We Are Our Ancestors. We Are Our Progeny. Reflected in Every Cell. Distilled in Every Being.

A lesson in inheritance

“Every present moment carries with it the past’s conditioning and the future’s seed, so every present moment freshly offers the possibility of redemption from what has been and the healing into what will be.”

— Norman Fischer, Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up

Entering this world, we take what is given. Our body and form determined beforehand. Our place of landing decided, sight unseen.

A contract among souls. Perhaps ours too was in on it. But we forget upon arrival — our inheritance seemingly happening to us. Oh, what a small sliver of the story!

Inheritance is that — everything we were originally handed.

Also, more.

It encompasses what we come in with, yes. And all that happens to us, good and bad and what seems “bad” but is a well of compassion, connection, resilience, and emergence.

It includes too the inheritance of childhood, teen years, middle age, and each phase of life, carried into what’s next.

Our memories, wounds, patterns, addictions, and stories.

All that we remember, and all that we forget. The beliefs and identities we inherit, perpetuate, and recreate. Everything that is us.

But not only us.

Inheritance is more than that too.

It extends beyond the conscious mind, of course, with all that we consciously see and perceive. Also beyond imaginings of self, with the self’s illusory bounds.

It includes the joys and hardships and life we live. But also those that came before. Those we inherit from parents, grandparents, ancestors, and our wider lineage — a net of beings woven through people and times.

It includes familial, societal, and human constructs as well. Ones we take as matter-of-course and, equally, those we champion or rail against. All passed along. All defining us.

Then there’s the earthly and extraterrestrial sides of things. Nature, the planet, Universe, Source. All more than our speck of flesh can fathom.

So we start close in. We make meaning.

Unaware though we are in this place — unaware though we are of our place — Inheritance is not a one-way transaction.

We do not simply receive our lot and our story from forces known and unknown. We participate.

Inheritance, in other words, is neither passive nor predestined. Inheritance is a living, breathing co-creation.

It defies boxed-off, linear translations of self, other, and world. It refuses absolutely flat, caricatured versions of “my story” and, most especially, “my victimhood.”

It demands responsibility and empowers in the process.

By braving this invitation, we heal. By healing ourselves, we heal those who came before and those yet to come.

We are our ancestors. We are our progeny. Reflected in every cell. Distilled in every being.

Thank you for reading. I’m a doctor of Chinese Medicine and write about sobriety and soulful living. Find all my links here: