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RE: What We Do and Experience Can Be Inherited
Some years ago, I remember reading an article about studies at MIT into the nature of "genetic memory," and how it may serve to explain seemingly "irrational" fears and phobias.
For example, a pregnant woman almost gets run over by a cement truck and now she feels anxiety every time she sees a cement truck. But when her child is born... the child grows up to have a fear of cement trucks, in spite of never having had an experience with one.
So what we pass along-- and what we don't-- is really not fully understood.
I know I had night terrors and had irrational fear of dark closets....My mom led a good life so I don't know where that came from. Maybe in my past one of my ancestors died in the dark and I got his or her genes. Or maybe it's karmic, in my past life I was killed in a dark closet and that energy stuck with this mind continuum I call me...dunno but it's fun to think about! My first Buddhist teacher told me karma is like a snowball rolling down a hill, it gathers more mass and energy as it rolls and that explains karma and rebirth.
Lots of people are horribly afraid of snakes and spiders but have never been bitten!