To be born, you needed …:
- 2 parents,
- 4 grandparents,
- 8 great-grandparents,
- 16 great-great-grandparents,
- 32 third great-grandparents,
- 64 fourth great-grandparents,
- 128 fifth great-grandparents,
- 256 sixth great-grandparents,
- 512 seventh great-grandparents,
- 1024 eighth great-grandparents,
- 2028 ninth great-grandparents.
Over twelve generations in the last four hundred years, 4096 ancestors were needed for you to be born. (Source: Lyrical Zen)
The lives of our ancestors
We sometimes wonder who we are. It is the most fundamental question we live with. Why do we go through what we go through? Why do we look the way we look?
When we consider everything our ancestors went through before we were given the chance to live this life, we cannot help but wonder what influence they have had on us.
What struggles did all those generations have to face? How many wars did they live through? How many love stories did they experience? How many children did they lose? How many dreams did they cherish? How much happiness did they know? How many journeys did they make? Which illnesses did they survive, and which did they not? Did they know poverty or wealth? What trades and professions did they practise? What dangers came their way? What discoveries did they make? Were they close to their feelings or far removed from them? Did they have good opportunities? Were there heroes or heroines among them? Saints or criminals? Were they dependent or independent? What role did religion and rituals play in their lives?
Humility
I wonder what this impressive number stirs in you, dear reader. For my part, I feel a deep respect for my family lines and for their history. A feeling as if I want to bow deeply with my hand on my heart. There is also a sense of humility, as I become aware that we are all just a small link in a very long chain. After all, within a certain span of time, we too will belong to an immensely large number of ancestors for descendants who will never know us personally. During the trainings on family constellations, we sometimes set up long rows of forefathers and foremothers. It is an impressive experience. The bow then comes all by itself.
The impact of our ancestral history
From generation to generation, talents, physical and health characteristics and many other things are passed on. We understand this, and we notice it ourselves when we look at ourselves, our parents, our grandparents and our children. But we also carry beliefs and unprocessed emotions with us from generation to generation. That is why our lives can look like a complex pattern of threads woven together so closely that they can no longer be told apart. We notice this above all when we set out to discover who we are, why we are here and what our purpose in this life is. We think we will resolve a particular problem in a few weeks or months, only to find that every movement we seek sets off a new search. Time and again, a new aspect reveals itself, a deeper layer that asks for attention. ‘I’ve been at this for so long already,’ clients sigh. ‘It never seems to stop.’ Indeed, it does not stop. The influence of the many previous generations works on tirelessly in our own lives, as family constellations show us again and again. Our personal story is put together in a rather more intricate way than a five-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle.
I never knew them.
I regularly see disbelief in my clients’ eyes. ‘How can those previous generations possibly have an influence on me? I never knew them. I know nothing about them.’ It is true that your conscious memory knows nothing and remembers nothing of your distant family history, but your energetic field does. That field belongs to a much larger energetic family field – unconscious to us – which, like a meticulous bookkeeper, keeps track of every event and the emotions that go with it, with the aim of restoring balance to situations that have been thrown off balance. Whatever needs to be brought back into balance reveals itself in the form of the difficulties you encounter on your life path. The question I then hear is: ‘Where does this come from? Why is this happening?’ No easy task indeed, because we do not remember the origin on a mental level.
A missed opportunity at school
We are one of the first generations to have the luxury of being able to spend a good deal of time healing the old imbalances we carry with us. What a tremendous time! For ourselves and for the collective. Tremendous because it allows us to become freer within and to pass on a less burdened system to our children. Tremendous, too, in the sense that the emotions can sometimes be intense. It is a pity that neither at school nor at home do we learn how to deal with sky-high emotions taken on from the past and these kinds of pop-ups. What a missed opportunity for ourselves and our children, and consequently for society as well.
The restored flow of love
Fortunately, more and more people are setting out to free themselves from the burdens they feel weighing on their shoulders. There are many ways to do this. One of them is family constellations. They have the power to teach you to look at your family situations in a liberating way, so that the burdens slide from your shoulders, love can flow again and the warm connection with your ancestors can be restored. It does take some effort to let go of your train of thought and surrender to the process, but it is more than worth it.
The impact on education
If we keep in mind the impact of our family history on our daily lives, you can imagine that pupils do not sit in the classroom without their ancestors. Most schools will probably take into account the influence of the child’s family, but it goes no further than that. Knowledge of the actual events in the family system can help pupils move forward when learning or behavioural problems, fear of failure or an inability to concentrate arise. The same applies to how staff or management function. There is no distinction according to role. In fact, these problems are nothing other than the bookkeeping of the great energetic field trying to restore balance. Through educational and family constellations, it can become clear whether the problem at hand has its origin at school or in the family system. When we learn to look at school difficulties in this way, we can bring relief to everyone involved much more quickly and more deeply, and a pleasant wind of learning can blow through our schools.
With zestful regards,
Hilde Van Bulck.
Awareness Architect — Speaker — Author — Systemic constellation facilitator and adviser
AMI Activator — Motivator — Inspirator
