You Don't Have to Like Your Ancestors

But You Do Have to Deal with Them

Introduction

the daunting mega-quest of writing down everything i’ve learned that i didn’t want to learn about reality, ghosts, demons, possession…. into a serialized manual on substack is generally an exhausting process. it is exhausting precisely because the work, actions, philosophy i’m writing about is really only strong, healthy and valuable in community, in right relation. in a relational container where i can correct the rampant misunderstanding and ghostly delusion that persists and pervades these topics.

i don’t claim to be an expert, my self-image is that of a coerced practitioner. coerced because i never consented to learn this from some place of freedom or privilege. i learned this the hard way, and i still learn the hard way, like a prisoner explaining the minute details of concrete and iron from inside the cell.

because of this, much of my writing is improvisational, i’m having a conversation, as dislocated as that might be at times.

partially i’m doing this to maintain sanity in an increasingly unsane world. partly because what I’ve learned is that a person MUST help, Must be generous and selfless, even as they exercise restraint, caution and patience. believe me, i wouldn’t have chosen this deliberately. I’m not living the life i wanted. I’m the incarnate antithesis of the American dream told to children: ”you can be anything you want to be.”

it’s this thread i want to pull today.

Leone Contini, Ricollezioni, 2019.

white people hate their ancestors

white people hate their ancestors and continually murder them in daily life. psychically, spiritually, emotionally. white people, the very concept of whiteness is in a sense a continual ritual murder of their ancestors. the reason this is so normalized is because many of their ancestors also participated in this crime.

this is why the ghost of whiteness, as well as the ghosts of white people, are so entrenched. co-dependent.

now, it’s not only white folks who do this, but by far they are the most eager and willing to maintain the practice of this. with the money involved in the project of whiteness, many other kinds of people are joining in, day by day, generation by generation.

there is a severe narcissism here, which also becomes enhanced when white people go on a “healing journey” to “heal their ancestors”.

this concentrated hunger which harms others may be a necessary evil we must all endure, though i pray that isn’t the case and that white people can deal with their ancestral karmas without such cringe and ignorance.

Singapore’s Robot Playground Media

the project of whiteness and the project of colonial America is based on the severing of ancestors — the exiling, ignoring, and abandoning of ancestral hygiene.

• some of this stems from a revisionist history which complicates and confuses everyone to the point of fairy tale nonsense.

• some of this stems from very real exasperation and trauma from the so-called “OLD WORLD”, the folk name for Europe pre-immigration.

• some of this stems from bald-faced propaganda which remixed feudalism and installed a new aristocracy. the possible reward that was given to immigrants of a certain skin color when they entered into the Faustian bargain.

now, i can’t solve or explain all of this today, else this post would be ten thousand words or more.

what i can attempt to do is explain clearly what a ghost is, to alleviate some of the ignorance and fear as to why people don’t want to deal with their ancestors or feel they can’t deal with their ancestors, and, to try and give you your power back which was stolen by the institutionalized religions and consumerism.

Yang Repression/Yin Repression

i will briefly discuss one aspect of afflictive fate: repression.

repression can be considered a kind of obstruction to freedom. there is entire discussion to be had about freedom and how we misuse freedom, but this is not that conversation.

in an afflictive state or arrangement, we can be repressed from the easeful, spontaneous expression of the nature/spirits that make up the so-called self. repression can appear as a freeze response, or a fight/flight response, an addictive compulsion or an addictive repulsion. these are natural defensive responses that become engrained and entrained, turning into supposed “personality traits” and “personal narratives” about “how things really are”. when a natural defensive response become habitual and automatic, we can consider this an aspect of ghostliness, or afflictive fate/karma.

while this symptomology may be labeled as personal, it is important to de-personalize it while also consciously re-sponsibilizing it. (again, another entire subject i go over with clients in the third or fourth session).

What is the difference between Yin and Yang Repression?

yang repression appears as a “thing” that can be named, defined, and differentiated somewhat easily. yang repression can generally be pointed to in space and time.

yin repression is more subtle and hidden. these are like a thousand tiny doses of poison that corrupt over time. the causes are often obscured from consciousness and can’t be easily located, defined, or pointed to. yin repression is often the real issue with addictions. the urge to smoke a cigarette, the urge to overeat, the urge to dissociate. one single time these actions are not damaging. they become damaging via the accumulation over time of these ghostly possessions.

van gogh

in the west, people think of possession as mainly the yang style of repression. the poltergeist/exorcist cinema version. an “event”, a “haunting”, etc. because this style of narrative and perception fits with western biases, there is an observer effect that takes place which deludes the overall context and ecosystem of relationships. This bias also makes the yin style of repression/obsession/possession even harder to discern than it already is. obscuration on top of obscuration.

the yin style of this can also be considered the person who suffers in silence or performs self-harm, while the yang style is perhaps more related to outward harm on others, the environment, etc. Outbursts vs “inbursts” so to speak.

