By Raven Cohan

          It was 1949 in Chicago when at age three, I asked my friend the ragman if he was a Jewish Negro or a Catholic Negro.  (He answered… “Honey… I’s just a Negro”.)  I couldn’t further this conversation because he quickly left before a woman who’d been racing toward us arrived and gave me a tongue lashing for just talking to my friend!

            Mom instilled in me a sense of equality in all people yet also gave me pride in being of 'The Chosen People'. At times it seemed a dichotomy that I should feel chosen over any other people.  At fifteen during confirmation classes with my stoic Rabbi, a quest for more spiritual knowledge awakened in me.  I probed libraries.  Like many youths I seemed to reject religion but I came to a new version of childlike faith that I backed up with as much science as I could find in modern Quantum Physics and Biology.   That probing continued through adulthood and led me to believe that we are all one people.  We all have an original root in our philosophies, religions and understandings that come from deep inside our very own DNA.

            My husband and I took a visit some years ago to an ancient mesa in New Mexico called Acoma. The guide was special.  He was a chief and holder of the tribes’ Medicine knowledge. He relayed to us a poetic story of how all Ancient People were born in the core of the earth and all emerged out of 'holes on the earth’ in order to surface upon different continents all over the world, which also were born in the core of the earth. We wore different skin colors and spoke languages that were unique, but we all were born within Mother Earth.  All of our ancestors learned through stories, music, dance and art that came from the unconscious knowledge of ONE.

            Presently I am re-reading a fascinating book by anthropologist, Jeremy Narby, Ph.D. entitled, The Cosmic Serpent.  It’s subtitle is 'DNA and the Origins of Knowledge'.  It is impressive to see a Ph.D in anthropology who believed only in science come to understand the unconscious knowledge that can be revealed to us in dreams and other altered states.  In this book, Narby shows how peoples all over the world who were in trances, had experiences of symbolic renderings of what he concludes, (and so do I) to be representative of the DNA molecule.  Only recently does modern science understand that DNA has the foundations of language built into its structure.  More and more scientific studies are finding that BELIEF itself is how we come to evolve, even over genealogical tendencies.  Belief in my opinion is what you cultivate into your life by repeating over and over, "THIS is MY TRUTH"... To me this makes no religion wrong and no religion right by100%.  All are right for the individual.  We are all born in the earth and created by one force that you choose to name as that ONE. 

            Go ahead and choose to be who you are. Tell yourself what YOU believe today.  We don't choose our race, sex, and state of health that emerged from our parenting when we are born.  We can take time to choose our beliefs.  We can also choose to respect and honor those who grow up differently than ourselves.  I always say, 'If everyone believed just like me, they would want to be reading my morning newspaper on my favorite spot on the couch at the very moment I want to do it!   The population of the world would be sitting on my lap, one on top of the other piled upward through two stories.  They crash through ceilings just to be like me.  That's not fun for me at the bottom or for anyone else on up!'

            When looking back at that deeply ingrained memory of the rag man I knew as a child  I see how he gave me an inkling that we may look different and think differently and people might hate us because of that but we can name ourselves to be a believer in one thing or another or even believe in nothing.  Can we come to know somehow deep down within our own DNA that we are all one people despite our outward beliefs?  That is my greatest wish.

 Raven Cohan studies and is certified to teach Taoist practices such as Tai Chi, Qigong and Internal Alchemy Meditations.  See her Website at www.TaoTLC.com