All Relative? Your Genetic Inheritance and Your Will

Photo: My mum, dad and myself. Mumbai circa 1983.

Note: This blog may be triggering for individuals with unprocessed trauma. Please consider this before reading. Please reach out for help if you experience strong emotions while or after reading this. For the purpose of brevity, I haven't gone into too much detail. Please know that intergenerational trauma (IGT) is real and yet there is a way to integrate it. In no way does this blog attempt to bypass, reject, or deny it. Always know that what is felt is processed, and what is rejected remains.

It's 2:36 a.m. and I was woken from my sleep with an urge to write this. I tried to go back to sleep but the call was strong. So here I am....allowing.

A few days ago, after meditation, I wrote a note on my phone that I later posted on SoMe (Social Media). So many resonated and said they read and re-read it. It came a day before offering a new corporate training program on Stress Management: The Power in Your Genes. That session was powerful for everyone who attended it. It also came a day after I had a strong somatic experience of processing some intergenerational trauma. This blog is an extension of that which has flowed through practice and grace.

The Download: From Identity to Consciousness

"To move beyond the limitation of identity, we must first become embroiled in and even enamored by identity. It is the design for the survival of our specific genetic heritage.

Who am I?

Who were my ancestors, their stories, challenges, beliefs, grief, and triumphs?

Then, this too begins to drop. This need for belonging, for “especially” loving or disliking our families and the traits we believe we inherited from them.

As the inward journey progresses, judgment softens till it finally drops. We are able to see why our ancestors held their beliefs. We can process the cruelty of prejudice that tangles us in the pain of unbelonging. We acknowledge that we are here because of their efforts. Nothing we have is ours. It is an unbroken chain of inheritance, a love for their kids to have a better life than theirs. All their shortcomings fade in the light of seeing this.

You will know when it’s time to relinquish loyalty to ancestral beliefs that limit you. Your life will give you strong feedback, your gut will squelch from not being yourself, your throat will choke with silent screams that need to pass through. You will know that the call is not to belong to a family, a race, but to belong to yourSelf. To live as though there are no "others", for freedom cannot be complete in limitation, in separation.

Those beliefs were necessary for survival of your parents and ancestors then, today you can choose differently. Move from survival to evolution, from genetics to epigenetics, from determinism to the dance of inner (and outer) freedom."

Why even do this? Does this have any basis in science?

Science shows us that the experiences of our ancestors change their genetic expression. As my college friend, neuroscientist Dr. Brian Dias says, "There are two main mechanisms, social transmission, and biological inheritance through which legacies of stress (and abundance) perpetuate across generations. But how do they do this? They do this by becoming embedded under our skin. They do this by taking root in our biology, in our DNA, in our Book of Life. DNA, is the set of instructions that makes you and I edit this book of life. Edit these instructions in this book of life differently and the message gleaned will be very different. Embedded within you and I are molecules called readers, writers and erasers. And what these molecules do is they put the equivalent of full stops, commas, highlights and whiteouts on our books of life, allowing for that book of life to be read differently. Some of these punctuations take the form of methyl marks that are put on DNA called DNA methylation. They take the form of marks put on histone proteins, which are proteins around which the DNA is wound on our chromosomes, and they take the form of marks which are put on RNA that allows the message read from these books of life to be extremely different. Epigenetics is the phenomenon that allows for environmental events to edit the Book of Life, take root in our DNA, become embedded under our skin, and allow for legacies of stress (and ease)to perpetuate across generations."

Photo: My dad, his mother, and his siblings. Not pictured is my dad's father. He was an advocate, a radical journalist writing about the oppression and crimes of the Portuguese regime, and a freedom fighter. He was always being hunted down to be silenced, so didn't find himself in pictures. My dad is the one on the extreme left.

So, what can I do? I can't meet my ancestors. I don't feel comfortable talking about this with my parents.

