THE GLOBAL APOLOGY PROJECT

Shamanic teacher, painter and author in the UK and the world

Does our world need a Global Apology Project?!

Earlier today I ran the following post on my personal Facebook page:

“While I was teaching in Philadelphia recently I received a piece of guidance (and it made me sit up in bed and pay attention): “our world will not heal until there has been acknowledgement and apology for every single act of injustice ever committed”. I teach all my students (in my Ancestral Healing work component) that shamanic healing work often means taking the place where an apology is owed and voicing that. I am teaching my students to get “beyond their own ego and their own ideas about right and wrong” in order to do that. Miracles occur as a result of this, tangible changes in everyday reality. So then I got mulling how to take this idea further collectively… Create a group dedicated to apology, offering an apology where one is needed (and not forthcoming from other quarters), a great “Akashic Archive of Apology” for our world?! I don’t think the Web of Life or larger Knowing Field (ultimately, in the very long run) minds where an (overdue) apology originates – as long as it is wholehearted and unconditional. If it unlocks sentient beings from being stuck in old trauma – the World Soul will welcome this and guide the process. – Just offering this as today’s idea… May well develop this into a blog over the weekend… And no, it would NOT be a substitute for personal and individual shadow work and forgiveness work and get people off the hook that way – not remotely. However, many grave injustices were committed by people long dead – but the trauma still vibrates…”

The responses I received were very encouraging!

Step 1 was creating a Closed Facebook Group called THE GLOBAL APOLOGY PROJECT to bring people together. Feel free to find us and join!

Step 2 is creating this dedicated webpage on my website where I will post updates and suggestions as our work progresses.

I would also like to dig into the question: why did I receive this guidance in Philadelphia (where I teach courses) but not in London, UK or Sweden (where I spend far more of my time)? Two things come to mind immediately: when my colleague Susan Rossi invited me to bring my 2 year sacred art practitioner program to the US and suggested we use Quaker Retreat Center Pendle Hill as our venue, we both did some shamanic journey work to understand what was calling us to do this.

I would also like to dig into the following question:

Why did I receive this guidance in Philadelphia (where I teach courses) but not in London, UK or Sweden (where I spend far more of my time)?

Two things come to mind immediately: when my colleague Susan Rossi invited me to bring my 2 year sacred art practitioner program to the US and suggested we use Quaker Retreat Center Pendle Hill as our venue, we both did some shamanic journey work to understand what was calling us to do this.

The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia informs us that:

Relations between Pennsylvania’s Native American and European peoples underwent cataclysmic change during the second half of the eighteenth century. Despite the reputation for peaceful intercultural relations that Pennsylvania had enjoyed since its founding in 1681, a series of wars engulfed its frontiers after 1754, leading to the dispossession and exile of the colony’s native peoples. During the Seven Years’ War, which lasted in North America from 1754 to 1760, the colony that William Penn had envisioned as a “peaceable kingdom” became instead the scene of some of the most horrific interracial violence in early America. The disruption of Pennsylvania’s Indian relations caused a deep political rift to open between Philadelphia’s Quaker community and colonists living along the Susquehanna Valley frontier. By the 1790s, Native Americans and Pennsylvania’s European peoples were permanently estranged from each other, and no Indian nations retained secure possession of homelands within the state’s borders.

As Dutch national I it pains me to report that Dutch people committed atrocities here. They may not have been my immediate family ancestors (there is no record of immigration to the US in family memory and family tree research) but on level of nation and homeland they are of course my ancestors.

Therefore I interpreted the invitation from Susan Rossi as a call to take spiritual responsibility for what the Dutch people did here. I decided to actively engage with these memories, to apologize and make amends. We also made a conscious decision to move a step beyond that: in our program we are actively working to arrive at the higher octave manifestation of the warrior archetype (meaning the sacred warrior and protector who stands up for Life and all sentient beings). We are also working with the sacred marriage (or hieros gamos, Divine union) of the sacred masculine and sacred feminine in their higher octave manifestations.

