Most of us who are spiritually seeking are looking for a solution that will both heal the world and heal our souls.

This often looks like many weekend workshops, several festivals, maybe an audience with a guru from a distant land. And while most of us indeed have good intentions, this all too often includes plenty of spiritual trespassing, spiritual role play and participating in ceremonies or rituals with little original context.

Which eventually means we’re back on the dusty road, chasing the next spiritual shiny object, wondering aloud why such and such didn’t help or work for us—we’d heard wonderful things about it on social media after all and everyone is doing it.

Here’s the deal: the way we approach spirituality is broken.

We are encouraged to consume without consummating, to cleanse those chakras until they are squeaky clean or until we transcend this reality. We are taught to control our mind to control our world, to hold the talking stick until we’re blue in the face. Do ayahuasca, practice kundalini yoga and adhere to a strict cleansing food protocol—because that’s what everyone seems to be doing.

Why are we approaching spirituality with the very same mentality that we’re trying to escape? Why are we still consuming, cleansing, mastering, transcending, controlling and following the crowd? How can we claim to love and want to heal the earth while at the same time we are desperately trying to transcend or, at the very least, master our time here on Earth?

That next spiritual training, the new amazing guru and the latest can’t-miss weekend workshop don’t work because there is no cultural context to anchor ourselves onto. In fact, it’s likely that by participating in the newest and greatest spiritual technique that we’re accidentally trying to anchor into someone else’s cultural or spiritual lineage—without permission. And if that new spiritual technique is originally anchored in the spirits and culture of a far away land? It’s equally as likely that this spiritual trespassing is really getting on the nerves of the ancestors and land spirits of origin as well as the ancestors and land spirits of the land you’re trying to do this new work or ceremony on.

This spiritual trespassing is also called cultural appropriation and it doesn’t work because it isn’t based in our soul’s own lineage.

So how does one anchor into one’s own spiritual lineage?

We need to go back to our individual roots. Heal the wounds and trauma endured and perpetuated by our ancestors. These wounds live in our shadow and need more than a sanitizing bath in love and light. We need to meet with our ancestors in the dreamspace and learn from them. If we ask for their support, guidance and protection we will get it. When we learn to work with our own ancestors as a source of spiritual initiation and information, we can learn rituals, experience origin stories and participate in a cosmology that fills our cup…because it already fills our bones.

All we need to get started is to create an ancestral altar and use it. We won’t be worshipping our ancestors but we will be participating in a two-sided relationship with the spirits that are closest to us. Bring offerings to your ancestors. Ask for guidance and sit in silence to hear the answer. Look for, and act on, synchronicities. Our ancestors care for us and our lives like no other spirits can: they died for us. They’ve incarnated and they know the joys and tribulations of being earthbound.

They’ve been waiting your entire life, possibly entire generations, to be remembered and to offer guidance and protection to their own lineage. No consuming, cleansing, mastering and transcending. Only giving, healing, learning and appreciating. Which is exactly what we’ve been looking for and is exactly what this earth needs right now.

Blood is thicker than (rose-quartz infused) water.

Turns out it’s a lot deeper, too.

Author: Darla Antoine

Image: Mallory Johndrow/Unsplash

Editor: Catherine Monkman