Sacred Sexual Healing: Ancestors and the Four Foundations by Leslie Blackburn During the past year and a half, my work on the path of sacred sexuality, self-awareness and remembering has grown to encompass a greater appreciation for the role of ancestors — the support they offer, and the healing needed there. All the work that I’ve done over the last two decades I now see clarified into four resources of support — key relationships that are often ruptured in our experience. These include our relationships with: •
nature
•
community
•
ancestors
•
our own bodies
I have seen a deepening relationship with Spirit emerge as a common thread as we connect with each of the four. Breaks in these four key relationships represent the biggest obstacle to overcome as well as the biggest opportunity to find support and create healing for so many of us. Since the trauma happened in the relational space, the opportunity for healing happens in the relational space as well. I’ve found this to be true in my personal journey, and with thousands of folx I’ve worked with in our Western, US culture. The thing is: we don’t know what we don’t know. Most of us live in a culture that normalizes broken or severely compromised relationships with the body, the earth, ancestors or community. Because of this, we often don’t know how these breaks and ruptures may be contributing to our problems. While all four of these areas require dedication and practice to restore conscious connection, ancestral healing often occupies a particularly large cultural “blind spot.” True, some people are aware of this missing connection. Others never lost that felt connection to begin with, and may not even realize what rupture from it feels like. However, the majority of people in Western cultures do not know that the experience of a felt, living connection with their ancestors is possible, or haven’t even given it consideration. My experience is that restoring connection with any of these areas — body, community, nature or ancestors — makes restoring connection with other areas easier. As we do so, everything clarifies. Life becomes more easeful, more rich, 24
vibrant, and colorful, and access to pleasure and even ecstasy is more available. Let’s elaborate on these four foundational relationships. Connecting with my ancestors came most recently for me. I will touch on the three others first then elaborate on the ancestral healing that is very alive in me right now, and I believe also for many folx seeking their next level of personal growth. Body Repairing, listening, trusting, and rebuilding our relationship with our bodies is the main subject of my upcoming book: Sacred Sexuality: Listening to Our Bodies. We meet the physicality of spirituality there. For me, my body became an access point into Spirit, and vice versa — bringing Spirit into matter. Often we are taught not to trust our bodies and that we should leave our bodies to meet Spirit. This teaching is perpetuated by many religious structures that break the connection between body and Spirit. What if we reframe awareness and instead see that the lived experience of spirituality is all about embodiment — of spirit coming into matter? That coming home into our own bodies is connection with the divine? The body is an enormous bank of stored information. What’s it like to slow down, remember, and unwind the information that’s been held there? Further, this information is not only from our own personal body and lifetime. Our body holds intergenerational wisdom, communal wisdom, societal structural wisdom and the traumas associated with all these levels. When we touch our bodies, move, make sound and breathe, we open some of the many access points to increasing our body awareness. Community As we repair our relationship with our body, we may feel more clear to be able to navigate, for example, our relationship
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March 2022