We are born four times in the universal experience of being human.
The first birth is physical. Not always so easy but we survive only because we are loved and cared for in greater or lessor degrees. You can't do it alone.
Our second birth arrives with the experience of our conscious self around the age of five (though sometimes earlier, sometimes later) along with the idea of being a person in our own right, someone separate and, sooner or later, full of problems.
If the ego matures, that is, if we understand the inner life and the value of self, then we will eventually make choices to support the birth and expression of the true self, who we really are, who we were born to be. This powerful and courageous step often happens around midlife, when we realize that we have been on the wrong road for too long. We turn around and find a truer direction, sometimes at the cost of the false life we built trying to be special by societal terms. Because the true self is the physical embodiment of the soul, the work of life's second half will the work of the soul.
There is yet one more birth, one that I have known about for years but only now understand and experience first hand. This fourth birth is the divine self. Many write about it, but very few explain or describe it well enough for us to recognize. This self is the pure, silent, thought-free consciousness that has always been there, but we were always too busy, and too polluted with goals, ambitions, thoughts and beliefs, to recognize. That consciousness is in fact divine consciousness. Dwell there, go deep, and you will find an incredible source of joy, love, and instant knowing - not knowledge, but knowing. And when we focus that pure consciousness into the bodily experience of our physical being, we become conscious being the fourth incarnation. Now we are love, bliss and instant knowing and the life divine begins. Now it's no longer about struggling to figure out what we should do or believe, for it is right there flowing out from that core consciousness and embodied in conscious being. Now there is no self in the traditional sense, for the divine self is timeless, infinite, irreducible, and awake. Now, as it comes forward, the work of our life is to remain in that consciousness, listening to it, offering every thought and action to is as paper to a flame, until "you" disappear and it is what's left.
Everything changes from the perspective of the divine self. No longer do we have goals or beliefs. Now the world itself is divine and there is no need for belief. As the mystics have been telling us forever, Heaven is already here, we need only wake up from the illusions of mind to see that all being is God - all being, including me and you, which is why dwelling in the silent interior opens the divine self and through its eyes a new world. Released from the exigencies of everyday life, many enlightened elders have the great privilege of waking up into this divinely conscious self and bringing it into the troubled world of man. We will not change the world with head-driven action, the world itself changes as more become consciousness, as it becomes a conscious world.
The first birth is physical. Not always so easy but we survive only because we are loved and cared for in greater or lessor degrees. You can't do it alone.
Our second birth arrives with the experience of our conscious self around the age of five (though sometimes earlier, sometimes later) along with the idea of being a person in our own right, someone separate and, sooner or later, full of problems.
If the ego matures, that is, if we understand the inner life and the value of self, then we will eventually make choices to support the birth and expression of the true self, who we really are, who we were born to be. This powerful and courageous step often happens around midlife, when we realize that we have been on the wrong road for too long. We turn around and find a truer direction, sometimes at the cost of the false life we built trying to be special by societal terms. Because the true self is the physical embodiment of the soul, the work of life's second half will the work of the soul.
There is yet one more birth, one that I have known about for years but only now understand and experience first hand. This fourth birth is the divine self. Many write about it, but very few explain or describe it well enough for us to recognize. This self is the pure, silent, thought-free consciousness that has always been there, but we were always too busy, and too polluted with goals, ambitions, thoughts and beliefs, to recognize. That consciousness is in fact divine consciousness. Dwell there, go deep, and you will find an incredible source of joy, love, and instant knowing - not knowledge, but knowing. And when we focus that pure consciousness into the bodily experience of our physical being, we become conscious being the fourth incarnation. Now we are love, bliss and instant knowing and the life divine begins. Now it's no longer about struggling to figure out what we should do or believe, for it is right there flowing out from that core consciousness and embodied in conscious being. Now there is no self in the traditional sense, for the divine self is timeless, infinite, irreducible, and awake. Now, as it comes forward, the work of our life is to remain in that consciousness, listening to it, offering every thought and action to is as paper to a flame, until "you" disappear and it is what's left.
Everything changes from the perspective of the divine self. No longer do we have goals or beliefs. Now the world itself is divine and there is no need for belief. As the mystics have been telling us forever, Heaven is already here, we need only wake up from the illusions of mind to see that all being is God - all being, including me and you, which is why dwelling in the silent interior opens the divine self and through its eyes a new world. Released from the exigencies of everyday life, many enlightened elders have the great privilege of waking up into this divinely conscious self and bringing it into the troubled world of man. We will not change the world with head-driven action, the world itself changes as more become consciousness, as it becomes a conscious world.