Transcripts
When you make that strong intention to connect to a guide who really has
Speaker:healing powers for you and your lineage as a whole,
Speaker:who shows up will be exactly who you need to speak to.
Speaker:Hello and welcome back to Remember Why You're Here,
Speaker:a podcast for seekers and sensitives where you can relax, receive,
Speaker:reconnect to yourself and remember that most important thing of all,
Speaker:why you're here. I'm Asia Suler, author,
Speaker:earth intuitive teacher. And in this episode today,
Speaker:I wanted to revisit a recording I put out several
Speaker:falls ago now. It was actually before my daughter was born.
Speaker:She was just a little babe in my belly when I first recorded this.
Speaker:And I wanted to return to this recording called Who Are Your Deep Ancestors?
Speaker:Because right now in this moment, as this is being released,
Speaker:I am in Southern France visiting the paleolithic caves
Speaker:of the deep ancestors. I am in the Dordogne region of
Speaker:France in Les Eyzies, and I am here once again.
Speaker:So I was here last year for the first time fulfilling a dream
Speaker:of mine that I have been holding and nurturing
Speaker:within myself a dream that I talk about in this recording.
Speaker:its genesis, how it first came in,
Speaker:working on my next book or working on this book that really has
Speaker:been a part of my world now for almost seven years.
Speaker:That's nutty to me that the idea for this book first came in seven years ago.
Speaker:If you are curious more about what this book is,
Speaker:I talk more about my first journey to Southern France and the
Speaker:overall tenets of the book,
Speaker:what I'm actually doing with this book in episode 40 called What Am I Doing in
Speaker:Southern France?
Speaker:So you can go back and listen to that episode from last year. But this
Speaker:book, which will still be years in the making, it's just one of those books,
Speaker:but this book is about what I call the deep ancestors,
Speaker:these ancestors of our lineage and of the earth
Speaker:that are here to help us reconnect to what it means to be human,
Speaker:these deep ancestors who are profoundly connected to the earth,
Speaker:who knew how to live in relationship with the earth.
Speaker:And my experience with these deep ancestors are that they have so much to
Speaker:teach us and so much that they want to say.
Speaker:So for me in my connection with the deep ancestors,
Speaker:it has brought me to these caves in Southern France.
Speaker:So many of these caves date back upwards of
Speaker:30,000 years ago. So these are ancient,
Speaker:ancient places. Some of these decorated caves,
Speaker:painted caves have these images inside of them
Speaker:of animals, of faces,
Speaker:of hand prints that predated
Speaker:agriculture,
Speaker:that predated anything that we know of in terms of the
Speaker:written record. These engravings in these paintings are
Speaker:upwards of 17,000 to 36,000 years old.
Speaker:And so it has been just really the honor of my lifetime to be here and
Speaker:inside of these caves.
Speaker:I'm getting to visit some of the caves that I saw last year,
Speaker:but I'm also getting to visit a few caves that I was unable to see last year
Speaker:because they were closed for various reasons.
Speaker:So it has just been such a treat so far to
Speaker:be here,
Speaker:to wake up in this beautiful place with this ancient river moving
Speaker:through these limestone cliffs,
Speaker:to wake up and have my tea and look out over the green and
Speaker:the snaking river. To be inside this valley,
Speaker:that just feels like home in so many ways.
Speaker:It's everything a human could hope for in terms of the shelter and the
Speaker:fertility.
Speaker:And I see why humans have come here to make their home for so
Speaker:very long,
Speaker:including humans that existed before homo sapiens came onto this planet. This
Speaker:was also a place in which the Neanderthals lived.
Speaker:And so as I am just deeper in this exploration this
Speaker:week, coming back for this second trip,
Speaker:hopefully tipping more into the writing of this book,
Speaker:I thought it would be particularly potent to revisit this
Speaker:recording,
Speaker:this episode that I made really not so long after
Speaker:the first message came in for me to start working on this book. And so again,
Speaker:this was when my daughter was just a little seed in my belly.
Speaker:I recorded this in 2021. I think it came out in 2022.
Speaker:And yeah,
Speaker:it just feels like such an honor to return to this and just see this long thread
Speaker:throughout time.
Speaker:And it feels particularly potent now to visit because we've officially
Speaker:tipped into fall.
Speaker:We're officially in this season of the thinning of the veil of the ancestors.
Speaker:It's such a rich time to work with these deep ancestors,
Speaker:so let's go ahead and meet them. Let's meet your deep ancestors
Speaker:and explore the ways in which they may want to work with you.
