Honoring Our Ancestors

Honoring Our Ancestors
This paper challenged me as I cannot think of any one elder person in my life that thinks or thought transpersonally. Everyone in my immediate and extended family is Mormon except my youngest sister and me. So, the logical thing to do was talk to my sister, Nicole, about what allows us to deviate from our family norms: neither of us could think of a single person who talked to us about anything but Mormonism growing up.
We have come to the conclusion that the very stifling coercion of the Mormon environment is what caused us to escape. However, there had to be something within us that allowed seeing that it needed escaping. We tried to find similarities in our childhoods—we are separated by seventeen years—and could come up with nothing definitive: only that we both read copious fairy tales. We began wondering if some people are born with a “blue print” that allows for the ability to think freely.
Do coercive and guilt-ridden religions typically produce some people who rebel? Of course they do, frequently. However, this begs the question: does rebellion automatically create the thinking or does the thinking create the rebellion? Both my sister and I rebelled and questioned many aspects of our original culture’s teachings, dogma, and beliefs. I do not believe that she and I left the church out of childish rebellion only. No one else has left the Mormon Church. Am I trying to say we are special in some way? I do not believe so; the “why” of it is interesting.
For me only, the rebellion coupled with education in sociology opened my thought process wide open compared to my growing up state. My father says I am “ruined” now because of leaving the church and receiving the education. However, ruined or not, it was a joyful revelation to me that so many thoughts on so many subjects were possible. Now that I am studying transpersonal subjects, I feel freer than ever.
Perhaps need to work on being grateful to the religion of my childhood; had it been different, I would be different. I am learning to like myself and love being open to change and growth. These are hard lessons to learn but worth the time, effort, and even the disapproval of most of my family. I have learned that my differences from my families’ culture are a good thing.