“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, and even life itself—cannot be my disciple.”
—Luke 14:26
These are some of Jesus’ most unsettling words. At first glance, they read as a harsh command to abandon family, to walk away from everything dear, even from life itself.
But what if he was pointing to something deeper?
What if he was speaking—not just of the people in our lives—but of the layers we carry within us because of them?
🕯 The Conditioning We Inherit
From the moment we are born, we begin to inherit things.
Not just names, bloodlines, and hand-me-down traditions.
But ways of seeing the world.
Stories about who we are.
Rules about what is allowed.
Wounds, worries, whispered fears.
We learn how love works by how it was shown—or withheld.
We learn what to expect from life by what our parents expected.
We internalise the roles we are given, often mistaking them for who we are.
And all the while, a deeper self waits.
Unconditioned.
Unclaimed.
Free.
🌿 The Inner Exodus
When Jesus calls us to give up family, to “hate” even our own lives, it sounds like rejection.
But in the spiritual traditions, particularly among the early desert monks and Celtic wanderers, there was another understanding:
To leave home is to begin the path of awakening.
To lose your life is to shed the false one.
To give up your father and mother is to loosen the grip of the inner voices that no longer serve the light you were made to carry.
It’s not about dishonour.
It’s about freedom.
🌊 Shedding the False Self
There comes a moment, often unexpected, when we realise that the “I” we’ve been living… was never fully ours.
It was shaped by expectation.
Bound by fear.
Shadowed by someone else’s pain.
And so the Spirit whispers:
“Will you let it go?”
Not the people. Not the love.
But the conditioning. The roles. The limits.
The masks inherited and reinforced over years.
This is the cross.
Not a punishment—
but a doorway.
🌀 Losing to Find
“Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
—Matthew 10:39
In the world of changework and deep transformation, we often speak of “unlearning” before we can truly begin.
This is Jesus’ language too.
Before the resurrection, the crucifixion.
Before the true self, the letting go.
When he says to give up life,
he may be inviting us to release the script we were handed…
so we can finally begin to live the story we were born to write.
✨ A Celtic Reflection
In the Celtic Christian imagination, the path of the pilgrim was rarely just outward.
It was a journey inward, to find the “place of resurrection”—the deep centre where God whispers our true name.
And so, many would leave their homeland not to reject it,
but to leave behind the illusions it had sewn into their soul.
You don’t need to walk away from your family.
But you may need to walk away from what you’ve internalised:
– That love must be earned.
– That you’re not enough.
– That you must stay small.
– That you’re bound by what came before.
Christ says:
“Leave it. All of it.
Come and follow me.”
And in the leaving,
you find something truer than you ever knew.
☘️ A Final Blessing
May you have the courage to question the inner voices that no longer serve you.
May you honour your parents while releasing what was never yours to carry.
May you lose the life that isn’t truly yours—
and in its place, may you awaken to the one that is.
The one God has been whispering to you
since before you had words.
Ancient Whispers 
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