Articles from the Religious Research Journal

You Must Be Born Again

by Tom Hemphill

Recently I’ve been studying how life changes for many of us in our middle years.  All the jokes about the “mid-life crisis” hide a deeper reality.  There is indeed something going on – something profound, important, life changing – somewhere in our middle years.  Far more than the obvious physical, emotional and relational adjustments that typically accompany our “middle ages,” I believe this something is a spiritual gift. 

Another growth opportunity

I admit, I am among the first to bellyache about “another !#$!%+! growth opportunity.”  Still, once such experiences are engaged, growth opportunities are what have separated us from the shallow, narrow, unaware persons we used to be.  Growth opportunities are, in my book, usually not much fun.  But growth is what we are here on Earth to do, and the spiritual gift of significant growth that comes to each of us in our middle years is truly a blessing, however else it may be perceived.

There is a spiritual concept that holds that one is not fully incarnate until after one’s 49^th year – that in any given lifetime it takes seven cycles of seven years for the soul and personality to be wholly present and able to be wholly integrated.  I do not know if this is so. 

However, most of the people I see doing the hard growing that accompanies midlife are almost always in their fifties or beyond.  Only a few advanced (or over-eager?) souls seem to tackle this work whole-heartedly while still in their early forties.  Certainly for myself, facing the challenges of maturity that are associated with midlife seemed to begin in my late forties, and became a conscious focus of mind and spirit only after my 50^th birthday.

If we were more candid with ourselves, we would admit that the “middle years” of our lives begin somewhere in our late thirties and continue perhaps into our late fifties.  However, in our youth-focused society, even people well into their sixties and seventies shun the term “middle-age,” as though the admission that we are no longer youthful were something to be ashamed of.  For the sake of this article, I shall use “mid-life” or “middle-aged” to include all those who have begun to do the important inner work that marks the shift from young adult to mature human being. 

The nature of this particular group of growth challenges has been articulated by various authors, going back to the ancient Romans and Greeks.  In the last century, C. G. Jung, the great Swiss psychotherapist, wrote extensively of the difficulty of this passage.  Currently, several books are on the market that speak to this transition.  I recommend Kathleen A. Brehoney’s Awakening at Midlife.

Seeing the persona, accepting “the shadow” and becoming whole

Perhaps the most distinctive characteristics of this aspect of our spiritual journey through life are that this process of self-discovery and self-growth demands self-awareness and becomes transformational.  This is the time when one begins to step away from the careful persona we each create – that respectable, predictable mask or public face we use to interact with society and tell the world who we are. 

It is at midlife that we chafe to be “real,” to admit to ourselves and others that we are more than the persona, more than the image, a real person behind our carefully constructed mask.

According to Jung, this is the time when all of the aspects of ourselves that we have shoved down inside and not acknowledged begin demanding to come out and be expressed.  Jung called this collection of aspects of our personality “the shadow.” 

It is sometimes assumed that our “shadow self” is all of our wrong or shameful inclinations.  However, we can just as easily shut down our sense of joy, creativity, self-love, spiritual wisdom, integrity, wonder and passion.  The shadow contains that which is truly us but is not yet truly expressed.

If one thinks of this transition in spiritual terms, it is quickly obvious that your Creator created you to be – above all else – you.  You, despite all your shortcomings and inadequacies, are a unique expression of God’s own Nature.  It is the will and purpose of God that you should become truly and wholly Who You Are – as He created you to be. 

Jesus the Christ told His disciples, “You will be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  I was always taught that this meant I was supposed to struggle to be without sin – an incredibly good little boy – just as God is without sin.  But another translation of the original Greek has Christ saying, “You will become whole, even as your heavenly Father is whole.”  The Greeks associated perfection with wholeness – even as a circle is “perfect” because it is whole, complete unto itself. 

I believe it is at midlife that we begin to do the important work of self-growth that expands, heals and matures our inner wholeness.  We are guided and prodded to become wholly Who We Are, just as God is wholly Who He (She) Is.

