The period of time we will be considering on Saturday is your conception – your very earliest moments when your Soul chooses and enters a body.
This moment of conception when the sperm meets the egg which science terms fertilisation is a short moment in a longer and fascinating journey. In this lesson I will share with you some of the interesting facts of that journey and at the end there are some reflective journal style questions for you to contemplate before we meet on Saturday.
Here's a quick summary of the full process:
On the female side a mix of hormones prompt the egg to mature and be released into the fallopian tube where it travels slowly towards the uterus. Following ovulation it will live for only 12 to 24 hours if it is not fertilised. The sperm, in contrast can live for 5 days and must travel to meet the egg in the fallopian tube during this short window.
There are a fair few challenges for the 300000 or so sperm that undertake this journey. They must navigate thick fluids, multiple dead ends, and potential hostile immune cells. They are helped though by uterine contractions that guide them towards the tubes.
For the few hundred to 1000 that make it this far they now need to penetrate the zona pellucida, which is a membrane surrounding the egg which contains sperm receptors that are specific for human sperm. When a sperm has penetrated this membrane, it becomes impermeable to the remaining sperm.
Once fertilised the nucleus of the sperm travels to the nucleus of the egg and they fuse creating a zygote In scientific terms - the sperm and egg haploid pronuclei fuse, and the chromosomes align on a mitotic spindle. The resulting zygote is a diploid organism with a complete set of chromosomes!
This single cell is your smallest physical manifestation of yourself! All the genetic information that will develop into the you that you are now is complete.
The zygote remains as a single cell for at least 12 hours before beginning the process of cell division. After 3 days there are 16 cells and it is called a Morula. As it does this it continues its journey down the fallopian tube. It takes a 30 hour rest at the ampullar isthmic junction while the uterus prepares for the pregnancy. It then takes a more rapid journey to the uterus continuing cell division (mitosis) as it goes. It completes this transition and on about day 6 or 7 reaches the uterus and the blastocyst as the tiny, pin head sized bundle of hundreds of cells is now known, bursts out of the protective zona pelludica and implants into the lining of the uterus – completing the process that results in pregnancy.
Of course the science is mostly about measuring and defining at the level of hormones, mechanics and processes and we are more concerned with the energetics and the resulting implications for our lives and living in fulfillment now. And it is interesting to contemplate where those two meet.
I invite you to read two facts reported from science but with a more open curiosity of what else may be going on at other levels.
Fact 1: The egg plays a significant role in which sperm is successful.
Most of us were taught in school that the fittest and strongest sperm wins the race but recent science tells us a more nuanced story than that.
A recent study in 2020 shows that the egg has an input in to which sperm are successful. The egg releases chemoattractants into the follicular fluid which influence how the sperm swim. The study showed that ,
"Follicular fluid from one female was better at attracting sperm from one male, while follicular fluid from another female was better at attracting sperm from a different male…. This shows that interactions between human eggs and sperm depend on the specific identity of the women and men involved." Says Professor John Fitzpatrick assistant professor in the department of zoology at Stockholm University in Sweden and co author of the 2020 study this is quoted from. Chemical signals from eggs facilitate cryptic female choice in humans published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Fascinating stuff. From the body consciousness perspective the egg is probably seeking a genetically diverse match that will produce the strongest offspring. And she didn’t necessarily favour the sperm from her actual partner…. From our perspective here, where we are looking at the energetics of our birth blueprint and using this focus as an opportunity to transform our experience as a human for the better – I suggest allow this information to sink in and be curious and open about your Soul’s experience of the journey of conception.
Fact 2 : The spark of life
I’ve often wondered when exactly the soul enters the physical body – is it an instant moment or is it spread out over time. I suspect both as I feel we have a wider awareness as a soul and a different relationship with space time and matter than we can comprehend as humans.
That said… there is a moment during fertilisation where a spark of light flashes that can be measured with a fluorescent probe. As the sperm enters the egg, there is a release that floods the area around the egg with zinc. Physiologists think that the zinc helps to strengthen the egg membrane to stop additional sperm from getting into the egg. Which is undoubtably true and I wonder what else is happening in the burst of energy beyond our scientific measurements and attempts to understand?
Here are a couple of short videos for those of you interested in the science. And then I would like to invite you to the next lesson for a short reflective exercise.
Links to videos:
Click this link to view the spark in action (11 seconds)
For a more indepth look at the science check out this TEDEx talk (14 minutes)
