The Divine Companion

Booklet Uncovering your Full Heritage

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Imagine living for years thinking that you aren’t worth much and that you didn’t matter to anyone.  You have accepted these beliefs as the etched-in-stone truth about you, and for decades, your life and relationships are limited by these distorted beliefs.  Imagine the huge change if you discovered that these ideas about you were quite wrong; imagine that you discovered that you are actually very precious and well-loved.  

Some people have experienced that wonderful change when they felt God drawing very close and embracing them in their inner world.  That experience is like discovering a rich heritage that you never knew you had, a rich heritage that enabled you to live a larger life based on a much fuller view of yourself.  These people found spiritual nourishment after decades of a subsistence diet.  

Your worldview-- how you see yourself; your ideas about how to connect with others; your sense of the meaning of your life—matters a great deal; it shapes your life more powerfully than anything else.  Depending on your worldview, it can give meaning to your life or leave you feeling that you don’t matter; it can bring warmth to relationships or limit your ability to really engage with others.  

Perhaps your initial worldview has given you a sense of being worthless or being far superior to others; perhaps it led you to think that you must be a people pleaser in relationships or you must be the dominant one; perhaps it made you think the world is a long slog through many hardships or a series of endless opportunities to learn and create.  Your initial worldview may have been enough to get you started in early life and perhaps it continued to work well enough later in life.  But often your first worldview eventually falls short; leaving you trying to get by with a limited heritage is inadequate for navigating life and relationships.  Trying to get by using a too-small heritage need not be your lot in life.  

Your initial worldview is like a heritage you received from others, first absorbed from your family early in life and later from relatives, friends and teachers.  Although your heritage—your initial worldview—may feel like a complete and finalized perspective, you have a much richer heritage that is often covered up and needs to be excavated.  Life sages are people have uncovered the richer and fuller human heritage that is yours but isn’t widely known.  Spiritual sages have articulated some of that rich heritage although their wisdom may be very hard to find in some religious organizations.  Psychologists and psychotherapists have articulated some of that rich heritage although its connection to spirituality may be very hard to find in some professional circles.  Uncovering your full inheritance can help harmonize both your human and spiritual capabilities.

This book uses personal stories to weave together these two wisdom streams to give a practical sense of how you too might uncover your full heritage, how you too might see your full endowment of both psychological and spiritual capabilities.  Their stories might help you excavate your full heritage from whatever covers it so that you can experience first-hand how precious you are.  Their stories don’t end with a complacent and self-centered feeling good about yourself; their stories lead to understanding life more deeply, engaging more warmly with others and courageously pursuing more meaningful goals in life.  

Life is hard.  It can be really hard if your worldview is inadequate for what you face, if your heritage is too meager.  But life becomes more manageable if you uncover your full heritage, a much richer worldview that helps you see yourself more clearly and form more caring relationships.  Your initial worldview is likely only a small part of your full heritage, a partial and limited worldview.  Life and relationships get better when you have excavated more of your full heritage. 

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This booklet is an epub with flowable text that can be read like most Kindle books on a phone as well as tablets and computers.