I know death and rebirth are themes better suited to Easter than Christmas, which focus is (supposedly) the birth of Christ into the world. But the world is currently ablaze in the throes of awesome change.
Who knows where we’ll be in four months time?
So, rather than looking backwards 2000 years and celebrating Christ’s birth, I figured why not celebrate where we are right now amidst the ongoing, rapidly expanding birth of Christ consciousness in humanity?
Not the “rebirth” but the birth. One bright flame at a time.
The myth
To help facilitate this awakening, methinks it’s time to abandon the whole “rebirth” mythology.
Humans have a tendency to project their own thought patterns—especially their fears—outward in order to get a handle on their issues. And storytelling is one way we do this.
The myth of the phoenix comes from the ancient Egyptian myth in which the grey heron, the Bennu, was associated with the sun god Ra. According to the story, at the end of its life the Bennu would spontaneously burst into flames and then rise anew.
In the myth of the phoenix we have the added concept of “self-awareness.” Or what, up until now, has passed for self-awareness—meaning the illusion in which the “self” is basically limited to the flesh.
The phoenix was supposedly the only living being aside from humanity to be endowed with the sacred knowledge of what we call “death.”
All the rest of life—the beasts, the birds, the fish, the flowers—was just stupidly going along, living day-to-day without the slightest awareness of the terrible end that would inevitably draw nigh, cutting their play date on Earth short.
Permanently.
Only humanity and the phoenix had the right awareness. And the whole point of creating the myth of the phoenix, was to wake humanity up to the right action to take with this knowledge.
Which right action was: prepare for your demise.
Instead of freaking out and dwelling in fear, drinking itself into a stupor, desperately trying to avoid the terrifying inevitability of ending, upon seeing its death draw nigh, unlike humanity, the phoenix would prepare a nest of wood and resin and expose the nest to the full force of the sun’s rays. (The sun being the source of illumination and enlightenment.)
Perched resolutely upon the pyre it had built, the phoenix would absorb the light of illumination and would burst into flames along with the wood, and thus be reduced to ashes. Then, miracle of miracles!
Out of these ashes would arise another phoenix.
A phoenix wiser than its predecessor. A phoenix awakened to physical immortality that would never die again! A phoenix that very soon became associated with the philosopher’s stone and the alchemical process of turning lead (dumb humanity) into gold (awakened immortal humanity).
Wow.
Pretty soon we had a bunch of alchemists living in the basements of the castles of their overlords, hunched over their bunsen burners (or what was used for bunsen burners in the 10th century), messing around with everything from cow dung to saltpeter, mercury to sulfur, trying to create “elixirs of immortality,” writing mysterious texts, professing to know the Secret of the Ages.
Satanists and vampires drank blood to retain their youth and hopefully attain a longer life. Mayan priests conducted human sacrifice—hoping to strengthen the bond between themselves and the gods, thus enhancing their chances of achieving immortality.
Meanwhile, Christianity hopped on the bandwagon, offering up the image of the sacrificed Christ on the cross rising from the dead after three days—yet another symbol of immortality that could only be achieved through much struggle, pain, and personal sacrifice, along with plenty of rule-following and tithing to the priests and the purchase of papal indulgences guaranteeing passage into heaven.
What a mess!
Humans running around, desperate, frightened, crawling on their knees, doing all sorts of crazy things to themselves and others—self-flagellation, castration, human sacrifice, drinking foul concoctions—trying to attain the right actions and information that would spare them from the inevitable.
What the … ?
Meanwhile, all the “dumb” beasts of the field, creatures of the sea, and other birds of the air were living life fully and mostly contentedly, every day all day, including the day and moment of their physical bodies’ last breath.
Does something seem wrong with this picture?
Is this “ignorance is bliss” in action? Or are we missing something here?
Beyond the myth
Back to the whole idea of self-identity.
How do you identify your “self?” Do you identify self with something? Like physicality? For Pete’s sake, physicality isn’t really physical. Every “thing,” including us, is energy. There’s no teeny-tiny point particle down at the bottom of things—no materiality here whatsoever.
The whole concept of physicality—including its ending—is a mind virus.
How can something that never existed ever end?
It can’t.
Seriously. Pause for a second and take that in.
How can something that never existed ever die?
The physical body seems very real. And in its own way, it absolutely is. It’s just that what the body really is and what we’ve come to believe it is (and thus concretize) are two very different things.
The body is an image—from the Latin root imaginem, which, among other things, means “phantom, ghost, apparition, idea, appearance.” AKA not physical.
But as we believe, so it is.
And what has been left for us to believe in anyway?
For thousands of years we’ve been programmed to forget our real nature as spirit beings of pure love. We’ve been programmed to project spirit as something “out there” and inaccessible. As something “other” than us. Something to be attained … like immortality.
And then we get handed myths like the phoenix to chase after. And attaining “salvation” by following the rules of religion.
Reframe
Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of people say the words, “I’m not afraid of death.” And I’ve always marveled at their audacity. Or faith. Or something.
Do they really mean that? I would think. Or are they just kidding themselves?
Even though I’ve had the experience of breaking through the illusion of materiality, living for days with no sense of personal identity as a physical human being, recognizing and embracing my eternal spirit nature (see my essay “God”), seventeen years down the road spent living and perceiving myself once more as a physical human, even though I know it’s an illusion, there’s still fear in me around “death.”
It’s that ingrained an idea.
It’s THE idea—the control mechanism—wielded against humanity like a club.
The concept of physical death (remember, that which never existed in the first place can never die) is THE basis of all fear in humanity. And fear is the main tool of control.
The concept of death is a deliberately created mind virus that’s infected us, along with the concept of being physical.
So, how do we get beyond the illusion of materiality and death? Well, meditation is the best tool I know for dealing with the former and thus the latter. That and seeing all the other self-images and their passing for what they really are: Fleeting self-images—selves that die over and over again—without our even noticing it happened.
For example, the little kid “me” desperately wanted to be a grown up. And it happened. The kid died somewhere between age 12 and 18 without a whimper of regret and no eulogies for her passing.
The image of me as a college student died and was replaced by the image of myself as a successful television editor. The single woman died when I got married. The married woman died when I got divorced.
The image of myself as a “spiritual person” died when I saw that spirituality was just one more label, one more illusion I’d adopted as real and draped myself with.
The death of those many selves was not felt or even noticed. It just happened. And so it is with the image transition called physical death.
What’s real—the self—just walks on never even noticing the change …
Unless …
Unless there is so much terror and desperate clinging to the body at the point of “death” that what is created is trauma instead of transition. Which situation creates instant—or nearly instant—rebirth on the Wheel of Samsara, a continuation in the cycle of Earthly birth, death, and rebirth, and death and rebirth, and death and rebirth, and death and rebirth, and …
You get the picture.
Without the fear and trauma (which we have been deliberately programmed into) what new experience does the self/spirit walk on into … ?
Honestly, I don’t know. I obviously haven’t yet managed such an easeful transition! If I had, most likely I wouldn’t be here in this supposedly material form writing these words.
Which, now that I’ve arrived at this point in the essay, I realize aren’t exactly “Christmas-y” words at all.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is the most Christ-like message/gift I could possibly offer this time of year. Certainly the man called Yeshua ben Joseph knew better than to believe solely in his physical nature and death. And we’re still holding him up as a shining example of Who/What We Really Are over 2000 years later.
And the angel of the Lord cried, “Fear not!”
Maybe it’s time we listened?
Hugs and much aloha ~