Threads Between Worlds: The Ancestors and the Path of the Soul
Connections that Shape Our Identity Through Presence
I find a deep resilience and inner compass when I take time to recognize those who came before – family, mentors, and unseen ancestors whose stories still echo quietly in my life. I’m not alone in this. Across cultures and through the ages, the honoring of ancestors is a universal practice, expressed through offerings of food and drink, prayers, care for graves, and storytelling.
Honoring family, mentors, and ancestors is more than an act of remembrance; it is a way of understanding who we are. These relationships shape our identity, ground us in belonging, and remind us that our lives are part of a much larger story. When we remember those who came before, we acknowledge the gifts they passed on – their courage, their mistakes, their resilience, and their love. Their lives ripple forward through ours, guiding us in ways both subtle and profound.
In Mexico and parts of Central and South America, Día de los Muertos – the Day of the Dead – is one of the most vibrant expressions of this remembrance. Here we are invited to reimagine our relationship with the cycles of life and death, to see them not as opposites but as partners in the same great dance. Families create altars (ofrendas) adorned with marigolds, candles, favorite foods, and photographs, welcoming the spirits of loved ones. It is not a time of sorrow, but of celebration – a joyful homecoming of the heart.
All Saints’ Day, first established in the 7th century, arose from a similar impulse: to honor those who lived lives of faith and compassion, both known and unknown. Over time, it became a day not only to remember the saints, but to reflect on how each of us might embody that same light in our own lives.
When these Christian observances met the deeply rooted Indigenous traditions of the Americas, something beautiful emerged – a fusion of reverence and remembrance. Beneath the forms and symbols, both hold the same truth: that remembrance is not about the past, but about presence; not about loss, but about continuity.
These sacred days remind us that the path of the soul is not linear but cyclical. The living and the dead, the seen and unseen, exist in quiet conversation. Just as the ancients believed their ancestors walked beside them, offering guidance and protection, we too can sense that same nearness – in moments of reflection, in a dream, or in the hush of candlelight.
At the Cuyamungue Institute, we recognize this same impulse in our practice of Ritual Body Postures—a way of entering deeper states of awareness and listening to the ancient wisdom of the ancestors that lives within us. Through posture and rhythmic induction, we reconnect to the continuum of being, to that larger community of the soul that transcends time and space.
As we enter this season of remembrance, may we each find a moment to pause, light a candle, and welcome our ancestors home – not as ghosts of the past, but as companions in the great unfolding of consciousness and being.
“Across cultures and through the ages, humanity has found ways to honor the unseen threads that bind us all.”
The name “CUYA” carries with it both history and vision. Rooted in our origins as the Cuyamungue Institute, it now also serves as an acronym — C.U.Y.A. — a guiding symbol that unites our mission:
C — Consciousness: The field of shared awareness that arises in Collective Presence, where the “We” awakens beyond the “I” – moving from the “Me to the We.”
U — Unity: Our alignment with the Cycles of Nature and the rhythms of the cosmos, reminding us that we are woven into a greater fabric of reality. This sense of unity reminds us that our awareness is the shared consciousness that connects all living beings.
Y — Your Awakening: The inner journey of Embodiment and Wisdom, where through direct experience the body remembers. At the CUYA Institute, this awakening is nurtured through Ritual Body Postures and ecstatic trance, where the body itself becomes the doorway to wisdom, presence, and transformation.
A — Ancestral Wisdom: Roots. Our connection to Sacred Lineage, honoring those who walked before us and rooting us in belonging and continuity. Our founder, anthropologist Felicitas D. Goodman looked to some of the oldest, most authentic ancestral records we have — the world’s collection of early and indigenous art — and decoded selected artifacts as embodied “ritual instructions.”
Together, the Four Pathways of C.U.Y.A. — Consciousness, Unity, Your Awakening, and Ancestral Wisdom — form a single tapestry of practice. They remind us that awakening is not an abstract idea but something we live: through the body in Your Awakening, through nature’s cycles in Unity, through community in shared Consciousness, and through the guidance of Ancestral Wisdom.
- …. CONTINUE