On the Biological Race to Have Children, Part I: the Biology Overlay

The following text is part I in a multi-part series. It is a work in progress and may be revised further.

One of the major types of spiritual plan made by those incarnating on Earth involves the goal, or mission if you will, of having children during their lifetimes.

The life choice, or even spiritual intention, of having children, is by no means a “higher” spiritual directive that applies to all — regardless of the bias or opinion of any source otherwise. In other words, you do not have to have children in order to live a life that is fulfilling and complete — which is something that should be defined by your personal standards alone. Both as a spiritual being and as a human, you are completely and unconditionally free to choose either way (to have children or not) without Spirit holding any preference of prejudice for either choice.

As an environment for the experience of incarnation, planet Earth has plenty of opportunities for those who choose to do either. You can safely assume that, if you are here on planet Earth as a human being, reading these words, whatever you had chosen to do for this lifetime prior to it, you were given the opportunity and blessing to set forth and do just that. As such this text should not be interpreted as being biased either way.

I will nonetheless open this discussion by stating that the experience of having and raising children is one of the highlights, perhaps one of the “draws”, of incarnating on planet Earth. This is because, as an experience, it is in many ways transcendental.

When the human being becomes parent to a child, he or she will now (usually, ideally) take into account the children’s priorities and well-being, in addition to their own personal desires and aspirations. In many ways, observing the well being of the children and ensuring their upbringing comes first, while their own personal interests and desires will now be coming second.

Thinking on behalf of someone else other than the self, and owning the responsibility of the well-being of the children, forces one’s perspectives away from the self, in a sense going beyond the self. This is a kind of shift in perspective and priorities that may very well happen for the first time in the lifetime.

This forcing of one’s perspective away the self can be said to be an experience of a transcendental quality (hence spiritual), in the sense it makes the self’s perspective go beyond, move past, its regular awareness and perspectives otherwise. This is of particular relevance since the desires and perspectives of the human self, in the human experience, may at points become quite egotistical and self-centered. The experience of caring for another in this manner tends to move, push, the human’s awareness towards the values of altruism — thinking of something other than the self, as well as the perception of participating in something larger than the self — and benevolence/positive alignment — caring for the well being of another, in particular for someone who is not capable of doing so on their own.

Biological Overlay

The experience of having children is assisted, reinforced, by the biological/physiological components involved in the processes of becoming a couple, birth, and parenting.

The human body, biologically speaking, has a way to condition individuals, and later mother and father, in shifting, ‘guiding’ their individual moods, perspectives, and priorities, in whichever ways are necessary to create an emotionally stable relationship that provides a beneficial environment for the successful upbringing of children. This is achieved with a number of physiological components of the body, such as hormones for example, that aim at regulating elements such as fertility, mood, willingness to meet others, and so on. I’ll generally refer to this as the biological overlay of the process, in the sense these are mechanisms of the physical body. These mechanisms are for the most part inherited from, well, Nature, more specifically the animal kingdom, still reminiscent in the human physical body to a significant extent.

This overlay is a series of ‘programmings’ and triggers of the biological level. It is set into motion, for example, the moment the young boy/girl starts to find other boys/girls as subject of interest beyond what can be termed ‘friendship’; or when the girl/woman feels the fabled ‘ticking of the clock’, i.e. a desire to have children of her own at a certain point in time.

These types of sensations, although possibly fuelled by the many complex layers and desires of the human self, including the spiritual, can nevertheless be closely associated with the programming of the biological overlay, which broadly speaking aims at ensuring the survival of the species, and keeping it biologically and genetically healthy.

This biological overlay actually makes the process easier for the intention of the spiritual self, if that intention is to go through the experience of building a family and having children.

