Monday Morning Mindfulness - Heaven and Earth

Whether you consider yourself a creative person or not, I am sure you can relate to me when I say that I have a desire to live in a constant state of inspiration. 

You know that feeling when you look around you and everything seems charged with life, energy or beauty. You could be anywhere - in a country field filled with flowers, or a third-world city filled with noise, colour and vibrant life, but somehow everything seems good. You could be eating dim sum in a cheap Hong Kong takeaway, and it tastes fabulous and the people look beautiful and your mind fills with ideas and enthusiasm. You could be on a South African mountain top with the wind blowing the smell of sun-dried grasses and cool snow melt streams, and you feel that it is great to be alive and that the world is benevolent.

Now, there may be some of you who wake up in the morning feeling that way, and live every day with that as your norm of experience. However, I bet you would admit to me that when you have to fill out your tax return you may just lose your enthusiasm and your drive. Or perhaps you are a numbers person and the tax return thrills you. Well then, I bet your joy ebbs a little when you get to your Ladies Retreat Day and your discover that the theme is Expressing Your Spirituality Through Paper and Glitter.

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Monday Morning Mindfulness

Image: 1987porsche944 

Do you find yourself waking up on Monday Mornings with the weight of the world upon your shoulders? Perhaps it is because your mind and body have had a short break over the weekend, a little switch-off (hibernate), and on Monday Morning you reboot and load up all the stuff you should be thinking about in the week and your operating system has a hiccup.

That's what I felt like this morning anyway. I thought, seeing as Monday Mornings tend to do this to me, I will attempt a little routine of writing a more serious post first thing in the new week, to focus myself on something positive and constructive, something more eternal than, say, the laundry pile. (Although my laundry pile looks eternal most of the time).

This morning, I was mulling something over that has been on my mind for a while, and that is the importance of honouring others. Now this is something I am still THINKING about doing a lot, rather than managing to do. They do say that thoughts are a precursor to habits, and I do want to get into a habit of honouring people.

Why?

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The Importance of Inheritance

We're taught as we are brought up in our western culture, "You can be anything you want to be". Success stories often herald people who have overcome the obstacles of a difficult upbringing or disadvantaged birth to make a new life for themselves. People often blame their emotional problems on bad parenting. It seems these days it is impossible to bring up your children without a fear of scarring them for life! Our individualistic society has taught us to leave your upbringing and your generational inheritance behind. Friends have become more important than family, with the increase in broken family units and fragmented community.

Watching the popular TV series "Who Do You Think You Are", where celebrities are helped to research their family tree, I have been struck by the way every person has been deeply affected by the discoveries they have made about their ancestors. Most begin the programme with scepticism at worst, or at best a detached interest. I have not seen a single person untouched by the history that is uncovered.

In an effort to understand why this process had such an unexpected impact on people who have mostly made successes out of their own effort in spite of their pasts, I decided to do a little family tree research myself. I think I have discovered why the process of understanding our family heritage is so important.

I was astounded firstly by how much hardship my ancestors endured. The deaths of children, the loss of income, illness and war, long sea journeys and being parted permanently from loved ones. I began to realise as I accumulated stories of the daily lives of my family that there was a treasure there that I had not expected. I saw that they had fought battles in the the past and won. They were not only examples to me, but they had built up an inheritance for me of experience and victory in trial. I realised that if they could do what they did, I could too! After all, they were endowed with the same genetic pool as I am. So physically and mentally they were working with very much the same materials as I have. Their environment was much more difficult to live in, their history was more tragic, their culture was more demanding. They did not have the benefits and comforts of modern life. So if they could make it through what they did, I surely can do even better!

My overall impression was of being part of a unified movement of people towards an ultimately common goal - living life to its fullest. I no longer want to start from scratch as our culture encourages us to do when we come of age. I want to use the collected experience of my ancestors as a springboard for my life. They have an inheritance to pass down, which is not material, but spiritual. They have fought battles against unseen enemies and won. How foolish it would be to fight those battles again because I would not accept that their victory is my victory! The Bible has the theme of inheritance running right through it from beginning to end. Even Jesus was listed in a long genealogy in the book of Matthew. If it was important that he was placed in a context of a family tree, it must be important for us to understand the legacy of our own families.

I would like to pass this on to my own children - that they are part of a common thread of humanity, with all its successes and failings, and that what better place to learn about life than the stories and experiences of our own families. What an inspiration they are to me in my life. I encourage you to discover the treasure that is your inheritance!