You Must Be Born Again

Last week during a meditation, I heard the words, “You must be born again.” This phrase reverberated in my mind and in my heart.

I was surprised that I encountered little or no resistance when I heard this message. At one point in my life, I know that I would have had a very different reaction. I am certain that I would have immediately pushed against it strongly. However, this time the phrase landed gently in my heart and opened me to a new understanding.

The phrase comes from the Gospel of John, chapter 3, which tells the story of when Jesus visited Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a leader in the Jewish tradition. Unlike other Pharisees, Nicodemus recognized Jesus as a great teacher of truth and wanted to know more. Jesus told him that unless one is “born again” he cannot enter the “kingdom of heaven.”

The chapter continues with the most repeated Scripture in the Baptist church:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

I did not even have to look that one up!

I was taught to believe that being “born again” meant to accept the literal interpretation of John 3:16 and accept Jesus as the one and only son of God sent to “save” us from our sins.

However, when I heard the phrase last week, I knew it had nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth as savior but as a teacher of ancient wisdom.

Instead of a call to accept Jesus as my personal savior, it was a call to dedicate myself more fully to releasing all that I have allowed to blind me to seeing clearly and living in alignment with the truth of the Christ. It was a call from the Divine Mother urging me to remember who and what I am as an expression of Light, created as the image/likeness of the One Light – the Source of all that is.

I share this with you because, while the message was what I needed to hear in the moment, I believe it to be a message for all of us. If we are to “enter the kingdom of heaven” which is not a place somewhere in the ethers that those who are deserving go after death, but a state of consciousness that we can achieve now, we must be “born again.” We must return to the conscious awareness of the Light that we already are and begin to live it. When we do, we will “enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Not only we will “enter the kingdom” but we will know that we are "eternal life.”  Then, and only then, we will truly begin to manifest a world that reflects the Oneness realized in the “kingdom of heaven” consciousness.

Because it is now so prevalent in the minds and hearts of humanity and because I want to do my part in helping to keep it at the forefront, I will use racism as an example.

I grew up in the deep South, mostly in a small town and mostly surrounded by white people. I was taught, both explicitly and implicitly, that black people were inferior to white people. I was also taught that they were not as smart. They were lazy. They were alcoholics. They were dirty. They were to be pitied and helped, but not to be welcomed into “polite society.” I was conditioned by racism.

Even though there was something within me that knew those things were not true, all those thoughts, concepts, and beliefs became part of my consciousness - whether I wanted them to or not. I dare say that, even if you did not grow up in the South, you too were conditioned with many of those same ideas. They became part of our consciousness, whether we are conscious of them or not.

As I do not want to speak for anyone else, I will revert to using ‘I’ statements. As with all subconscious beliefs, these beliefs about race effect how I have seen black people, related to black people, and treated black people. While I am not proud of it, I am grateful to now be awakening more fully to the reality of it. And, I know that I still have a lot to uncover and to learn.

Gratefully, I can be “born again.” However, it is not as simple or as instantaneous as deciding to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It is a process. Yes, it requires me to make a conscious decision to make those unconscious biases conscious and to do the work to heal them. I cannot fully “enter the kingdom” and live that consciousness so long as I continue to hold an unquestioned belief that anyone or anything is something other than the pure Light and Life of the Divine. I know that I have done some of that work for which I am grateful. I am happy to say that I am going deeper with that work now.

While I have used racism as an example of the beliefs or unconscious biases by which many of us have unwittingly been conditioned, the same concept applies to any and all false beliefs that we may hold about any person, group, culture, or religion.

I watched a documentary last night on Netflix entitled Disclosure. It is a series of interviews with transgender individuals talking about the ways in which transgender people have traditionally been portrayed in the media. It was revealing for me. In a way similar to how black people have been portrayed, the media has provided us with images of transgender people as disgusting, unnatural, dangerous, and dishonest. These images have conditioned many to revile transgender individuals which has contributed to the prevalence of hate crimes against them.

Again, if we are to “enter the kingdom of heaven,” we must be “born again” in our hearts and minds by uncovering our unconscious beliefs and biases so that we not only know ourselves as the eternal life and light of the Divine, but also know all others as that as well.

For God - the Life and Light that imbues all creation – sent the only begotten emanation of itself – the Christ – into the world so that whoever makes the conscious decision to know themselves as the Christ and behold all as the Christ in expression will realize the truth of the eternal life that imbues all creation and will realize heaven consciousness, claim it and bring it into manifestation.

I invite you to join me in using the mantra, “This moment, I am born again” to affirm our commitment to remembering who we are as the Light of the Divine and to embody that truth more fully in every moment. I encourage us to especially invoke the energy of the mantra anytime an unconscious bias begins to make itself known in our thoughts, words, or actions.

Use the mantra to bring it to light, make it conscious and allow the Light to begin to transform it. One moment at time, one thought at time, one word at a time, one step at a time, we are “born again” as we remember who we are, and we come that much closer to “entering the kingdom of heaven” and making it a reality on Earth.