When you incarnate, you’re still the exact same spiritual entity as before, with the same set of desires, aspirations, and characteristics, you had. However, this spiritual identity can become quite subtle and distant, difficult to identify, during incarnation itself. You’ll be at all times under the metaphysical veil of incarnation, which is designed to cloud your perception at all times from the immediate understanding that you’re a spiritual being first and foremost. Furthermore, during the incarnation you’re constantly bombarded by a myriad of impulses and stimulus, physical/emotional/mental, and both internal and external, all with a tendency to be louder and more powerful than any recollection you have of your own spiritual traits.

For these reasons, and generally speaking, regardless of how well you made your plan for the lifetime prior to the incarnation, you always have to contend with your own Free Will as a human being, once you incarnate, grow, and start living your life. You’ll be making choices and decisions, more often than not, from the point of consciousness of the human self, rather than from the consciousness you had outside of incarnation — which may or may not be aligned with your spiritual plan. There is no guarantee technically speaking that you as a human are going to decide to follow what you had designed spiritually.

As far as the spiritual objective of having children goes, this is where the biological overlay comes in.

During the incarnation, the overlay tends to reinforce, cement, the focus of the human self towards the priorities, first of seeking to couple with another, and then, eventually, of having children together. It does tend to make other priorities in life fade, or at least lose relative importance, when compared with the purpose of being with another in a couple, and building a family. (Of course, when you’re young and you aspire to have romantic experiences with others, you may not be thinking in terms of having children! You simply want to find experience love, companionship, mutual bonding. Nevertheless, and strictly in a biological sense, having children is more or less the final goal behind the design of the overlay).

The overlay then, works like a railway track, the train in this analogy being the human self and his practical choices, determining the direction he or she takes during incarnation. The overlay does not literally prevent you from making choices that do not align with the spiritual objective of having children; however in practice it is so strong, its impulses so powerful - at points even overbearing - that it all but guarantees that you will make choices and decisions that will have you follow down that road.

In other words as you seek love, you’ll feel compelled to seek others for companionship; you will seek to fall in love deeply as you couple with another; and you will then be likely to aspire to have children, as a natural consequence of living that love.

Part of the Human Experience

This is not to say that this overlay is “wrong”, that it is anti-spiritual, or inappropriate by design.

Much like with anything in physical matter, the focus and choices you make based on the overlay may or may not be aligned with your inner truth and greatest good. But it is, ultimately and to a large extent, part of the human experience; a natural component in how human beings perceive and experience the world around them. As a human you have the opportunity to share experiences of love, intimacy, meaning, and communion with others, and the overlay plays a large part in the seeking of love — regardless if the prospect of children is explicitly involved in the equation or not.

Also, this is not to say that on its own the overlay ensures all situations of having and raising children turn out perfectly, smoothly, or successfully. Certainly you may come up with real life examples of situations where you may consider children were born and raised with sub-par attributes of love, and/or tolerance, acceptance, emotional stability, material resources, health, etc. Nevertheless the overlay is meant to reinforce, support, and provide the best possible circumstances, for the process.

The transcendental quality of the experience of having children — that is to say, as mentioned, pulling one’s inner perspective away from one’s own egotistical self — means it can bring about spiritual advancement, leading the spiritual self to chose it as an adequate and desirable experience. This can even be the case if the individuals — i.e. the human self — did not consciously made made the decision to have children.

Sometimes children are born seemingly on accident, without/against conscious choice, or otherwise in seemingly less than ideal circumstances for their balanced upbringing. But if the spiritual selves involved, prior to the lifetime, made the arrangement to go through the experience, the situation can come about even if seemingly against the conscious desires of the human selves, if it was decided it was of benefit to them spiritually.

In that case the experience will then be interpreted as if ‘falling’ upon them, being ‘thrown at them’, apparently by accident and/or bypassing their conscious choices. This is the typical situation when, while the human selves initially did not chose to be parents, in time they’ll have the opportunity to be surprised by it, learn from it, and grow to acknowledge the experience.

The experience of having children, while not always undertaken in life in the most “perfect” or ideal scenario, can and is frequently chosen on the spiritual level due to the type of lessons and experience it allows. If the spiritual selves chose it, then it’s because they saw beneficial purpose in it.

