People often have a timeline they are most comfortable navigating - past, present, future, liminal, other - but we also often weave them together for a fuller experience in our bodies and lives.
I can often see threads of the future. I look for sustainability and pathways, dreams that turn to goals or visions that turn to plans, the waves and the shoreline they'll touch, converse into landscapes not yet traveled. I cherish the aliveness of the present and take efforts to be wholly aware in the moments I'm living. I've never been much of a history buff or interested in family trees / genealogy, but I respect my personal past enough to break observed patterns and try to not repeat mistakes.
In recent years, a slightly more abstract interest in ancestral healing has formed, though, with the idea that healing ourselves can heal the past and future too. Even more recently, I've participated in meditations, facilitated by The Wild Woman Project and solo, that have made me feel into the past a little more than is usual for me. And, then that past circles right around into the future, time being non-linear and continual and a mystery in itself.
Some of this centers around the idea that within our own genetic code, within our family's experience line, so much has been navigated, so much has been endured and triumphed, so much courage has been summoned and embodied. Those lessons are in our bones and hearts. Those people energetically have our backs. There are times when I've felt their reassuring hand slip into mine. The past isn't a weight or an anchor, but a whisper in the ear, full of real substance, "You've got this."
And, in turn, every step I take in my own life, each river traversed, is a blessing to the future, me in ancestor form also whispering, "You've got this too."
Working with stromatolite awakens this sort of experience.
Marian McGuinness wrote for BBC, "...stromatolites are stony structures built by colonies of microscopic photosynthesising organisms called cyanobacteria. As sediment layered in shallow water, bacteria grew over it, binding the sedimentary particles and building layer upon millimetre layer until the layers became mounds. Their empire-building brought with it their most important role in Earth’s history. They breathed. Using the sun to harness energy, they produced and built up the oxygen content of the Earth’s atmosphere to about 20%, giving the kiss of life to all that was to evolve."
Ancient wisdom. The birthing of life. Meditating with stromatolite can connect us to those rivers of origin - of our current ancestral line, of past lives, of issues buried deep within us, ones that give us strength, ones that need healed. It helps us shed and solidify. It helps us ground in our purpose. It even teaches us how to how to become good ancestors.
References:
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210117-stromatolites-the-earths-oldest-living-lifeforms
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