Filling an ancestral void
As a part of a migrant family who traveled not only from Korea but through South America (more distance), where and how far are the traditions and stories and family that might have informed my spiritual practice had my people been able to stay? I am openly seeking answers.
More and more, I am meeting people who are interested in creating spiritual community that is not easily packages on social media or solely in religious settings, with their own varied perspectives guiding them.
Incorporating the voices of their elders, the histories of their families, the traditions and rituals that are more deeply connected to land and each other. I want to build and be a part of these networks of care which leave space for our humanity, learn new ways of using energy work responsibly, and help bring in a season of spiritual life that goes beyond what some religion, cults, and too generalized new age spirituality has been able to achieve so far. Some will call this work ‘decolonizing',’ but I am hesitant to because I have too much the colonizer still operating within my own practices. I do not say this to chastise myself (perhaps a warning to keep lit), but to acknowledge that many of the practices I have learned have come through White American communities that learned these practices from Eastern & Indigenous spiritual teachers. But I accept this because well, the outcomes have still benefited me and my communities.
I know that only practicing Korean indigenous rituals is not my authentic path, but it is definitely a piece of my own spiritual practice that is currently missing.
I am not here, at least in this entry, to critique the history of all spiritual movements and systems in America. I am simply here because I am guided to share my experience, in its messiness. I am willing to make mistakes, and I hope to build with others so that I have a community of people who can call me in with kindness and honesty when that happens.
I am in a position where I am creating as much as I am receiving. I am learning with skilled practitioners while navigating doubt. I am investing an enormous amount of energy learning techniques and practices, and also building my own which serve me best. I am clearing fear in truckloads but sometimes like to jump back into it like a pile of comfortable autumn leaves. It is refreshing to fall back into old patterns, after all.
I noticed that a few of my recent entries ended speaking about fear. And now, after working with people who may not be necessarily how I’d expect a teacher of mine to look, and communing with friends who have become so dear to me they feel like soulmates, I want to speak about fear in a new way. As I see how community can be built in times of great pain, I’m not so harangued by the paradoxes of life, my own colonized shame nor my own worries of judgment. We can only do things step by step. This is a step where I am OK with my story.
