Click for audio: The Emerging Soul
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit (John 12:24).
Considering the context in which this saying of Jesus is presented, we tend to associate it more with his death than with his birth as we celebrate it within the Christmas Season. Yet birth and death, which considered in a spiritual context, are inseparable. You cannot have one without the other.
The birth of Jesus as Savior is symbolic of the birth of the Christ in each of us, that spiritual dimension that Paul referred to as our “hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). While we’ve all witnessed the transformation from seed to plant, the mystical birth of Christ in us involves a renewal of mind (Romans 12:2), a revelation that we are more than our senses-based self-image. The self-image, in fact, is the grain of wheat, the seed to which we must die that the full glory of our soul may come forth.
Paul referred to this process as a mystery that has been hidden for ages, yet mystics of all time have spoken and written of it. People have struggled to understand and experience this elusive light, often with little success. Jesus gives us the key to this birthing process with the seed illustration. When the grain of wheat is dropped in the ground, it does nothing but let go and surrender to the transformational forces that take over. It is endowed with the intelligence, life and power to go through this change. Love softens its outer shell and draws to it the proper nutrients. The death of the grain of wheat is the birth of the new plant that will produce even more grains.
Our spiritual birth, our transformation is a letting go, a surrendering to a process that transcends the normal intellectual approach to this spiritual awakening. With the same faith we exercise in dropping a seed in the ground, we turn our attention to that inner urge for greater peace and freedom knowing it is our emerging soul that beckons.