Birthing The Self

Pondering about the process of 'rebirth' and what it means to be 'reborn' is an experience altogether insular. Only one, the individual, can judge for a personally subjective meaning about the events and outcomes of being renewed and rediscovered. Can we be reborn in an instant? Without baptism or confirmations, or life altering experiences, can one be instantly renewed. Religion dictates a formulaic stance on rebirth. You must be baptized, according to some god theologians. You have to be treated with someone who has been given authority, and most importantly, you must have an experience similar to the steps laid forth by said religious sect. These sectarians might just call a colloquial rebirth or renewal as a 'change of heart' or a 'different perspective.' But what is so life changing about water, about symbolism and ritual that is not valid with a change that comes profoundly felt and organically experienced?

Say for instance you learn something new, you speak a personal truth and you utter a sentence that reverberates in you a completely new perspective? And that that perspective is the basis for your change that sends forth rockets of new behaviors and new forms of thinking and new visions of the self. Is this not rebirth? Is that not even as life shattering as a dipping of one's own body in water?

"Everything around me is evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality - it’s all evaporating. I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else. What I’m attending here is a show with another set. And the show I’m attending is myself." — Fernando Pessoa