Blog #29: 2025 Post: President Mandela: A Mentor and An Inspiration

Some ask why I write and speak in many forums about Nelson Mandela. I do as he became both my mentor and a deep inspiration. I have read many books and articles about him, met him, and went to South Africa to walk in some of the footsteps that were a part of his “Long Walk to Freedom.” I have recommended his autobiography many times with the comment, it is the greatest book I have ever read. Some friends have read it and loved it. Others remarked they did not finish it or it did not grab them. Different strokes for different folks. The book told his full life biography in detail, the history of South Africa, the history of the African National Congress (ANC), but most important to me he traced the thread of his inner life that he kept alive until his death.

After his father died when Mandela was 12, he lived his early teen years in a Methodist enclave of the Thembu tribe. In this community he was welcomed into the family of the King of the Thembu tribe. He polished his adopted Father’s shoes and creased his pants to prepare every Sunday for the Church Service. He was raised with all tribal customs moving from adolescence to adulthood enveloped by tribal customs, fire and brimstone Christian sermons and love. Mandela rarely saw a white person until the King sent him and the King’s biological son off to an elite boarding school for Black South Africans. In other blog posts (Meeting President Nelson Mandela, Speaking about Mandela and Daughter Goes to South Africa) and in a presentation I gave on Mandela at the Minneapolis Basilica (linked here) I speak about a few of the poignant experiences he had at school as well as many other aspects of his life. Here I just note that he begins his life with two inner threads – Christian worship and tribal customs that merge to help form the beginning of his inner life.

When Mandela left the tribal Methodist enclave he worked security in the mines, married, had 3 children, and educated himself to become a lawyer. The two threads continued to influence him. Never in all these early years did he internalize what apartheid was trying to impose on black people. Mandela carried himself with a deep-seated regal stature exuding character and integrity. He was a naturally charismatic leader.

As he saw the devastating impacts and suffering that apartheid imposed on his people his inner life was lit with a fire to work against the intolerable oppression and the complete lack of freedom. His evolution in leadership in the ANC and his three trials are of course in his book and in my talks. During extensive time in jails before and during trials his inner preparation, inspired by Martin Luther King, Ghandi and many others culminated in a four hour speech challenging the Judge in the last and third trial. Many thought this Judge would impose the death penalty. But instead Mandela received a sentence of life in prison at age 46.

Mandela was in prison for 27 years; 18 of those years were spent on Robben Island. He says that the best years of his life were taken from him. His book and my talk (linked here) recount many of the brutalities as well as his triumphs in those 27 years. Yes, he had triumphs. Freedom came slowly but his vision and inner work never ceased. Standing in his former cell on Robben Island President Mandela spoke about his survival due to keeping his heart and his mind alive.

He did this in numerous ways. One significant way he did it was to engage in sense free thinking about thinking such that his own Divinity was revealed to him. Over time it became apparent to him that if he had a spark of Divinity in himself, then that same spark existed in all people on Earth even the brutal wardens and guards. So he then began to speak to that Divinity in others. He would not compromise his own experience by speaking with anger or hatred. The warders and guards came to appreciate the manner and depth with which Mandela spoke to them. His inner became outer and was visible to all. He could hate the evil actions of some, yet he could retain the ability to see that even people doing evil things had somewhere in them a Divine spark.

How did he do this? He worked with Biblical verses, some from Psalms, some from other portions of the Old and New Testaments, along with poems, prayers and verses from esteemed authors.

One poem was made famous by the Clint Eastwood film “Invictus.” This is an 1875 poem written by a man who suffered a leg amputation. To survive that ordeal he wrote Invictus. People can at times be inspired by higher intuition to bring into existence a poem, meditation or verse that has a special spiritual quality to it. Some higher thoughts can be actual invisible spiritual realities and/or spiritual beings.

Come with me for a moment. Read it out aloud with emphasis 5 to 10 times.

Do that daily for one month. Additionally think about this poem internally for 10 minutes a day quietly in meditation both reciting it now from memory and thinking about each line and each word and experience exactly what is being conveyed. After that one month evaluate your experience. When you miss a day or fail in other ways acknowledge it and let it go and keep on keeping on.

Mandela spoke this poem aloud numerous times many days. His fellow prisoners came to hear it and would ask him both in prison and years later when freed to recite it. Sometimes prisoners who were in the general population for violent offenders would call out to Mandela in the section of the prison for political prisoners and ask him to speak it out. When he was in a house in a medium security prison in Capetown before his eventual release he received former prisoners as visitors and they would ask him — speak it please? And he would speak the Holy Inspirational Words of Invictus that had taken on great meaning for so many.

It is Mandela’s ability to recognize his own Divinity through a process of Thinking about Thinking that was and still is deeply inspiring to me. It is his ability to say if Divinity, Eternity, and Infinity is in me then it is in all 8 billion on Earth, even though some commit evil dastardly acts. Mandela was always quick to say he is no saint. I surely agree with him. I embrace with a bear hug his utter human fallibility that is present in all of us. Yet we can all come to know our own Divine Spark and attempt to always speak to that spark in all others.

Mandela goes into prison at age 46 and he comes out at age 73 in 1990. From 1990 to 1994 he had most difficult meetings with President DeKlerk who shows him black on black violence that DeKlerk had staged to argue to Mandela that the future of South Africa was not ready for one person one vote. But Mandela was resolute. He told DeKlerk many times that he DeKlerk was arranging this violence with his goon squads which was later proven when Mandela became President. It was at the end of these four years of negotiations with DeKlerk that “The Christ” was discussed and an agreement was reached for one person one vote. It was out of the Christian impulse learned as a young man in the Methodist tribal worship and Mandela’s conscious self-development in prison that the impulse for living out of forgiveness was born. The King of the Thembu tribe governed by consensus many times spending multiple years in conversations with tribal factions to gain consensus. Mandela learned first-hand the brilliance of never crushing a minority. This was relearned and practiced in prison discovering his Divinity and the Divinity of all others.

Mandela then leads his country of a majority oppressed people to forgive the minority oppressor — an astounding and magnificent act unequaled in human history.

Prompts for discussion, meditation, journaling:

• Does any one human being deeply inspire you? Not who do you admire, but who inspires you with an inward fire?
• Did you journal as you worked with the Invictus poem for a month? Did the poem begin to have a voice?
• Do you believe it is possible or have you ever experienced a poem, a verse, a prayer, or a meditation as a living invisible spiritual reality?
• Do you have an inkling of your own Divinity, Eternity, and Infinity? If so have you written about it? Have you spoken to the Divinity in others? Can you imagine doing so?