Speaker:Lately,
Speaker:ancestor work has been coming back into our imagination in the Western world and
Speaker:the ancestors couldn't be more delighted. Right now we're in autumn,
Speaker:known as Samhain Season in the Celtic Wheel of the Year.
Speaker:This is the time of the year in many different cultures where it becomes easier
Speaker:to speak to the ancestors, to communicate across the veil,
Speaker:and in the Celtic understanding to access the other world.
Speaker:There's a lot of different kinds of ancestors to connect with.
Speaker:I wanted to talk about one specific variety of ancestor that is eager to
Speaker:speak with you. When it comes to ancestor work,
Speaker:many people are familiar with the concept of working with those in your lineage
Speaker:who you can name, who you can find on your family tree,
Speaker:or who are connected to you by name. Now,
Speaker:this is a beautiful way to go about ancestral work and important healing can
Speaker:happen with this. And it can sometimes feel fraught if you have a challenging
Speaker:relationship with your family or to your family's history, for example,
Speaker:your family's histories as settlers or colonizers. This can feel challenging,
Speaker:like there's a lot to wade through and perhaps trauma to heal.
Speaker:One way to connect with your ancestry in a way that might feel a bit gentler,
Speaker:but still just as profound is to connect to your deep ancestors.
Speaker:So who are the deep ancestors?
Speaker:This definition might change depending on where in the world you come from,
Speaker:but I consider the deep ancestors as those who lived before written
Speaker:history, those whose names likely have been lost with time,
Speaker:and those who come from a culture and a time where the
Speaker:environment that they lived in and the society that they lived in very much
Speaker:lived in harmony with the earth.
Speaker:So depending on where in the world your family hails from,
Speaker:this could be quite recent or it could be pretty far in the past. As someone of
Speaker:European descent, to me,
Speaker:my deep ancestors feel that they reside in the neolithic or the paleolithic.
Speaker:So both the neolithic and the paleolithic are considered to be pre-history
Speaker:because there's no written accounts of these times.
Speaker:We are mostly going off of artifacts and what we can deduce from
Speaker:archeology. If you've ever heard of the concept of deep time,
Speaker:this is looking at the scale of earth time and its grandiosity and
Speaker:its fullness. Well, we can apply the same concept to the ancestors.
Speaker:We have deep ancestry.
Speaker:We tend to focus on just the last few hundred years,
Speaker:especially because that's what's normally recorded in our family trees.
Speaker:But your tree,
Speaker:the tree of your DNA and your ancestry goes all the way back to the beginning.
Speaker:So if you wanted to,
Speaker:you could commune with deep ancestors a hundred thousand years ago,
Speaker:or if you'd like to commune with ancestors that are outside of the
Speaker:Homo sapiens species specifically,
Speaker:you could go back even further. I like to think as deep ancestors as those
Speaker:who live outside of the current systems that we live in.
Speaker:So these systems of capitalism, patriarchy,
Speaker:and the exploitation of the land.
Speaker:I want to commune with those who experienced a reality that
Speaker:is outside of what I was handed,
Speaker:a reality that is actually here to help us remember what
Speaker:it means to be human and how to move about the world.
Speaker:These deep ancestors have a perspective on life that we're really
Speaker:just remembering now and they have so much to share with us.
Speaker:These deep ancestors lived in a paradigm that for some of us might even be hard
Speaker:to imagine now, but when we connect in with them,
Speaker:they can begin to share these mindsets with us,
Speaker:these ways of interacting with ourselves and the world,
Speaker:and profound gifts can come out of this connection.
Speaker:These deep ancestors in your lineage have very
Speaker:specific,
Speaker:powerful gifts to share with you. I believe that there's a wisdom that lives
Speaker:in our deep ancestry and now wisdom is wanting to come to the surface again.
Speaker:Even 2000 years ago,
Speaker:Daoist philosophers in China were already talking about the fact that their
Speaker:ancestors knew something and were aligned with the Dao in a way
Speaker:that had already been lost. So even 2000 years ago,
Speaker:advanced cultures in the world were seeing that there was a way that their
Speaker:ancestors were operating in the world that was actually more in harmony with
Speaker:the earth and therefore more in harmony with their own Dao and the thread of
Speaker:their own soul.
Speaker:Through my explorations in connecting with the deep ancestors,
Speaker:I have seen time and time again that they deeply want to communicate with us.
