Spiritual rebirth is the transformation that arises as the ego dissolves and a natural way of being and living emerges. Some of what emerges was already there such as the space of beingness. However, some elements of transformation are unique to the individual.
Your beingness is like the canvas for a picture.
The initial unconscious ego is the picture smeared over that canvas.
As that paint drips off the canvas, a blank space is cleared for you to be…
ANYONE!
At least anyone that it is possible for you to be.
Yet, spiritual rebirth is not about holding onto this new “picture.” Rather this conscious ego knows it is made up. It knows it is temporary. We are unattached to it, and we can drop it at will.
We also create a temporary ego during this whole process. This is the inner work ego.
It knows it is useful for dissolving deeper levels of unconscious attachments. When it is unneeded or unhelpful, it is released until such time as it is needed again.
Ultimately, a conscious ego is a tool, and in spiritual rebirth, we learn how to use the tools that help us engage with the realities in front of us.
Intentional Spiritual Rebirth and Creating Consciously
One thing that people need to appreciate is that creating a new conscious ego is necessary, and it is work.
People are patterns.
They repeat the familiar patterns that they know.
They cannot do patterns that they do not know.
Many people hope things will just “manifest,” but what we find is just that pure blank canvas. No new ego. Just spaciousness.
And we find out that we’re very limited in our “drawing” abilities. We barely can finger-paint a picture of a new way of living much less use stencils, charcoal, acrylics, or all the other amazing ways we can craft ourselves.
In the collapse of the ego, we find out that we will have to deeply re-imagine ourselves. That includes learning how to learn.
Rebirth After the Collapse of the Ego
Much of this blog is dedicated to the collapse of the ego, and I’ll point you to using the search tool and checking out the different sections of this blog to read more about that as well as to a couple blog posts below.
Sacred Destruction: The Removal of Obstacles in Spiritual Rebirth
Spiritual Awakening Body Changes and Rebirth
For this post, I want to talk more about the actual rebirth of something new, which is very different than trying to be someone new.
Before the ego collapses, many spiritual seekers take detours to create spiritual egos.
The spiritual ego is a layer placed upon the old unconscious ego. This ego has lots of rules about how to live, who to like and not like, what to do and not to do, and so forth. The spiritual ego clothes itself in spiritual names, practices, ideologies, purpose and meaning, and more. It will make the individual suffer more as this new identity continues to run into the many problems reality presents to any illusory story.
However, after a true ego collapse and doing the inner work to release many attachments, there is far less concern about living any particular way. Rather, a greater focus arises on simplicity and practicality.
Spiritually Reborn and Living a Simple Life
What does a human being really need?
Clean water.
Clean air.
Nutrition
Activity.
Quality sleep.
Healthy community.
We also need safe shelter and clothing to protect us from the elements, and a couple more things like antibiotics if we have a bacterial infection.
It’s really that simple.
But modern Western Society has created a vast illusion that we need more than we do.
We’re never good enough in this culture.
Feeling Like You’re Not Enough
That’s why earlier on the path, many people object to simplicity. They come up with a whole bunch of excuses why they need so much more. Furthermore, they call that way of thinking and acting practicality.
That so-called practicality is simply an ego trying to re-justify its beliefs. It’s not practical when looked at under the lens of spiritual inquiry.
Awakening to True Practicality
In spiritual rebirth, we arrive at a mature understanding of practicality. We know what it is and how to apply it in most common situations. I say “most common” and not “all” because there are a lot of situations in life. The vastness of life is appreciated in a mature state, and that’s why spiritual rebirth is not a static position. It’s not a set of behaviors that we think works all the time.
Life is too enormous for that, and our ignorance is to monumental to have all the answers.
Instead, we understand that spiritual rebirth is a deep surrender to continued change and the unknown.
In spiritual rebirth, we stay humble because of how truly little we know.
And we stay curious.
In so doing, we continue to ask the questions of:
“What is real?”
“What is needed now?”
These humble questions guide us through our lives. Usually what we need to do or say is simple, and we tend to be rather direct about it. No ego dancing to get to a point. Just the truth.
Surrendering to Intelligent Flow and “Awakened Energy”
Awakened energy is kind of like being thrown into the river and taken along for the ride.
That’s one way to look at it.
As we wake up to reality, we don’t find “awakened energy.”
We find out that we’ve been ignorant to ourselves and to life, and we used the word “energy” as a placeholder for so many sensations and emotions that we didn’t understand about ourselves. We didn’t even have language for them.
In accepting our ignorance, we become wise.
In becoming wise, we surrender, and we watch how ego structures seem to fall apart on their own. Most do because without our continued engagement with ego thought, emotion, sensation, and action patterns, the ego structure cannot exist.
The ego is a doing.
When we surrender and watch it, the ego is not being done anymore. The residual inertia and momentum of those patterns may need a minute or three to breakdown, but they do.
Then we start to watch a different kind of flow and intelligence.
