Driving down the street, I saw a bumper sticker. It said… Born Once… Die Twice, Born Twice… Die Once. I began to really ponder the message Christianity applies here – the intent with this message is that we are born of the physical body and will die but unless accepting Christ as your savior, we will face the final death in judgment with a price of eternally surrendering our soul; to be granted eternal life is to go through a process of becoming reborn. It is logical that we will die a physical death, but I feel this theory is a one-pointed thinking that can hold us from experiencing our true divinity. To place any limitations on the soul is to believe that we are not holy. And we are.

I wish that my spiritual journey was as simple as to mutter a few prayers and find complete fulfillment in transformation, but living a sacred life for me has been a constant journey of endurance, faith, and acceptance. Did I mention faith? Through my own experiences, I began to see a paradox: life is death, and death is life.

Life is a continuous process of aging and dying; the soul is eternal, expressed through the many experiences made possible by the physical body, as it naturally moves through cycles of change; just as nature moves through the ever-changing phases of spring into summer, fall into winter, the body is born, lives, and then dies.

I wanted to explore some of the deeper meanings that I recognized in reading this message. As in all religions, there is truth, not what is made true by one defined perception. Love is… and I believe that God is Love. Separation from Love is a choice. When God says to love one another, I believe he meant without holding back; perhaps death is merely symbolic of the loss we feel when we restrain ourselves and base choices in control that is fear based, rather than what is loving, pure and free.

Embracing our spiritual consciousness is believing in the perfect self-expression of our divinity through our actions as we completely open and share love with others. Christ consciousness is made truth by the acceptance of our virtues, such as humility, compassion, and integrity; it is love made manifest into form.

This consciousness is found in the recognition of our authenticity as we rid ourselves of the judgments made from the false projections of personality that we chose to embody. We are letting go of all of the masks others want us to wear. We are also freeing ourselves of all of the false beliefs that we have accepted to wear. A gateway into this consciousness is through an inner process often called the dark night of the soul. In this darkness, we can see our divinity, not limited by the judgments and fears that inhibit us from truly expressing how precious we are.

The desire of the will is to express the soul’s intent through the creation of our everyday experiences. Spirit is born through the inception of an idea and made form through our choices and beliefs. If there is no experience based on personal beliefs for the soul to feel and learn by, our virtue is oppressed and we remain stagnant. Experiences are created but the manifestation is not in alignment with the spirit and soul; desire is oppressed by the denial that did create the experience. Over time this denial of our expression suffocates the true passions buried within our heart; we feel lost, alone, and full of fear.

As a way of balance, our soul can go through a process that is often called the dark night of the soul, which can offer illumination through the discovery of our self as we begin to accept and recognize our innermost feelings and desires.

We long, we fear, we judge, we deny, never fully expressing our true nature, often afraid of its intense power to love, and the great responsibility that power brings. Acceptance and forgiveness can offer the gateway to where we find the freedom to live and the capacity to love unconditionally. Maybe the truth is that we are really dying a little bit every day. Self-denial keeps us stuck in mourning, portraying life as the death experience we ultimately fear. When physical death does occur, we leave this body without ever truly recognizing the brilliant nature of our essence.

People often fear being alone, far more than they fear death. Children begin life, untouched by the oppression of fear and judgment that inhibits creativity. Understanding is limited until experience teaches them otherwise. The child’s imagination can take him to another reality, to a safe place where there is never a sense of being alone. He makes his way by entertaining himself with just about anything because in his mind, the imagination is full of potential and full of spirit.

As we grow, that innocence is not taken away, but squelched and silenced over time by all of the rules and expectations placed on us by our self and others. We grow into adulthood with only a glimmer of our true essence displayed. The loneliness we feel is the loss of the imaginative and creative aspects of our personality. Trauma and betrayal can pivot us into these dark moments of grief that sometimes can take months and even years to mourn, but once we have accepted our pain, we can finally heal. How much of life is spent on things that have happened in life? It is not possible to experience the opportunities that wait today when there is so much attachment to the past. We should not fear this dark night; instead, we should embrace it.

Going into this descent that feels like hell is where we enter our unconsciousness or soul. We plunge into this inner world that has no eyes so we are no longer able to deceive ourselves with the projections of how we think things should be. We can only see by feeling our way around the darkness; wisdom is gained through the acceptance of our emotions as we begin to discover how things really feel to us, not by how it appears. We can now embrace all the aspects of ourselves that have been feared, denied and judged by our perceived failures and inadequacies: the cloak of emotional baggage that we wear that often protects and distracts us from the pain we are feeling deep inside.

The Universe acts in paradox. Everything about life has its polar opposite. Just like day has night, truth has deception, love has apathy; each polarity acts as a mirror so each element can be expressed and embraced, and eventually integrated into our wholeness. Maybe the purpose of looking through the dark lens that resembles death is so we may appreciate the gift of living.

If we open to our spiritual unfolding through these cycles of death and transformation, we can look forward to the changes that occur with rebirth. Liberation takes place as we begin to release the attachments that keep us stuck in the reflection of physical reality, so we may embrace a lighter, more natural state of existence.

Responsible imagination is not being caught in a whimsical fantasy of romance, rather applying our childlike innocence and wisdom both in harmony. It is allowing ourselves to fully utilize what we have learned in life regarding how we relate to ourselves and in our relationships with others. Creating attitudes of no longer desiring to be victim or to blame others based on our own fear, we can now rewire the outdated patterns. We find the courage and creativity to release us from the situations that are no longer serving our old ways of responding; this process is purging and shedding anything that does not have value within our own integrity and authenticity. Through embracing our uniqueness, we allow inspiration to blossom and cultivate our creativity.

Challenge yourself to view life as a constant process of letting go, and death as the freedom that acceptance can offer. By not celebrating life, we are slowly dying inside. Maybe through this experience of the dark night, we are somehow cheating death. Through these deep inner changes, we learn to shift away from someone who we “think we should be” into embracing who we really are. By having faith in the spiritual process of death and rebirth, we are accepting the freedom to explore the depths of our imagination and move beyond ourselves so we can follow our dreams. Who you are is becoming crystal clear as you continue to walk into that unseen place that resides within. It is in this darkness that you will meet the face of God.