As above, so below!

The second strand of meaning I focused on is that Philadelphia is often called “The City of Brotherly Love” but actually, going back to classical Greek, the name means : “Those from the same womb” (Adelphi in classical Greek means from the womb and came to mean brothers but originally meant siblings, of any gender, in more ancient Greek. Philoi means loving). To realize that we are all members of One Human Family and children of Mother Earth is another key strand in our work. Let’s focus on a return to loving our brethren!! (The link takes you to the etymology of the name Philadelphia).

The third strand consisted of us looking into the history of Pendle Hill, the place hosting our training. Today this is a Quaker resort and retreat center. During World War II it was used as a respite place for soldier wounded in World War 2. That is another piece of the puzzle because our journey work kept showing an Out Of Control Warrior God or Archetype.

It must be remembered that we did these preparations in the Summer of 2015 so well before Donald Trump became president of the US!! To be frank hose journeys were uncomfortable, even a bit frightening.

Today, as this guidance came back to mind so strongly, at least 235 people were killed and another 109 injured in an attack on a mosque in Egypt’s North Sinai region (I started writing this blog on Friday 24 November 2017). This appears to be the deadliest terror attack on Egyptian soil so far. After at least two explosions, gunmen waiting outside opened fire on fleeing worshipers. Sadly our world sees many terror attacks at this time and young people are actively being recruited (and brain washed into the ideology of terrorism as a solution to the world’s problems).

Another way of saying/seeing/framing this is that the shadow expression of the archetype of the warrior (as opposed to the blueprint of the spiritual warrior) is very active in the world right now. And the rest of the world is at a loss dealing with his, dropping into fear and ‘waging a counter war’ instead. Waging War on War obviously, visibly, does not heal anything. History proves this but it may just be one of the core (and most painful, most traumatic) lessons humanity will ever face.

Tragically that lesson will be “on repeat” (appearing again and again, desperately seeking our attention and healing) until we grasp this.

The US especially has demonstrated a tendency to “wage war in far off lands” and then receive home veterans with PTSD who are not honored or supported properly – meaning that the USA as a nation and landmass holds huge shadow material (not owned or addressed) around war, native peoples pushed off their land and decimated, human sacrifice not honored, the sick and vulnerable not tended.

We are all watching the decisions Donald Trump is making and in the UK this week members of Parliament voted that animals do not feel pain as part of the EU Bill marking the beginning of Brexit. While I am typing this, an email from the vice principal of the school my three sons attend pings in: a personal note about all the attacks (involving young people) that have been happening in our area (meaning South East London, UK).

These are only some things currently playing out on the world stage. Unfortunately the things I describe here are only the tiniest tip of a mammoth iceberg. I have just highlighted some things that I feel a personal connection to. However, if all of us collectively decide that “waging war on war” or “the war to end all wars” is not the way to go (only a seed bed for never-ending and ever-escalating conflict) we need to look very seriously at creating a toolkit for restoring peace, changing the vibration of places and making amends to all beings (not just humans but all sentient beings) affected.

For me The Global Apology Project is one such thing and only a small start, but still a start: collectively setting a focus that heals, unites and raises consciousness. It is a start. A huge number of practical changes need to occur as well. The wounded need tending, the dead need burying and mourning, the living need to regain hope, the children need to be prioritized and embraced for the Future World Leaders they are.

If all of us take one significant step away from the old pattern, thus joining forces, a spiritual army stars marching for peace and rebirth, one step at a time…

Expect further blogs and updates from me as this project unfolds!

Imelda

Imelda Almqvist’s book Natural Born Shamans: A Spiritual Toolkit For Life (Using shamanism creatively with young people of all ages) was published by Moon Books in August 2016. She is based in London,UK and teaches shamanism and sacred art internationally. She is a presenter on Year of Ceremony for Sounds True and on the Shamanism Global Summit with The Shift Network.