The night before Samhain (Halloween), right before I went to sleep, I asked some of my blood ancestors to come to me in a dream. Guess who appeared? The Dalai Lama! 

I’ve spent six days over the years with His Holiness in ceremony and dialogues, including a whole weekend, and really love his joyful energy and infectious laugh. Being around him, even in a crowd, is inspiring.

In my dream, the two of us were in a narrow hallway together. He was his humble, gentle self. This revered man motioned to me to follow him and go meditate. We entered a room with other monks; I was invited to sit with them. I felt honored, excited, and amazed. The dream was reminding me what is important: joy, humility, awareness, and stillness together.

Ancestors of Affinity

His Holiness could be what I call an "ancestor of affinity"—those whom we resonate with deeply without necessarily having a genetic connection. I felt the same affinity with my Andean teachers, the Q'ero, and the ways of being they embodied—joy, reciprocity, connection, and the consciousness of releasing heaviness and filling with light. As I expanded my own awareness into the universe and the bigger picture, these connections of affinity have helped me let go of resentments towards my ancestral family and keep my heart open.

I have friends and students who really get into their ancestral lines. For me, it wasn’t so easy: a lot of disconnection was passed down and acted out, and I had a hard time seeing why I’d want to know the ancestors better. 

Ancestral Trauma and Gifts

We now theorize that ancestral trauma, as well as the trauma of our own experiences, can affect our genes and stays in our bodies. The science of epigenetics studies how trauma can leave a chemical mark on a person's genes, which can then be passed down to future generations. This mark alters the mechanism by which the gene is expressed; this alteration is not genetic, but epigenetic.

In shamanic healing and soul retrieval, we see this in sometimes remarkable ways: part of a young woman’s despair and disconnect comes from (unknown-to-her) wartime rape two or three generations prior. Or a cancer shows itself to have origin in ancestral starvation. Or, as in my family, four generations carry a sense of disconnection, grief, and depression way stronger than their own personal experiences: with The Famine in their bones, loss of beloved land, and permanent separation from those left behind (letters by ship took six months in the 1870’s), our Irish immigrant ancestors passed on behaviors and attitudes that we’re still trying to shift. 

Ancestors also offer us great gifts of insight and wisdom. They survived and thrived wherever they went. They experienced earth changes and natural catastrophe, great harvests and famine, everything but the kind of climate change we are experiencing.

Witnessing, and mustering as much compassion as you can, is a way to be present with your own ancestral lineage. That presence helps you see and accept, rather than running from, whatever you carry from them. This time when the veils between the worlds are thin—around Samhain/All Hallows Eve/All Saints Day—is a very good time to connect, ask for their help, and honor your relationship.