We start to watch LIFE.
Life is a force. We surrender to that force. In so doing, it is easier to handle the easy moments and the difficult moments when we go with that flow rather than paddling against it.
Flowing When Your Life Is Hard
Embracing Difficulty
Life gets difficult. There is pain, and while we become free of suffering after spiritual rebirth, other people in our lives will continue to suffer.
How deeply we can surrender to the suffering of others is often a test of spiritual maturity. Some people can handle their own suffering better than seeing others struggle. This is often true of parents watching their children suffer.
But suffering is part of this world, and human beings choose it. Even if they don’t understand that they are choosing their suffering, that choice must be honored until someone decides that they want freedom from their suffering.
Additionally, there are all kind of difficult events that can arise. The spiritual path doesn’t remove external world difficulty. Disease is difficult. Certain aspects of aging are difficult. The way people act out their suffering to inflict pain on other people can be difficult.
However, the person who has fully come through the process of spiritual rebirth understands this, and they find natural, practical, and intelligent ways to move through difficult periods.
The Spiritual Rebirth Process Overview
The spiritual rebirth I am talking about today doesn’t mean total spiritual freedom. Rather, it is a maturation point where someone has shed so many internal attachments that a sense of what is natural is much more clear.
Natural is not necessarily easy. It is not a feeling-state. It is a clearer lens on what is real and a focus on engaging with what is real.
For example, focusing on great nutrition is a natural choice. It makes the body feel its best.
7-Day Jim Tolles Breakfast Challenge
To use my usual seed/plant metaphors, consider this overview of the spiritual rebirth process:
- The seed (The unconscious ego shell protects the potential for human spiritual growth).
- The shell cracks through awakening or gradual spiritual work (The initial ego begins to dissolve, which occasionally feels blissful, peaceful, etc. in moments of openness).
- A time of moving through the dirt/darkness follows (This time has a lot of healing from ignorance, attachments, and pain).
- Emerging above ground into the light and adjusting to the light (There is more healing and some spiritual growth).
- Maturation and flowering (The person stabilizes internally while continuing to grow and dissolve deeper levels of core issues and attachments).
- Bearing fruit (The person lives and acts in new ways in the external world and completes their spiritual rebirth into a new person, but s/he has not yet realized total spiritual freedom).
- There is no plant. (This is when spiritual freedom is fully realized).
Another Conscious Choice After Rebirth
There is no plant is not an idea.
It is a realization and a reality.
The deeper, subconscious levels of attachment to the illusions of separation and individuality haven’t given way at the bearing fruit stage. Additionally, some of the biggest illusion are typically alive and well despite being the most obvious. When the cultural idea of “progress” is everywhere, it is hard to see. When it is pointed out, a person may not be able to accept how truly toxic the idea is to them and all the ways they’re attached to it.
So even with a great amount of inner transformation, many people will be satisfied with this bearing fruit level of spiritual realization.
However, the deep roots of illusions can grow back. They can tangle and strangle the fruit bearing apple tree (or whatever tree you’d like this metaphor to be). Things can be distorted, and a bright clear spiritual person can be pulled back down to the ground and the decay of darkness (ego ignorance).
Which is why some of us continue on to cross the chasm.
When Inner Changes Become Outwardly Noticeable (Video)
The Spiritual Chasm Ahead
Crossing the spiritual chasm is the final leap into total spiritual freedom. Nothing can be held onto. The drives to survive and procreate are surrendered. The illusion of individuality is dropped.
No attachment can be carried across this final chasm.
It can seem shocking for some of who have felt like they’ve progressed so far– even to the point where the idea of progress is meaningless – to now stand on the edge of this cliff seeing the vastness in front of them. Some will turn back. Again and again, the power of our deepest attachments cannot be overstated. Few people will ever even arrive at the edge of this cliff, and fewer still will make the leap.
And it shouldn’t be and can’t be made for any ego desire.
The hopes for a better life or for spiritual achievement are false. There is nothing for the ego to attain in this leap. It is simply a calling beyond the human ego self that arises and lifts the person into this final phase of transformation beyond transformation.
Sustainable Spiritual Transformation
Naturally Living in the World
This is all I’ll say about the chasm and what comes beyond for now.
Instead, let’s finish this blog post appreciating the blank canvas in front of you.
Let’s appreciate that this free space to draw and create in any way possible for you is profoundly easier than living an ego life.
Let’s notice that this arrival in being spiritually reborn continues to be a daily surrendering to what Is.
Let’s understand that there never was anything in the way of this canvas except the illusion of you.
This is enough for now.
(Updated 7/7/2024)
4 Comments
<3 Beautiful, as usual.
Thanks!
I feel as though you have articulated what I am unable to express in words. What an extraordinary life this one is, and the unknown is the most beautiful muse for the journey. Thank you so much Jim.
You’re welcome, Lora. Great to have you still connecting on this journey after so many years.