On the Biological Race to Have Children, Part III: Cultural Worth
Read Part I: http://www.heartki.com/biological-race-children-part-biology-overlay/
Read Part II: http://www.heartki.com/biological-race-children-part-ii-romantic-contracts/
At various points during his/her lifetime, the human being will be assessing potential romantic partners. He/she will do so as he/she seeks the experiences of love, protection, belonging, well-being, and the sharing of positive experience with another, as well as, potentially, eventually, having children together.
The assessment of potential romantic partners takes place under a strong influence of the biological overlay — a concept covered in parts I and II.
How strong that influence is, depends of various factors, such as the moment you’re at in your spiritual journey; the spiritual intentions you had for this lifetime; as well as your past experiences and memories, both in this lifetime and before.
As a very broad principle, it could be stated you’re more easily tuned to the spiritual identity of others, the more progress you’ve made in your spiritual journey, and the more spiritually sensitive you’ve become. In other words, one could be tempted to say it becomes easier to see beyond the overlay, and connect with the true spiritual nature of others and your own, if you’ve got more spiritual baggage under your belt. On the other hand, the overlay can be so potent and intense, that the accumulation of unsolved, unfinished business related to romantic affairs over time, can at the same time make it harder to see past it. In other words, the sway the biological overlay has over you doesn’t necessarily correlate to your spiritual age and journey.
In any case, at the end of the day the biological overlay is a intrinsic part of the human experience. It’s valid to say it’s always present in the physical realm, at least to some extent.
Pragmatic Values
The filters of the biological overlay tend to perceive qualities in others in terms of physical attributes, personal willpower, confidence, emotional maturity, social standing, and professional success.
The overlay has an utterly pragmatic perspective: it looks for these traits because it sees them as those that can give your (potential) children the best chances of surviving and thriving in a 3D physical world that is utterly pragmatic, and can be difficult, harsh, and unforgiving.
Such traits can be passed on to the children directly, genetically — i.e. through the physical body – and/or indirectly, by being imparted through parenting as the children grow up. They can also serve as direct support: a partner with strong financial resources will ensure your children will be supported by those resources.
This prioritization is biological in nature. As such, it doesn’t necessarily pay attention to the more subtle aspects of the emotional and spiritual connections between individuals. In other words, it may have you miss, or bypass, the emotional/spiritual attributes of another, and/or his/her alignment with you on these levels.
This means the overlay can have you become wrapped up in romantic potentials and connections that are primarily about physical and biological attractiveness, even if said individual proves him or herself to be toxic, unstable, or simply misaligned with you, resulting in an unbalanced relationship. The overlay is assessing that person strictly from its physical/biological perspective. As stated in part I, it’s possible — and easy – for the overlay to have you fall in love for someone who isn’t actually a healthy, balanced match for you, considering the emotional and spiritual layers as well.
Even if the overlay doesn’t lead you to outright toxic/unbalanced relationships, it may still have you spend time and attention in what you would consider to be less-than-optimal connections. It may even make you miss romantic contracts (part II) with others when you meet them, if they happen to not meet the criteria of your overlay (or vice-versa).
The overlay may have you become repeatedly stuck in karmic situations with others over multiple lifetimes. You’re being drawn to those with whom you have less-than-ideal spiritual compatibility, and so relationships with these individuals will tend to not end well. Therefore these relationships continuously leave things unfinished, which will then have you repeatedly drawn in the new lifetime into those same karmic relationships and situations, over and over, in order to try to heal them.
The biological overlay is not “evil”. As with anything in/of duality, it may at any point be aligned, or misaligned, with your Light. In other words, it may work for, or against, your spiritual good. But if you follow it and take it at “face value”, the overlay can and will lead you to dead ends, and have you bypass relationships of spiritual meaning.
The Race
Generally speaking, when you’re incarnating with the expectation and spiritual desire of finding love and raising a family during your lifetime, you’re submitting yourself to the overall scenario we’ve described in these texts thus far. You are entering a race almost literally the moment you are born.
There are spiritual contracts, plans, and potentials in place, for your lifetime. Some of them will be ’strong’ and perhaps ‘almost inevitable’, while others will be contingencies, fallbacks. But at the same time, while this is true, because of a certain degree of uncertainty — both due to the nature of incarnation itself where your free will in the now moment reigns supreme, and due to the added uncertainty of working with the biological layer, previously addressed — there are really no guarantees. You are not guaranteed to end up with your romantic contract. You are not guaranteed to succeed at the race. This only exacerbates the mindset of being in a race even more.
