This article appeared in our October 2004 issue.When my first grandchild was born, I saw something in her that I had missed in my own children some 25 years earlier, when I was too young and self-absorbed to see anyone, including myself, very well. What I saw was clear and simple: my granddaughter arrived on earth as this kind of person, rather than that, or that, or that. As an infant, for example, she was almost always calm and focused, quietly absorbing whatever was happening around her. She looked as if she "got" everything -- enduring life's tragedies, enjoying its comedies, and patiently awaiting the day when she could comment on all of it. Today, with her verbal skills well honed, this description still fits the teenager who is one of my best friends and seems like an "old soul." In my granddaughter I actually observed something I could once take only on faith: We are born with a seed of selfhood that contains the spiritual DNA of our uniqueness -- an encoded birthright knowledge of who we are, why we are here, and how we are related to others. We may abandon that knowledge as the years go by, …