I needed some time to answer the last three questions. It seems hard for me to summarize my answers and post them in a public forum.
4. The main focus of the first chapter is that we all inherit problems that we did not cause yet must live with. Which of these inherited problems do you feel most affected by?
My main issue at the moment are childhood traumata from violence and neglect which often put me into the role of the victim. So I have trouble trusting people, to draw lines and protect myself against bullying.
5. The book states, "to gain insight we must step outside our usual realm of experience". What does that mean to you? Where or how might you gain new insight?
By concentrating on my own ressources and real blessings available to me now (like nature, friends, spirituality, hobbies). I feel all the negative experiences are like a dark spiral in me trying to catch me, but there's also a light spiral which can heal me if I make it strong enough by supporting the strengh I already have and protecting myself from influences (like bullies) which increase the power of the dark spiral.
6. What challenges/inherited problems do you feel belong to you? Which ones are you called to fix?
I feel the violence and neglect which happened to me as a child isn't just a single experience of a single person, but part of a larger problem of society. The most disturbing part for me is that I've searched for help a couple of times and only got advise like "don't behave like a victim then you won't be treated like one" or disbelief - and that even from people who should have acted professional like the police. I'm sure there's something deeply wrong with a society who allows children and teens to be hurt continously while standing by and giving cynical advise to a child who clearly isn't strong enough to fight several attackers at once without a gun. (I'm really not surprised some children and teens use guns.) But I don't understand what's wrong exactly and at the moment it's not my job to heal whatever it is. I have my hands full with healing myself.
I also don't understand why there's this inhuman streak which compells people to hurt other people to the point of breaking their will and destroying them psychically just for the sake of finding joy in the power to destroy another human being. That's also something I can neither understand at the moment nor heal. What I can heal is at least building some trust by socializing with people who still have their hearts in the right place and healing the destructive patterns within myself which mirror these outer processes.
I often feel that I can't really make other people understand what I experienced and that it would be too much for them to have empathy for because I can't bear my own experiences myself. But I can trust that there's a certain amount of empathy in the world and that every little understanding going from one human heart to the other can heal a little bit. And I can imagine that a 'higher power' like gods can bear an amount of desperation and hurt I often feel I can't bear - so I know that even if I often feel that I can't heal it, there's a way to heal it step by step because there's a drive in all living beings and the 'spirit fabric' of the universe which never stops the healing process. So even what seems to be an endlessly bleeding wound, there's an endless repleneshing which will heal it eventually.
What I'm called to fix at the moment are my own wounds (with various forms of support by friends, my spirituality and professionals), this including putting a stop to this ongoing victim-perpetrator-dynamic within myself (I have a really abusive inner critic) by concentrating on my own healing powers, finding understanding with myself within myself, nourishing myself. I see it like I'm the engineer keeping an eye on the wheel of healing, give it new grease when it stagnates and get a little fuel here and there from various allies.
Thanks for reading this long and difficult post. I hope what I wrote didn't put anyone off...