Speaker:Not only are they invested in human beings flourishing and you
Speaker:flourishing as one of their lineage,
Speaker:but they're invested in human beings being able to be here on earth,
Speaker:being able to be in communion with this earth,
Speaker:to living in harmony. And so they want to be
Speaker:communicating with you and they want to help guide you, not only in your life,
Speaker:but in your ancestral work as a whole.
Speaker:They can be a sentinel on one end of the spectrum that can
Speaker:help you heal whatever trauma or hurt has happened in between.
Speaker:So I have a really interesting story of how I got into working with the deep
Speaker:ancestors.
Speaker:I was doing a series of pilgrimages to visit the countries and the
Speaker:lands that my family are from in Europe.
Speaker:And right before I went to England, I did a journey,
Speaker:so sometimes called shamanic journeys.
Speaker:I did a journey to connect with the ancestors there to say, "I'm coming.
Speaker:I'm excited to meet you." And what was so interesting is in the journey,
Speaker:as I was drumming,
Speaker:I actually found myself going into a cave and coming out into this limestone
Speaker:cliff in what looked like Southern France. Now, this was confusing to me.
Speaker:I had never been to Southern France before. At the time,
Speaker:I didn't even know that there were limestone caves there,
Speaker:but I just had this feeling like this reminds me of something I've seen.
Speaker:Maybe it was Southern France, but this definitely is not England.
Speaker:And as I moved through this landscape and in this journey,
Speaker:I met with people who said they were my ancestors who looked quite
Speaker:different than what I expected.
Speaker:They looked as if they were from paleolithic times,
Speaker:the clothing that they were wearing, how they were traveling in a small band.
Speaker:And it was one of the most powerful journey experiences I ever had.
Speaker:And I remember they looked directly into my eyes and they said,
Speaker:"We are the ancestors we want you to connect with.
Speaker:This is your work." Of course,
Speaker:I still went to England and had an incredible time connecting with my
Speaker:matrilineal line there,
Speaker:but that encounter with the deep ancestors never left me,
Speaker:and it ended up becoming this torch for me to continue to do this
Speaker:ancestry work in an even deeper way. Now,
Speaker:what's really fascinating about this is right before I went to England,
Speaker:I did a genetic test to find out my DNA history.
Speaker:And while I was there, I got the test results back.
Speaker:And what is so interesting is that part of these test results was actually to
Speaker:look at my haplo group.
Speaker:Your haplo group traces your mitochondrial matrilineal DNA,
Speaker:so following your matrilineal line as far back as that specific
Speaker:variation can go. And I found out that I was haplogroup H,
Speaker:which a large majority of people of European descent are.
Speaker:But what's so amazing about this, as I was reading,
Speaker:is that haplogroup H can be traced back to the limestone
Speaker:caves and landscape of Southern France in the paleolithic.
Speaker:My mind was so blown by this.
Speaker:It's one thing to have an experience in a journey or meditation and feel like
Speaker:this was meaningful to me. Doesn't matter whether or not it's true,
Speaker:it really gave me something profound.
Speaker:It's another experience entirely to have that profundity and hold onto it
Speaker:and know that it's an important guide for you,
Speaker:and then to have this fascinating,
Speaker:interesting piece of your history come in to affirm this,
Speaker:that actually I did have ancestors living there and what I was experiencing was
Speaker:not just a figment of my imagination,
Speaker:it was a true connection with my deep ancestors.
Speaker:The really cool thing about working with the deep ancestors is you don't need to
Speaker:know very many specifics at all about your heritage or your lineage.
Speaker:You can just ask to connect to an ancestor from the deep past who wants to work
Speaker:with you. And in fact,
Speaker:you might know countries that your family is from,
Speaker:but the deep ancestor who wants to work with you might have never been to that
Speaker:country. That might be further back than even your family established roots in a
Speaker:specific place. So be open to just who shows up and where you end up.
Speaker:So how do you start talking to your deep ancestors? Well, first of all,
Speaker:they want to talk to you. So once you open that door,
Speaker:you might end up finding that actually they're right there and they're going to
Speaker:start coming into your dreams, coming into synchronicities in your life,
Speaker:or just into ideas that seem to lead you forward.
Speaker:If you've never tried a shamanic journey,
Speaker:I think this is an incredible place to start.
Speaker:And I will put a link here to a video that I have all about how to
Speaker:undertake a journey so you have guidance about how to do this.
Speaker:Any kind of meditation practice will also help you tune in.
