Honor of Healing Others training series to learn how to heal Ancestral Patterns for clients and loved ones.
If you choose to engage in this level of healing, your ancestors will be very grateful to you.  If the ancestor who originated the pattern has karmic implications attached to their actions, you may not be able to resolve it for them, but you can resolve it for the innocent ones who followed and “inherited” the pattern.
Note: Not all members of a bloodline will choose to accept ancestral pattern healing.  As always, they have free will to accept and receive the healing work, or to reject it.  Some bloodline members will be grateful to no longer hold themselves as victims, while others could cling to victimhood. Some may have attached the ancestral pattern attributes to their identity.   For example, a member of a bloodline suffering from an ancestral pattern of anger may think that their anger makes them powerful.   Since others are threatened by their anger, the bloodline member may enjoy that feeling of power. Instead of embracing anger in a healthy manner, as an emotion to be experienced and released, they may choose to hang onto the ancestral pattern and behaviors. They may choose to feed it, to allow it to foul every other facet of their experience, and the experiences of those around them.  You can’t control that, and shouldn’t try to control it. 
Once you heal the ancestral pattern, each bloodline member is newly empowered to choose for themselves. Before the healing was performed, on some level, they had no choice. The restoration of empowerment for yourself is your role.  Ancestral healing is often a sacred agreement that you make to heal yourself and your family. Those ancestors will be in gratitude for the burden lifted from them by you and the will start showing up as allies for you on your journey.   

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