In many northern hemisphere traditions Halloween is the time to honor the spirits of unseen nature, the powers of destiny, wonder and mystery that surround us and permeate us, and to honor the ancestors,

People ask me how to honor ancestors. Many of us don't know much about our ancestors, and some of us despise our ancestors. How do you honor people you despise or don't know?

One of the keys is that we are not necessarily honoring the behavior of our ancestors. We are honoring that every life that has ever passed across the skin of this Great Mother Earth has been a hard life, full of turmoil, dilemma, joy, grief, wrong choices and bravery.  (This is actually one of the reason we come here to be in the body - we learn lessons faster and more deeply in the body than anywhere else.)

There is that old truism that forgiveness is not about the other person - it's about freeing yourself from a spell that keeps you small, locked in pain, locked in martyrdom. Forgiveness is not at all about forgetting, or pretending or denying reality. Forgiveness is about releasing a curse placed on you by trauma, or in shamanic healing terns, it's about releasing the energy pattern embedded in you. In Spanish this is called susto – the energetic remnants of trauma, embedded din our energy body. Releasing that curse, freeing yourself from that energy, clearing that susto, allows you to make a new world - one that operates very differently from the unhealed one. Forgiveness doesn't change the past; it changes the future. 

I believe that many of us (meaning peachy-moon-colored people of European ancestry) have come here in this life in part to do the healing on our ancestors that has been needed for centuries. If you are searching for a purpose in life, this is a great one. We do this healing on the ancestors in two ways.

One way is through ceremony, like this one. We ceremonially give healing to our unhealthy ancestors - we heal the way the life force had gotten twisted in them, and in this twisting, had blinded them to love, and made them deaf to beauty, and had made them into such hungry creatures that all they could think about was gathering more food to them  - in the form of actual food, but also in the perverted form of all addictions, including the addiction to status that comes from wealth. (I urge you not to do this kind of ancestral healing on your own if you are new to shamanic work, but work with someone who understands the ancestral world. If you do feel compelled to do this on your own, please ask your helping spirits to make you invisible to the unhealthy ancestors.) 

The other way we continue the healing of unhealthy ancestors is to live differently than they did. Change the inner reality from which their lives and actions sprung. This involves doing the very difficult personal work of undoing the patterns in myself that have been handed down, or sung into me. It involves opening my comfortable ignorance.

​There is a tremendous amount of this going on right now! A great deal of discomfort is pouring out of many of us. I believe this is because Spirit is cleansing us. Now that seems like a nice thing to say, but I want to make clear that I'm talking about a scouring, not a warm washing. The scouring is coming to all of us, there is no escaping it. The main questions as I see it, is do I try to run from it, and delay it, or do I jump in and be the first wave to get through it?  I believe those drawn to shamanic practice are part of the early wave to open the new future, a very different future form our current one. Shamanic practice builds the spiritual foundation upon which this new world will stand.

So when we "honor" our ancestors, we are honoring the fact that our ancestors carried the Life Force their entire life and they passed it on to us so that we may carry it, so that we may protect and defend and work with it. Whether we love them or despise them, we stand on their shoulders. For those ancestors who we admire, we ask that they send strength and wisdom up through our bones so that we may work with the life force with as much courage and beauty as they did. 

For those ancestors whose behaviors disappoint, horrify or wound us, we do the hardest and most wonderful act: we send them beauty, medicine and food through ceremony in order to heal what was unhealed in them during their life - and in that unhealed state they perpetrated things that were wrong. We use some of the strength we get from the healthy ancestors, and send it downward to clear susto in unhealthy ancestors, so they no longer need to reach up through our bones, and into our lives, and grasp at our life force to feed themselves. And we commit ourselves to doing a better job wielding the life force than they did.

It is a tenet of shamanic practice that life exists on a circle, and to heal any part of the circle brings healing to other parts of the circle. Here is a secret: When we heal our ancestors we are healing ourselves and our descendants. We cease the repeated generational distribution of spiritual poisons. Here is the other secret: unhealed, we repeat the perpetrations of our ancestors. Healed, we awaken and create waves of different actions in this world. 

