A Mother's Self-Awareness & Daily-Life-Practice
- Didileia
- Jul 16
- 5 min read
"Because we remember we might be compassionate."
Memory is a vital part of our human Nature; an important gift to be used with awareness and responsibility. Our embodied capacity for feeling and our cellular memory are the creative intelligence we have and our power of emotional water. Water holds memory. Ancestral memory within our genetic patterns can be turbulent water to navigate and make calm and sweet. It is an individual inner journey to make peace with our conditioned patterns that we personally find painful, and transform them from dark to light, if we so choose. Otherwise, we keep repeating what does not truly serve our well-being, and possibly blaming others for our shortcomings. This only disempowers us from within our own heart and mind.
However, our most important capacity as human Nature is our ability to be aware of ourself and what we do. Awareness empowers our choice and creative possibility; to use our memory with feeling to either nourish or destroy life (our own and others). Awareness and memory are two human Nature capacities that we craft our life-experience with each day, as individuals creating collective impact (adding to or detracting from circumstance).
What do you choose to do with yours? What life are you crafting for yourself and impacting others? Is it nourishing and meaningful? Are you doing what truly matters to you?
My dad was a very charismatic man who had a gift with languages. He was born in 1934 and lived as a World Citizen and man in the world, not as a black man. He considered himself to be on common ground with equally sacred potential. He had self-assuredness, personality, magnetism, and ambition. He was a gifted artist and natural toolmaker. He also had vision and ambition. He walked in the footsteps of his ancestors with deep pride and love for their contribution to life. He taught my three sisters and I to respect family, and to share our natural gifts. He was not perfect though, as none of us are. He had his weaknesses and shortcomings, as we all do.
But being of like-heart as my mother who also happens to consider herself a World Citizen on common ground, they gifted my sisters and I with the legacy of considering ourselves to be no greater or less than any other person in the world. We were shown their example of treating the rubbish collector, the family member, the storekeeper, and the prime minister equally and to offer care and hospitality with kindness and skill; to be thankful and share. However, nothing is ever perfect, humans fall short, and lineage patterns are a jumble that must be sorted and evolved by individuals. Thus, life goes on for us all and it is up to us what we make of it.
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev's comment resonated with me and refined my lived experience of this teaching: 'Never look up to anyone. Never look down on anyone. See life just the way it is.' This helps me be more compassionate and harmonise my patterns and individual experiences of misuse of power, illusion of hierarchy, and doing as you are told no matter what. My spirit is to use my voice to speak for myself. "Children are seen and not heard" always grated with me and still does. I will always make space and time to listen carefully to a child and be uplifted by their untainted observation of the world. "Out of the mouths of babes" is another saying that rings true with me. And Doreen Virtue once said of children, "the greatest teachers are the freshest from Heaven". I feel we are wise to pay direct attention without conclusion and nourish new life according to its nature as a sacred part of the sacred whole.
The Gift of Hospitality
(Photos: Family board game, Rosehip and Hibiscus tea, Ancestral altar)
I am not big on playing board games, they have never really been part of my family culture or enjoyment (it was always music, songwriting, and hospitality that filled my birth family home in Milne Bay). But when our 27-year-old son appeared with his game and a request for the family to play, I am glad I quietly accepted and joined in. Thus ensued two hours of enjoyable family time and connection between a 16-year-old, two 27-year-olds, and two 50-somethings:) Wingspan is a nice game that isn't very competitive and I can recommend it if you like interesting facts about birds and their habitats. My son had gone so far as to buy the extension pack which includes Australian birds. He was inspired by his friend and his friend's mother.
This evening made me reflect on hospitality both with others and within ourselves. Both my father and my mother's families are gifted with offering high hospitality to others. I grew up in this atmosphere of treating others well in our presence. I experience these to be precious social skills within family and community that I continue. I honour my ancestors every day now, and call them close in my memory for protection, strength, and experiential wisdom. My nature and radiance is formed from theirs, under my charge and responsibility to use with as much awareness, memory, skill, and care as I can.
My contemplation flowed into offering genuine compassion to self and others and how this relates to being hospitable within ourselves. To offer ourself the gift of hospitality within our body and being cultivates inner harmony. Choosing to forgive ourself for our difficult patterns and be gentle and kind as we make effort towards change is like tending to a difficult house guest and trying to understand for a while as we accommodate their needs. Hospitality is not the same thing as being "a doormat". We always have to have discernment and courage with grace to turn out whoever or whatever harms our well-being. To be hospitable and strong is a cultivation. It speaks to self-worth. It is principle and practice. We must know what self-compassion feels like in order to be able to truly offer it to others.
Memory and boundary come into play. We must respect our own healthy boundary and require others to respect our boundary. The ability to say "No" with dignity and calm is a natural, worthwhile cultivation. Our mind is our natural guardian of our inner landscape. We can use our awareness to choose what to take in and what to hold onto with our memory. We can use our imagination to imagine our best life. We can discern and take intentional action in the present to create an outcome. Choice and possibility are always available to us. Inner inspiration, devotion, radiance, and harmony are actual possibilities gifted within each and every one of us. I trust that you feel and choose these ancestral "roots and trunk" within you to craft your daily life's flourishing from within your heart.