We must step beyond our childhood Sunday School lessons about pleasing God by being good little children.  While this may be adequate teaching for children, as adults we must acknowledge that we truly honor God by becoming all that He has potentialled us to become.  To the extent that I am living less than fully Who I Really Am, to that extent I am missing God’s plan and purpose for me and Her blessing for others through me.

The early part of our adult life is focused on adapting to society and learning to play appropriate roles in society –  mother/father, husband/wife employee/employer.  It is in this part of our life that we establish ourselves in the essential relationships and roles of earth-living.  We develop a persona during this time, and the mask of relational, familial, and social acceptability facilitates this stage of our growth.  This is important work in itself, and establishes the dynamics of the inner work that lies ahead.

At midlife we come to the time when acting out a role is not enough, when “success” in business or in a marriage no longer is as rewarding as it was.  This is the time when we begin to accept that life won’t last forever.  The carefully developed persona masking our true self, which was so necessary previously, no longer serves us.  Instead, it stands in the way of moving beyond our current illusion and into our true reality. 

Now, life is short.  If we have work left to do – or joy within us still unlived – it is clear that we must find it, know it and express it now, or it will never be fulfilled.  In short, this is the time when we shift our focus from being who we ought to be in order that we have the energy and perseverance to become who we truly are.

A crisis of self-discovery

There are radical examples of this in our society: the successful businessman who throws it all away to teach literacy in the African jungle; or the new divorcee who trades the minivan for a convertible; or the mother who attempts suicide because she looks at her life and finds it pointless.   The crisis of midlife is a crisis of self-discovery. 

This profound self-discovery is scary because it involves admitting that who I have been all my life is incomplete and partly phony.   It is scary because, as I reject that which is not authentically of myself, I do not yet know what – if anything? – may step forward to take its place.  When a large piece of what felt like my reality falls away, I am left not with instant enlightenment but with what feels like a gaping hole in my personality.   Seeing this hole, this incompleteness - this is a view of the crisis of midlife.

It is at this point that many people short circuit the self-discovery process, and quickly fill their emptiness with something – work, shallow relationships, alcohol, busyness, anything.  This reaction to our incompleteness is understandable, but ultimately complicates the growth process.  Our task is not to fill our emptiness with filler, but to discover our true nature, our true purpose in life, our true self-consciousness.  Then we must fill all of our Self with Who We Really Are – and nothing but Who We Really Are.

I was blessed years ago to find a superb spiritual counselor.  One of his greatest gifts to me was to help me see that my view of “reality” was tainted by my own emotional and psychological growth – or the lack thereof!  As a young man, much of what I placed my faith in was in fact an illusion.   Facing that fact, seeing my illusions for what they were, and accepting their bias or untruth was very hard work. 

The only route from illusionment to truth is to go through dis-illusionment.  And, believe me, disillusionment is painful!

Yet, once you acknowledge that your early adult years have been spent creating a publicly acceptable mask (and to some extent believing it yourself), what is there to do but move beyond it?   And how can this be done except to acknowledge our illusions, feel the pain of disillusionment, grieve the loss of who we tried to be and might have been, and to accept ourselves as we truly are – as God made us?

This is made more difficult because most of us evolve a pleasant persona.  The pleasantness of our public self, our social self, is not a bad thing.  But the persona itself is a distortion of our own deeper truth.  At midlife, we are required to be our own real self, whether or not we are comfortable with this new self-awareness, and whether or not this true self is as pleasing or socially acceptable as was our old mask.

Birthing at midlife

The best metaphor for this growth process is, I believe, the metaphor of birth itself. 

The life of a fetus is wonderful.  Suspended in warm fluid, he rarely feels discomfort, much less pain.  All of his needs are miraculously met through the mother’s body.  Nothing is required of him, other than the physical growth of his body, over which he has no control in any event.  No effort, no pain, no struggle, no responsibilities, no obligations to meet – ah, there are days I’d give anything for a bit of that!

