Ancestors and Mutual Indebtedness

Today is Halloween, or All Hallow's eve, day of the dead in Mexico, which is well known. The Romans also celebrated this thinning of the veils as an opportunity to honour their ancestors, as well as make offerings to what we might now call ‘ghosts’, unrested spirits of dead souls who still try to communicate with the living.

 Many people I know in different spiritual traditions, Neo melange traditions as well as traditions of in tact lineage, mark this time of year, by taking pause from the busy goings on of worldly life in order to acknowledge, in ceremony, in thoughts, in deeds, those who have died. 

In modernity, we see everything as what we can get from life, we look at life with an extractive view and want to squeeze everything we can for the sake of our own enrichment. Traditional cultures, of which we all come from, whatever our skin colour, whatever we’ve come from, coloniser or colonised, we come from small, local traditions that varied depending on landscape, customs, materials available, climate, food and so on… modern humans all thinking and believing similar things is a very recent occurrence, evolutionarily speaking. 

Thousands of years ago, the sun was worshipped, the first glyphs of all culture, long before formalised writing, centred around the symbol for the sun, if that was impersonated into a god or goddess, or simply worshipped as the sun, respect was paid daily to simply being here. 

Modernity has us in a choke hold of thinking if we get everything we want we will be happy, and I so rarely hear people, at the institutional level or the individual level, considering what we can in fact GIVE. Isn’t it the act of sharing our gifts , of plunging all we have of ourselves and offering it to this life, isn’t that the point?

Isn’t that what feels incredible, knits us into a wider geography of life, of the elements, of appreciation? The people I know who are the happiest are those who give daily from their gifts, who do what they do regardless of the money, and if it ends up with them being rich, great, but it was never what they taught. 

Being rich is the natural state of being alive, having a body is such a rich experience, like ghee, or cream, its alive, thick, responsive to its environment. 

Happy all Hallow's eve, you beautiful soul.

With love, 

Loren

Secret Activations is an audio coaching feed for daily invitations to vivacity and embodiment in your art, life and emotional world. Musings and encouragement from speaking with clients, life and my own incessant path of trying to create more authentic artistic work in the time I have on this planet. more details are below 💋

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