Echoes of our Ancestors
Updated: Sep 1, 2022
One of my Grandmothers, Nanny Ison, lived on a very old dairy farm and I sometimes stayed there over the school holidays, as a child.
She would wake up really early in the morning, to cook my Grandfather a hot breakfast. She usually made him sausages, eggs and a fried tomato.
In between her cleaning and washing she would sit by the "range" (a wood burning stove). She was an incredibly good cook and I fondly remember her Lambs fry and bacon, her Rum balls and her Lemon spread.
My Grandmother was very superstitious. If she spilled salt, she would throw a pinch of it over her left shoulder to stop evil spirits from entering the house.
I remember it was very bad to spill milk because that means that you would soon lose a great deal of money. As a child she was upset with me for bringing a peacock tail feather into the house and on another occasion she was worried about my Mother having wattle in a vase because this brought bad luck.
I have often wondered where these superstitious ideas had came from and I guessed that they had probably been passed down many generations from my ancestors. Maybe these beliefs went back hundreds if not thousands of years.
My Grandmother was a devoted Mother and Grandmother. Her family had moved to the countryside in Australia, from England about one hundred and fifty years ago. She was a wonderful and strong human being who lived a good life but elements of her thinking and behaviour were controlled by forces deep in the past.
I guess many people may not have experienced anything quite like this, however most are aware of the ideas and attitudes that our Parents and Grandparents have passed down.
We all live terribly normal lives on the surface but in private many of our beliefs and attitudes date back to the early times of our families.
You see, there is so much that we pass from one generation to the next and these beliefs and understandings often inhibit us from aligning to the world we actually live within.
It is through Meditation that we can discard these intergenerational ideas and behaviours.
It is through Meditation that we can truly be free of the unhelpful judgments and beliefs of the past.
By discarding these influences we don't remove the legacy and memory of our loved ones, we simply free ourselves from the control of the past.