In this Multiverse History Lesson, Shaunga shares a Writer/Director commentary on some of the major themes of our first two podcast episodes. We talk about two principles that makes an Ancestor’s Writers Room different from a regular writers room: 1) we regard fictional characters as Ancestors themselves and 2) we study not only the life path of the Revolutionary Ancestral Artist, but the Revolutionary Ancestral Artist and their Animal Companions.
Shaunga talks about how this helps us live and move through grief, transition, and know at the end of the day we’ve done enough, have enough, are enough. Plus, stay tuned toward the end, we get real nerdy about STRING THEORY (it’s a concept in quantum physics) and how it ties everything together!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Greetings Good Listeners,
In this Multiverse History Lesson, I want to make connections between a few important things that have shown up thus far in the storytelling magic offerings I’ve shared thus far, in the Ancestors Writers Room, OPENING ACT.
In episode 2 of the podcast, a character from my Ancestor’s Writers Room named Lyra tells us a story about the “galactic roots of genocide.” Because if we can understand the root of a widespread problem, maybe we can unearth it, plant and grow something new where genocide used to be.
What we learn in this story, that way back in Multiverse History, before planet Earth was even born, the spirit of genocide emerged in the galaxies. And the first thing that it did was cut off our ability to communicate with our loved ones across time, space and dimension.
If we know that – before genocide did anything else, that’s what it took care of – what does that tell you about life here on the planet? It tells us something about how much of a miracle it is that today, our abilities in ancestral communication and divination not only still exist, they are restored within us, our spiritual gifts are thriving and pouring out of us. That’s a miracle. And it also tells us something about how much of a threat we are to a capitalist, colonial, genocidal paradigm. And thus how important it is to keep investing in ourselves, in each other, in our gifts and talents.
If these are the galactic roots of genocide – this is absolutely linked to the fact that it was literally illegal for Indigenous people to gather in ceremony to honour and be in communion with their Ancestors up until the 1970s on Turtle Island. It’s linked to the history of criminalization of mediums, psychics. And it’s linked to the ways that many of us have experienced micro aggressions or been attacked in queer, activist community, or by our families, partners, social circle, teachers, elders, as our spiritual gifts started rising.
I’ve certainly experienced this, even by those with well-meaning intentions. We often attack what we don’t understand. I have been very misunderstood by many relationships because I listen to my Ancestors, because many Ancestors I listen to are so old that they themselves are very misunderstood.
In podcast episode one, “the crazy planet” we find out that Earth has Elders that she’s supposed to listen to. But in story, her Elders named Alexis and David (“Ew David”) they don’t understand why the Earth is making the decisions that she makes. Or they’re like – okay we get it, but why do you have to do it that way. And they put all these different names on the Earth – crazy, irrational, reckless, she’s nonsense, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. And the Earth had to really work on trusting herself. Trusting a vision of freedom that she has for her whole body. Not just what she wants, but how she wants to do it. She know how important her principles are, and what she believes in, she know that its hers to protect.
This is a very common life experience for those who are living an Ancestral Artist Life Path – especially during the last 15 years of Pluto in Capricorn, when many of our gifts really came online. We were misunderstood. We may have been pathologized, controlled, people tried to intervene when they shouldn’t have, or we were attacked, whatever our story is, bottom line, we had to really work on trusting ourselves, and trusting our visions, decisions, our beliefs and principles, that we knew we had to protect. And protect it with our lives.
This protection is more important now than ever. Because in 2024, we really are going to be bringing what we’ve been protecting into fruition and into FULL BODIED ADVOCACY. Not only that, we will be receiving, the benefits and the rewards, the justice. What is owed to us is coming back. What we’ve sacrificed is being recognized. We are being thanked for fighting for what we believe in, and being okay with losing a lot in that process. We are receiving our flowers. It’s time for that justice and balance to be restored.
I speak about this in my post: “The Earth Has Bills to Pay.” Time is over for us to have to fight for our principles and defend them: now we get to be protected by communities and relationships that really get it, so we have the support to fully advocate, so our advocacy can do the full scope of its job. That it couldn’t quite do in an earlier paradigm where it still had to fight for itself or explain itself. That’s the shift from Pluto in Capricorn to Pluto in Aquarius ie 2024.
In episode episode 2, we saw how the whole universe put these names on Lyra for trusting her vision, because they didn’t understand what she did for the whole Universe. But there were two loved ones who understood, and they would spend the rest of their lifetimes reciprocating in gratitude for that sacrifice. At the end of that episode we see that it was about friendship, all along. All along, this was a story about a queer witch and her two Black cats.
The names of those two black cats are Estha and Rahel.
