Family Wisdom Tree

Your Ancestors, Your Family ...

 

 

... Overcame countless obstacles in the 100,000 years or so they have walked the planet.  

 

Think of the millions if not billions of souls that did not survive, that did not pass the many unexpected 'fitness tests' that allow living things to pass along their genes.  

 

But your family line did survive.  Your ancestors endured.  They overcame incredible deprivations, experienced mind altering enlightenments, traversed whole oceans and crossed entire continents -- leading to where you are today.  

 

Each step along the way is recorded somewhere -- in archaeological evidence or historic documents, in stories passed down from generation to generation, or in the genetic material you inherited that is carried in every cell of your body.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our cells literally remember and recall significant events in our ancestors' lives.  There is empowering significance this.  

 

 

Could it be that, long before we had hard scientific evidence showing that the ancestors 'live on' in our DNA, we chose to keep their memories alive as an subconscious affirmation of the survival value -- the vitality -- their presence represents today?  

 

Could it be that our forebears are not so much 'calling to us' but instead we are calling on them to release the pent-up genetic potential -- the empowering lessons of the past -- contained in their genetic material?

 

Ancestral memory is a peculiar thing.  It comes to us in unpredictable ways, at unexpected times.  It comes to us as a remembrance of a story handed down from our parents or grandparents.  It comes to us as intuition and precognition. It arises in dreams and probably helps explain some aspects of 'deja vu' as well as the even more peculiar 'deja visite' -- the feeling that we have been to a place before, that we know it intimately as if we had lived there in another life, another period in time, even though we know we have not.

 

Genetic memory is a close relative of ancestral memory.  Genetic memory represents all the lessons that have been handed down as changes to our DNA code over tens of thousands of years of family experience.  Some of these changes were accidental.  They happened as random mutations of DNA that turned out to have survival value.  They happened as a result of exposure to environmental conditions that changed the structure and order of the DNA base pairs.  They happened as a result of physical or emotional events that shocked the nervous system to its core, resulting in cause-effect messages newly imprinted on our DNA.  

 

Although science is new to some of these ideas, a great many of our attitudes, beliefs and behaviors are based on an innate knowledge that the lessons our ancestors learned are still important to us today.  Now that science is confirming what knowledge and culture have known, we can with confidence take this understanding to the next level.

 

 

The film The 13th Warrior illustrates the point well.  

 

Late in the movie the Norse warriors engage in a pivotal battle.

 

They collectively chant a reverent verse known to all their clan:

 

'Lo, there do I see my father.

Lo, there do I see my mother and my sisters and

   my brothers.

Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to

   the beginning.

Lo, they do call to me.  They bid me

   take my place among them - in the halls of Valhalla -

Where the brave may live forever.'

 

 

There are many unspoken messages here, messages that are present in our collective, subconscious mind.  

 

First, the verse confirms for us that the ancestors are present; they surround us and call our names, especially in difficult circumstances.  'Step into our circle.  Remember what we have taught you.  Do this and survive,' they urgently appeal.  

 

Second, we learn that the ancestors await us.  They have been with us all along.  They bid us take our place among them.

 

Their time is out time.  Past, present and future are merged in the present moment.  Which path will we take?  Will we take the path to continued life or the path of death and closure?  The ancestors want us to live.  They want the family line to continue.  They want their hard-won genetic stock to be passed down to new generations.  Otherwise all is lost.  In such a case closure, death, could mean annihilation of the entire lineage.  

 

What good would ancestral memory be then?

 

Finally, we learn that the Brave are those who try.  They are those who give everything to the effort of continuing in the face of hair-raising, blood-chilling, death-defying circumstance.  The effort we make is overseen by the ancestors.  They take notice and they care.  The effort we make, simply the effort itself regardless of the outcome, lives on 'forever' -- either in the ongoing, surviving family line or in the stories we leave behind for others to contemplate and learn from.  

 

That, then, is the answer to our question above.

 

In death we leave behind the tale of our living.  Even if the family line comes to a close (and someday it will), our neighbors will carry the story of our living in their memories.  A portion of the DNA they hand down will be influenced by the curiosity, the awe, the nourishment our own living gave to others.

 

All that from a phrase:  'Lo, they do call to me.  They bid me take my place among them.'  Repeated over countless centuries, in a multitude of languages and settings spread across all human history.

 

We and they are the same.  We have always been together, always will be together.  Yet even for the new awareness this offers there is still the question of what does it all mean.

 

The Family Wisdom Tree offers a method of bringing this mysterious ancestral knowledge into the light of day.  It offers a structured approach to integrating conventional genealogical information with the more deeply held subconscious influences shaping belief and behavior.  The Wisdom Tree helps us understand not only where we came from and from whom, but why we live the way we do.  The Wisdom Tree also offers insight into how we might change things for the better.

 

The journey continues here.