The Ancestral Arena

 "Ancestor Angst" ? Or should I call this post simply "Ask Ancestors"?
You read on and choose.

Kim's guiding globe

This is the second post from my daily forays into writing with warm flowing ink, no planning, no thought,  that I've taken up like my own personal Inktober! I'm guessing by the end of the month the ink would be flowing freely and my writing hopefully will ascend to another level like the ancestors themselves are doing.

It's that time of year again and there are spirits whispering in every corner of my head. 

It's those ancestors come to remind us that there are knots and breaks in the fabric of our interconnection and that it's the time for the magical mending. 

The dark fortnight leading up to Durga Puja, is when, by tradition, we get a chance to redeem those unpaid debts we owe them. The crowd of stressful events or non events that have gathered out of nowhere to create a year of overall gloom in my life, tell me there are debts that they - the ancestors - may need to pay and could be coming forward now wanting to pay.
Unfinished business from their side.

Rather than looking for their long accustomed and oft neglected customary offerings, they may be restless in this arena. Knowing my own lot from this vast pool of spirits in varying stages of ascension to higher realms, they wouldn't be the ones to leave kith and kin in want. 

There are many traditions where a light is left on a dark pathway to guide the departed to the otherworld. Years ago, Kim Raikes arrived unexpectedly in my life as an angel to wipe my tears of grieving for my mother, and to stay, play, pray and continue to hold me up, years later. Together we have navigated grief - fresh and raw as well as old and slumbering - hers and mine. She has invariably been the comforter and I the comforted. Early in our connection, we had started to co-dream. Yes, we would dream the same lucid dreams at times, walking in and out of each others'. And in one of those I saw the vision of a pathway in a homestead by an ocean in a strange but familiar land. And that pathway was lighted with clay globes emitting a soft, warm light that was clearly meant to lead a lost spirit home. The dream had come to us very near the time of Pitru Paksha  and somehow Kim decided to take it as a cue to invite some wandering spirits on to her deck. Where we offer balls of rice by tradition and feed it to the birds, she placed a ball (globe) of light and left some snacks -maybe to be claimed by squirrels and raccoons. 

The first night she was disturbed by the presence of so many strange and mixed  energies and reported back to me that she felt a tiny bit overwhelmed. We decided that she needed to be more specific and call those she felt to be her ancestors regardless of ties by blood or lineage. And she did and entertained some very important guests whom we both regard as our own. 

I confess that while I've always been part of this practice in her home in Maine, from across the myriad miles, I never actually got down to doing it in my own home. Because my home never really felt like all of my home. There were these missing pieces, these rents and tears in the fabric of connection with what my imagination and past experience declared as my home. 
And it's all finally making sense. Burdens I can't put down, stresses that always come back with interest, an actual absence of resources (no don't preach to me about lack mentality, I'm a pragmatist) all of which yesterday's post tells you about.

When we are left bereaved, we are left bereft of opportunities, of answers, of wise guidance on the next few steps to take along a troubled path. Grieving a person's living presence is coupled with the pain of missing what could have been, what could still be if we can find our way to it. But for those of us who believe that energetic connections endure and present themselves more strongly when they are called upon by a collective of descendants eager to right wrongs and continue the weaving of wholesome fabric spanning generations and lifetimes, this could be a time of reclaiming and sustaining connection. All beings seek continuity and these celebrations are ways of affirming it. 


Well I decided this time around - and we are already halfway through those 14 days that are allotted for this year's "peace process"  - I would do some good, heartfelt asking. And I am already picking up whispered signals directing me to here-and-now persons who will be my earth angels. I am offering light to our progenitors and theirs ... and waiting. 

Footnote:  here is a different and very illuminating interpretation of tarpan - the traditional ritual that's carried out during this fortnight. I leave you to reflect as I do. 
"By thinking of the deceased ancestors with gratitude and trying to give them an emancipation, one is actually trying to free oneself from various kaarmic predispositions that one has as a result of the rina (karmik debt) with several people. One can view this as an external event of satisfying and emancipating an external entity (a pitri). Alternately, one can view this as an internal event of satisfying and releasing an internal kaarmik predisposition."