Imagine to Remember

Simone Weil wrote “Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on”.  This currency, this inheritance is also passed down from parent to child, generation to generation, it is in the blood and in the milk. We know it by many names; family curses, intergenerational trauma. Many of us have tried in vain to identify a source, an original wound. Some of these roots are easily identified; patterns of abuse, displacement, war, colonization. But if we really could trace it back to its origins we would find that it began at the very beginning with our fall from grace, our separation.

It is said that the sins of the father do not befall the son, and this is true in the spiritual realm, but in this earthly existence we suffer the sins of our parents and their parents before them, and if we are not careful our children will suffer for ours. And this inheritance is passed down through the generations until someone comes along who confronts the pain, dissolves the suffering, and sets free themselves and their descendants. Sometimes the task is too great for any one person, the pain so profound, so maybe they only begin the process of healing, and on and on the successive generations toil, until that person is born, who slays the monster once and for all.