The question is: Who are our ancestors?
You may answer, our genetic forebearers, our parents and their parents and theirs, our late relatives, our family in its wider context, etc.
Well, of course, you’re right, but I actually don’t choose to see the situation that way.
I think of my ancestors as being my past lives.
I feel supported in this contention by an experience I had in a meditation retreat. I saw a great number of sitting people, knowing that each one was a past life. I emerged feeling as if I’d just viewed the real family album.
I’m also supported in this by the law of karma. I don’t incur karma, as far as I’m aware, for the deeds of my bodily relatives. I do incur karma for my past deeds in other lives.
Interestingly I could make a case for that being the only karma I should worry about, the only one I’m at all responsible for. Keep my nose out of other people’s business. I’ve learned a lot lately about standing back and allowing other people their experience.
I’m simply not genealogically-inclined. Come to think of it, I’m not really inclined towards past lives either. More and more I’m coming to rest in the present. What was it St. John of the Cross said? “Without a foothold you must seek Him out”? (1)
Footnotes
(1) “Without a foothold you must seek Him out-
no face nor form, alone –
tasting there something I dont know
that one may come on randomly.”
(“St. John of the Cross: For All the Beauty There May Be,”