The Living Ancestor

What if the idea that we live in a simulation is less a ‘material reality’ and more a symptom of modern disconnection? It’s likely that those who feel the world is simulated have simply forgotten what it feels like to be ‘real.’ This episode examines the consequences of a loss of lived contact with reality: the fading of soul, body, and world into abstraction.

Some live in the world as conscious, active participants inside animated bodies, while others drift as spectators of a simulation, like players in a video game. Many modern humans find themselves in a kind of limbo, yet the possibility of inhabiting the real world is still within reach. Tune into The Living Ancestor Podcast to discover how sensory awareness, presence, and breath can reconnect us back to reality.

To paid members: It appears there was ‘glitch"‘ with this post’ and it only went out to paid subscribers. Apologies that you are receiving it twice as I correct the glitch, and get it to everyone. In fact, I had republish the whole thing from scratch because of technical issues. Seems I might be upsetting the techno gods.

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“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.

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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.

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In this episode, we explore one of the fundamental themes of becoming a ‘Living Ancestor’: orienting our lives toward ‘completion’. This expresses itself in small daily moments, all the way to the larger arc of completing the ritual of one's entire life.

We touch on how resolving ‘open loops’ and familial karmic ties helps us prepare for death with a lighter heart. Unfinished business keeps us tethered to the past in unhealthy ways, and many of us carry a large amount of ‘drag’, that is anchored to family and ancestral karma.

Embracing closure allows us to step into a spiritual legacy more ripe with the potential of flourishing, and it can happen in small movements of recognition and action. Through some personal stories and practical insights we’ll explore an engaged way of approaching this principle of completion.

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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.

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Have you ever heard of Kintsugi? It is the art of purposefully breaking pottery and repairing the cracks with gold. I can envision no metaphor better suited for describing the creative process.

Creativity is not replicability.

Creation is (in part) the filling of cracks with gold…our gold.

In today’s podcast, we explore how critical it is to liberate ourselves from the relentless pursuit of perfection in our creativity.

What I have come to learn is that flaws and imperfections are not just inevitable; they are essential. They are a feature and not a bug, and they are present in all works, traditions, and methods.

For years, I found myself ensnared in a pattern: I would discover someone's work, become enamored, dive deep into it, only to eventually become disillusioned by its flaws and imperfections.

Yet, it is the cracks and flaws that make work unique.

In this podcast, we’ll explore how to appreciate the imperfections in our work and the work of others.

We’ll dive into the foundational elements of creativity, discussing how flaws shape and enrich the message, much like the art of kintsugi, where broken pottery is mended with gold, creating something uniquely beautiful.

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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.

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In today’s world, there is an idea that you can just eat ‘content articles’ for breakfast, get certified, and then go on to have a fulfilling practice regurgitating the same tired information.

In this world, genuine articles are few and far between. It’s no surprise that imposter syndrome is so common as to be a household term.

While most sources out there will try and sell you some kind of ‘workaround’ so that you don’t feel like an imposter, (or not let the feeling stop you from acting), I suggest that this feeling is ‘actually’ a signal giving you valuable insight.

Instead of running from or ignoring the feeling, I suggest doing this instead…

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In this episode, I explore offerings and sacrifice as ancient human technologies of relationship, exchange, and transformation.

Across indigenous and traditional cultures, the giving of offerings is woven into how humans relate to land, spirits, gods, seasons, and one another. Offerings create balance, ease tension, express gratitude, and anchor us in time and place. At a deeper level, they speak directly to the other-than-conscious mind, the symbolic and energetic layer of reality that understands exchange, nourishment, and reciprocity.

I look at sacrifice not as punishment or moral debt, but as a fundamental alchemy. Sacrifice is a form of death. It removes something from our immediate threshold of experience and creates space. Every expansion requires contraction. Every gain requires release. This is a truth the body, the unconscious, and the ancestral memory all understand.

Drawing on primal human experience, I explore how this rhythm is still alive in us today. Life itself calls us toward greater capacity, toward the fuller expression of our gifts and the life we sense we came here to live. Yet many people remain stuck at the threshold because they cannot surrender who they currently are.

I speak about the altar not as an object, but as a place of change. To alter is to transform. To live in alignment with becoming requires the willingness to sacrifice the present self for the one that is emerging. This process is often uncomfortable, because nothing wants to die, and the parts of us that are familiar resist release.

This episode is an invitation to understand sacrifice not as loss, but as compost. The relinquishing of what is feeds what is becoming. When we are willing to offer who we are now to the altar of change, we nourish not only our own evolution, but the life that is calling us to contribute something greater to the world.

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In this episode, I explore fate, destiny, and free will through a deeply personal story that has shaped my life from infancy.

I share how I was born into an African-rooted shamanic and divinatory tradition carried through my Cuban family, and how a long-form divination performed when I was a child became a reference point for who my life was “supposed” to be. From a young age, I was told I would become a spiritual teacher, even a prophetic figure, and this story quietly shaped my sense of identity long before I had the language to question it.

I reflect on growing up inside that narrative, rebelling against it as a teenager, and later confronting it again as an adult when I could no longer tell whether my work as a teacher was truly my choice or the mechanical continuation of a story I had inherited.

From there, I describe a radical break: stepping away from teaching, shutting down my business, and devoting several years to stock market trading as an experiment in free will. That period brought discipline, loss, emotional intensity, and ultimately grief, revealing that the archetypes of teacher and artist were not roles I could abandon without cost.

I explore how sustained practice eventually burned away what was not aligned and led me back to this work, not as obligation, but as conscious engagement. From that process, a simple formula for destiny emerges: fate provides the soil, but destiny requires soul forces to bring it into fruition.

This episode looks at destiny not as a fixed outcome, but as a living process, shaped by archetypal capacities, choice, and the willingness to engage one’s inheritance consciously. It closes with a reflection on the mystery at the heart of free will itself, and the possibility that the deepest act of choice may be the decision to realize what we were always meant to become.

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