Deep down, throughout your life, your spiritual self knows you’re immersed in a setting where you, along with many others, are competing for resources. These resources are social acceptance; attractiveness; romantic experiences with others, which in turn will translate, in the long-term, hopefully, in emotional maturity.
These resources are not endless, freely available for all. If you are comparing yourself with another for physical attractiveness, almost inevitably one will be more attractive and the other less. A hierarchy of attractiveness is formed. If you’re competing for a specific romantic partner, typically that person will only ever be in a relationship with one other person at any one time, and not with another. If you’re competing for a job opening, the available jobs will be limited. And so on.
And so the race is about growing, maturing, and displaying as many traits sought by the biological overlay of potential partners as possible, as fast as possible: physical attractiveness and health; social acceptance and belonging; emotional maturity; professional success. So that when you do get to a stage when you start to open up to romantic experiences, and later when you’re starting to consider settling down and/or sharing a deeper, more stable relationship, you have the best possible chances of achieving just that, in the midst of a scenario where everyone else is trying to do the same. And, hopefully, have the best possible chances of meeting the requirements of the scheduled, and therefore ideal, romantic contracts planned out for you.
In this type of game, what represents beauty, health, maturity, social acuity, is generally speaking not measured in an absolute sense, but instead defined, in each moment, by those around you, among each other. What is beautiful, what is maturity, what is attractive and what is socially adjusted, is represented by the references of those you meet, and the examples you see.
Furthermore, spiritually speaking, while you’re incarnated you (generally) have little communication with your spiritual team who accompanies you, to have a sense of know how well you’re progressing — the only real measure of success you have, is how you compare to others around you.
For these reasons, in this race there’s a natural predisposition for looking to the side: establishing comparisons with others in order to gauge your own value as a person, and your progress in the race. Your personal value is not something that comes from within, but a relative measurement which results from a direct comparison with others around you, and the references you have.
From this race and pressure to succeed at it, come many of today’s cultural bias of society. You have standards of beauty and youth, often and heavily picked up and manipulated by the media and marketing strategies, disseminating ideals of what male and female health, vitality, and high personal worth should look like. The hierarchy of perceived social worth is heavily influenced by appearance. This is valid for both genders, but I do consider it to be, at least historically, much more impactful for females.
In society, the worth of women tended to almost directly correspond to their youth, age, and fertility: (i.e. perceived ability to generate and raise children). Ageing impacts especially heavily in the self-esteem of women, and their perception of self-worth as well as their worth by others; from here you have several strong cultural biases that consider things like ‘life ends at 40/50’; that menopause is something reduces the worth of the woman (as the woman ceases to be able to have children), and so forth.
The rate at which you grow up, mature, become socially adjusted, have romantic experiences, and are able to create a family, is subtly but continually judged and evaluated by, parents, peers, and society. Children are often asked if/when do you get your first girlfriend or boyfriend; peers of teenagers and young adults measure the age at which virginity is lost; in many cultures getting married — especially for woman — is a milestone that equates to personal happiness and achievement. As is, of course, having children. This is the ultimate measurement of success for the overlay.
And if you happen to not achieve these things before others do, and/or before a certain age, you start to feel you’re missing something; you’re doing something wrong. You become unhappy, frustrated, depressed, as others somehow know something you don’t, because they’re able to achieve things you haven’t been able to. Your family may often put added pressure on these measurements of success (ex: “when do you get married”, “when do you have children”) as they too will tend to measure their own success in raising you, by the rate at which you manage to achieve such milestones at the race.
Cultural Overlay
At this point we’re no longer discussing a set of preferences of someone who incarnated with the desire to find love and have children. We’re now discussing a bias in perception of the society as a whole – one which becomes the standard, the norm, of assessing personal value. It’s not just a biological overlay, it’s a cultural one too.
Continually you’ll be judging, and be judged by, physical appearance, confidence, and social status, as a measurement of your personal worth in general, and your quality as a potential companion.
The way others respond to you, how others see and react to you, and how much attention and leeway you’re given by others, is considerably impacted by these values. For instance, if you’re attractive you’re intrinsically seen by others as worthy of their attention, which will be ‘granted’ to you. You’ll receive it virtually without effort, without you having to ‘do’ anything for it. Likewise, if you’re perceived as less attractive, you may struggle to be granted attention by others in this same effortless manner. You’ll feel you’re not worthy of their attention, or not as worthy. If you want to be seen in equal standing to those who are more attractive, you’ll have to work harder for it.
