Chapter 2 –
Science tells us our genes do not define our life but that they compose its blueprint.
As they hold the keys to our health, mind and physical potentiality, genes are, indeed, the main elements of our pre-utero destiny for our time, here and now.
Science confirms that small differences in our DNA contribute to each of our unique physical features.
Some will attract. Some will detract.
Some will be our strengths. Some will be our weaknesses.
Beyond determining our race and the resilience of a body that should see us through well into old age, genetic factors have a say in our degree of intelligence, and they dictate our sensitivity to emotional stimuli.
Our bodies’ tendency to develop allergies is often hereditary.
We can add that, though inherited from both parents, our genes are also the carriers of our karmic blueprint.
Reality check: modern research tells us that, from birth to old age, trillions of microbes affect every stage of our life.
Besides that, our physical potential, our intellectual and emotional IQs depend as much on our DNA as it does on our inherited karma.
So, what remains in our power is to enliven the intention to maximize or minimize the impact of both. What remains is our ability to tweak our emotional resilience in tandem with our heart-based coherence.
We are all familiar with so many testimonies of changed lives!
Individuals of all ages, cursed, some might say, with odds stacked sky-high against them. More than survive their trauma, these individuals, including children, and have upgraded their destinies.
While still in utero, some were afflicted with the most ‘damning’ types of genetic disorders. Others came to grief through a mind-blowing dose of ‘bad luck’. Others, trapped in an emotional turmoil, inflicted the worse type of addictions upon themselves.
We read about them.
We see the plot beats of their lives our screens.
We hear them speak in their own voice.
They speak of their challenges, those we would not dare wish upon our worst enemy, should we be unlucky to even have one.
We get that these survivors are not embittered.
They do not regret a single moment of their journey of recovery.
They are joyful. We feel tapped out.
They tell us that each of their most physically and emotionally painful moments made them strong and evermore determined to beat the odds. They thrive.
They inspire us to release from expectations and feel rewarded by ‘little’ things that matter to us.
So, blessed, as most of us are, with what by comparison is ‘only’ a low-grade challenge, we allow these fascinating beings to enflame our own courage.
Every time I think of karma, I remember the words of my mentor, Yudit CS, my mentor.
Here is the gist of what she explained some 15 years ago:
Beyond our DNA and beyond whatever karma we may have inherited from our genealogy and/or from a blend of our soul’s previous incarnations, of course, there’s also the template we have created jointly with the universe.
Childhood is the age of innocence but, aware or unaware, our teen years were those of our rite of passage into karmic maturity. Already then, above and beyond our parents’ wishes, we were [karmically] expected to take responsibility for our emotions, our thoughts and our actions.
Here’s thought: if we are so blessed as to survive the perilous years of childhood emotionally unscathed, our chances of living a rewarding life are greatly increased.
Reality check: as the first entries on our personal karmic balance sheet, what we felt back then, what we did and said began to matter.
It began to add up as credit or debit points.
The good news is that our personal karmic sheet is updated continuously. Up to the nanosecond we are no longer breathed by Soul, or by the universe or by God.
That sheet holds the records of how we have, up to any given moment, stayed in the flow. And how well we have rolled with the punches, so to speak.
Though it feels counter-intuitive and certainly goes against the grain of our culture, setbacks only set us back so we can bounce better and further.
We’ve heard it many times before said in many different ways: there are no such things as failures. Only opportunities to rethink thinking.
‘Gam zu letova’, as Yudit CS would say. That, too, is for the better.
And so, we smile.
We find reasons to laugh more often.
Bottom line: if it is unconsciously that we have so far co-created the inner-outer reality that only gives us diluted moments of contentment, then, chances are we could benefit from actively, consciously co-orchestrating with the universe better moments of unadulterated happiness.
Like the fauna and flora around us, we were all born with an inner mechanism engineered to maintain us in an optimal state of wellness. That’s provided we remained in the natural environment in which we came to exist.
Should a mishap befall us, as for fauna and flora, wired deep into our human DNA are the ability and the tools to heal ourselves. Of course, that’s provided that for animals, plants and humans, the moment to transition from here to another realm is not yet upon us.
Reality check: particularly over the past 200 years with one generation after another embracing all that became incrementally simpler, faster and cheaper, our inner and outer environment have become anything but natural. So, it’s up to us to ‘manually’, or should we say, ‘mentally’ adjust our tools, our neurochemicals within all areas of this body that bears our name in this lifetime.
Heads up: up to us to create habits that release more dopamine, more serotonin and more oxytocin through our bloodstream, our central nervous system and our heart.
Reality check #1: we, humans, have been blessed with one extra component beyond that of critical thinking and language. That’s the mental mechanism that triggers happiness.
According to karmic design, be it from the universe, the field, God or our Soul, the activation of Happiness and Joy has always been essential to our survival.
That’s why the wiring is already in place pre-birth.
This neurological wiring, almost as ancient as the planet herself, predates the availability of toys for all ages: money, food, drugs, all that is ‘internet’, sex and escapes used as so many imagined sources of happiness.
Now, doesn’t that go a long way in explaining why ‘happiness’ and ‘joy’ derived from anything outside of ourselves can never sustain the level of happiness we desire?
Serious questions: in the absence of truly dramatic events in our day-to-day, is there any reason why we shouldn’t be happy at least 40 % of the time?
Have resentment and the fear of being found lacking in one way or another ‘ever’ made us feel good or … better?
