What does it mean to change so deeply that we do more than acquire new habits? What happens when we begin to recognise ourselves differently, and the identity we once defended no longer feels like the whole truth?
In this essay, I also read crucifixion and rebirth as images of inward transformation. This is my own spiritual approach, not a replacement for the biblical accounts or the meanings these events hold within Christian faith.
The person behind the label
I am wary of any use of the word “sinner” that makes a person’s wrongdoing the final definition of their whole being. In my own metaphysical understanding, we do not enter life as beings whose essential nature is guilt.
I do not understand the soul’s presence here as punishment for an original offence. I see the experience of separation as something through which we can turn towards the recognition of unity, rather than as a permanent verdict on who we are.
My understanding of different lives is also one of simultaneity: lives unfolding together, rather than a sequence in which an earlier offence must be repaid in a later existence. This belongs to my metaphysical view; it is not a scientific account of time, and I do not offer it as a logical disproof of another religion’s teachings.
For that reason, I keep two questions distinct. How do I understand the soul? And how do I respond to what a person has actually done?
A harmful act does not become insignificant because I believe in our underlying unity. Responsibility, protection and the possibility of making amends remain important; acknowledging what I have done is different from condemning my entire being through one unchanging judgement.
Nor do I believe that someone who follows no named spiritual path is worth less than someone who does. Awakening, as I use the word, concerns an inward turning, not a system for ranking people.
When understanding becomes lived knowledge
We can learn from books, conversations and the guidance of others. In my own faith, guidance from God also belongs here: a recognition that changes us need not arrive only through an external explanation.
Yet transformation is not the same as accumulating information. It is one thing to say that every person has dignity, and another to remain attentive to that dignity in an encounter that unsettles us.
For me, teaching received through the heart is not merely an emotion. The heart is the place of connection with the Source; the mind can then begin to understand what has been received, and our actions can give it form.
I do not mean that every strong feeling is divine guidance, or that inward certainty makes careful judgement unnecessary. I mean that spiritual knowledge is more than an explanation I find reassuring: it concerns recognition of our relationship with love and with the Source.
The familiar image of myself can obscure that relationship. I may spend so much effort proving who I am that I leave little room to discover what I have never truly ceased to be.
What comes to an end in the image of the cross?
In my inward reading, the cross can also show the ending of our attachment to a rigid self-image. I am not speaking about destroying ourselves, but about no longer having to defend, at any cost, an identity that has become too small for the truth of our lives.
That identity might say: I am lovable only if I never make a mistake. Or: I can be safe only if I control everyone around me.
Letting such convictions loosen can be unsettling. We may be releasing something that once helped us cope, even when it now keeps us confined.
But pain is not what makes the change authentic. I do not understand God’s love as a reward that becomes available only after we have suffered enough.
Neither does the language of “carrying our cross” oblige us to remain in a harmful situation. A spiritual interpretation should not make it harder to seek safety, name mistreatment or accept help.
What ends, in the reading I am offering, is the insistence that the old image must survive unchanged. What becomes possible is a relationship with ourselves that no longer depends on defending that image.
Rebirth: a different way of being present
In John’s Gospel, Nicodemus asks about being born again in physical terms, while Jesus speaks of birth through water and the Spirit. (John 3:3–8) I hear in that exchange an invitation to look beyond the repetition of an old form.
Here, I use “rebirth” for an inward transformation within our present life. I am not using it as another name for my understanding of multiple lives.
This turning can change how we relate to God, to ourselves and to one another. It may unfold gradually, or begin in a moment of recognition that places something familiar in an entirely different light.
“Purification”, in this sense, is not a certificate of personal perfection. It is the loosening of what conceals our belonging, and the recognition that love is not foreign to us.
The question is not whether I have become a flawless person. It is whether I can live more truthfully from the connection I am beginning to recognise.
What returns with us to everyday life
For me, inward change matters partly because of the world we offer one another through our presence. We do not control every circumstance, but the way we use the possibilities available to us still matters.
When fear and defensiveness no longer determine every response, we can offer a different kind of encounter. We cannot guarantee that another person will change, but our own participation need not remain the same.
Perhaps this is one quiet sign of rebirth. I no longer have to preserve everything I believed about myself in order to come closer to who I am.
With love,
Georgina
Soul4you