The shamans remind us that we have our human ancestors, but we also have our non-human and pre-human ancestors: the fertile earth, the fruitful sea, the rocks, the winds, the stardust, the tides, the lightning, the creatures great and small - all of these are our ancestors and we will honor them and feed them the food of beauty in our ceremony. This is work you absolutely can and should do on your own. Stand outside and say hello to every living thing you lay eyes, ears or skin on. Make prayers of gratitude and send them love and strength for the coming winter. Thank them for the gifts they bring to the web of life. This kind of prayer, done regularly, can change your life. 

I'm wishing you a bountiful and beautiful autumn. 

Because I'm a theology geek, I think a lot about the term teleology: the study of the purpose of everything. What is the purpose of the universe? Where is the universe going? I'm in the universe, so wherever it’s going, I'm going too.

In Celtic shamanic tradition there are three core questions you ask a traveler on the road: Where are you from? Where are you going? What's the purpose of your journey? And there's a fourth question: Who are your people?
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There's a link between those two paragraphs, and it comes in the form of Albert Einstein's famous quote: “The most important question you can ever ask is if the world is a friendly place.” This is a teleological question, and working a spiritual path begins with wrangling with that "most important" question, and answering it honestly for yourself.

​Einstein's extended quote is valuable here:

Your spiritual maturity (or, if you prefer: soul age) factors deeply into how you answer Einstein's question. Younger souls, or less mature theologies are rooted in the first answer. They tend toward hierarchical spiritual structures that tell people what to believe.

Atheists, agnostics and scientific materialists are grounded in the second answer. They value their own personal inquiry and answers, and they are grounded in one part of the human experience: reason. Mystics and shamans occupy the third answer. They marry reason and poetry, logic and dream, emotion with analysis, tradition with direct personal experience.

I suppose each group believes their answer to the question makes the most sense, and they may think the other groups are naïve, immature or downright stupid.

I do know this: how you answer the question creates the kinds of prayers you make (and I declare that everyone, in each of the three categories of answers prays, even if they don't call it prayer!). How you pray determines the decisions you arrive at, and your decisions are the soil from which all of your actions spring, and your actions create your reality. In the third answer (the universe as a friendly place) our prayers are a co-creation with the universe, and this is the most effective way to pray. 

So, your life depends on how you answer that question!
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If you want to move out of a victim mentality because you've had enough of what it can show you about life, if you want to move out of pessimism and cynicism, then give a try to standing in the friendly universe and answering those four Celtic questions from that place. This is big work, long work, deep work, and it may not be easy for you, so have some patience with yourself. It also can be lonely work, so  seek out a teacher and community who can help you. (This answers the fourth question: who are your people?) 

Here are two ideas to chew on: maybe the purpose of your life is not about your career or your children or your travels or your "goodness." Maybe your purpose is to become a healthy ancestor - to do your spiritual work now because we have had scores of generations of unhealthy ancestors, and we need healthy ancestors to help us, and all of your spiritual work now, in this life, is preparing you to serve the descendents from the spirit world (or yourself when you come back). 

Or this: maybe your purpose is simply to raise your spiritual maturity level in this life. Maybe you were born into that less mature religious tradition in order for you to grow your way out of it in this life. Stepping from level 5 to level 6 in this life is a great purpose, an achievement!

Well, those are just ideas to chew on. 

Be honest with yourself and with the world. Be patient. Be committed. Go into the fear. Don't be afraid to claim your power when you feel it. Flowers will come. 

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Sandra Ingerman has a way of making shamanic practice simple, straightforward and accessible. Her new book offers you concise, straightforward guidance on the fundamental elements of making ceremony. Below is an excerpt of THE BOOK OF CEREMONY: Shamanic Wisdom for Invoking the Sacred in Everyday Life. 
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