From the Holocaust to the Burning Times and back to Lemuria
We live in changing times, we were born into these changing times to create the world we desire – consciously. We are now becoming fully aware how every thought, word and action creates the world we live in. Carrying forward pain from the past, holding on to the memories of injustice, consciously or unconsciously, that have caused suffering creates a future of pain and healing cannot be complete where wounds are still active.
Yet we must remember. We cannot be who we are without the stories of where we have been. Our story-tellers are the carriers of wisdom from the ages; whether it is your grandmother talking of her childhood, your school teacher explaining history or your friend relaying their pain filled memories. There is connection of hearts created through the stories of others. We find where we are linked, share common experience and see ourselves in a new light.
In July of 2009 on a pilgrimage to New Mexico, we began our journey into the past, we felt into painful memories and astonished ourselves at the healing that took place. We were moved in compassion for humanity, our families, and mostly of all for those who caused us pain. Our stories of how this experience moved us are related below.
We continue the journey through the coastline of California, a pivotal place in the consciousness of humanity. California is the link between Lemuria and the mainland, between paradise and paradise lost, between our future and our past. The healing of the California coastline is the fulfillment of long awaited prophecy which is linked here: http://www.yraceburu.org/California_Missions.html
Many of us on the spiritual path are concerned with healing the Earth, and we do so through prayer, meditation, and energy work, yet more is needed to clear the layers of dishonor, distrust, fear, manipulation, torture and genocide. Ceremonial work is what is needed. Ceremony is the heavy-lifting work of healers. Ceremony changes and ignites the grid, the Earth, and our collective consciousness to wholeness. We are calling forth the healers and those who wish to help. We are calling forth those who are ready to take on a vision larger than themselves, to create a future brighter than they can imagine. Can you imagine a future where we rejoice in our collective history instead of be ashamed of it?
We can create that future.
Sign up here: http://www.sistersofhonua.org/Missions.html
OUR STORIES
Sharing Hearts, Healing Spirits, from Lynda Yraceburu
I did not know my true roots growing up. The history of my ancestors was kept from me for many years; maybe for my own protection, maybe my father was never told for his protection. I am not sure of the exact reason why. I know I all ways had an empty feeling in my heart; one of missing my family or who I was.
For the most part I was spared racial judgment and reticule. The most harassment I received was when my family moved to a new neighborhood, as my father was in the military. It seemed like we moved a lot. So, I had my fair share of being the new kid on the block, and proving myself. I received more teasing from my older brothers, which as far as I knew was regular family growing pains.
It was not until many years later when I found out my true lineage, Hungarian Gypsy, that I started understanding what bigotry and genetic judgment was about. I read and dreamt about the atrocities put on my people and what they went through. How they were treated at the concentration camp Auschwitz; as well as, how they were not welcomed in most of Europe. How they were condemned to a life on the road with no home land to call their own.
I felt the anger and out rage grow in my cellular knowing as I understood more and more what my people went through. I had all most no understanding how or why people could or would treat others like this. But never the less, I felt the anger in my heart grow to all those that wronged my people. Many, many of whom were innocent; the young children, the woman and the men that had a different skin color, or different beliefs and different tradition. Who are these perpetrators to take away one’s uniqueness, individuality and free will? How could I forgive those that condemned my people? My heart grow callus to them and to anyone that carried the same beliefs of bigotry and racial judgment.
Then last year, while on a pilgrimage in the south west with a group called Earth Wisdom, the purpose and intent was to do ceremony in several of the sacred sites in northern New Mexico, to bring water back to the land. One of the sites we went to was the sacred and healing waters of Chimayo, which took place at the Mission, where the river ran through and was one of the oldest and first Missions established.
We did many ceremonies that day, one of them I had the honor and privilege to do with Janet Lightstone, a ceremony of forgiveness of the oppressor of the ancestors that had wronged, tortured or killed the oppressed. So that those that had done so wrong could be forgiven, and their Spirits set free. And the family lines of the future could release the genetic guilt that they carry in there hearts today.
I was amazed at the amount of relief and release I felt in my heart when I forgave those that had wronged my people, for what ever their reason was. It was no longer important to know what there reason was. Just to find compassion in my heart for them. As I looked around at the other participants I noticed tears falling over many of the faces. I did not know if their ancestors were of the oppressed or the oppressors. I just knew they all looked as if they found compassion in there heart to forgive. Not to condone but to find the strength to move on, free of the genetic guilt or victimization that had been left by their ancestors.
I realized at that point how much work had been done to free the spirits that were unjustly tortured and killed. But had no clue were the real work needed to be done, that of forgiveness over past ills. We did great work that day, but this was only the tip of the iceberg.
The more of us that can come together to forgive the past, the more compassion and love we can find in our hearts today. The healthier our future becomes for future generations.
Just the pilgrimage is coming up for us to further this work. “Sharing Hearts, Healing Spirit” The healing of the past done at eight California Missions, to more deeply love our future. If you have a pull to heal your past so you can more fully love your future I strongly recommend checking this pilgrimage out.
