Ann’s Blog

Generational Healing Through Deep Memory Release

The dream that had led me to Scotland (see entry June 26, 2007) had occurred several days before I had scheduled a “Deep Memory Process” session with Kathy Bornino, a counselor who lived in a community near Anna. I had contacted her on discovering she had been trained by Roger Woolger, a Jungian with whose writings and methods I was familiar.

The dream had not come up during the “deep memory” part of the “process” but later on. My discussion with her concerning the dream, together with what had played out in the session, would form my first clear understanding of how Bob and I would be working together in ways not too different than we had been used to.

The primary focus of my session had related to my knee surgery. The inquiry had been about the possibility of a genetic memory or pattern manifesting in this knee. Kathy suggested I focus on the knee and observe if someone in my family line came to mind. Right away I heard: “Great Aunt Helene.” At the same time I experienced a physical “witness,” or what is sometimes described as “a hit.” As instructed, I followed back through this ancestral line to a great (x4) grandfather. My maternal grandmother’s mother’s father had owned a brewery in Munich. Beyond that I knew nothing of my Munich ancestors. The ancestor in question would have been my grandmother’s great grandfather, at least as far as I can figure out.

Take what follows as you will, I will simply tell it as I experienced it:

On the screen of my mind I saw a battlefield. I identified the field as involving the Bavarian army in which my ancestor was serving. The time I guessed to be the early 1800s. However, none of this seemed important. What was central was my sense, my inner perception that this grandfather, as a youth, had here sustained a leg injury. But more crucial was that this scene was where an emotionally crippling trauma had unfolded with an impact sufficient to have affected future generations.

Among bodies, horses, blood and weapons, my ancestor knelt before a fallen friend who was a close and beloved comrade. He could have been a brother. I couldn’t be sure. But what was apparent was that someone he deeply loved lay mortally wounded before him. And onto my ancestor, so young himself, was falling the responsibility of putting his friend (or brother) out of his excruciating agony. So unbearably heartrending was this necessity that in carrying it out a fragmentation of my ancestor’s soul occurred. In an act of sheer survival, it was here that his capacity to feel shut down. Here his heart of flesh had turned to stone. And it was this emotional as well as physical crippling that had colored the psychic atmosphere in which my mother’s mother’s mother’s father had been raised.

Sitting in Kathy’s consulting room, I attempted to restrain my body from shaking as I was caught up in empathetic connection to this ancestor. For how long the shaking continued I’m not sure, but gradually my sense of calm returned. As it did the scene on the screen of my mind shifted. What had been more of a statuesque or “frozen in time” quality gave way to a reanimation of the figures. I saw the two—my ancestor and his friend—as having been set free and now both were trying to talk at once. My ancestor was begging forgiveness for what he had done. Attempting to interrupt him, his comrade was explaining that he had never considered the deed other than an act of compassion and love.

This, for my ancestor, was a startling revelation, and a re-perception that took a few moments to sink in. I then observed them embracing, with tears of profound release flowing freely, and from my eyes as well.

With this the matter seemed finished, nevertheless I wondered if there was something else I needed to do. But before I could think what that might be, Bob appeared on the scene and motioned to them to follow him. This they did with me observing as the three disappeared.

When I opened my eyes I was back in the ordinary reality of Kathy’s room. “You were really shaking,” she observed, and asked what at that point I had been experiencing. In other circumstances I likely would have given unrestrained expression to the intensity of the emotions that my ancestor had found it necessary to repress in order to survive. Actually, in a stifled interior way I had been giving expression to this. Simultaneously, I had been understanding that the crippling injury to his leg and a subsequent rigidity of this leg was matched by that to his soul. Was it possible that this psychic atmosphere in which my mother’s mother’s father as a child had been raised had something to do with the undiagnosed crippling of my great aunt Helene? or with the deterioration of my right knee? If so, does this suggest that an ancestral trauma of sufficient emotional impact can effect the DNA of an hereditary line, thereby passing onto future generations a particular physical tendency or vulnerability? Or who is to say but what in a hereditary line one person will bear the mark of a crippling trauma in the physical and another in the emotional body?

This was my first experience after Bob’s transition of doing “soul releasement” in partnership with him. Yet it was something that closely resembled work we previously had done together, but never so compellingly.

Kathy explained what she understood from personal experience of the advantage of the team work she saw Bob and I now able to undertake. What she explained was that the one who is in the spirit realm (Bob) has the greater advantage in seeing and knowing what needs to be accomplished. But this one no longer has access to the expression of emotion, whereas the one still in a physical body (me), is able to pick up on the emotion and, more importantly, able to give expression to it for the soul or souls of those held captive by the trauma.

A further insight for me is that negative and misperceived emotions can be as binding to the emotional body as strong ropes are to a physical body, and their removal as equally dependent on the empathetic compassion of a third party.

As my two-hour session with Kathy was concluding, I related to her my Scottish Regalia dream of several days before, (see previous entry). Out loud I wondered if its possible relevance was to my son Robert’s move to Scotland. The discussion then turned to Kathy’s interest in Scotland, particularly Edinburgh, as a place where more “witches” had been put to death than in Salem.

Besides visiting Robert and Diane in their new home base, I was wondering if there was something else on my Glasgow agenda. The answer would be “Yes,” but the nature of this would not come to light until my next Deep Memory Process session which would be shortly prior to leaving for Scotland. It would involve a visit to the Special Collections Library at the University of Glasgow where I would have the rare opportunity of pouring over a number of 16^th and 17^th century alchemical manuscripts, in particular a group of twenty images in the Rosarium collection. How or even if Generational Healing and Alchemical Symbolism are related I have yet to find out.

