How can spirit loss be used in a metaphysical practice? In spirit retrieval practices, the recognition that you can lose a part of the source energy you draw from, and learning how to recover that.

The flip side of this would be deliberate investment techniques, the use of phylacteries and such. The Egyptian hierophants had an elaborate system of investment that they undertook while still well and in their prime. Perhaps the intuition of this process occurring naturally is what leads to reverence for family heirlooms.

You can avoid losing your spirit by investing in positive systems? Indeed.

How do family heirlooms help to keep spirit? They carry an echo of their original owner. A “voice” that continues to shape the perception and experience of those who cherish the legacy the family has preserved. This figures heavily into much of Asian cultural veneration. So just as there is safety in physical numbers, there is integrity in spiritual numbers as well.

You can feel a change of spirit when the numbers shift. Yes. This is perhaps what we try to fake by our habit of collecting possessions in the western world. Maybe it’s instinctive on some level to look to connect with ancestors by the things they owned and used. We just don’t accomplish that these days, not generally very well.

Even if I consider that acquired traits are way more important than genetics, I still enjoy seeing my coat of arms above my chimney and the stern look of ancestors in paintings. Taken from a materialist point of view, recreating an environment through inheritance of a material legacy and thus preservation of an environment, would have a noticeable impact on which genes do or do not manifest in subsequent members of that familial line. Comfort can prevent some genes from activating, where instability can activate some that never previously manifested in that familial line. Symbiogenesis.

Just as you can have emergent characteristics that are independent of specific genetic combinations, like a measure of symmetry gained or lost that occurs regardless of the inherited traits from either parent (symmetry typically being equated to beauty or attractiveness), you can also have submergence as well. So though members of a family may have been wild and passionate and creative, a new member may lose any demonstrable measure of the characteristics even all the while having the genetic traits in a largely intact form. And chronic states of emotion, or deliberate disregard for an otherwise inherited dietary habit, can produce late onset shifts in health, and thus reflexively, perception of identity and ability. Late onset spirit loss.

My own recent ancestry includes a people with virtually no alcohol tolerance. If I disregard the legacy of my ancestors, even though I have others in my ancestry that do have alcohol tolerance, it has a demonstrable impact on my self-awareness and behaviour.

How does it have an impact on your self-awareness? Regressive, and I demonstrate behaviour not typically associated with alcohols effects. Basically, alcohol behaves kind of like crack for those of Native American ancestry. They develop an uncharacteristic emotional dependency on it.

Are you of Native American ancestry? Grandmother on my father’s side was half as was my grandfather on my mother’s side. Full blooded natives recognize the ancestry easily, even to the point of ignoring my father and uncles “illegal” hunting on reservation land.

How many generations can you go back in your ancestry? Few as my grandfather on my father’s side was racist and rejected any of his spouses ancestry, and my grandfather was a migrant worker and out of touch with his own family.

How do Native Americans deal with spirit loss? They “journey” with the sufferer. The shaman would first question those close to the person, and examine any possible breaches of taboo, and then would use a technique of intuitive immersion to explore the sufferer’s connection to their world around them, usually arriving at some insight into what way that person had become divorced from the spiritual supports their people normally share. Also, they could discover this during dream interpretation as well.

So if you are feeling spirit loss, then trying to connect with people of similar belief system will bolster your spirit? Yes.

If you prefer, you can see it as a primitive memetic management tradition, as those tribes resources and range of operation were sharply limited. And if you go with the premise that behavioural characteristics are genetically inherited, then the limited environmental exposure, the limited cultural exposure, and the restricted genetic pool might perhaps allow for a rather predictable set of recurring issues.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~