Tuesday, April 26, 2005

"Born Again"

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When Jesus spoke of "being born again," he was not necessarily being literal, as in reincarnation-- although he might have also meant this.

As he often spoke allegorically or symbolically, especially in his famous parables, he was also speaking here of a psychospiritual process. It is one of dramatic transformation. In mysticism, to be "born again" is to receive, from the Spirit deep in the Unconscious, a new identity. Your human identity is your ego-- the name on your birth-certificate and driver's license.

But this is not your whole, or entire, identity. For, at a deep level of Mind, you are also a soul. This soul is much greater-- has much more experience, wisdom, beauty, and power than your ego. It existed, in "heavenly" realms, before this life, and will survive the death of your body and ego, at the time of your biological termination. Jesus and other masters taught that, when your mission or assignment is complete on earth, you will leave the earth, the earthlife, and the earthbody, behind. You will also have to leave behind your earthidentity. At that time, you will be "born again." You will adopt an entirely new identity; no one will even call you by your earthname.

But it is possible, while still alive, to embrace a rebirth experience or new identity. You can begin, at any moment, to identify yourself as a nonphysical soulmind. This is what deeply spiritual people have always done. You are not a body, but a mind. And deep in that mind is the soul, or soulmind. When you realize that you are a mind, you know that you are part of, arise from, a larger Mind. This is cosmic Mind or Spirit or God. This is the Lovenature deep within your unconscious Mind.

When you begin to identify yourself as Mind, not body, you begin to transcend (rise above) the merely "human" identity. You are not a body, as most human beings think; and the ego-self is tightly interwoven with the body.

Minds are not like bodies. Bodies are completely separated by membranes of skin. "You" are "in" your skin, and "I" in "mine." But minds are capable of melding and fusing in an "Interflow" process. They are not necessarily and always separate. In fact, no mind is ever "separate" from the one great Mind, the Spirit. (The illusion that it can be is the error of "duality," symbolized by the Eden story in Genesis.) So, after you have been reborn as the soulmind, you will later be reborn again, as the incarnation of the Love-principle or Lovespirit.

During our entire spiritual career as human students and learners, Love and fear exist together in the same mind. Our goal is zero percent fear and one hundred percent Love. It might well be impossible to reach this fine zenith, but striving for it makes human beings better by far. So, we keep this ideal before the mind as a longterm goal. For what we cannot do by our own power, God, through grace, can accomplish within us-- the complete erasure of all fear, and total in-filling with Love.
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