Early trauma is commonly associated with social ills—from drug abuse and sexually risky behavior, psychological problems that range from depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia to deficits in attention and impulse control. Recent research shows that adverse childhood events can affect gene regulation and expression as long forgotten memories can remain etched in an individual’s luminous energy field (LEF) and the neural networks in the brain. Even experiences that occurred when an infant was still developing in the womb can affect the LEF and neural networks.

The LEF serves as a blueprint for what happens within the body. Disturbances in the energy can manifest as cancer, autoimmune disorders, pain, inflammation, or other imbalances and ailments. Neural networks act like blueprints as well, dictating the forms and structures of the psyche.

The anger you feel in response to a missed airline flight or a perceived slight by a coworker may be very old anger that lays dormant in your neural networks and expresses itself in the present whenever it is triggered by an overly sensitive warning system for danger. The threat is not to your person but to your pride and sense of self.

Yet you either shout like a ram attacking a rival head-on, or retreat with the intensity of a rabbit running from a coyote. Brooding, retreating, and scheming become art forms as you respond to life as if it had a personal vendetta against you.

We all do this, although some of us develop better mechanisms of denial than others, a favorite being to blame our circumstances and other people. “If only he didn’t…If only she wasn't…If it weren’t for my terrible luck.” We write stories to support our sense of entitlement to jealousy, or resentment about the gap between what our lives were supposed to be and what they have become.

When neural networks determine your emotions and the thoughts that surround them, a mildly irritating situation that should frustrate you for only a few moments can become a source of rage and aggression, or fear and depression. Your future becomes dictated by the past as you become caught in the web of cause-and-effect.

If you are to break free of suffering from the same old problems you’ve struggled with for years, many of your neural networks—the blueprints for structures of thought, feeling, and behavior—need to be replaced. But who will be the architect who draws up new blueprints? And will this architect maintain a fear-response system that serves you well in times of physical danger without constructing a palace of pain that traps you in old responses to new situations?

You have the capacity to choose a new destiny rather than the one dictated to you by the events of the past and the DNA you inherited from your parents, grandparents, and ancestors. You can begin to draw a new blueprint when you consciously recognize that you have been using one that no longer serves you. You begin sketching a new one, actually generating new structures in your brain, when you start detoxifying your body, your thoughts, and your emotions. The sketch is filled in further when you employ shamanic practices for communicating with the invisible world, the realm of all creation where every tool is available to you. The old habits and stories of persecution begin to fade as you draw new lines, imagine new rooms to inhabit, and conceive of an entirely new structure for your life. With the invisible realm of Spirit nurturing, guiding, and inspiring you, you feel confident in what you are building for yourself.

We live for a time here, and for a time there, letting go of the familiar and stepping into the unknown with faith and curiosity. We can learn to be like the hunters and gatherers of ancient times, the nomads who trusted in their abilities as builders, creators, planners, and dreamers. Their faith came from knowing they could rely on more than their wits or the structures created by those who came before them.

They could speak with the force that moved the rivers and pushed the seedlings up through the soil. They could listen to the advice of the clouds and the sun, the tides and the herds, and find the wisdom at the intersection of the visible and the invisible.

And that's where we are headed with these rites.  Leaving the past behind, and opening up the neural networks to speed up the evolution of the luminous energy field.  Feed your bands!