One of the most powerful energies we can offer ourselves and our ancestors is acknowledgment. The simple act of truly opening to accepting their present moment experience as their truth, not needing it to fit our expectation, agenda, perception or story. What woke me up this morning, was what you will see below here, a download of a list of acknowledgments we can offer our ancestors. The call is to record it as a meditation you can listen to. (Please listen to the meditation here) Until that happens, please consider doing this.

1. Find a comfortable place and position, making sure you will be undisturbed for at least 20 minutes.

2. Have a notepad or journal and pen handy.

3. Tune in to your body, acknowledge sensations, and slow down the breath, so it feels like a lilting lullaby.

4. Hold lightly the intention to be open to what comes and to acknowledge your ancestors.

5. When you feel ready, open your eyes and read each of the sentences below. Notice sensations in your body as you read, memories and thoughts bubbling up. In your heart just truly acknowledge whoever comes up, feeling a sense of "I understand you, I see you, I feel you, I hear you. I am here with you."

6. When you are done, lay on your back in savasana and rest.

Acknowledgments

• anyone who felt unworthy of love, of money, of pleasure of rest

• anyone who felt unable or unsafe to express themselves

• anyone who felt shame, felt judged, or guilt

• misunderstood, unseen or not heard

• for whom pride, overachievement or vanity was an expression of insecurity

• who lost a loved one or many loved ones

• who lived through war, natural calamities, epidemics, and genocide.

• who felt that they failed as a parent, partner or friend

• who associated wealth with stinginess or dishonesty

• who associated pleasure with sin or shame

• who never had the opportunity to tune into their heart's desire, their purpose, their legacy

• who carried the burden of their parent's energy or depleted mental health

• who had to parent their parent and grow up too soon

• who lost a child prematurely, through miscarriage or other circumstances

• who passed without being able to tell their loved ones how much they meant to them

• who misunderstood members of their family and feel regret about it

• who had addictions, anger or exhibited strong or uncontrollable traits that hurt themselves or the people they loved

• felt inadequate in their role as mother, father, partner, child or relative

* PS: If you don't know who your parents or ancestors are, you can just hold the intention to acknowledge. The energy is more important than the details.

So what's relative and what about my will?

As we move from the desperation of survival to the expansion of evolution (as the fullest expression of ourselves), we realize that all our thoughts and beliefs about ourselves, our parents, our kids, our ancestors, whether biological or at work, are all relative (pun intended). Your Will is not what you leave behind on a document. That too, but really your Will is the use of "free will" of choice. No matter what your situation, you have the choice of perception. No one and nothing can take that from you. So use your will now, use your will to benefit yourself and others, to honour and acknowledge those that have gone before you and those that are here now in your life but may feel unseen by you. Above all, be honest about your feelings to yourself. Acknowledge your experience, as it is. Remember, it's all relative, your genetic inheritance and legacy depend entirely on how you use your Will.

A Personal Acknowledgment

I would like to acknowledge the incredible line of ancestors in my family and in my spiritual lineages. There are too many to name, yet my heart is so deeply grateful for their presence, for all the "triggering" that hurtled me towards this personal and collective inner work.

A few years ago, my paternal grandfather Carlos da Cruz was acknowledged as a freedom fighter by the Government of India. It is significant to mention because while it was public knowledge and my grandpa had letters acknowledging his work from none other than free India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the government withheld, due to corruption around the funds his family would have received the acknowledgment of his contribution. I recall this being a strong topic of contention and disappointment for my dad's siblings. One day, the government acknowledged him as a freedom fighter in lieu of the family relinquishing any monetary benefits that came with it. I still remember my aunt's face, how she cried from joy and relief and peace. As I write this, my eyes are in tearful flow, it was his ancestral energy that processed in me a few days ago. My grandfather, who I never met, owned a newspaper and was a prolific writer. To him, I owe my ability to write and express myself boldly. And with this healing, there is nothing held back.

Photo: Below is a clipping I have from a newspaper, the one that made my aunt cry as she held the trophy he was awarded posthumously.