Biological/Social Determinations of the Overlay

One aspect to the biological overlay is that you enter a type of race, starting almost as soon as the incarnation begins. In order to explain what this race is, I’ll begin by describing a number of factors contributing to it.

To begin with, there’s an age bracket or range, loosely-defined but still quite preponderant, that can be considered ‘optimal’, for the purposes of (first) having and then (hopefully) raising children. This could perhaps be said to over around the early twenties to mid-thirties.

This range is not just defined by physical vitality and fertility — i.e. being in your physical prime — but by a number of other factors as well. One element is the relative age of the parents of the parents (the children’s grandparents) at the time the children are born. In a general sense, provided they’re born soon enough, the grandparents will have enough vitality themselves to provide a second reliable framework of support for raising the children, which can be quite a long-term, demanding, all-hands-on-deck task.

Another element is that (obviously, in an optimal sense) having children is not just about the moment of conception, but also the long-term process of raising and providing for them. The parents need to not just have vitality at the time the children are born, but also enough that they can endure the long-term process of raising their children, during which they’re meant to bear the responsibilities, anxiety, strain, etc, the process often incurs.

So — and strictly biologically speaking — it’s important for the process to ideally take place at an early enough age of the parents, to allow them still time and energy to spend with their children; yet not quite so young that the parents themselves have not had time each to go through life experiences and develop a level of emotional and practical maturity, that will allow the couple to have the best opportunity to stay together and create an emotionally stable and nurturing relationship, for the children to grow up into.

All of these considerations, as well as the biological overlay in general, are closely tied with the traits of youth and vitality; to some extent confidence, having a positive, hopeful, energetic outlook about life; to some extent beauty and outward appearance also. For these are the ways the biological layer of the human uses to attempt to assess, evaluate, extrapolate, predict, if you will, in others, how much energy will they have, how well they can use them, and… well, how long will they be able to endure, when it comes to having children.

These, again, are aspects pertaining to the overall ideal or optimal situation when it comes to having children in life. This is not meant to be interpreted as a statement that having children outside of such circumstances is “wrong”; it means only to pinpoint, especially from the biology point of view, which is the basis this optimal age bracket.

A Partner rather than The Partner

One additional and crucial aspect about this biological overlay, is that its fundamentals come from, well, Nature.

The overlay is at its core a biological programming intended to have the species survive and thrive; to have individuals physically and genetically healthy, optimally adapted to their environment; while still being flexible enough to be able to withstand changes and shifts in their ecosystem. And the way it achieves this, is by means of competition.

In Nature, a species is meant to keep itself genetically healthy by having the strongest individuals survive and procreate — by whichever parameters “strong” is measured by. This is where the biological overlay has its roots. Individuals are constantly competing with the environment — fighting off or avoiding predators, resisting or surviving illness, for example — and sometimes amongst themselves — competing for females, being or appearing stronger, leading instead of following, etc. Biological species use these aspects of competition in order to stay sharp and healthy.

By intentionally making use of the biological overlay for the purposes of your main spiritual priorities for a lifetime, you are intrinsically subscribing, to some degree, to the nature of how the overlay operates — and the consequences this implies.

The biological overlay being used to support the chosen life path is irrevocably wired to assess, evaluate, and seek out partners with any given degree of compatibility and matching qualities, and within a mindset of competition with many others doing the same thing.

The overlay sets you up to look for someone who has desirable physical/psychological attributes, perhaps also with a sufficient degree of emotional maturity and material stability in life, hopefully with whom you can eventually build up a family.

The overlay works often by surging calls and impulses, in the way of emotions and feelings, which as you might notice can be quite overbearing, and completely overrun any and all other considerations and priorities — including the more subtle spiritual realisations.

