The Living Ancestor

with Ramon Castellanos

This Podcast is an exploration of what it means to become a ‘Living Ancestor’: A fully embodied, 21st century human being connected to our deep time hunter-gatherer inheritance. Themes include: aligning with fate and destiny, shamanism, ancestral healing, embodiment, divination, creative expression, and dying complete. eatingancientvirtue.substack.com

  1. 9月26日

    Soul Making: The Painting, or the Blank Canvas Beneath It?

    “By soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens. Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment — and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground.” - James Hillman One of the places where clear perception of spiritual work breaks down, is the assumption that everyone is ‘doing the same thing in different ways’, meaning that every path is equivalent. This is functionally inaccurate. The mechanics, formulas and processes people engage with, along with the core intent they have, all shape the potential outcome of a path. Two of the most common themes we encounter among the core practices of the world are those of: The Path of Subtraction: emptiness/non-dualism/dissolving/release/peace The Path of Addition: desire/expression/manifest form/passion/suffering There are more of course, but these two present the most common distinct ways of working with ‘the soul’. If there is a principle that can allow the two to co-exist, it is silence. However, that’s not the point of this talk. Here, I offer a metaphor of a person engaging with a painting they have suddenly awoken to from deep sleep, as a way to understand the distinction between the paths of addition and subtraction. One seeks to return the canvas to a blank state, and the other is ‘an artist of the soul’. Both are challenging, but each in their own way. Knowing what path your on, is key. 🌩️ To stay connected and begin ‘Eating Ancient Virtue: Absorbing The Past to Nourish The Future + Join me at my Substack: eatingancientvirtue.substack.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/subscribe

    23 分鐘
  2. 9月12日

    The 'Animal Powers' of Your Soul Medicine Shape Perception, Character and Destiny

    Your soul has innate and inherent ‘animal powers’ that belong to it, and they shape your response to life’s ongoing demand for choice. The constellation of our choices is character. Character is destiny. In this Living Ancestor episode, I return to the terrain of soul medicine, that living current of power held by, worked with, and transmitted by the soul. Up until now I’ve spoken of soul medicine in its more ‘projective’ quality and how we can work with it in our craft/s. But the medicine also listens, and through this, it opens up a branching tree of responsive possibilities that shape our character. Animal powers are those inherent and innate perceptive and responsive abilities all creatures possess. Just as each animal embodies a unique power—the eagle’s far-seeing eye, the dolphin’s social song—our soul carries a particular style of perception that apprehends reality in its own way. Through its stylistic apprehension of life’s unfolding, it creates meaning and purpose moment to moment, but especially in those times that pull us towards the soul in order to make sense of what’s happening…the ruptures and challenges that demand the soul’s depth. Destiny then emerges through the soul’s ‘stylistic response,’ that is the result of its animal power to perceive and respond. This episode works within the mysterious paradoxes of destiny, free will, predeterminism, and fate, and seeks to offer a pragmatic clarity that ties some of their pieces together. 🌩️ Join Eating Ancient Virtue for FREE @ My Substack: eatingancientvirtue.substack.comeatingancientvirtue.substack.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/subscribe

    13 分鐘
  3. 2024/06/19

    Are Your Ancestors Helping or Hindering Your Destiny?

    🐉 Join me at my Substack: theancestralnow.substack.com The Ancestors are either the wind at your back or a lead weight at your feet. In this podcast we explore how our Ancestors shape our fate, and thus by extension...our destinies. A big part of the message we inherit in modern culture is that of ‘individual choice’, which has wonderful gifts… and large gaps, for it misses how our lives occur in a continuum. In today's world devoid of practices that tend to the dead, we're often left ‘grappling’ with the legacies we've inherited, instead of being supported by them. In indigenous cultures, with healthy ancestral lines, the blessings of the dead, flow like a fertile river. Most of us are asleep to the gifts, and curses carried in the energetic signature of familial stories, hungry ghosts, or the loving dead (sometimes they are all the same thing). The fate bestowed upon us by our Ancestors can be expressed in many ways, but in this podcast, I cover how they do so through: * Genetic gifts and debilitations * Emotionally charged narratives & the energetic signature they carry * The ‘unlived destinies’ of our line, seeking to live through us Fate, destiny and Ancestors are all interrelated in crucial ways. In this podcast, I invite you to consider the possibility that a part of your destiny is to ‘awaken’ to these ancestral influences and actively engage with them. Understanding that your personal story is intertwined with the stories of your ancestors—which is further woven into the broader story of life and death itself—can empower you to actualize your own individual destiny, which paradoxically always ties into a greater whole. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/subscribe

    19 分鐘
  4. Finding and Following Your 'North Star'

    2024/05/03

    Finding and Following Your 'North Star'

    The concept of finding and following one's "North Star" is central to navigating fate and destiny. The North Star serves as an internal guiding light, representing a clear unifying direction in life. Metaphorically, it represents an inner sense of guidance analogous to the stable north star already in the sky: Polaris. As there is an outer sky, there is an inner sky. Just as the North Star aids navigation by bringing a ships crew into alignment with a singular direction, identifying one's personal North Star helps unify and synchronize life's disparate aspects toward a chosen path. Everyone already has an innate North Star, that is usually overshadowed by fate and conditioning. To transmute fate into destiny involves consciously aligning with this innate guiding light. Practically, the North Star translates into day-to-day actions and routines, guiding all aspects of life—health, vocation, relationships, and spirituality. When each aspect aligns with this guiding light, life becomes cohesive and purposeful. Traditional teachings emphasize this coherence, offering cosmologies, disciplines, and moral frameworks that align individuals with a cohering direction. In modern contexts lacking such traditions, many experience desynchronization, with different aspects of life moving disjointedly. Ultimately, walking in alignment with one's North Star is akin to walking the path of destiny daily, embodying the journey and destination simultaneously. 🌩️ Join me @ My Substack: theancestralnow.substack.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/subscribe

    19 分鐘

簡介

This Podcast is an exploration of what it means to become a ‘Living Ancestor’: A fully embodied, 21st century human being connected to our deep time hunter-gatherer inheritance. Themes include: aligning with fate and destiny, shamanism, ancestral healing, embodiment, divination, creative expression, and dying complete. eatingancientvirtue.substack.com