However, what we all know and the fetus doesn’t, is that his is a very limited life.  He lives, yes, but without self-consciousness and without choice.  The fetus lives in such a restricted manner that none of us would truly choose this for ourselves.

So what are his options?  If the fetus is to find and experience the wholeness of human life, with all its grandeur and tawdriness, joy and suffering, pleasure and pain, he has only one choice.  He must leave behind the limitations of the life that he has known and plunge headlong into a life that he cannot even imagine.

Not only that, but the only way to accomplish this is through the birth process.  From the point of view of the fetus, birth is neither pleasant nor easy.  The warm, comfortable fluid that has always defined his home disappears.  The snug, comfortable confines of his womb-world begin forcing him into a tight, awkward tunnel.  The contractions that move him forward push and pressure him in ways he has never known.  All of this discomfort, even pain – for what?

Then he is born, surrounded by loud noises, bright lights, strange sights, cool air.  It must seem like a truly horrible mistake.  How he must long to go back to the safe, quiet, warm, protected place he has always known to be his home!

What has all this to do with us at midlife?  It is at midlife that our birthing process, our process of becoming whole, true beings, gets completed.  At the moment of our physical birth, with all of its magic, trauma, accomplishment and joy, much that needed to be done was left undone.  It is as though at our birth we began the process of going from the “potential for life” of the fetus all the way to the “fullness of life” of the self-aware, mature human being.

In short, we have been some 50 years in the process of becoming fully, truly alive as God meant us to be.

The daunting part of this journey is that another birth now lies before us – a process of radical personal transformation every bit as profound as that transformation that brought us into physical life roughly a half-century ago.  We must go through the process of embracing the inner “shadow” we barely recognize, and leave behind the world of our persona – that mask that we created to get along in the world, even though we had to deny large parts of ourselves to do so. 

The process of bringing our true self into full life is a birthing process.  The fetus was alive but in a limited way – not “really alive” as we know it.  So also the young adult, unaware of how her “shadow” is influencing her emotions and directing her choices, and living comfortably behind her self-created mask, has been alive, but in a limited way. 

At midlife, whether or not we like it, we discover this to be true.  And we then face the hard choice of whether we cling to the comfortable, false illusion of life-behind-the-mask, or go through the pain of disillusionment and the stress of birthing, that we might become more wholly alive than we have ever dreamed, and more truly our self than we have ever known.

The limited living of the fetus must go through the difficult but empowering miracle of physical birth in order to know and experience the fullness of life in this physical world.  And you and I, whether or not we like it, can only move on from our limited living behind our persona as not-very-self-aware young adults by going through the difficult but empowering miracle of spiritual birth.  Thus, we know and experience the fullness of life, not as who we think we should be, but as Who We Really Are.

The re-birth of Truth, Beauty and Goodness

In the early days of Religious Research, Dr. Franklin Loehr defined “spiritual” as non-material.  That is, that which exists but does so outside of the physical universe is, by definition, “spiritual.”  Spiritual includes everything that is real, but cannot be directly measured with the five physical senses.

I use “spiritual” in this same context, to clarify that the new life that we find when we do the inner work of midlife is a non-physical birthing.  We are born to be Who We Really Are – consciousness, emotions, thoughts, relationships, self-awareness, self-love – all of it spiritual, and all of it essential for the fullness of life.

Is the metaphor of birth too strong for some midlife maturing?  Do you feel I exaggerate?  Every author I have read describes this midlife journey as transformational.  As a friend of mine says, “Tom, this is HUGE!”  And so it is.  Small wonder that we talk about it as a midlife “crisis,” for our very definition of our own reality is undermined, challenged, and must be rebuilt on new terms.

If the metaphor of “birth” seems overstated, consider it as “re-birth” or “birthing anew.”  Our English word for re-birthing or birthing anew is renaissance.  Indeed “the Renaissance” describes a time in Europe when all of the richness of life came alive after centuries of limitation.  