When the spiritual priority of the incarnating spiritual entity is indeed the experience of raising a family, then the pull of the biological impulses is typically considered and accepted as an element of the equation even at the level of the spiritual plan being made prior to the lifetime. The spiritual plan has to consider and work with/around those impulses that will be felt throughout the lifetime, knowing that they are going to be there and have their effect — because, again, they are being used as a way to anchor the life purpose of the human being.

That plan made on the spiritual level for the lifetime already takes into account the elements of competitiveness, the seeking out of partners and attributes in others, that the human being is going to have to manage, and be influenced by, as he seeks love and to build a family — simply because this is going to influence his/her conscious choices.

Also and quite importantly, the plan takes into account also that these pulls and pushes can very easily override the spiritual realisations that are needed to a) recognise and b) afford worth to the connection, with the Soul Mate — here, “Soul Mate” defined in this text as someone who shares a connection of spiritual Love with you.

It is extremely easy for the human being operating under a strong influence of the biological overlay to not be able to recognise someone as being the Soul Mate when meet them, of if they were to meet them. Or, even if the Soul Mate is greeted and acknowledged, and a relationship is built, it’s exceedingly easily to give up on that relationship. This specific relationship may not have any greater solidity or chance of success than others.

This is mainly because due to the powerful effect of the biological overlay, which makes it naturally difficult for an individual to be able to make a clear distinction between the Soul Mate, and any other individuals which might nevertheless hold some level of compatibility with you on a human level.

The biggest priority in the context here described, is the experience of having children; the building of a family with a suitable partner. Compared to this priority, the possibility of meeting with the Soul Mate is a more “fragile” one in practical terms. Furthermore, at the level of consciousness the priority for building a family is established, the spiritual self may not even operate with strong prioritisation about — “thinking in terms of” — the meeting with the Soul Mate. In this scenario, therefore, the prioritisation to establish a relationship with the Soul Mate may come only second, if at all.

Both as far as the spiritual planning goes, as well as during your own lifetime as a human being, as you seek love you’re not necessarily looking for the one and only spiritually matching partner, the with the strongest spiritual affinity you can possibly have. Rather, you’re looking for a partner with whom you have a reasonable degree of compatibility — with the subconscious purpose of potentially having children, as this is the main purpose of the biological overlay.

You may rationalise, or even feel, you’re seeking the one person most special for you. But more often than not, your life will in practice describe a path with multiple relationships, each with some degree of compatibility. While each of them might feel the most special person at the time, the perception you’re with best individual possible — especially in the falling in love stage — you might have multiple of these experiences, and, without necessarily any of them being an actual Soul Mate. This is how you come to experience that each person is absolutely unique when you’re in love, but experience it multiple times, at different points.

It’s for this reason you may fall in love and build relationships, healthy or unhealthy, stable or unstable, with those who have varying levels of actual connections of spiritual Love with you, or without that type of connection at all, provided there’s a proper degree of compatibility on the physical/emotional/mental (base human consciousness) levels.

Of course, it is not technically impossible, and may perhaps even be seen as optimal, to attempt to conciliate the two: to plan a family with your Soul Mate for that lifetime. And indeed, from time to time, on occasion, this does happen and is viable. But by far the most common situation is for the priority to be set in terms of finding love with a suitable partner.

It also still possible, compatible, for the spiritual planning for the lifetime to establish contracts for potential romantic connections with Soul partners, that will, or can be, carried out for that lifetime. Typically, even though the human being is under the influence of the biological overlay, the people he/she meets on their journey are not “random”, stumbled upon by accident, but instead individuals with whom stories (and sometimes karma) of other lifetimes are shared, spiritual beings already known from the past.

Still, because there’s such a strong influence of the biological overlay on the human being, it is a given that these partners will have to be sought out within the context and mindset of competition and external evaluation that the overlay tends to foster, as well as its potentially strong and intense emotional impulses that go along with it. In other words, the human navigates the network of designed potentials for that lifetime with his own choices at each moment, in turn heavily influenced by the biological overlay.

