Curse Breaking and Ancestral Healing

I am approached often with questions and requests that have to do with the notion of curse breaking.  It’s a hard topic for many people to bring up, and my heart goes out to those who feel the need to ask, because I know it means they are feeling trapped in a repetitive destructive cycle or limitation that has harmed or thwarted them enough that they are willing to consider whether someone means them harm.  Furthermore, it takes some courage to say this out loud, because it’s not something we want to believe in and our current cultural perception leads most of us to feel a little crazy or self indulgent even considering it.  The subject of curses is complex.  It falls beneath the realm of our conscious awareness and it’s often hard to be certain of the origins of our heaviest and  seemingly most immovable problems.  Based on what I have learned in traditional training, and what I’ve experienced in addressing these matters for myself and others, I believe that there are a multiplicity of origins possible when we perceive an energy or circumstance we identify as a curse.  Below are a few ideas to consider about how to understand and address heavy issues that you suspect are more than misfortune.

For the most part, a true curse, in present time, is something rare.  There are few people with that knowledge at at their disposal, and with the level of energy required to direct ill will in that way.  Finding a dark spell in a book or online doesn’t necessarily translate into the power to do significant harm.  Yet, people with this knowledge and disposition do exist, and there are cultural lineages wherein this practice has been preserved and passed down.  If you have been unlucky enough to come across someone who carries both the capacity to harm and a grudge against you, strong practices for cleansing, protection, and energetic containment are in order.  It may be worth trying to make peace or amends, if needed and if it’s safe to do so, or to seek outside support on your behalf.  Don’t forget to reach out to the larger forces of guidance and divinity as well, and don’t lose hope.  Free will and focused intervention can resolve and transform many issues, when we choose not to give into fear.

However, there are many more instances when what you are feeling has an alternate origin that requires healing on the unconscious levels of mind and soul.  Thought forms, stemming from our own self limiting beliefs or from other people’s ideas and feelings about us, may not be an intentional harm directed at us, but they can affect us in a similar way if they become strong enough.  Negative influence can come from within or without, and has many subtle forms.  Yet problems, obstacles, traumas, and destructive behaviors that repeat in our lives may more often be a form of soul memory and ancestral patterns surfacing themselves again and again, in an unconscious attempt at healing and integration.    

Could what seems to be a curse actually be an expression of ancestral patterns or generational trauma?  Here is where things get very layered.  We carry the shadow of the past within us, even when we do not know the specific stories involved, and even when we don’t feel a special connection to our family line.  The actions, experiences, and limitations of our ancestors pave the road on which we travel, and the more an experience has been repeated within our lineage, the harder it is to forge a new path.  It feels as though that which was too difficult for one generation to process or heal is sent forward in the line for another to attempt to resolve, for the benefit of the whole family.  This can be a tremendously painful process, as many of us attempt to consciously choose ways of living, working, and loving that are more healthy than those we have witnessed in our families, only to find that familial themes of illness, trauma, abuse, addiction, scarcity, or any number of issues, tend to emerge in some fashion, despite best efforts.  Alternately, we may find that though the full pattern did not play out in our lives, we have a condition that serves as a remnant or somatic expression of the trauma that was endured or engendered in the past.

Remember that however you feel about your ancestors, we do owe them our gratitude.  They did the work of survival, and perhaps sacrifice, that brought us this far.  If we have inherited something less than desirable from one of them, it may be that we have a particular resonance with that ancestor, and it also means that we have a special opportunity to bring awareness, forgiveness and healing to a situation that has been harmful and continues to affect us.  When we offer ourselves in this way, addressing these issues directly in a healing process that reaches deep into the hidden levels of the unconscious, we can free both those who came before us from carrying this pain further, and those that come after us from inheriting the compulsion to repeat it.  For example, if someone is terribly afraid of the water, and knows stories of drowning within the family, and/or has issues within the lungs, a picture begins to develop.  It may not be enough to just avoid water.  By engaging in a deep ancestral healing process, with help, or through work in trance states or lucid dreaming perhaps, it is possible to engage the ancestor with whom this pattern began, as well as those who were caught within it, and to offer oneself as a stand in to process and release the fear, pain, rage, shock, or whatever else needs to be moved.  This can bring completion and resolution to the initial trauma, so that it can finally be put to rest.  In fact, when we have issues in need of healing, it is very helpful for our process to include the ancestral levels which may be involved, so that the pattern can be unlocked and uprooted at its origin, lessoning the likelihood of it resurfacing again.         

Sometimes all it takes is looking at an old situation with new eyes.  Often limitations within us are established by fear, shame, guilt, and anger.  These are powerful emotions that leave an imprint on the psyche long after the details of the situation that evoked them have faded from memory.  It is part of our story of natural selection and evolution that we are wired to have negative bias.  This means that we remember our negative experiences far more viscerally and for much longer than the positive ones.  This helps us to pass on the knowledge of what is unsafe or harmful, even across generations, so that our genetic lineage can adapt, as needed, and continue.  It might help us know basic and important things like which plants we should not try to eat, but it goes further than that.  Think of your ancestors that lived through hardship and abuse from those that they were meant to trust.  What did they pass down to you about how to or whether to love?  Think of your ancestors that fled war, genocide, poverty, and oppression, and left behind all they knew in order to survive, what themes did they pass on about loss, identity, and safety?  Think of your ancestors who faced persecution and death, hunted because they believed in the magic of the earth and cosmos, because they were healers or seers  or devotees of the Divine Feminine.  What did they pass on about the need to hide who you are, or what it is safe to see and to say?  Couldn’t many of our perceived curses have begun within these levels of ancestral and soul history?  We retain the resilience and adaptability, but the shadows also remain.  In the Mexican tradition we call all of these patterns and influences from the past The Old Winds.  They blow through us and shape our lives and attitudes without us seeing their influence directly or knowing their origins.  It is said that we don’t really need to know their stories in order to clear them, but sometimes bearing witness to our ancestors’ stories is exactly what’s needed.  At least, it is one possible road into the journey of healing the past and freeing ourselves and them from carrying the burden.  With new eyes and much distance from the source of the pain, we can reevaluate the circumstances and constraints that led to the actions which planted shame within the family, and offer forgiveness and compassion to dissipate its power.  We can grieve for the losses that they could not, because it may have broken them to do anything but keep moving.  We can identify that the true dangers of the past don’t necessarily compare with the discouragements of today, and decide that this is the moment to reclaim the gifts and purposes that were hidden, in order to survive.  We can keep the resilience that they gave us, and step out of the shadows to right the wrongs, speak the unspoken, and be seen fully.  We can regard them with love while we revisit the wounds of the past, in order to sweep clear the path ahead.

This is the time of year when the ancestors are near, but in truth they are always within us.  What Old Winds are you carrying like a curse?  Perhaps it’s time to turn towards them instead of running.  If you ask their origin, and listen deeply, there may be things you don’t enjoy hearing, but there may also be relief, and even treasures hidden beneath.

May you walk unimpeded towards your best possibility, free of harm from within, free of harm from without.

With reverence and remembrance. Ometeol.

-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez, originally for publication with the eleventh house.