New explorations of mind and thought brought us great philosophers and the beginning of Science as we know it.  New explorations of humanity’s relationship with God brought us enlightenment in religion and new awareness of spirituality.  The world of creative art, sculpture and beauty flourished as never before.

Indeed, what flourished during the Renaissance was the pursuit of Truth, Goodness and Beauty.  This is precisely how the ancient Greeks defined the nature of God; simply put, the evidence of God’s presence is found on earth in Truth, Goodness and Beauty.  The European Renaissance brought all of western society into closer awareness and alignment with God’s presence and God’s will for us and for our shared life.  Re-birth is a powerful thing.

Being “born again”

Consider the words of Christ when He said, “You must be born again in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”   A disbeliever challenged Him, “What?  Must I enter again into my mother’s womb and be born again?”  And Christ replied that the re-birth that was necessary was not of the body but of the spirit.

How sad it is that well-meaning fundamentalist Christians have interpreted this passage to mean, “You must agree with our religious beliefs or you’ll go to hell.”  They even call themselves “born-again Christians.”  Yet, again and again when the Bible speaks of “the Kingdom of God” or the “heavenly kingdom”, Christ is not necessarily speaking of a post-mortem residence, but of vibrant spiritual life.

I believe Christ was telling us, “To know your greatest goodness, you must be “born again.”  You must go through a spiritual re-birthing, an inner growth, a clarity of self-awareness, a transformation, so that you are then able to live fully and truly the life that God has ordained for you. 

“You must experience a renaissance in order to stop being who you thought you were or who you thought you ought to be, and become, simply and truly, Who You Really Are.  Only in doing this will you find a fullness of spiritual knowledge – of yourself and of Life itself – and with it, inner peace.  And thus do you become whole even as your heavenly Father is whole.”

Christ was not speaking of religious dogmatism.  Indeed, He lashed out against the self-satisfied religious dogmatism of His day (which was not so very different from the religious dogmatism of today).  Christ was speaking of our spirituality, our spiritual wholeness.  And He said that it would take an experience of transformation as powerful as birth itself in order for this wondrous gift to become ours.

A birthright of wholeness

All of the evidence, from ancient philosophers, to modern psychologists, to current authors, echoes Christ’s declaration.  It is in the nature of Life itself – that is, this is part of God’s gift of Life to each of us – that we are potentialled and indeed goaded to seek and accomplish a wholeness of being that we could not imagine as young adults.  This wholeness is our birthright as children of God – not creatures made by God, but incarnate expressions of God’s own Beingness, according to Dr. John.

All the evidence is that this gift of wholeness comes to each of us in our middle years.  As with all of God’s gifts, knowing ourselves in our deepest truth, and living our lives in our greatest wholeness, is ours to choose.  It is not forced upon us.

Also, like so many of God’s gifts, it is so utterly transformational in its nature that – it is now clear - we must actually set down the life that we have known.  We must step away from the comfortable, familiar living behind and through the persona that we have accomplished.  We must choose to know and embrace our shadow, and lose our current perception of reality, in order to gain a reality far greater than any we have known, far greater than any we can imagine.

So it is that we face a transformation as traumatic as birth – in its own way frightening and even painful, even as it claims us, cleanses us, heals us, and propels us pell-mell into the fullness of life. 

What lies ahead is experiencing the fullness of self-aware life.  What lies ahead is knowing and living our own spirituality in comradeship with God.  What lies ahead is celebrating our own truth – our unique piece of God’s Truth – and no longer spending time and energy reinforcing a well-intentioned mask of partial truth. 

We no longer have to live the self-negating or spirit-denying life of trying to be other than we are.  Rather, we may now embrace, celebrate and be at peace with who we truly are - just as God made us.

On the other side of our midlife crisis, our middle-aged renaissance, our re-birth of self-awareness, there is a life of richness, depth, purpose and meaning beyond our dreams.  Indeed, we will say it is like being born again, and entering the Kingdom of the Spirit. 

And so it is. 

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