A Dream Of Three Fathers

I was in the kitchen, making dinner for us all. My father walked in, and told me his own father would not be joining us after all. He looked sad. “Let me call him on the phone”, I said, “Maybe if I ask him he will come after all.” My father’s face brightened a little; perhaps the situation could be saved. All the Ramsden men could be together, perhaps, for this one last meal.

Except that my grandfather died in the late Sixties, when I was twelve years old. My father died in 2003, of lung damage, the results of a lifetime of smoking. This family meal would never take place. I was waking up from an early morning dream where, for a few minutes, I felt clearly the way it was to be with my father, to speak with him, and to see his face. Talking to him in this way seemed like a lifetime ago, rather than only the passing of a few short years.

We all have dreams like this one, a dream that feels so very real.  Despite decades of scientific research, the human mind remains a mystery, and we still don’t fully understand how the brain produces conscious thought. But we do know that, to keep us sane and rooted in the present moment, the brain continually creates dreams.

The interpretation of dreams has long been the bedrock of any spiritual or personal journey, as chronicled from Shakespeare to Carl Jung. Dreams suspend the assumptions of our conscious self and set us free from the restrictions of physical reality. In this dream from my unconscious I was still attempting to bridge the schism between the generations in my family; trying to heal a long-standing feud between my father and his father. This family split had its roots in my father’s teenage loyalty to his own mother when he took on the role of pseudo-father during my grandfather’s necessary absence from England during World War Two. My grandfather had served in the British military, and in 1945 returned from the African war front to discover his family role usurped. My family never truly recovered. In fact, the same heritage pattern remains embedded in my family history today. Only in this modern version I play my grandfather, and my father’s role has been assumed by my adult son. It is a pattern as solidly embedded in my family heritage as my genetic code. But now I know that family traumas repeat themselves not because of our conscious choices but because they are programed into the family heritage relational code, into our relational chakra cords. These patterns provide the script, and we become the unconscious actors in our dramas of our lives.

How to change these patterns? First we must become aware of them, to know our family history, and to actively seek where our lives are following in the footsteps of a parent, or a grandparent. But even without that information we can still intuit the existence of an old pattern by the deeply disturbing effect it has on our lives, and have them verified by a psychic. As in a vivid dream we may come to notice how we are playing a role in the unfolding drama of our family heritage, where nothing we say – or can do – changes the outcome.

The act of dreaming itself is the true meaning of the dream, of course, not simply the interpretation. Facing what is true discharges the repressed reality of our situation, allowing us to consider new options for ourselves. The dream may seem to point the way towards some salvation, a redemption through an act of some kind. But the far deeper healing available to us is the energetic release of any emotional charge long held in the heritage genetic pattern. We must come to live our own lives, and not duplicate the lives of ancestors long dead. Yes, I do miss my father, but I still cannot save him from his own life choices, even after all my years of study trying to understand personal growth. But I can release my own naïve effort to try and save him. Instead of trying to telephone my grandfather in order to rescue my father from his pain I can initiate a new choice. I can simply go ahead and “prepare the family meal”; those who choose to come will come; the rest will live their lives as they wish. I learn to accept the truth that I cannot save anyone from that which they cannot face in themselves. The greatest healing we can experience is always that of letting go of our unconscious patterns… and then to move on to make a new choice.

Dean offers distance heritage chakra cord energy healing sessions: to clear family patterns and thereby “reboot” your life. Live the life you were meant to live, and not that of another.