"A Disturbance in the Force"

Intergenerational Disturbance and Evolutionary Practice, Part 1 of 3

A person’s understanding of their own evolution will depend on their metaphysical lens – the lens through which they perceive where their sense of self comes from, and what it is in relationship to. If someone tends toward mechanistic views, they will be unlikely to think of their personal development as meaningful beyond a given moment, a given experience, or their own interest. Whereas anyone who meditates, or otherwise connects with realities beyond their own physical person, personal evolution is more likely to be intuited as meaningful to the whole.

An “Agent of Evolution” lets their own evolutionary edge lead them forward, and will get that conscious evolutionary practice has the delightful consequence of benefiting our collective evolution. By design. There’s that fabulous quote by naturalist John Muir that says it more poetically: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

When it comes to working with imbalance in the whole, (in the system,) our metaphysical viewpoints will direct us to address things differently. With COP26 recently behind us, let’s look at the systemic imbalance of climate change. The mechanistic view might come up with solutions like carbon sequestration, or carbon taxes. This addresses the problem on the level of symptoms, and is a good and necessary thing.

Yet within that group of humans alive who acknowledge forces and powers and realities beyond the mechanistic facts, we are more likely to seek out solutions that go to the metaphysical roots of the imbalance. One approach in this camp that seems particularly seminal at this moment in our collective human evolution involves recognizing that our singular human lives take place across time, and are connected to the entirety of human experience.

Last year as lockdown began due to the coronavirus pandemic, I had just broken my wrist. I knew this event was not an isolated incident. I knew it was connected to many things, seen and unseen. I sensed that an unsettled ancestor had made themselves known. Yes, the rope attached to the trap door I was pulling on with all my body weight had frayed and snapped just then. Yes, it was 8 a.m. and I was in a rush to start the day. But the whole experience had the unmistakable pallor of an ancient, troubled dynamic, one that felt uncomfortably familiar to me, deep in my bones. (Pun intended.)

I set out to find others who had steeped in the ritual arts of speaking with the dead. That’s how I came across Dr. Daniel Foor and his Ancestral Medicine community of practitioners. I spent a good deal of lockdown working with my own ancestral lineages and learning everything I could about these lost arts. In the process, I stumbled onto somatically encoded metaphysical discoveries about how my evolution is connected to yours, and about how when we walk the evolutionary paths most suited to us, we benefit the collective.

As individuals, we are not just singular, mechanistic parts. We are intimately connected – to each other, as well as across time.

But how does all this relate to climate change? On his website, Dr. Daniel Foor explains the relationship between climate change and our ancestors:

“Ancestors are the unseen mirror of living human beings, the deep spiritual roots of family and culture here on Earth, and the medium by which culture is transmitted over many generations. Ecological degradation is the physical consequence of confusion in the human psyche about our place in the larger community of beings. This confusion among the living is often a breakdown in the intergenerational transmission of healthy culture, a disturbance with the ancestors. Disturbance in soil quality translates sooner or later into trouble among the leaves and flowers; when the ancestors are not well, the living suffer in turn.”

How do we address disturbances at the level of the ancestors? Well, much like we might address troubles indicated in the leaves by working with the soil, we address intergenerational disturbances that are showing up in our waking, human lives by working with the ancestors themselves. In this scenario, we are the “agent” through which the disturbance is put to rest, the intended transformation happens, and balance is restored.

We can still sequester carbon, or impose carbon taxes, or address the symptoms of climate change. But we understand that non-physical approaches are also needed, if we are to address the imbalance at its root.

More on this in Part Two… stay tuned…