“Yet this aloneness is anything but lonely. Solitude gradually clarifies the heart until a true tranquility is reached. The irony is that at the heart of that aloneness you feel intimately connected with the world.” – John O’Donohue
The morning I was to leave Switzerland for the Bavarian Alps, I awoke from a dream in which I needed to catch a flight but had left my bags and all my essentials behind. I also had to facilitate an important gathering that same day but because I needed to go back for my things, I felt distracted and unprepared. I woke up frantic and started my train ride full of agitation and self-doubt. What was this trip all about anyway and who was I to think I might bring some healing to my ancestors? I felt alone. Limiting stories of “I’m not enough, I’m too much, and I’m not worthy of love” all came rushing in.
I had anticipated that I would encounter these old patterns at some point along this journey, but it is never easy when they arise. They feel so real. So achingly true. The wound of separation that we all encounter in some way as humans on this earth, the forgetting of our divine nature. This wound, I believe, gives rise to all forms of oppression and depression, to the myth of supremacy and the creation of the other. Our souls all long to belong, and this longing calls us home to our sacred place in the web.
I trust that all that emerges along this path are parts that are surfacing to be witnessed and integrated, to be made whole once again. Healing trauma is not an intellectual process. It has to be felt and met with our presence and fierce compassion. Now was the time for some practice.
So as I sat on the train, watching the green hills of Germany roll by, I tended the tender parts. I welcomed them each, allowed them to be there, investigated their particular textures, put my hand on my heart and whispered, “you too belong”.
I got curious about how these painful feelings of aloneness might be connected to the ancestor I was on my way to honor, Johann Knauer, my maternal great-great grandfather who came from the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1852. I couldn’t find the particular town he was from so I had decided to pay homage in the Alps and feel this lineage through the land.
I didn’t know much about him, as my great-grandparents died before my mother was born so she didn’t have any information. But in the genealogical research that my dear friend Shökai Sinclair did (big shout out to Sho for all their incredible research support to make this trip happen) – I found out a few things. I knew that his first wife died on the voyage to America. I knew that in Oklahoma he married Amanda Sheets, had five children with her, and that she left him for another man with whom she went on to have six more children – i can only imagine the scandal that was and the courage it took to follow her heart. I don’t know if Johann was left broken-hearted but he never married again.
Side note on Amanda: Months ago, in preparation for this journey, she came to me strong. When Shökai unearthed the names of my great-great grandparents months ago, I read them out loud in ritual to name them and claim them. When I got to her name, my whole body filled with a rush of energy and tears sprung out of my eyes. I went back to the records and found out that we shared a birthday and that she had lived in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, 30 minutes from the Art of Living retreat center where I would be going to do ancestral healing work with Thomas Hübl. Amanda has been a powerhouse spirit companion ever since.
Ok, back to Johann. From his obituary, I learned that he was a carpenter, a fruit dealer and that he operated a neat and clean restaurant where warm meals could be had at any hour for 25 cents. He homesteaded the farm he lived on at the time of his death. He dug his dug-out with his hatchet (!) While he did not go about much, his neighbors respected him and he expressed his thanks for their care of him in his solitude and sickness. He told his friends he was ready to die. So Johann most likely struggled with some loneliness in his life.
I decided to dedicate my practice to him, of bringing kindness and attunement to these inner voices of doubt and loneliness, imagining that if I tended those wounds in myself, the healing might ripple out, backward and forward in time.
Seven hours and four trains later, I arrived in the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, Germany with its quaint Old World charm, its wooden homes with arched doorways, ornate painted facades, shutters and bright geranium flower boxes. I ate my first hamhock with some bacon coleslaw and potatoes. Pork, kraut and potatoes seem to be what my ancestors ate in abundance, cooked and prepared in every kind of way.
I spent the last three days walking through alpine forests and breathing in the mountain air.
Because of my back pain, I am walking very very slowly and mindfully, calling in my turtle guides to help me keep it real. Fortunately, walking slowly helps me to open my senses more deeply to the more-than-human world around me. The forests and meadows were springing with wildflowers. I greeted each one as an old friend. Edelweiss. Blue Monkshood. Bird Vetch. Rampion. Mountain Arnica. Pasque Flower. Bellflower. Common Yarrow. Queen Anne’s Lace.
I said hello to the alpine trees of the Bavarian forests. Spruce. Birch. Mountain pine. Fir. I marveled at the light sparkling through their leaves and the soft breath of the wind, making them shiver and sway.
I delighted in the pollinating moths and bees and fly high drama.
I felt waves of alternating wonder and sadness pass through. Some of the sadness had no storyline. Some of it came from the immense grief of this past year with a divorce, my father’s passing and the suicide death of a close friend. Some of it felt ancestral. Some of it felt current for the losses and impacts of our climate changing world. I just felt it all, singing softly, welcoming each wave, holding it in the larger ocean of loving awareness. Sometimes I called my ancestors names as I ascended slowly up through the sky. Sometimes I walked with mantras, in the tradition of Thich Naht Hanh, making them up as I went along. “With each step I pray. With each step I am home.” “With this breath, the Tao. With this breath, I flow.” “Sadness, sadness. Feeling, feeling.” Sometimes I just soaked in the breathtaking beauty of mountains and river gorges, waterfalls and the luminous blue sky.
All in all, I walked 15 miles and ascended over 5,000 feet, moving ever so slowly, feeling all the feels, and praying with my feet. I made little cairns and offerings to the land and my ancestors along the way.
I am discovering how aloneness can be both an art and a portal back into connection with our world and our true belonging. As I inhabit myself and each moment fully, I find that I am never alone. The ancestors are always walking with and within us.
I have been reading the wisdom of the beloved Celtic poet and philosopher, John O’Donohue, who recently crossed over, and will leave you with his words…
We live in a world that responds to our longing; it is a place where the echoes always return, even if sometimes slowly…Each one of us is alone in the world. It takes great courage to meet the full force of your aloneness. Until you learn to inhabit your aloneness, the lonely distraction and noise of society will seduce you into false belonging, with which you will only become empty and weary. When you face your aloneness, something begins to happen. Gradually, the sense of bleakness changes into a sense of true belonging. This is a slow and open-ended transition but it is utterly vital in order to come into rhythm with your own individuality. In a sense this is the endless task of finding your true home within your life. It is not narcissistic, for as soon as you rest in the house of your own heart, doors and windows begin to open outwards to the world. No longer on the run from your aloneness, your connections with others become real and creative. You no longer need to covertly scrape affirmation from others or from projects outside yourself. This is slow work; it takes years to bring your mind home. – excerpts from Eternal Echoes: Exploring our Yearning to Belong