Speaker:I find simple instruments like a flute or a drum instruments that
Speaker:likely your ancestors did have access to because we know that these are very
Speaker:ancient instruments in humankind that can really help you tune
Speaker:in and sort of get into the flow. Or if you have particular music that to
Speaker:you helps you drop into the feeling sense of your deep ancestors,
Speaker:definitely play that music as well.
Speaker:Any kind of ancestral arts is also a direct way to communicate
Speaker:with your ancestors. So ancestral arts could be music or dancing,
Speaker:but it could also be crafts, for example, leather working,
Speaker:sewing, or molding clay.
Speaker:So all of these are ways to start talking to your deep ancestors.
Speaker:And I think as long as you go in with the intention to really connect to
Speaker:benevolent, wise, shining, intelligent,
Speaker:deep ancestors, those who have wisdom to share with you,
Speaker:then you don't need to worry about who necessarily shows up.
Speaker:When you make that strong intention to connect to a guide who really has
Speaker:healing powers for you and your lineage as a whole,
Speaker:who shows up will be exactly who you need to speak to. This is a
Speaker:really powerful time of the year for doing this kind of work.
Speaker:Because the veil between the worlds is thin,
Speaker:it's just much easier to hear these messages,
Speaker:to receive communications and dreams.
Speaker:So your willingness to harness this time of the year will
Speaker:bring so much depth and so much profundity to these
Speaker:explorations.
Speaker:And if you'd like any support on this journey of connecting to your
Speaker:ancestors and this concept of the other world,
Speaker:then definitely check out my course Herbs for the Otherworld. In the course,
Speaker:we talk about specific plants and practices that really help you
Speaker:to communicate across the veil,
Speaker:to harness this really special and powerful time of
Speaker:being able to work with the unseen realm and have the wisdom and guidance from
Speaker:the unseen realm stream into your life and uplift and support you
Speaker:as you move into your next step. So now I would love to hear from you.
Speaker:If you've started doing ancestor work or it's an established part of your
Speaker:practice, I would love to know who do you talk to?
Speaker:Have you had a deep ancestor in the way that I describe it show up for you
Speaker:in your journeys or in your connections? And if so,
Speaker:what have you received from this relationship?
Speaker:So wherever your explorations take you this autumn,
Speaker:may the path be guided by those who love you beyond all reason,
Speaker:by your deep ancestors,
Speaker:by those who are here to guide and support you every step of the way.
Speaker:So if you do end up working with your deep ancestors this fall,
Speaker:if they too are calling to you or talking to you, I would love to hear about it.
Speaker:It has been such an amazing place for rich conversation over on my Substack.
Speaker:Remember why you are here.
Speaker:It's been just really authentically fun to create that space,
Speaker:to connect with you all,
Speaker:to have it be a space where I can be sharing expanded
Speaker:episodes, greater writings, more information,
Speaker:just really more opportunity to connect.
Speaker:So if you're interested in deepening the conversation,
Speaker:I'd love to hear from you over there. And this week,
Speaker:I'm actually doing something that's taking a little bit of bravery for me,
Speaker:but this week for paid subscribers,
Speaker:I am releasing part of the first chapter of my
Speaker:book.
Speaker:So I wrote this introductory chapter last fall when I took a sabbatical
Speaker:to work on the book and it required a lot of collation of years and years of
Speaker:research and I have a very in-depth outline of the book and I wrote this intro
Speaker:as a way to really organize my thoughts and help me reenter the world again. And
Speaker:so I wanted to share
Speaker:a piece of this introduction for all those who are joining me as paid
Speaker:subscribers over there. If you're not a paid subscriber,
Speaker:you can still read a little bit of that introduction and read me talking about
Speaker:its creation. So if you're interested in that,
Speaker:I will put that link here for folks who want to check
Speaker:out the Substack and check out some of this first chapter of the book.
Speaker:It's always pretty tender to put something that you've really just been working
Speaker:on your own within out into the world. It's like your little cache,
Speaker:you're like a squirrel with this little cache that you've been saving and is so
Speaker:precious and to put it out in the world feels really big,
Speaker:but it also feels like an important step into really going
Speaker:deeper into writing this book and to taking the next step in its creation.
Speaker:So I would love to see you over there if you are feeling called and whatever the
Speaker:winds of autumn bring to you this season,
Speaker:may it bring with it these tidings from the deep ancestors,
Speaker:these rememberings of how deeply you belong on this planet,
Speaker:how you were made for this time,
Speaker:you have within you all of your ancestors' resilience, their knowhow,
Speaker:their magic, their connection to this planet,
Speaker:and may this shift into this new season help you
Speaker:remember that most important thing of all why you're here.