Here I want to share two principles we work with in The Ancestors Writers Room that differ from a regular writers room: one – we regard fictional characters as Ancestors themselves. And two – we understand our animal companions as heartfelt powerful contributors to the creative process when we mutually decide to work together. We study the specific technology of how our animal companions offer us soul lessons, they mirror our wounds through their behaviour and emotions, they provide energy healing to our creative projects, they act us death doulas to help us transmute and move through big transitions.
Estha and Rahel are characters from a book – titled “The God of Small Things” by writer Arundhati Roy. Estha and Rahel are also my two black cats who are now my Ancestors. Rahel transitioned on January 23 2022, and Estha transitioned in January 31 2023. So after 15 years of a beautiful life together, this is the first January that I’m without them in body. I am in observation and ceremony for this anniversary, for this Funi-Birth-eral.
Even as they are in spirit, Estha and Rahel continue to work with me, and collaborate with me as Ancestors. In fact, Estha and Rahel are primary collaborators for these big ceremonial musical theatre productions I’m creating – including my play titled PLUTO, which stars Pluto and Jupiter as Otherworldly Giants, and ordinary humans, time travellers and shape shifters.
I keep repeating this theme in my stories, that the Ancestors Writers Room is about how we connect the big movements with the small things, and how that ceremonial daily life is holy. I want you to understand how personal that is to me, and why I use that language. The God of Small Things.
Unlocking this Multiverse History Lesson with Lyra, helped me remember the truth of how old and galactic my love is with Estha and Rahel. How deep our history goes, into the Multiverse.
I think that for anyone listening to this, you can look at some of the deepest friendships in, with humans or non-humans, and you’ll see a history that is just as old, and just as giant. I have the same length of history and love and lifetime shared with two of my human best friends, Sze-Yang and Ravyn, and their dog too, Shao-Hu.
When we work with characters as Ancestors, we acknowledge that stories, like Ancestors have things they couldn’t heal in their lifetime or in their body.
When you look at the God of Small Things as a text – in my opinion, it is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read, thus why I wanted to name my cats after the main characters. But there are also things in that book, that the story couldn’t heal in its lifetime, in the pages between the front and back cover. Both in terms of inside the story and in a meta way. There are elements of caste violence that is embedded and problematic in the writing, because the writer didn’t know how to fully heal those things through her writing.
And also, while it is an incredibly beautiful book, it is a tragedy. It’s tragic what happens to these characters. In my post / poem “The Earth Has Bills to Pay” – I say this:
The Earth has lived and died so many other lives, in books that ended with tragedy. Even if those books managed to find beauty in tragedy, they didn’t just manage it – the LANDED the ending of a tragedy that made you weep for joy, made you sing for life, made you want to choose love, again and again. The Earth has learned so much from every single heartbreak, that when the last page closed in each of those stories, she was at peace with herself. I had a good life, and a good death, what more could I ask for? But on the shelf that book would still be categorized as tragedy – she wants more for herself this time. She wants a different name.
Every word I wrote about that is about God of Small Things. That book is a tragedy that made me weep for joy, sing for life, and made me want to choose love again and again. That book is a tragedy, but on the last page, it is at peace with itself.
When Estha and Rahel came into my life as babies, in 2008, small, small kitties, they were already Ancestors. Because they had already lived and died in a tragedy in a book and now they were alive ready for a different name, a different ending, a whole different story. And they got it. We did it. But we still want more. We want an end to some of my repeating tragedies that I haven’t yet reconciled. We want a happy ending for the world, and every one in it. We want the Earth’s story to be removed from that place on the book shelf reserved for tragedies.
When I was carrying for Estha and Rahel in the last few years, as their Death Doula, I was constantly anxious when that moment would come, constantly beating myself up about making mistakes, and worried that I would make a decision that was horribly wrong…they kept telling me: don’t worry Mom. We will leave at the exact right time. Not a moment too soon, and not a moment too late.
Estha and Rahel taught me that yeah, some things our Ancestors cannot do in one life time. They weren’t meant to. They were supposed to take it as far as they could, and then pass it on.
That is our job as Revolutionary Ancestral Artists, and as ordinary humans. Our job is to know what work is ours to do – and take it as far as we are meant to, and then pass it on.
This is something I practise every day, in small ways, even in my writing practise. Or my sacred entrepeneurship. Do I know when I’ve done enough for the day. When I’ve taken it as far as it will go for that day. This I practise in my relationships, that’s the hardest thing. Do you know when it’s enough, what you’re supposed to do for other people, or for the movement, for your lineage, for the justice mission. Where’s that line between what is your responsibility, and what isn’t? When and how do you know when to say, that’s good, I’m good. That’s enough. Ultimately that’s what we’re doing with our whole lives. How far am I supposed to take this, and when is that moment when I need to let go and pass it on.
