The following excerpt is taken from the new book Spirit Medicine: Healing In The Sacred Realms, by Hank Wesselman, Ph.D.. It is published by Hay House (July 1, 2004) and available at all bookstores or online at: www.hayhouse.com.

Ancestral Lineage Healing

The energy body is a composite field derived from three sources—the energy of the mother, that of the father, and the energetic infusion from our personal oversoul. These three fields are links of connection, in turn, with our ancestral past, and since energy never dies, we can’t disconnect from those who’ve given life to us.

These fields record imprints of everything that happened within the lives of our ancestors. Lifetimes dominated by positive focus and good intentions produce lineages oriented toward positive action, personal growth, and accomplishment. In the same manner, negative goals or unsavory actions across many generations may result in imprints of abuse, illness, and misfortune. In the Eastern traditions, the creation of such patterns is called karma.

Those ancestors who have crossed over most recently are the ones with whom we have the closest links, both biologically and spiritually. If a serious illness or severe life trauma was endured by one or more of these individuals, it’s recorded within their energy system. And since they’re only removed from us by a generation or two, those conditions may affect us, producing distortions in our own fields that may manifest as illness. Here’s an example.

HW: When I was in my early 50s, I developed a sore throat that never seemed to get better. I had been a heavy tobacco smoker earlier in life, so I went to an ear, nose, and throat specialist. Nothing abnormal was detected, nothing to biopsy, and I was sent home with allergy pills.

Six months later, my sore throat was still very much alive. Another medical examination revealed nothing. More allergy pills. A year later, the same. So I turned my attention toward my spirit teachers for answers to this quandary, and their response produced an unexpected insight.

When my mother’s father was in his early 50s, he developed throat cancer, and in the surgical procedure that followed, his larynx and part of his throat were removed. He survived his cancer, although he spoke in a whisper for the rest of his life, one that extended well into his 80s. Yet the throat cancer and the subsequent surgery had caused the distortion in his field, creating an energetic wound that was still present even after the death of his physical body.

Many indigenous groups, including the Taoists in northern China and Korea, know that the energy body can maintain its integration as a personal pattern long after death. They say that it takes approximately four generations, or up to a hundred years, for an ancestor’s energy to completely detach from this world. It’s also known that ancestors often feel a particular concern for their descendants, and they may remain in connection with them, serving as guides, protectors, and teachers.

I thought about this at some length. Could it be that the nonconformity in my grandfather’s field was affecting me adversely, producing my chronic sore throat? My grandfather and I had loved each other dearly in life, so I understood quite clearly that this wasn’t being done deliberately. Perhaps it simply couldn’t be avoided because of the closeness of the connection.

This brought up a series of intriguing questions. Did my grandfather need to be healed before he could ascend back into the Upper Worlds and rejoin his oversoul source? Was this why the symptoms had appeared in my throat? And could I, using the techniques of spirit medicine, heal my grandfather?

The answers to such questions remain, of necessity, elusive, yet there was also a sense of urgency. If I couldn’t heal my grandfather, dead for 40 years, would I manifest cancer in my own throat? I was the same age that my grandfather had been when he developed the cancer—an age when his immune system’s ability to protect him was beginning to decline...

I decided to attempt a healing for my grandfather, and I did what all practitioners of spirit medicine do under such circumstances. I turned toward my spirit helpers for advice and guidance. My meeting with them revealed that one possibility was to invite my grandfather’s spirit into my sacred garden and do the healing there with the assistance of my healing masters. Then, an interesting idea presented itself: Why not try to find my grandfather in his sacred garden?

Many indigenous groups understand that when we die, we go into a dream from which we don’t wake up. These postmortem states are dreamed by the dying, and they appear to be archetypically determined. That means that they tend to take forms derived from the worldview of the dreamer.

These dreams are "in between" states located in the Middle World of Level Three. They’re situated between the life just lived and the return of our energetic matrix to our oversoul field in the Upper Worlds. As has been mentioned, the Tibetans call these the Bardo worlds. Christians refer to them as Purgatory.

Understanding this, I went into journey-mode, expanding my consciousness, and then I intentionally connected with my grandfather’s spirit through that part of my own energetic matrix that’s derived from his. Upon doing so, I discovered that when he died, my grandfather had entered into the dreaming of the garden that had surrounded the house he’d lived in, and that’s exactly where I found him, sitting on a bench, surrounded by foliage—a place that he’d been very fond of in life.

Knowing that my grandfather had last seen me when I was 11 years old, I "re-membered" myself at that age, essentially re-creating myself as the boy that I knew my grandfather would recognize. I then approached the elder gentleman seated on his bench in the dream world, and our reunion was a warm one.

Remember, my grandfather was outside of the time-space continuum, and so it meant nothing that 40 years had passed on the physical plane of Level One.

As we chatted about this and that, much as we’d done in life, I kept glancing at his throat. How was I to do a spirit-medicine healing for this patrician gentleman who had owned the beautiful house called Seven Doors on the island of Nantucket?

I appealed to my spirits, and their response was immediate. On an impulse, I got up and stepped behind the bench, whereupon my grandfather looked the other way and pretended not to see me. This had been a game we had played when I was a small child, a game in which I would sneak up behind my grandfather through the bushes and then suddenly jump up to place my hands over his eyes from behind. Guess who?

On this occasion, I looked down at the pine needles carpeting the ground behind the bench and made my intention. Instantly, from between the pine needles, the head of a garter snake appeared, and then another—the same snakes I had caught and kept in a coffee can as pets when I was a child. They were still there, in the dreaming of my grandfather’s garden.

Without thinking, I put my hands down on the ground, and the striped snakes promptly wrapped their long bodies around my forearms. Then I stood and gently placed my hands over my grandfather’s eyes. Instantly, the old man became immobile and began to ask: "Is it Clark Gable? Nooo . . . Errol Flynn? Noooo . . . David Niven? Noooo . . . Lionel Barrymore? Nooo . . . and so on down the list.

Meanwhile, the snakes dropped their heads down to the level of his neck and began to flick their double-tongues over the wound in his throat. I had no idea what they were doing. Perhaps it was some form of snake medicine. I concentrated upon healing for my grandfather and held fiercely to my focus. The snakes continued flicking away with their tongues until my grandfather guessed correctly, whereupon the old gentleman leaned back to be embraced by his grandson.

For long moments, I simply held my grandfather in my arms, our hearts brimming with the great affection we had for each other. Then I released him and dropped my arms. The snakes took this as a cue and dropped down, gliding off into the brush, unseen by the old man. As the drumming came to an end, I took my leave, promising to return on the morrow.

This was the first "ancestral healing" I did for my grandfather, but on checking my own throat afterward, not much seemed to have changed. Maybe it was a cumulative effect, I thought. So I made follow-up journeys to my grandfather during my workshops on the weekends that followed.

Several weeks later, I noted with interest that my sore throat had improved, and over the next several months, it disappeared completely. A subsequent journey to my grandfather’s garden revealed that the old man was gone. His wound had been healed . . . and he had ascended.

This is just one example illustrating how it may be possible to work with our spirit helpers, and by association with subtle energies, repairing distortions that accumulate within families across time. In the process, the collective matrices of ancestral lineages may be freed of pain and suffering, and the wounds passed generationally, from parent to child, even from oversoul to descendant self, may be healed.

It has already been noted that when we enter the timeless dimensions of the dream and do a spirit-medicine healing for someone else, we receive healing for ourselves, as well as for the macrocosm mirrored inside ourselves, with all its fears and struggles, hopes and dreams.

This means that when we engage in healing work of any kind, we do a healing for
the world.