The Burning Times, from Janet Elk
I was watching a movie a few months ago, about the witch burning period of history, specifically during the Spanish inquisition, throughout Europe. I learned that over 5 million women were killed during that time, in that region, thanks to another religious/political/fear-based misuse of power, and to specifically return the balance of power to men (many men had died in the previous wars and through the plague, so there was a “surplus” of women, that were now gaining wealth, and did not have husbands to control them). This isn’t the first time I’ve responded to a witch-burning scenario, so this must be somewhere in my lineage/past lives, so this is what feels personal to me, and yet it’s the same, same thing, no matter where it played out and by whom.
Ultimately, as we all remember that we are One, we can no longer deny that what happens to one of us happens to all of us, and we most likely have played out each role in this drama from all sides, in every timeline in history. For each hurt or wound that is forgiven NOW, we all heal incrementally. Since we are the living earth, it makes perfect sense to me that our earth mother heals also when we forgive.
Thank you for your vision of healing, through the Missions of California, which will affect all souls, as we are all part of this process whether we feel it or not, participate in the healing or not. I’m grateful for those that will join you on this trip and be the pilgrims and facilitators for us all.
Transmuting into Peace, from Jackie Millay
I find forgiveness a daily necessity given the situation I’m dealing with. We give ourselves so much by allowing the energetic freedom of true regard for our own feelings, no matter how negative or difficult, which then allows them to be transmuted into peace and balance as we continually traverse the astonishing landscape of this paradoxical life we’re apart of.
A Pilgrimage of the Heart, from Jennifer Masters
On my personal spiritual journey I have always been looking for ways to connect with the land where I live, and the spirits that dwell here, in the desert Southwest. Many neo-pagan paths are grounded in the seasons and natural aspects of Northern Europe, working with spirits from those lands, a long way away from here.
And so I read something about the “Places of Vision” pilgrimage to sacred sites near Santa Fe, New Mexico with my Apache teacher Maria Yraceburu and community, and I no longer remember what I read, but it was one of those moments when I knew I had to go!
I don’t know why the mixture of indigenous spiritual beliefs and Catholicism among the modern-day pueblo peoples was strange to me. The Virgin Mary has greater presence than Jesus Christ because of her association with Mother Earth. We visited a couple of churches, including El Santuario de Chimayo, a chapel built on ground that has been sacred for thousands of years. Many have literally been healed with the earth beneath the chapel, and there’s a hole in the sacristy floor behind the altar where one may take some of this dirt. It was also the first church founded in the Americas that served to convert the native peoples to Christianity. Normally I think of religious iconography from any path as beautiful, and I was surprised at the disdain I felt as I looked around. Perhaps for the atrocities committed against the indigenous, perhaps because of my own past of not feeling at home in Christianity, although I thought all those feelings were well behind me. I fully support the idea of blending spiritual paths, I walk a blended spiritual path (hence my website domain name “Eclectic Tradition”), so this really caught me off guard—another layer of the onion exposed, so to speak. Perhaps my past was behind me, yet as a representative of the greater community I was tapping into hurt and anger much larger than myself—for the opportunity to heal it?
A fellow pilgrim, Janet Lightstone, was called by Spirit to do ceremony on this day to heal this past, not just healing for a people that had never known disease, enslavement, or war, but healing for those that inflicted the pain—they all suffered. This pilgrim is a descendant of the Ortega family and told us her story of having traveled to Mission San Juan Capistrano, where she connected with the spirit of a Friar who was in pain—from the atrocities he both committed and sanctioned—and was in need of healing. She picked a spot by the river near the chapel for the ceremony. I was reminded that every walk of life has experienced persecution at some time or another in history. Who has not been the bully, the bullied or the bystander? When the ceremony concluded, any that still harbored sadness was instructed to pick up a nearby stone, breathe the last of our sadness into the stone, and throw it in the river. All of us, now in tears, did just that.
Those of us that went on this pilgrimage, were meant to go and participate in this, on behalf of our community, on behalf of the world. The steps we traced, from one sacred site to the next, followed along the tracks of our ancestors. The ceremonies we enacted were beautiful in their simplicity, and reminded us we are all children of Earth, we are One with All Our Relations.
So much about this pilgrimage hit me on a deep level and resonated in my soul, truth unfolded before me on a pilgrimage of the heart, and there is just no intellectualizing it or analyzing it. My heart understood with perfect clarity what we were there to do, why we were there, and why it was so important. And yet my brain still cannot grasp any of it! The experience was … hmmm … hard to sum up. But I feel more at home on Earth, in this life.
A Vision of Peace into the Future, from Maria Yraceburu
I believe the Mission Pilgrimage Trip: Sharing Hearts and Healing Spirit is important to what is currently happening in the world. I know that the desecration that took place between the missionaries and the Indians is an oozing wound in the California coastline that needs to be healed to help stabilize the shifting magnetic grid. In addition, I know from what happened at Chimayo during our Places of Vision pilgrimage and after with Aunt Betty’s story that many carry the woundedness of our ancestors, and these things need to be put to rest for us to be able to carry the vision of peace into the future. I know that the reception the Ohlone Indians are planning for us in Fremont will help many that carry the history of the oppressor to release. I know the stories that my Chumash sister Julie will share, will bring light and love into everyone and the seam along the coast will be closed and healed easing the transition of mother.
This is what I know, this is what I believe. This is why I am committed to being there.
