"Being the Face of Our Ancestors: Everyday Life with the Dead" with Dr. Daniel Foor of Ancestral Medicine

Guiding Question for this Autumn Equinox Ritual: How do the ancestors already move and speak through you in your everyday life?

Before the lecture we were invited (again) to light a candle and what-not, and I did. I was already dressed this time, however, since I was filming a video for Youtube earlier in the morning and I also had my monthly Dr.'s Appointment today. So there really wasn't much else to do to prepare before it started.

At this point, I'm really loving Dr. Foor's Guided Meditations; this is the second one, now, that I've had no trouble with. Though this one was much lighter on content compared to the Autumn Equinox one I attended.

Like last time, we were told to "call down whatever powers we wished to assist us". This time I asked HaShem to open the doorway to the Ancestors- and for Chava and Adam (the First Mother and First Father respectively; the deepest ancestors of Humanity) to call my own Ancestors forth for me.

Then we were invited to look at the sort of "web of relationships" that surrounded us. And then we were told to see if any of the ones closest to us were broken and / or unhealthy, and invite our healed ancestors to step forward into those spaced instead ... It was actually a really lovely concept that I enjoyed a lot!

Anyways, I did that as instructed; I invited whatever healthy, healed ancestors were available and who wanted to come forward to be my guides and healers to do so. And I explicitly asked them to be my guides, and to be involved in my life, and to give me guidance- and I thanked them for doing so if they chose to. I'm very excited to see if any of my Ancestors step forward into the space of Guides for me. Especially since, for Rosh Hashanah, I did a ritual immersion and moon meditation- and a secondary purpose of that was (re)affirming myself as part of my ancestral groups, and acknowledging my connections to them. So this is a lovely little ritual parallel that I didn't expect.

Other than that, Dr. Foor had a lot of really interesting insight on Ancestors and their purpose, and what we can gain from connecting and communing with them, and being in right relationship with them properly. It was a really good lecture

"The Ancestors" are, in a general way, the collective. In other words, there is a sort of ... Essence to our species. It's most beautiful spiritual expression. And the Ancestors are that big spirit of humans as a collective force. They are the wisdom of our species; the many-faced, many-gendered, multi-racial, human librarian with great insight into that unique Human essence.

Think of bears, and then think of "the bear spirit". They're different, but they are the same; the one is the (passed on) spiritual collective of the living all / others.

• We ourselves are the collective resultant faces of our Ancestors ... Your body is their body. Your voice is their voice. It's just how things are structurally built in the Universe.
  
  
• We as individual people, each of us, are also a singular specific thing, however. But if we can inhabit and embrace our specific forms as people, those forms (our specific cultures and locations, and so on) can become an "on ramp" of sorts to engaging with this collective spirit and wisdom. Thus our specific relationship with our Ancestors is our access point to the collective wisdom of Humanity.

"Why would I want to become the face of my Ancestors when they were bad people" is such a common question. But it's not one that even needs to be asked, really; it comes from a misunderstanding of Ancestor Work, and a cultural disconnect from the framework of active Ancestral relationship.

"Ancestors" are not just the troubled ones; yes, some Ancestor Work has to do with with assisting the dead to become at peace, but that's not all there is to it ... It's mostly dealing with those who are at peace already, and who are already safe to relate to.

The word "Ancestor" can be used in a more expansive way to refer to "Other Than Human Kin" in the Animistic sense, but more often people focus more narrowly on the Human Kin. And in that regard it's often used properly to refer to those Ancestors who are specifically at peace as opposed to those who are not currently healed or need realignment.

"Ancestors" aren't only the recently deceased, either- especially not only the ones you knew / know- despite that being common ... Those people are "part of the ocean", true. But the ocean is much more vast than that; most of our Ancestors will never be remembered by face, name, deed, or historical event. And so we have to let go of that idea in order to properly connect to them.