Because “inbursts” seem relatively self-contained, they are often rarely seen as what they are: a collective/ancestral karmic curse/habit that is concentrated in a so-called individual. this person is essentially being colonized by a ghostly force, which may also include gu syndrome traits like parasites, infections, mold etc. in this case, the ghost is attempting to communicate in the only way it knows how: by repeating its pattern of imprisonment. it can’t ask for help directly (part of being a ghost is lack of real agency, ghosts ARE weakness, that’s their strength).

so the ghost, which is really an amalgamation of ghost echoes that can’t find the agency to change, projects its echo onto the host. because this relationship can be very yin in nature, this projection onto the host appears to be the host.

the ghost force or aura can also affect others to alter the way the host is perceived. this is as terrifying as you might think. a person can be possessed by a ghost that seemingly is not “their ghost”. this shows the interconnected quality of all of our fates and karma.

in the case of this “possession-based scapegoating”, or “observer-effect possession”, it can often be difficult to see the source, the person who hosts the root ghost. like a ventriloquist throwing their voice.

artwork by olivia steen

at the level of group, the phenomena diffuses, replicates and gets “stronger”.

remember, this yin strength is strength-via-weakness.

the curse/haunting/possession can diffuse itself so far into culture that as the ghost-force becomes stronger, the host(s) becomes weaker, and that weakness is upheld and fed by the culture itself, so that the true inter-relatedness and source can never be fully witnessed and exorcised/transformed.

this might mean that the host becomes a ghost and joins the ghost-amalgam, and because nothing was resolved or unraveled, passes onward and finds a new host.

a host can become a ghost during life and/or after death. we can be partial ghosts. similar to how people can be hosts to viruses and infections that are held dormant by a strong immune system, but when that immune system has a crisis, all the dormant viruses are unleashed. this can happen on all levels of reality, not just biochemical, physical or material, but also psycho-emotional, neurological, spiritual and even more: psychically.

this meta-phenomenon has taken me my whole life to understand empirically. it is not about belief, faith, superstition, etc.

the main lesson i’ve learned is to deal with the negative symptoms with dignity as best one can, with zero expectation of reward, love, kindness, hope, sympathy, cures, etc. It really is like being wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to prison in a sense. Every prisoner is in some way indicative of this very process of phenomena i am explaining here. Systemic oppression is systemic possession.

But this is not some permission to drown in addictive grief! No, that too can be a form of narcissism and repression. It can also be a necessary ritual exorcism. Often, we cannot know for sure, which is why everyone must learn to be able to discern their karma with more clarity. And, why we can’t wait for others to do their work for us to do ours.

Regardless of where you fall in the propaganda machine of race or gender, this reality of ancestral hygiene cannot really be avoided. There’s no escaping this, whether you have a privileged fate or not. Those who are less afflicted have a kind of civic obligation to assist those who are more afflicted. Those who are more afflicted have a civic obligation to not create more affliction.

Further Study

The topic of ghosts and demons is vast. Most intact or semi-intact cultures have community festivals, rituals and protocols for dealing with ghosts on a group/society-wide level. This includes yang and yin ghosts. even though most ghosts are considered yin, there can be greater yin or lesser yin style ghosts, such as the difference between the ghost of a small child orphan, versus the ghost of a rapist.

Because the west largely does not have these kinds of rituals, we can sometimes piggy-back on other communities’ righteous qi if we enter with respect and learn the protocols, such as at the many asian festivals around the world or dia de los muertos, or at the many altars and shrines to Santa Muerte, etc. Depending on where you live there will be varying availability, some secret/hidden and some more outwardly “disney-fied” but no less ritually useful.

Another option is to Do-It-Yourself, which can be hard or impossible depending on your fate. But above all a sincere effort is a must, regardless of perceived outcome or difficulty.

One way is to make a plaque for the ghost(s) and leave an offering of incense every day for a period of time to rectify the misalignment, if any. Because there’s no way for anyone else to really check or “prove” if this is efficacious, the onus of responsibility and awareness is on the practitioner.

There are hundreds if not thousands of folk remedies for ghosts, ranging from bio-medical to shamanic and everything in-between. The main thing to keep in mind is that everything and everyone is connected — made of the same “stuff”. There is no real meaningful difference between us, the so-called living and the so-called dead -our ancestors, and ghosts. To think that there is, is like selecting raindrops from the same downpour and elevating some while diminishing others. All the raindrops hit the ground and all return to the same source.

by wisteriamoth

Even when we are plagued with pain, fear and madness, we can cultivate integrity and dignity to unravel as much of the karmic knot as possible within our given lifetime.

Even if the intensity of the ghost causes us to prematurely die, commit suicide, overdose of narcotics, or even harm others, we must responsibilize this infection while also de-personalizing it, even if society at large will blame and “eternally damn us” with the same “scarlet letter” that may have created the ghost in the first place.

Housekeeping

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