CELEBRATION
Here you are, at the end of your journey, or should we say at the beginning? There are no more places, no more time or movement. You no longer observe life through these external manifestations. You feel it deep within yourself. In the stillness and the silence, you feel united within yourself and with the rest of the world. Welcome this fullness and radiate. 



© IStockphoto

ARTICLE
What if Life Began
Way Before Us ...?
By Élaine Drolet

While writing these words, I feel feverish. Stopping to think about where intrauterine life begins can’t help but evoke dormant and forgotten memories. Unconsciously, I feel emotions that I cannot explain; I remember my four pregnancies and think again about the exact moments that determined their evolution. Today, between my heart, which is racing, and my memories, which are bouncing around, there are five lives: mine and those of my children. Our bodies are distinct, but we’ve traveled the same path to get here. If our entrance into this world arrives through different contexts, contact with life begins for everyone at the same place, in the heart of a mother. Does that mean that we all start off equal?

When we see a pregnant woman, we tend to smile. Even without seeing the tiny being she’s carrying, we can easily ­imagine it, warmly loved and rocking with the peaceful, comforting movement of the water within, sheltered from the world and its stress, as if the mother’s physical envelope insulated and protected it from the outside world. Yet, it’s before being born and around birth that all the possibilities and major limitations of life are most often created.

The uterus and its amniotic fluid make up the site of ­development of the being, with all its genetic potential, from the elements supplied by its mother and its environment. This cozy nest is the hearth for a human being’s first life experiences, forming the basis of its evolution in all its dimensions. The developing fetus follows a psycho-physiological process that establishes its physical, emotional, interpersonal and mental connection to its entire existence.

The presence of the being in life, at this stage, is absolute. That’s why everything that stays in the fetus’ body, heart or mind, leaves such a profound imprint. The five senses in their purest form serve as vehicles to transmit information of well-being or unease.

Touch and taste, which develop during the first semester of pregnancy, deliver impressions of pleasure or displeasure. Hearing (being exposed to sounds, voices, music), smell (surrounding smells), and sight (perception of light) mainly develop during the second trimester and greatly expand the spectrum of experience by increasing the intensity of sensations being perceived by the fetus. Up to this point, we may in fact believe that the comfort of its environment and the care its mother takes to eat properly ensures that upon arrival, the fetus feels confident in life. And yet, there’s more to consider.

Throughout its evolution, the fetus’ system is being refined. During the third trimester, its nervous system is sufficiently developed so that it can collect sensory impressions outside of its body. A mother’s emotions are transmitted to her fetus through a chemical and hormonal substrate via the placenta and the umbilical cord, resulting in the fetus experiencing various states of being that can also become physical manifestations (accelerated heart rate, agitation, choking sensation…). Even if these emotions are not yet a part of its life experience, it will interpret them as part of its being.

And if the mother’s intense sensory experience and emotional legacy did not constitute a powerful enough memory bank to direct the course of existence, some research conducted by psychiatrists and neuroscientists suggests that a spiritual consciousness exists in a fertilized egg even before it even enters the uterus. This consciousness would be connected to a reference program larger than human experience and suggests the idea of a link to infinite knowledge, where feelings of freedom and connection between the fetus and the universe will occur. Severing this link when it becomes integrated with matter, the uterus would become the being’s first limiting experience in life. According to this premise, even before we begin to develop, we are dead in another life. These theories are new and still in ­exploratory phases. They share reflections from quantum physics, a scientific field that is still little known and recognized.

Be that as it may, we’re somehow able to understand the complexity surrounding the definition of the basic parameters that guide the life of a being even before it is born.

When it comes into this world, a baby has already learned many things. We take enormous care to help him progress in his active life, but are we aware of our contribution to the unconscious programming of his life when he was growing inside us? When he was swimming inside us, the product of the desire of two beings to unite, attentive and totally uninhibited, what did we think, say, and do? And what did our parents think, say and do when they carried us? Life emerges from such depth, and its very first manifestations imprint upon us in our watery home.

Also, under the guise of usefulness and efficiency, is it possible to believe that a human being who chooses to take a shower rather than a bath unconsciously demonstrates a disconnection with himself? In a world where sensory pleasure and performance have replaced the search for meaning and the quality of the experience, would we be afraid to take a bath? A bath where we would be submerged in our own deepest memories, surrounded by various emotions that insist on resurfacing, direct from the heart, where the past and the present meet to open our selves to the consciousness of our beginnings and all our possibilities, surrounded by water, as pure as when we first began.