In order 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.

Across twelve generations over the past four hundred years, 4096 ancestors were needed for you to be born. (Source: Lyrical Zen)

The lives of our ancestors

Sometimes we wonder who we are. It is the most crucial question we carry with us. Why do we go through what we go through? Why do we look the way we look?
When we look at everything our ancestors went through before we were allowed to live this life of ours, we cannot help wondering what influence they have had on us.
What battles did all those generations have to fight? 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 did they practise? What dangers came their way? What discoveries did they make? Were they close to their feelings or far from them? Did they have beautiful 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 do not know what this impressive number does to you, dear reader. In myself it awakens a deep sense of respect for my family lines and for their history. A feeling as if I want to make a deep bow with my hand on my heart. And a sense of humility, becoming aware that we are all a small link in a very long chain. For 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 in family constellations we sometimes set up long rows of forefathers and foremothers. An impressive experience. The bow then comes of its own accord.

The impact of our ancestral history

From generation to generation, talents, physical and health characteristics and many other things are passed on. We understand that and we observe it ourselves when we look at ourselves, our parents, our grandparents and our children. But beliefs and unprocessed emotions are also carried along from generation to generation. Which is why our life can look like a complex pattern of threads woven together in a way that cannot be told apart. We notice it above all when we set out in search of who we are, why we are here and what our purpose is in this life. We think we can solve a certain problem in a few weeks or months, and then find that every movement we go looking for sets off another search. Time and again a new aspect shows itself, a deeper layer that asks for attention. ‘I have been at it for such a long time already,’ clients then sigh. ‘It never seems to stop.’ Indeed, it does not stop. The influence of the many previous generations goes on working tirelessly in our own lives, as family constellations show us over and over again. Our personal story is put together rather more intricately than a five-thousand-piece puzzle.

I never knew them.

It happens regularly that I read disbelief in my clients’ eyes. ‘How can those previous generations have an influence on me? I never knew them. I know nothing about them.’ It is indeed true that your concrete memory knows nothing and remembers nothing about your distant family history, but your energetic field does. That field belongs to a much larger energetic family field, unconscious as far as we are concerned, which, like a meticulous bookkeeper, keeps a record of all events and the emotions that go with them, with the aim of bringing balance to situations that have been thrown out of balance. Whatever needs to be brought back into balance emerges in the form of difficulties you come across on your path through life. The question I then get to hear is: ‘Where does this come from? Why is this happening?’ Not a simple job indeed, because we do not remember the origin at a mental level.

A missed opportunity at school

We are one of the first generations to have the luxury of being able to devote a fair amount of time to healing the old imbalances we carry with us. What a wonderful time! For ourselves and for the collective. Wonderful because it allows us to become inwardly freer and to pass on a less burdened system to our children. Wonderful too in the sense that the emotions can sometimes be fierce. It is a pity that at school and at home we do not learn how to deal with towering emotions taken over from the past and with these kinds of pop-ups. What a missed opportunity for ourselves and our children, and consequently for society as well.

The restored stream of love

Fortunately, more and more people are setting out to free themselves from the burdens they feel pressing on their shoulders. There are quite a few ways of doing that. One of them is family constellations. They have the capacity to teach you to look at your family situations in a liberating way, in which the burdens slide off your shoulders, love is allowed to flow again and the warm connection with the ancestors may be restored. It does take an effort to uncouple 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 take the influence of the child’s immediate family into account, but it does not go any further than that. Knowledge of the factual events in the family system can help the pupil further when learning or behavioural problems, fear of failure or an inability to concentrate arise. The same goes for the functioning of staff or school leadership. There is no distinction on the grounds of one’s function. In fact these problems are nothing other than the bookkeeping of the great energetic field trying to restore a balance. Through educational and family constellations it can be made clear whether the problem that presents itself has its origin at school or in the family system. If we learn to look at school troubles in this way, we can bring relief to all parties involved far more quickly and far more deeply, and a pleasant learning breeze can blow through the schools.

With a zest-for-life greeting

Hilde Van Bulck.

Consciousness architect — Speaker — Writer — Systemic constellation facilitator and advisor
AMI Activator — Motivator — Inspirer