If you want to go on a nerdy extra credit journey, I recommend listening to my two podcast episodes, the one called “THE TIME LOOP” and one called “TIME IS A HEARTBEAT”. I speak about what I learned from my Dad when he transitioned, and what he passed on to me. And I speak more about this concept of how do you hold that balance, knowing exactly when to move, when to make your move, – not a moment too soon, and not a moment too late. Because that’s what will be required of us in our freedom movements, personally and collectively.
If you’ve been following along my work, you know that I’ve been offering a grounding meditation that involves connecting our root chakra into a special place in the Earth’s core unique to you that holds the essence of your True Name, whatever that means to you. And then connecting the top of your head, all the way to your North Star – unique to you – that also holds the essence of your True Name.
When you join the 2-Month Ancestor Apprenticeship with Ancestors Writers Room in February and March 2024, one of our offerings is an extended audio recording of this meditation, that you can listen to to connect to your true essence. You can listen to this in the morning to ensure that you stay on path all day, or you can listen to it if you’re feeling ungrounded and unclear, or you can listen before you enter any kind of creative portal, to help you open up to your true creative voice, your true ancestral creative voice.
So I want to tell you a story about what happened to me today when I did this meditation for myself. I was just sitting at my altar, speaking the meditation out loud, and I said, imagine there’s a string from the top of your head all the way up to your North Star. You know, like String Theory. I just felt spontaneously like saying that, like nudge, nudge, just being cute at my altar. Because I’m a Multiverse Nerd and I love just geeking out about quantum concepts.
But then I was like hold on – what is String Theory again? I felt moved to take out this tarot deck that I have called Quantum Tarot. My friend Anabel gave it to me. Because I knew there was a tarot card representing String Theory, and I didn’t remember what the card was. So I thought, let me look this up. I got out the tarot book, looked up the card associated with String Theory. Guess what card it is.
THE STAR.
I’m like, you can’t make this shit up!!! You can’t make this up. I’m like, I’m already freaking out, so I read the description of what String Theory is, as described in this tarot deck. Listen to some of the description:
“quantum theory and general relativity – two landmark discoveries of 20th century physics – have revolutionized the way we understand the world. But there’s one problem; they don’t work together. Quantum theory is excellent at explaining the microscopic world of the atom, whereas general relativity is good at describing the universe on a grand scale. For years physicists have struggled to combine these two ideas into one grand unified theory that describes the universe. At last, string theory offers real possibility of unification. Mic Drop.”
Like this is literally describing the miscommunication between the big movements and the small things. But at least here’s the one thing that can bridge that communication gap.
THE STAR.
ARTISTS. THE ONE IN THE SPOTLIGHT. THE ONE WITH THE MIC. THE ONE ON STAGE. THE ONE WITH THE PEN. THE ONE WITH THE PAINTBRUSH. THE ROCKSTAR WITH THE GUITAR. WHATEVER IT IS, YOU’RE THE STAR.
Not just any star, but THE STAR that is meant to heal the ways our communication has been cut off from our ancestors, our spiritual gifts, our magic.
These two areas of life they’re saying that are not supposed to work together. This is speaking to a larger fracture between justice and spirituality. Between science and magic. Between activists and healers.
We are not meant to fall into the gap between those places, finding ourselves forever fighting to get out of a hole in the ground. We are meant to rise. We are meant to wholly integrate these supposed opposites and move from that place. That is why we are such a threat to genocide.
When you join the apprenticeship, we will dive deeper into multiverse and quantum concepts, animal lessons, so many things, I just have a wealth of knowledge pouring out of me and I really want to share it with folks.
This thing about two opposing forces is a collective message but it’s also personal to you as well. Where in your life made peace thinking that it would be okay if you never got it in your life time. Is it – I’m going to choose to be myself, and choose to be true to myself, but that means I’ll never have the relationship I want, or the money I need to sustain myself, or a community that I can thrive in. Up until now, we’ve had to choose. And we’ve stayed true to our heart and to the ancestral vision, to what we knew we had to protect. We stayed true to it, even if it meant we lost teachers, elders, friends, partners, family, community, jobs. We stayed true to it. We made peace with that tragedy. That it would be okay if we never got that kind of love, because at least we have ourselves, and that’s enough.
But the Earth – and STRING THEORY IS SAYING – no, baby you’re a star. You’re a star. You get to have a different book now. It’s these ancestral visions, protocols, technologies, that you have protected and you have beeen ever so faithful. Now you get to have the healing return back to you. And you get to give it back to Mama Earth so she can heal herself too.
This next chapter is for you. For your stories will heal the world too.