Darkness Visible: Personal Myths
Tibetan Bon shamans believe that we are already one year old when we are born. Our first year of life is spent in our conception and gestation in the womb, a time when we are conscious, aware, and learning about the world through the experiences of our parents (especially the mother, in whose energy field we reside). Their feelings and sensations are carried in the egg and sperm and then in the life force of the mother’s blood. As a consequence, we are all born with certain predispositions, leanings, assumptions about the world, psychosomatic behaviours, and inclinations. There is a ‘mood’ to our lives and, already, a life script in place that we will increasingly come to live by.
The same notion can be found in other traditions too. In one of Castaneda’s books, for example, the shaman don Juan reveals a Toltec formula for calculating the amount of personal power or energy available to us, which is very similar to Tibetan beliefs. “The Level of energy of all beings depends on three fundamental factors”, he says: “The amount of energy with which they were conceived, the manner in which the energy has been utilised since birth, and the way in which it is being used at the present time”.
And nor is this just a spiritual or esoteric idea. Modern day paediatricians have also found that emotional disturbances in newborns, as well as their sleeping and eating patterns, exactly reflect those of the mother, as if they have learned from her in the womb how they should ‘be’ in the world as soon as they are born. Even the nutrients carried in the mother’s blood which feed the growing child are packed with information. Whether the mother chooses to eat well during pregnancy or not, is