Saturday, April 4, 2009

Does DNA Hold Memories?




(above, 1916 wedding of grandmother and grandfather Thorvaldsen)


What if everything you ever did, ever experienced was somehow locked into your DNA and passed to future generations? A kind of collective knowledge that makes successive generations more intelligent?

Contemplate it in this article.

I was plagued many times by the ability to picture things before encountering them. I always discounted this ability because of my psychic talents, but occasionally there is something so strange that I can’t help but wonder if I get the knowledge by other means. Such as, my grandfather fell through an ice fishing hole in Norway as a child, he floated around beneath the surface and somehow magically popped back up in the same hole (thankfully—it was the only hole in the ice!) I didn’t know about this event until I was well into adulthood when the subject of ice came up, but I always had a strange fear when in water that something would come down over the water and seal me in. A very bizarre fear. Most folks fear sharks or riptides. I feared a clear plate of glass…

My father told me the story of his childhood. He was from Norway. Apparently, his father was part of a family who owned a huge iron works. My grandfather spoke many languages and was well educated. He was to be married to a society lady when they hired some maids from Sweden. My grandmother, Marta, came to work at the estate from her home in the Lapland region of Sweden. Grandfather took one look at her and refused to marry his society girl. He and grandmother married soon after. When WWI happened, the family couldn’t sell iron to Germany, so they shaped it into church bells to get it through, but eventually they were caught. The family business dissolved. Grandfather and grandmother came to America in search of a new life in California and adopted a new name from “Thorvaldsen” to “Day.” (They actually used the judge’s name because they couldn’t come up with a simple American name). Apparently, grandma became homesick and they went back to Norway for a few years where my father spent his early childhood, and then they came back to America via Ellis Island the second and last time.

All that background being said, I had a dream one time that I was in a stable. It looked like one of the ones you see in a European film, very rustic. The smells and plants were different and it didn’t feel like America. A man was brushing a horse and talking to me in a foreign language. Somehow, I knew what he was saying. He was talking about reincarnation. I scoffed at what he was saying but somehow understood each word and contemplated them long after the discussion. When I woke up, I thought it was the silliest dream ever.

Then, during one of our family dinner table discussions we talked about our horses we boarded and I thought, “maybe that’s where I got the dream?” but still, it didn’t feel quite the same as our own stables and horses. I mentioned the dream and my father asked me to go into detail. I did and he lit up with an expression that was complete and total shock. He told me a story of how his father had a stable attendant who believed in reincarnation and used to tell him stories of it. My grandfather over the years had come to believe in reincarnation because of the man’s compelling stories. This was not a story my father had ever told anyone. He had forgotten about it all together.

That was one of many such glimpses into my grandparent’s lives. From knowing just which house was my mother’s when she was born when we drove down a roadway to having dreams in French (a language apparently grandfather preferred to Norwegian), I have wondered about the possibility that DNA does more than give you preferences. Such as, my son wasn’t around my mother growing up, but he uses the same eyebrow raising and hand gestures when talking that are identical to mother’s. Perhaps DNA is altered by settings and conditions, diet and lifestyle, and many other factors that make it possible to pass on a kind of pattern that does more than choose eye color or virility.

Perhaps DNA could carry historic information, a subtle way of ensuring what happened to your elders doesn’t happen to you.

While I was researching my genealogy from mother’s Fraser family from Scotland to grandmother’s potential Saami history from Sweden, I was sent a photo in the mail from a relative.The photo my relative sent me was the wedding photo of grandmother and grandfather in Norway. What shocked me the most was the room! When father talked of his father’s childhood home, I saw paintings hanging way up on the wall so high, they were way above people’s heads. It made no sense. My mother was an artist, we knew that you hang at eye level. I also had always envisioned some kind of dark ornate curtains around a doorway opening with panels and emblems that looked very official, like royalty. The photo above (bad quality, recopied many times) shows just that room! I know I am psychic, so it’s entirely possible I zoned in on the room when he spoke of it. There’s no way to truly verify if my DNA had memories or my psychic mind had opened a portal. My logical mind says that, since my father never witnessed the room and didn't know of the picture's existence (the photo came into the family after he passed on), I couldn't have heard about it from him or picked it up psychically from him. Also, my grandfather died long before I was even born, as did grandmother. I had no exposure to that family to hear about the home or its decorations. So, how could I psychically read it with no reference that existed during my time period???

Still, I hear from others that they have influences from grandparents who died long before they were born and others who have dreams of places and situations they couldn’t have dreamed up while awake.

It intrigues me to think that perhaps part of my experience here will help guide subconsciously the generations to come. It certainly makes a good case for overcoming phobias and making peace with others while here.