I’m spending time with my family right now so I’m editing/recycling some old posts of mine.
Right now it’s Christmas and Hanukkah, which I love. In times like these, I think we need to be reminded of what unites us instead of divides us.
Maybe it’s because I’m Jewish, but to me, Jesus seems like a mythical figure on the order of Zeus or Apollo. He lived so long ago that sometimes I take for granted he actually existed. He was born, he bled, he defecated. Jesus was a human being. Yes, an amazing human being, but he still existed, was still blood and bones the same as you and I, which astounds me. Fun fact, Sir Isaac Newton was also born on December 25. Newton wasn’t Jesus, but he was still a remarkable guy.
Let’s light the way for each other, together.
Why am I mentioning Newton’s birth? Primarily because when I hear about incredible human beings like Jesus, Newton, Albert Einstein, or Martin Luther King Jr., I somehow put them above me. I think to myself, “Those were amazing human beings, but I could never do anything like they did. I could never accomplish what they did.” I somehow don’t believe they felt the things I felt or struggled the way I struggled. But that’s not true. They were people just like us. They had fears and failures just like us. Nothing separates us.
We’re all made of the same material. We all come from the same source. We are all light, which brings me to Hanukkah. One of the principles of the holiday I like the most is that one candle may kindle the light of many others and yet lose none of its own light. Right now I think it’s important to remember great people of the past, to remember we are like them, may accomplish what they’ve accomplished, and also we can be candles in the dark that kindle the light of many others.
My spiritual path is about using everything as a vehicle for liberation or enlightenment. About not running from feelings and tough times, and yet always remembering there is something more to me. Something outside the drama, the ups and downs, a witnessing part of me that remains unaffected and emits a light that can never be diminished. It’s my job to keep growing that light, to keep remembering its presence, and to kindle that light in others.
We need to keep kindling that light in others so we create a world we wish to see. A world where we live amongst each other in harmony. A world where we celebrate with each other and mourn with each other. A world where we aspire to great heights, accomplishing what we burn to accomplish like people in the past. A world where we remember who we really are — light beings.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I had an interesting experience this week. A friend posted this article about how family trauma can be inherited. I’d heard of the concept before, especially when epigenetics came to the scene, but I didn’t think the issues I’m addressing right now could be related. I thought epigenetics made me more prone to overreact to stress because my ancestors experienced stressful situations. Stuff like that. However, reading that article had me rethink some things.
One of the issues that’s plagued me for a long time is a fear I’ll be replaced, usurped, or forgotten. I attributed it to being a middle child, but this week I contemplated whether the issue was rooted in my ancestral lineage. Before World War II, both of my grandparents were married to other people and had families, all of whom were killed. By the time my grandparents married each other, in a way, their previous families were replaced, by the living.
This picture! How perfect.
My mother has shown me a family portrait taken before the war – a whole gaggle of people – and then she points to a few people and says, “These are the only ones who survived.” I have no idea who the rest of my relations are, I don’t know their names, or their stories. They have been forgotten. Even typing this right now I’m tearing up because I feel the grief around that, these lost family members.
I started meditating after reading the article about inherited family trauma, and I said to all of my ancestors, “I’m inviting you back into the family. I’m acknowledging you. You have a place. You are not forgotten and your role will not be usurped.” Afterward, I became frenzied and manic. Energy buzzed through me and hours later after I calmed down, I felt relief in way that I haven’t before. Instead of feeling insecure, worrying that I’ll be replaced by someone else, I felt an assurance that I am irreplaceable.
I am fascinated by the whole thing because so often I think of myself living in a vacuum – my issues started with me and that’s the end of it – but this experience has me thinking perhaps that’s not true. My spiritual teacher says we are affected by our environments and by external sources. Not just in the sense of, “It’s cold outside and that makes me cold,” but “I live with drug dealers so I’m more likely to deal drugs myself.” We all know this, don’t we? It makes complete sense, but it didn’t occur to me until the other day that the effects of someone else’s actions who I’ve never met, who I don’t know anything about, could be impacting me today. Not in terms of government policies, but personal traumas like being locked up in a mental institution or losing a child.
The good news is this stuff can be healed. Mark Wolynn, who wrote a book called It Didn’t Start With You, says:
“On a higher level, I believe these traumas are important, because they lead us on a hero’s journey. We enter the path through introspection, through looking at what’s uncomfortable, by being able to tolerate what’s uncomfortable, and then by journeying in to what’s uncomfortable and emerging on the other side in a more expansive place, using what was contracting us as the source of our expansion. Many of us don’t realize that the trauma we are born to heal is also the seed of our expansion.”
I dream of a world where we delve into what’s uncomfortable. A world where we understand our issues are not ours alone and may have a root in what happened to our ancestors. A world where we understand we all have carryovers from the past and we finally put the baggage down.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.