Being so strongly pushed and pulled by the impulses of the biology usually makes the prospect being able to acknowledge the Soul Mate unlikely. In practice, the chance of acknowledging the Soul Mate can be quite reduced in this context; and so that potential is therefore something that is often not prioritised in the life plan, or not planned at all. The spiritual self, as well as the human self, for that lifetime they are not thinking in terms of connecting with someone spiritually, and exploring that connection deeply and fully. Instead, they are looking to fall in love.

Falling in Love

Falling in love is a process that is directly linked to the overlay: you have, for any number of reasons and elements that influenced your judgement, elected a specific individual as the most desirable partner for you.

This is not simply a biological process. The mechanism of falling in love involves a strong spiritual component as well.

When you fall in love, you’re declaring a specific individual as “perfect” (for you). When you do this, you’re then triggering your overlay into preparing you for coupling with that person, using all the tools at its disposal to place you in a blissful state, one of openness and desire to be with that person above all else (even if the other person has not made a similar decision). It started with a decision within you, based on your perceptions, conscious or otherwise.

But the way the process is achieved also involves a strong spiritual element. When your body detects you’re meant to fall in love, it’s not just a matter of hormones and chemical elements being produced. Your more subtle layers also open up the gateway for your own Infinite Spiritual Love that is a property of your Soul. So as you are, hopefully, experiencing a state of bliss, of walking on clouds, as the other person chose the same as you, this state is a recollection, a reminiscence, of what you felt as a Soul when immersed in the purest state of God. This is why this is such a potent mechanism, and why you seek it.

It just so happens that the human self considers — and in a way, is built/designed with the bias to do so — this Love to be about someone, to be directed at, justified, by another person. In reality the other person was indeed the catalyst to begin the process, its “muse”; but that energy of Love you trigger, that washes over you and makes it feel everything is okay, is actually your own energy Love as a spiritual entity, of yourself/about yourself, and from Infinite Creation, about you. In a sense it is a very real and intrinsic characteristic property of yourself as a Soul.

However the catch is that the perception and functioning of the human self conditions this energy of Love to the validation of the other. So you can experience Love that is requited — the other person made the same determination about you, the evaluation is mutual, and so you feel your judgement justified (by the God/Universe, the role you are placing in the figure of the other person) — in which case you allow your own Love to flow unto you, and to them. At which point you’re allowing the energy of Love to flow back and forth between the two.

Or you can make the deliberation about the other person without them having reached a point they’re ready to make the deliberation about you themselves, or, if they’re not going to make the deliberation to the same extent, or at all. In which case you’re going to perceive your Love as not being good enough — i.e you not being good enough. You’re going to see that your Love as not validated, not agreed with. And so you’re now experiencing suffering, not allowing that Love to flow to you. Turns out you’re not deserving of the Love you hold most dear in the whole Universe.

The human experience can involve the exploration of contrasts, of Light as well as darkness. And so you can undergo the experience, for any reason that relates to your spiritual lessons or identity, of deciding to open your own gateway of Infinite Love to someone who actually isn’t a good match to you — simply because it’s possible. You keep guiding yourself by what you’re feeling within, when it was you who had unleashed the process in the first place.

The deliberations you make come from your human perception, and that perception can at times be partial, misinformed. It depends on your level of awareness at that moment. This is the reason why you can fall in Love for someone who doesn’t Love you back the same way; for someone who doesn’t actually share connection of Love with you on a spiritual level. This is how you can feel something so strong and amazing, even when it’s not reciprocated, or even about someone that is wrong or toxic to you. Because the actual Love you feel is real: it’s part of who you really are.

This is how powerful Love is.

Part II: Romantic Contracts: https://medium.com/energy-and-consciousness/on-the-biological-race-of-having-children-part-ii-romantic-contracts-e1f19d4e0f0e

This text was originally published at my website heartki.com: http://www.heartki.com/biological-race-children-part-biology-overlay/