My grandmother on my father’s side died a week after he was born. Her name was Mary. Without any memories of her, he’s only ever had a few black and white photographs to know her by.
Late one night, I had the inspiration to see if I could colorize an old photograph of her in Photoshop, something I had never attempted before. I got out of bed and began working on transforming the image on the left. After a few days, I finally produced the image on the right. I had it printed and framed and presented it to my dad as a late birthday present.
This was the first time he had ever seen his mother in colour. For a man that’s stoic in nature, he appeared overwhelmed and deeply thankful.
It was only afterwards that it dawned on me that that very day was his mother’s death anniversary.
Our familial and ancestral history plays a big role in our conditioning. We are shaped by those that we are nurtured by. We inherit trauma and other patterns of emotion, thinking, and behaviour from our ancestors.
For those on a path of healing, spiritual development, awakening, and ascension, inter-generational conditioning is something that absolutely must be addressed and resolved in order for one to really cultivate an embodied sense of love that is free from attachment, unhealed wounds, trauma, and fear.
About a year ago, during a family argument, I received a download of insight in a flash. It explained in the most direct and simple terms about how the death of my father’s mother nearly sixty years ago had influenced the dynamics of my immediate family in a very direct way. I understood without question about why certain issues of trust, guilt, fear, and resentment existed, stemming from this unfortunate loss.
With this revelation came a deep sense of compassion for each of my family members, including myself. Though we often blamed one another for our unhappiness, the tension we had lived with for all of these years was really no one’s fault. We were all simply coping with unresolved trauma, loss, grief, and fear from our pasts, involving more than just the death of my grandmother.
Whenever negativity is expressed, it is always a cry for love, for healing, for release from the conditioning of the pains of the past. It’s never a personal thing. With this understanding comes compassion, empathy, patience, and unconditional love. And who better to practice this with than our family?
Colourizing the photograph of my grandmother was a very intimate experience for me. As I zoomed in closely to the image, colouring in the details of her face, I would hold light conversation with her. I had flashbacks to Pakistan, to times before I was born, with visions of my cousins, my aunts, uncles, and other relatives.
It was as if with each stroke of colour, I was undoing a bit of the pain that we had all been through together, not just with my grandmother’s death, but through the challenges of life in general.
For many on the spiritual path, especially early on, a feeling of being the black sheep of the family tends to arise. We might think that we understand it all, and that our family totally doesn’t. And so we might feel as if the best thing to do is to simply escape, to move on, or to stay distant so that they don’t bring us down, interrupt our flow, or lower our vibration.
However, unless there is serious abuse taking place, wanting to escape a situation rather than transform it is often the less ideal path to take. We weren’t given the life circumstances that we have randomly. Especially not when it comes to the family we were born into.
We came here to transform, to bring change, and to heal. Not to run away.
If you are reading this post, then you are called by Life to be an anchor of Heart-centered consciousness, leading the way for a global paradigm shift, awakening, or ascension. It is already well underway.
Your job is not to walk away from your ancestry or family. That’s impossible. They are in your blood, your psyche, your DNA. Your job is to heal, to forgive, to release, and to love so that their loads may be lightened to ease their ascension process as well.
Before we come to really understand our roles in life, we might ask—
Why do we have to serve others when it seems like they haven’t really served us? Why must we take on the other’s grief? Why can’t the others do their work just like how we’ve done ours?
Well, there is no other. Your family, community, and the collective is you. This isn’t poetry. Shying away from the service of others is shying away from the service of oneself. Those that truly know themselves, that are truly awakened to unity consciousness (and beyond), see no option but to serve out of compassion, empathy, patience, and love.
We might have grand ideas of working as professional lightworkers, writing books, giving healings, teaching, serving, and guiding the public. Many on this path see themselves in these roles and it is inspiring and exciting to see such ambition. But if one isn’t ready and willing to serve and love within their immediate family structure, then they are not yet ready to serve the community outside of that. There’s no getting around it.
This is an invitation to see each member of your family as God in disguise, as innocent, as a reflection of yourself. All negativity that surfaces is nothing but a cry for love. It takes courage to offer it, I know. It’s something that I’m continuously working on myself. But this right here is the real spiritual practice and it is our work as we go on to usher in the new paradigm of Heart-centered consciousness on a global level.
Spiritual awakening can create energetic instability with many challenges, such as depersonalization/derealization (DP/DR), Zen Sickness, Emptiness Sickness, psychosis, mania, insomnia, and more. I share some ways I ground myself to prevent energetic imbalance.