Obviously this not a black-or-white situation. One could definitely offer examples of charismatic, charming, and successful individuals who bypass the parameters of physical attractiveness, social acceptance, and remaining aspects of the overlay. Nevertheless, the basic principle still applies: in human society you’re being granted attention, focus, acceptance and approval by others, by default, based on these parameters.
Since this is now a collective cultural bias, it forms a type of ‘mainstream wave’, one you’ll be subjected to the moment you try to navigate society. It’s the norm; the default game you seem to have to play, engage with, if you want to draw love and acceptance from the external world, in any way. It’s a game that can be played by peers, by friends, and by family. You’re likely to be submerged in these default views, regardless if you happen to have the desire to have children or not, or if you wanted to spiritually actively participate in the race. And they will want to dictate your personal worth to you, and your priorities. If you let them.
Inner Truth
This work is titled ‘the biological race to have children’ because the standard consciousness of society places you under a thick layer of a cultural pressure which defines success under a certain set of parameters, with those parameters having their origin in the biology of the body, meant to support biological reproduction and biological success in a harsh physical world.
As mentioned in Part I, these parameters are not wrong or inappropriate by design. In that part we mentioned how the experience of establishing successful partnerships, sharing love, and raising children, are, or can be, a meaningful, powerful, and deeply transformative experience in the human life. Under no circumstance can these experiences be considered ‘wrong’ in any way.
Still, these parameters do create a strong cultural residue, so to speak, in the way society, as a norm, evaluates and judges the worth of the individual based on a certain set of principles, and then impacts the individual based on those perceptions.
This cultural coat, or overlay, constitutes an external definition of worth: by default it impairs on individuals an evaluation of quality, from the outside inward, largely based in external factors: physical beauty, social acuity, material success, etc, and which is held as important by the society as a whole i.e. external to the individual.
By being external to the inner self, these cultural values may or may not be aligned with who you really are within, and what you spiritually want to do in life. They will try to impose a type of identity, a type of values to live by. And if you subscribe to them, you’ll find yourself constantly measuring yourself to standards of beauty, life objectives, and other measurements of personal self-worth, that are external to you, and will take their toll on your personal confidence.
These values are based in competition, constant comparison, and drawing worth from the external: when you’re accepted by a potential partner through the values of the biological overlay; when you attain the next material goal, promotion, etc; when you perform better than others around you.
Subscribing to these values for the definition of your self worth will obscure your connection with your own true spiritual source of identity and worth, and may trap you in negative cycles where all you do is to try to draw as much worth as possible from the external. An example of this is what’s usually referred to as sexual addiction, where you’re seeking the spike of worth of being accepted by a new sexual partner, of being perceived as more sexually able than others, and so forth. Such imbalances can become exceptionally intense and difficult to acknowledge and overcome, because they’re being endorsed by your own biology and even by society itself: you’re seen as more successful as an individual if you’re beautiful, if you have many sexual partners, etc.
They become imbalances because you’ll spend all your time working to attain as many of such external objectives as possible, all the while pulling away and away from any internal sense of worth. To the extent you become attached to external sources of worth, you’re distancing yourself from the internal one. In other words, spiritually speaking you become lost.
Many religions and mythical philosophies can be biased against sexual impulse, the ‘pull’ of the body, romantic relationships, etc. Some will imply these are outright ‘evil’, sinful, inherently ‘dirty’, meant be shunned. While others will mention they need to be surpassed, bypassed, given up, or transcended, in order to attain spiritual mastery.
While the “guilt trip” sometimes associated with such teachings can be profoundly negative and harmful, it’s nevertheless possible to observe a common point of truth among them: deep down such teachings are meant to attempt to steer man in distinguishing what’s biological and cultural in nature, from what’s his true spiritual nature and identity. They try to pull you away from the powerful jaws of the biological overlay, into the realization of the unconditional Love of Spirit — since the former can often be at odds with the latter.
Metaphysically speaking, by subscribing to any personal measurement of worth that depends on obtaining it from the external reality, you may be drawn away, derailed, from the path that respects your own inner identity and reality. In life, at each crossroads, at each choice, you are either honoring and aligning with your inner truth, or you aren’t. And the more time you spend working for external measurements of your own quality, that’s time you’ll sooner or later have to spend remembering your own truth within, again.
Ultimately, in your personal spiritual path you will be confronted, in some way or another depending on your journey, with discerning what sources of worth in your life are external and therefore illusory, and what sources are truly meaningful and important. That doesn’t necessarily imply completely discarding any and all external sources and biological impulses, ruling them as ‘wrong’ by design. It may simply mean placing them to the side, down a notch in your inner chart of priorities, so you are free to make your choices in life, at each moment, without being bound by them.