"Our destiny is found on the path we take to avoid it."--none other than that ancestral mentor to many, Carl Jung

Hallowed E'en, All Saints Day and All Souls Day, October 31 - November 2, are Christian holy days devoted to our relationship with ancestors.  During this time of the year the veil between worlds is thin and we can seek to understand and evolve our relationship with those who have brought us to existence and have now have passed from our sight.

For the purpose of the post, we are referring to our human ancestors, although we have many other kinds, including animals who have formed us (they could be attached through generations before we were born), trees, mountains, etc.

Established in 1850, Oakland Historical Cemetery is Atlanta's oldest cemetery. 
The Lion of Atlanta rests over an undetermined number of Confederate soldiers buried beneath.
Check out Wayfaring Wanderer's current post on a Stroll Through Oakland Cemetery for a great photo montage of this historic, beautiful cemetery.

Two Septembers ago in 2006 I traveled to Eugene, Oregon with my dear friend Krayna, (who is also a blogger on the Virtual Tea House) to engage with a synagogue  around the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  (Krayna calls them the 'High Ho's' but I'm not intimate enough yet with them to nickname them!) While not Jewish myself  I have more than a little love, honor and admiration for the ancestral lineage between Judaism and my 'home' religion of Christianity.  Religious home base is where we travel out from to explore and engage, for enlightenment and deeper understanding of our  roots.  So it's natural for me that I spend time beginning to understand Judaism, not from a book, but with people who live and breathe it. 

On this trip, several impactful things happened, including a dream.  The impetus for the dream was an experience that I had standing in the back of the synagogue after the service looking at the names of those who had died as part of the Jewish community there in Eugene.  The candles/lights were lit for people who had died 40, 50 and 60 years before this date.  There were the Jewish years on the plaques as well as some Julian calendar dates.  I stood in awe and heard echoing through my mind a Jewish proverb that I'd come across years before while working in hospice grief groups: "You're never dead until you're forgotten."   A spaciousness opened under my feet and above my head as I experienced the names of those-who-are-not-forgotten, and knew that teenaged Christianity has  much to learn from our 'parent', Judaism, about honoring those who have brought us to this plane of existence.

The dream I had that night showed me that my hesitation to connect with ancestors was around fear that some of the darkness of my family's past would flood and overwhelm me.  The dream did an 'ancestral alignment' (sort of like a chiropractic spine twist, only different...) so that I saw that the ancestors as I knew them don't exist.  These are living, growing, vibrant beings, living on a different level, but very much alive,  and while vastly different from who they were 'here', are still connected to this level and willing to help us if we are open to it.  Note: If you read the link highlighted above about my ancient Grandmother, know that she died on October 15th in 2001..the threshold for this time of the year, it would seem.

I came across an article this morning from a blog by Lynn Jericho called The Inner Year  about ways to connect with our ancestors.  I reworked some of Lynn's great ideas and insights into this post.

• Engage with the dead. Relate to them with a reverent and open heart. Call out their names to let them know you remain connected to their being. (Not to the memory of their earthly existence, as this may trap us in the idea of these souls being what we thought they were...probably incomplete before death and certainly after death!). Even though they have disappeared, we still sense the ongoing growth of their soul and even occasionally their desire to connect with us.
• Being aware that ancestors live on beyond the threshold of death, and indeed may live exactly where we do, just on another level of consciousness, helps us reach out--or is it in--to them.
• Visit  local cemeteries often--even if you don't have family buried there.  The energy of these places helps open closed doors to ancestral energies.  (I have some I always visit when I'm in the 'hood: 2 in upstate New York, where my physical ancestors are buried for several generations; 1 in outback Colorado just because I love it--out there in the aspens; 1 here in Bend, Oregon where I walk my dog in the early morning hours.)
• It's not a mistake that the changing of the light brings us closer to the threshold of where we can connect with ancestral energies. If we did not have electricity, we would be dependent on the soft glow of candlelight after nightfall. The flickering shadows at the edge of candlelight gives us a sense that the dead are living nearby. Consider using candles often and with joy!
• During these festival days of the dead, do our best to resist the soul-killing energy of the mechanical and technical world. Find our way to the life of spiritual perception and sensitivity. Keep our thoughts pulsing with newness and the depth that our ancestors can bring to us. Ancestors seem to connect with living thoughts. They cannot experience mechanistic thoughts, addictive or habitual thoughts, or thoughts that lack our own spiritual creativity.
• Talk to the ancestors! Tell them about your need for their wisdom and perspective. Expect them to answer your call, but usually not in the way you expect!
• Read aloud a passage from a sacred text, listening to it through the ears of your ancestors. Read with your heart, not just your head. As you read aloud from a sacred text, feel the spiritual nourishment. Sacred texts feed both the living and the dead. You share a meaningful spiritual meal with your loved ones.
• In sleep, our souls are freed from the limitations of space and time.Pay particular attention to your dreams from about mid-October through Thanksgiving time.  The veil between worlds is thinner and our ancestors may try to connect through this more readily available mode. Call out the names of the dead nightly as you drift to sleep.  Calling out the names of the dead before asleep, is a way of saying “Here we come for a visit and a cup of tea!”

Clearer perspective, commitment to living our lives more consciously, a sense of seeing our lives as part of a much bigger mystery, and a sense of emotional balance are just some of the benefits of consciously connecting with our ancestors.  The more we connect with the ancestors in their continuing life, the more alive be become.

These practices also are also helpful to 'practicing our dying' so that when our time comes to make that shift, we're already keyed in to the next, the other, way of being.

If we're never dead until we're forgotten--let's remember with humility, grace, honesty and consistency those who have gone before us.  Let's bring the depths of our longings, fears and challenges to interact with those whose spiritual and sometimes genetic lineage we share.  They have wisdom that can help us find our way to the third way, the path of least resistance. Their wisdom can help us obtain the level of consciousness that Einstein connected with: a different one from the one on which we made and continue to make the problems we face.  

A favorite Hafez poem sums up what I pray those in the next generations--the ones I am ancestor to--will say summed up my life:

One regret, dear world

That I am determined not to have

When I am lying on my deathbed

is that

I did not kiss you enough.

Staying Connected: How to continue our relationships with those who have died by Rudolf Steiner