In his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, C.G. Jung, the great pioneer of the psyche, reveals the intimate connection between personal history, soul and spiritual awakening.

Through a fearless exploration of his memories and dreams Jung came to the realization that:

Hidden within the patterns of your personal history is a code that once deciphered reveals the meaning, purpose, and direction of this life.

When spiritual teachers demean personal history—they’re missing the deeper point.

Identification with the culturally conditioned surface aspects of personality is indeed limiting. The deeper truth is that even these highly conditioned patterns of personality reveal—if you have the meditative eyes to see—deeper meanings and revelations.

Here’s an example from my life (perhaps it will remind you of one from yours):

The father figure disappeared early in my life. And by that very disappearance, loomed large. At the same time, I was surrounded by women—grandmother, mother, and aunt. They doted on me.

Thus, a primal tension was reinforced through this family dynamic. I was both an object of affection and an abandoned child; loved and rejected simultaneously.

Primal tensions are at the heart of all family karma.

You have your own primal tension—your own spiritual paradox that pulses at the center of your soul. This tension is reflected in the dynamics and relationships of your family karma. This tension weaves itself into all your important relationships. It’s primal, pulsing in the center of your soul.

Now, here’s the spiritually liberating insight—your primal tension is not a problem to be solved. It’s the call of your soul. When you attune to the tension—with loving awareness—it opens into the path of liberation.

You were born to parent’s who were embedded in their own family karma.

They had their own emotional wounds. How clearly and compassionately they faced their karma; how wisely they transformed their wounds; set the emotional climate of your childhood.

Your parents, like most people, never learned how to heal their family karma.

They didn’t know how to enter the primal tension or heed the call of soul. So they struggled, reacted, and acted-out their emotional wounds.

I don’t know how that showed up in your history—whether they acted-out their woundedness dramatically or subtly. Either way, you were effected. Either way, you inherited the family karma.

Your family karma inheritance doesn’t have to be a burden.

That’s what C.G. Jung discovered. That’s what the yogi’s discovered in deep meditation. That discovery is possible for you. With the awakening of the Wisdom Heart, it becomes clear—family karma is not a burden. It is the path to awakening.

We all have family karma—emotional wounds that need attention.

The details of your story will differ from mine. But, the inevitability of wounding is shared by all of us. Your life—in its nitty gritty details—is your precise path to awakening. Most people turn away from this path. Rather than heal re-enact the patterns of incompleteness that they inherited.

Your wounds will continue to call for attention, for loving awareness.

The primal tension in the heart of your soul will continue to arise—as memories, dreams and entanglements. They won’t rest until they are completed, balanced, healed.

This is the nature of family karma—it persists. It continues to arise, to call for the blessing of the Wisdom Heart within.

How do you experience your family karma?

How do you hear the call to heal?

Share your wisdom in the comments below.

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Ed: Bryonie Wise