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"Egun are the spirits of departed ancestors, whether related by blood or by
religious lineage. Honoring one's ancestors can be viewed in simple or in complex,
metaphysical terms, which we will examine here.
When an individual is born, her soul incarnates, that is, takes on a physical body.
This soul comes from a constellation of energy that continuously incarnates within
a family line. This is a very broad concept, because all family lines eventually
return to one people. However, it is commonly believed that familiar energies tend
to stay together, which is why we bear the traits of our recent ancestors. While
the soul is here, it gathers wisdom and knowledge through its experiences on this
plane. When the individual dies, the spirit dis-incarnates and returns to that
constellation of energies, the cull of souls, if you will, to await
reincarnation. Because time is not a reality but a series of labels we put on reality
to be able to comprehend events in some sort of order, we must understand that
all incarnations of all souls exist simultaneously. We are all living one big life. This
is why so many people can cite so many varied experiences in past lives and why
so many people experience the lives of famous people as their own past lives. This
is also the main reason we revere our ancestors: to revere our source, those
experiences that our souls have had beyond those which they are having in their
current incarnation. When I give offerings to my grandfather, I am "feeding" that
part of myself and my family line that lived the life my grandfather lived. When I
continue my relationship with a deceased family member, it is because, in some
way, that relative still exists, whether the particular energy that powered the
particular body of that family member has reincarnated or not. To have existed at
one time is to exist eternally. To deny the importance of the experiences that our
souls had and continue to have on other planes of existence is to deny our very
selves. When we are told that an Egun has a problem with us or that an Egun
wants our attention, what we are really being told is that we are neglecting some
part of the experience of our ancestral soul that needs attention and the energy
that a particular offering can give. We must remember that those souls, even
though they are a part of us, have their own feelings, thoughts, and emotions that
remain autonomous. Our Egun can be happy, sad, or upset. They are not static
pictures of our past lives. They are still our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and
grandparents regardless of our understanding of the metaphysics behind their
existence. An important side to our understanding of Egun is to realize the
importance of our treatment of each other. To realize that we are all living one big
life is to realize that the evolution of each individual is important to the evolution
of the community as a whole. To treat each other poorly is to go against the
positive evolution of the whole. To foment that evolution, we must create and
maintain firm and fruitful connections with all of our relations, living and dead. It
is the realization of our interrelated existence and the willingness to contribute to
its productive growth that will heal our world and carry us into ever-improving
creation."-Egun-Ancestor Reverence by Shloma Rosenberg ( Ibaebaetonun Afolabi
/Oni Yemaya )




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