What are ancestral problems?

According to the science of Spirituality and unknown to modern sciences, 50% of difficulties in our lives are caused solely due to spiritual factors and another 30% due to spiritual and psychological and/or physical factors.

Please refer to the article on, ‘The breakdown of spiritual root causes of difficulties in life.’
One aspect of these spiritual root causes of problems in our lives is the distress caused to descendants by the subtle bodies of their ancestors who have passed away (died). It is also one of the more common spiritual factors that affects almost all of humanity in some form or the other. Before we give a detailed explanation as to why our ancestors would want to cause any kind of trouble for us, let us first examine the kinds of difficulties that people can experience due to departed ancestors.
The distress caused to us descendants by the subtle bodies of our ancestors manifests in many ways in our day-to-day lives.  It creates obstacles in both, our worldly lives as well as spiritual practice. In some cases, it may seem that the entire family has a dark cloud over it and various family members are undergoing various problems despite all efforts to overcome them. The difficulties that are created due to departed ancestors come in various forms as listed below:

• Inability to get married
• Marital disharmony
• Addictions (a sizeable % of addictions are due to ancestral spirits possessing descendants in order to experience the addictive substance or activity)
• Going blank in examinations despite being well prepared for it
• Loss of job
• Difficulty in conceiving a child
• Miscarriages
• Bearing mentally challenged children or children with special needs
• Death during childhood

Miscarriage, death in childhood, etc. happen when the distress by ancestors is coupled with other major spiritual causes such as destined possible death. It cannot happen solely on account of distress of ancestors. While the above types of problems may be a strong indication of ancestral problems, only a Saint or a Guru (a spiritually evolved guide) can tell with certainty the root cause of a problem.
At an intellectual level, we could use two rules of thumb to decide if the cause of the suffering is spiritual in nature:

• All remedies to solve the problem have failed. This is especially so when the problem should be easily treatable by modern sciences such as a skin rash, chest pain, etc.
• A number of family members (e.g. 4 out of 5) are suffering with any of the above mentioned issues simultaneously. (The reason that all the family members get affected is that they all have the same ancestors.)