I am a middle aged woman of recent Swedish, English,

English, and Irish extraction. I have lived in the US all

my life and have recently (within the last 20 years)

embarked on what I call a "great undoing". By that I

mean a journey of questioning my own underlying

attitudes and beliefs in whatever form they emerge

for me in order to bring all of who I am into alignment

with the best that I am capable of being ( the further I

struggle the more I realize that that is a task of many

lifetimes!).

In that process I have encountered personal, familial,

and collective attitudes and conditioned behaviors

that have shaped who I have long believed myself to

be. Some of these have been ones which I want to

keep and a great many of them I have found to be well

worth letting go of ( easier said then done! ). These

later range in content from my early conditioning in

and subsequent reinforcement of stereotypical female

behaviors and roles to a fear based denial of my own

worth both to my self and to others. In the healing

process I have looked to many of the perennial

wisdoms both for the desire to go on and for different

more healthy and healing ways of perceiving reality.

The deeper I delve into my own dysfunctions the

more I find parts of myself which I have thought of

as unworthy. But I have also found, waiting just

behind the ugliness, aspects and potentials that

excite me and connect me to the great oneness

of all that is. I find myself returning more and

more to my own deep Celtic heritage of song

and dance, myth and mystery, and that the

sacred places in my inner world resonate with

those that I have been lucky enough to go to

in the outer world. I have found great strength

of will, endurance, dignity, and gentleness in my

own matrilineal heritage hard alongside many other

characteristics that have not stood me in good

stead. The eastern sages along with western

psychology have offered me a way to connect

with my own inner world. The indigenous cultures

have invited connection to the earth and all the

beauties of the physical world as well as our

responsibilities to it and therefore to ourselves.

The western world has come the closest to uniting

the inner and outer by journeying perhaps what

looks to be like the farthest away from the great

Spirit at the center. There science has found the

particle and the wave, the holographic universe,

fractals and other phenomena that the mystics

have written of for ages. It is our responsibility

to bring Spirit back into these amazing discoveries

for they themselves are immensely valuable even

if the majority of those that embrace them are

severely limited.

For these reasons I would be less than truthful

if I said that it was only in the roots of my own

heritage that I have found meaning for my life.

So, at the moment, I am considering the possibility

that all the great wisdoms of the world have much

to offer each of us and, we may be in a point in

the history of conciousness when we are being

called to transcend our personal roots after fully

owning them. It is perhaps no longer enough

for western man to live the reductionistic paradigm

of science or the transcendant world of traditional

religion. Nor is it realistic for the easterner to live

solely in the inner world. Each has much to teach

the other and to learn from the nature based thought

systems of the indigenous peoples of the world.

S0, roots? Don't know! But what I do know for me

is that the way out is through whatever comes up

for me and if that takes me on a journey through

familial roots or all the way back through past lives

aplenty to Egypt and to my DNA and from there to

God, Goddess, All That Is, then that's where I want

to go.

Sally Lonegren

Feb-1999