Furthermore, it's tempting to want to see them as "just a part of you" or "just an aspect of what you are". But we know from the models of other meaningful relationships in our lives, that if we only see others through the lens of "us", then we don't get great results (or build great relationships); the Ancestors have their own existence. They exist outside of us.

Relating to the Ancestors isn't just an only-psychological idea. The intent of building relationship with the Ancestors is multifold.

First is for personal and family healing, for unresolved family legacy; it's bad to run away from the troubles we're connected to. Doing so may bring temporary relief, but it ultimately severs us from our Ancestors and community, and isolates us.

We're born into ancestral blessings (ask your Ancestors HOW you are awesome, even if you think badly of them)- but we're also born into collective burden, and pain, and things that are still in need of repair. And so if we want belonging, we have to open the trunk of inner-generational issues and deal with it through tangible repair.

Second, it helps us discover personal destiny and legacy; the place where we shine an bring our best to the world ... What is your very specific self while you're alive? And the Ancestors are good guides at discovering that. They have perspective on that, that's important.

It should be a "scary" thing to not be ourselves and do what we're here to do- and to really dig into what that means, on a soul level, for each of us. It's important that we bring that out into the world however we can, and make it a priority for ourselves to do so.

And finally, for living a more resilient and intentional life; embodying our Ancestors allows us better access to bigger states of collective love, harmony, and other grand emotions.

But it also gives us greater perspective on everyday things, on other places and people, and so on; it allows us to see each other in a larger and more connected context.

It's important to couple the understanding that we are the face of our Ancestors with the truth that everyone else is also the face of their Ancestors. And so any interaction is "Me and MY people" speaking with "YOU and YOUR people"- and there's a lot of implications with that.

Things aren't always so personal when reparations are "individually" demanded ... Things may feel personal. But they're really responding to you as the symbol of a thing- whether that's nicely or not. And understanding that consciously opens up much different choices. It also means you can speak in moments collectively and leverage that for constructive acts of repair and apology and relate to others and their groups.

Relationship has a lot to do with our own sense of belonging and our bodies, too ... If we have a negative view or our group, then we have a tendency to translate that to a negative view of our own self- and we tend to move negatively through the world, as well. So relationship with our Ancestors contributes to a sense of social and self belonging, and a positive sense of who we are as people, and within our own bodies.

Because we are inherently connected to, and the face of, our Ancestors ... Even if you don't actually do anything- and Ancestor Work- in the first place, consciously? It ultimately doesn't matter. You're still connected to your Ancestors.

However. Engaging in conscious connection is different than not engaging ... It's embodiment- and embodiment matters; it matters if you gain wisdom directly. If you get that insight yourself, rather than embodying someone else's insight that you didn't earn on your own.

So no, you technically don't need to improve upon anything. And yet, still, part of it is actively cultivating and training ... Especially of those stubborn parts which won't connect; your choice is whether or not you play that out consciously. And the risk of not doing so, is ultimately continuing to recreate trauma patterns.

Notice the judgements that creep in, even subconsciously, when you think of Ancestor work, and when you talk to others about it ... But yet allowing our identity to become porous with our Ancestors is the most normal thing you can do. It shouldn't be as awkward as it is.

Historically, then and now, it's unusual not to do that- not to have some way to commune with the dead who are here-but-not-here … It is pathological to think you can ever truly sever your connection to your Ancestors.

Entering Ancestor Work is ultimately an act of healing from cultural abuse and coming back into a place of embodying basic "life skills". And it's often intergenerational, so we rarely even clock it as being abuse. But at some point that abuse has deconditioned us and denied us the framework of connecting to our Ancestors.

That judgement is part of the apparatus of colonialism. But it's possible to notice it and interrupt it by coming back into right relationship with your Ancestors, and keeping your heart connected to them.

The final thing he said, that I think was really potent, was that "True Elders embody the kind forces of the universe". And I think that's always going to stick with me.