Looking Back / Looking Ahead

With Bob’s transition on the vernal equinox of 2006, my outer as well as inner journey took its most decisive turn since the wintry eve sixty-two years previously when first our eyes had met. I had been fifteen and he seventeen. The above illustration from a 16^th - 17^th alchemical work titled Rosarium Philosophorum is a picture worth a 1000 words of what the future held for us.

But before delving into the archetypal under girding of the forces of attraction by which two lives who are so destined become conjoined, let me bring you up to date.

In moving into year two of my life after Bob’s transition, I am persuaded to begin a more personal level of sharing from the somewhat voluminous journal dialogues that have transpired between us. Also, with the passage of a full year’s cycles, my vision of what lies ahead is beginning to take shape, this occurring incrementally as we have moved to a surprising new level of our souls’ eternal connection.

My first year after Bob’s transition was spent mostly away from Murray Creek, and culminated with a trip to Scotland accompanied by Anna, our oldest daughter. The trip was to visit our eldest son Robert Jr and was prompted by a dream in which Bob had appeared in full Scottish regalia. In working with this dream and in subsequent journal dialogues, the indication was that an aspect of healing work we had been doing for many years was to continue, but on a new level with him en spiritu and me still physically here. The dream was on July 21^st, exactly four months after his transition.

Bob is in full—really full—Scottish regalia. Masses of people are congregating. The setting is a combination of an outdoor area with a nearby large parking area. We decide that I should go get our car and bring it to a place where we agreed to meet. I am not concerned about getting separated from Bob, although normally I would have been. It is as though we have built-in homing devices. The sense is of some culminating collective occurrence. Most of those gathered don’t seem to understand what is happening, but have been drawn en mass by what I assume to be “instinct.” Bob, because of the way he is dressed stands out against the background of the crowd. The outfit he is wearing somehow identifies or relates to his role.

When son Robert was home for Christmas we made plans for me to spend the last two weeks of February in Scotland. This would include a trip to the Elliott clan territory in the Borders region. At that point I had no further specific instructions concerning what Bob referred to as the “assignment.” But I did understand it to be along the lines of the same “generational” healing work we had been doing for a number of years whenever such need had been discerned. By now I also understood that once this “assignment” was completed I would return to Murray Creek where, as Bob had repeatedly emphasized, our work together could best be carried out.

In preparation for our trip Anna sent for maps of Scotland. We also researched the Borders area and particularly the Elliott clan lands. In studying a map of the area the most significantly Elliott territory seemed centered around Heritage Castle, traditionally where the head of the clan had resided. Further instructions came concerning marking a triangular area on the map. This was in order to limit the scope of the healing work to be done. With Heritage as one point, to find the second point of the triangle I dowsed an enlargement of our map of the area with the indication pointing to Hawick, some twenty miles to the north of Heritage. The third point was then a simple matter of triangular geometry and turned out to be at the edge of the Wauchope Forest, close to but not exactly on a spot where a particularly bloody border battle between the Scotch and English had taken place in 1575. A fourth and the most significant point was given as the exact center of the triangle. Our map indicated this as being on Wyndborough Hill, the site of an ancient burial cairn.

The remaining instructions for our visit to this particular triangle of the Elliott clan territory included some sort of “witness” to be left at each of the four points. For this Anna made laminated facsimiles of a Murray Creek Labyrinth coin designed and minted some years ago by Jim Naylor. We also chose four crystals from Bob’s shamanic bag to leave at each point.

Once in Scotland I asked for a liturgy suitable for the work and which would put it within the context of a sacramental and transpersonal empowerment. The following was given:

Prayer of Divine Mercy for the Repair of the Breech

Eternal Father, Divine Mother, we offer you the Body and Blood, the soul and the divinity of your dearly beloved son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.

For the sake of his most sorrowful passion

Have mercy on us and on the whole world.

Pour out your mercy on this place, and on this land.

We pray for all souls harmed here in any way so as to have lost their way on their eternal journeys.

Pour out your mercy on both the perpetrators and the victims of violence here and in adjoining vicinities.

We petition in behalf of and for the release of any souls or fragments of souls held here.

We deliver any souls so desiring into the care of the Beings of Light and your assisting Angels here to guide their return to pathways of light.

We join with all of heaven in rejoicing at their reunion with loved ones from whom they have been separated—even the lost parts of their own eternal souls.

Gracious Father, Loving Mother, Beings of Light and assisting Angels, we give thanks for the privilege of having a part in this work of reparation.
Amen

Return to Murray Creek

On my first attempt to “come home” I lasted a week before, from lack of restraint, I suffered a mid-back compression fracture. So back to nurse Anna’s I went to have this repaired. The very day after the procedure I was again determined to make the trip back from Paso Robles to Murray Creek in time for the Easter arrival of Conal and Holly with their u-haul trailer of their drastically pared down earthly possessions. They were coming to live in the house Conal had purchased some three years previously on the 20 acres just to the east of our family 60 acres. But my back, instead of quickly restoring me to a pain free life, worsened. And back to Anna’s I went once more for another round of medical treatment and a month of physical therapy. With significant gradual improvement and with the expectation this would continue, Joseph and Ebru came down to bring me home. This third attempt to settle in at Murray Creek seems to be working with proof being that each morning with my trekking poles in hand I walk to and through the Labyrinth and back home.

And so with this entry I once again take up the task of writing about the ups and downs, the twists and turns of this journey called life.