Have they ever contributed any healthy solutions to our ‘problems’?
These days, we understand that healthy movement is medicine.
We understand that healthy eating is medicine, too.
We understand that rather than deflect or cover up our emotions, we need to look them ‘straight in the face’ to better make them things of the past.
Of course, we also know or intuit that healthy thoughts make up the third element of our built-in wellness pharmacy.
Reality check #2: no one can meet any of our current body/mind challenges with old emotions triggering old thinking and habits rooted in the past.
Reality check #3: as long as we feel and think and act, our karmic balance can never be static. Neither can the flow of our life.
So, whether we take charge of our operating system or not, life will still be happening to us.
The only question is whether or not we prefer to have a say in its day-by-day development.
Bottom line #1: We need to debug all that is unnatural to from our system.
We need to update it with all that is natural.
Like joy, happiness and, in their sustained state, contentment.
Bottom line #2: seen from Above, there is no such thing as an ‘ordinary’ moment.
Every moment we live is as essential to our purposeful wellbeing as every breath we get.
Since nothing in the universe is inert, inaction, even if purposeful contemplation, neutrality and passivity, only go so far.
It would, therefore, be helpful to think that every hopeful desire, as little or extraordinary as it might be, should serve us.
And those closest to us, too, of course.
It’s not by reading scripture, praying and chanting that we evolve.
It’s not by sitting cross-legged all day and allowing our thoughts to dissolve in space that we evolve.
Our personal evolution depends on our ability to show up … on deck. Coherent, resilient, open and giving. With our heart and our mind talking to each other.
That said, meditation can be transcendental for some but, to everyone, it affords a window of introspection, of calm, of ‘distance’ that is a prerequisite for any degree of incremental conscious transformation.
It is, and always was, intended to facilitate the work we have to do on the terrain, here and now, hands-on/heart-on.
A steady meditation practice is to us what the plough is to farmers. It is an essential tool, for sure.
That said, though meditation is a wonderful tool, but it cannot and does not do the work for us.
That’s true.
Here is what’s probably true.
AI-enhanced tools and vehicles will eventually spare the farmer who can afford them the physical work and the mental attitude involved in farming and in caring for the land.
Here is what’s absolutely true.
AI, regardless of its ever-increasing ‘intelligence’ will never be able to feel, think and act as us.
AI will never produce a being of energy and light wrapped inside a 3-D body.
AI will never get our heart back into a place where it’s aligned with our deepest intentions.
AI will never be us because it can never have a human purpose – a human destiny.
Bottom line: the physical, mental and emotional work that’s expected of us, human beings alive on planet Earth, always remains ours to generate.
You see, no matter how many new ideas and useful tools we might find along the way, the journey of reconnecting with our selves is always our own.
It’s always messy.
It’s always complicated.
It’s often painful … in a positive way.
Of, for sure, it’s tempting to breeze by the necessary introspection.
It’s easier to distract ourselves and numb the discomfort. Again and again.
In any case, when viewed from Above, all that we do consciously is always spiralling us upward.
All that we do to avoid unpleasant feelings and postpone actions congruent with our mind, heart and body is always spiralling us downward.
But, of course, we already know that.
Once we acknowledge our insecurities, frustrations, disappointments, or limiting beliefs, there is always a way forward.
So, we show up.
We breathe, and we make peace with what-Is.
We actively accept it.
We explore it
We stop criticizing ourselves and others.
We blame neither our genes nor our karma nor our parents nor our age – nor life as we’ve known it.
We stop fighting with ourselves and with others.
Instead, we gently shift our ego-persona, our shadow-self, out of our own way.
We remind her that we DO have a mind of our own.
We tell her that, from now on, anything that will be co-created in our name with the universe will come from us.
We feel the same caring compassion towards our ego-persona – towards ourselves as we would towards a young child in need of heartfelt reassurance.
We tell her that we know she is as much our worst enemy as our best friend and we love her for that.
She knows. She understands that.
We give her – we give our selves – a heartfelt hug.
Again, and again.
We are kind to ourselves without counting.
We operate from inside a non-judgement zone.
We allow the past to remain in the past, its only rightful, logical space.
We come together with our self for our self.
We come together with our’ clan’.
We do our best to hear the whispers of Intuition, of our Higher Self – Soul’s whispers – or God’s, depending on our belief system.
We are willing to be creative and open to coherent possibilities.
We understand they’re out there, just waiting for our signal.
We help our selves grieve and breathe.
We help others, too.
We protect the rights to express our truth, and we respect theirs.
And we smile a lot more often and we create opportunities for laughter.
Both are golden keys to our wellbeing.
Heads up: the sooner we take charge of whatever aspects of our destiny are ours to reframe, the sooner we emerge from our crisis – any crisis.
Serious questions: what kind of ‘us’ will emerge from our transformative mindset?
How will our ideal and promise made to self match the reality of what we deliver at home, within our ‘clan’ and social group, in the work place and in the streets?
What is essential is to accept that we’re ‘in it’ for the long-haul.
We’re in it for life!
No quick fixes available – not now – not ever.
Not when one is fully aware and awake on the expedition of a lifetime.
So, dear Reader, are we choosing to create more of the same?
Or are we now ready to invest our emotions, our thoughts, our energy towards resolving situations that leave us depleted and frazzled?
Copyright©Carole Claude Saint-Clair 2021
P.S. By the way, dear Reader, I’d love your support in spreading the word about All Matters on the Heart & Soul of our Culture!
