I wrote the following text to try and sell myself to a podcast, thinking I had 1000 words to do the job, then, when trying to send it, realised I was only allowed 1000 characters! So instead of binning it, I thought it still represents a shift in how I’m seeing things at this time, and the way I’m trying to create relevance around the Rebirth teaching.
So please take a read and send feedback. Thanks 🙂
Richard is a modern day yogi, who, through his own personal practise came across an experience of ‘rebirthing’. This is not a new spiritual teaching, it is perhaps the most ancient spiritual teaching, the virgin birth.
Jesus is not the only virgin birth story, there are many others too.
“Regardless, there’s nothing new about virgin births. History is littered with them.
A virgin rollcall might include Romulus and Remus, twin founders of Rome, born of the virgin Rhea Silvia. In ancient Egypt, Ra (the Sun) was born of a virgin mother, Net; Horus was the son of the virgin Isis.
The Phrygo-Roman god, Attis, was born of a virgin, Nana, on December 25. It resonates because he went on to be killed and was resurrected. In ancient Greece, Dionysos was the son of either the virgin Semele or the virgin Persephone. Persephone was also the virgin mother of Jason. And Plato’s mother, Perictione, was a virgin.
The list goes on. Hinduism, Buddhism and ancient China all have their share of them and none is more or less believable than any other myth, fable or symbol.”
At a time when we face so much uncertainty, political, economic and environmental, it seems more and more clear, that the only way out of this, is through human evolution, a change of the way we ‘see’ and ‘understand’ the world both internally and externally.
Richard does not throw the baby out with the bathwater, there is plenty of room for all the ‘spiritual’ ideas that are ‘out there’. But this experience of ‘virgin birth’ is perhaps the oldest spiritual teaching, that remains part of the conscious world we live in today. The meme of ‘virgin birth’ is very much a part of our society.
Through personal practise, Richard now understands that the ‘virgin birth story’ has been misrepresented. The ‘virgin birth’ is a meditative practise that can be experienced by anyone who is prepared to ‘die to the ego mind’, this is Jesus, dying on the cross, to then be reborn, as the Christ. This is the opening of the yogic ‘great heart knot’ the rising of kundalini energy, the experience of being present and open hearted in the here and now.
The ‘virgin birth’ involves an experience of pushing through an energetic membrane as our energetic vibration becomes subtler. The head, pushing through the membrane, is a parallel experience of the head of a baby coming out of the womb of a virgin, having to push through the unbroken hymen layer. When this membrane is pierced, the sensation of presence and lucidity are distinctly enhanced.
The virgin birth is slightly different to most mainstream practices, in that the energy comes back down the chakra column, through bindu chakra, located at the point where Brahmins keep their tuft of hair at the back of the head. This allows the practitioner to come into the greatest expansion of consciousness possible, whilst also being able to carry water and chop wood, live in the here and now. This is not cosmic consciousness (there are ‘greater expansions if we travel down the jhanic path), this is being sensitive and alive to the world within, and all about us, moment to moment.
The ‘virgin birth’ may not be the b-all and end-all of spiritual practise, but it has remained there as part of our popular culture over the centuries, being up-dated as time and culture evolved. It has been waiting for someone to understand it again and make it accessible as a key spiritual teaching.
Another key piece in the great jigsaw puzzle of life. Richard hopes this can help take mankind further towards that much needed, or make or break, shift in consciousness, to help us take the next steps of our conscious evolution, as humane beings.
Richard tells us that whilst this is clearly depicted through the Jesus story, it is also the teaching of the Buddha. The story of his miraculous birth, walking, straight after coming out of the womb, is actually a mix of his natural birth story and his ‘rebirth’ story. After he had the ‘virgin birth experience’ he would have gotten up and taken those first fragile steps of moving into the world with ‘full consciousness’.
Richard found the experience naturally through his own practise, but then also found it ‘coded’ in the Buddhist teaching of the ‘31 planes of existence’. This is the subject of his book, ‘Powers of 9’. Richard says that while he doesn’t have a lineage or spiritual teacher, the ‘numbers’ and how they bring out this teaching through sacred geometry, are his spiritual lineage.
The Buddha tells us the analogy of the ancient city that he finds in the jungle, he would then go to the king and tell him of this great ancient city that lies there overgrown in his jungle. He would tell him the way to get there, but then it would be down to the king to rebuild the city.
This is a parable for the Buddhas teachings. It wasn’t something new, it was ancient, it was the ‘virgin birth’. He could direct people to have this experience, but it was then down to them to rebuilt their ‘inner city’ through the pathways, through the jungle, of our ego-minds.
The Buddha also tells us that he didn’t develop a new practise, it is an ancient teaching that had been lost to the world, since the last Buddha had discovered it, and that when the time was right, it would be rediscovered again, and brought back into the mainstream consciousness.
Richard is not a Buddha in the classical sense of someone who lives from this space 24/7, he has experienced moments, ‘satori’s’ of awakened mind, and is a yogi in the widest sense, and very much still working out his own path to freedom from the trappings of the egoic mind.
He defines ‘mindfulness’ as a form of expansions of consciousness. We can be aware of our breath, but we can also expand out consciousness to become aware of our breath and our whole body, if we can keep expanding consciousness, it can eventually include our emotional and mental ‘bodies’, and also everything that touches the sense doors. Beyond this, we can also connect to that which transcends all these. When mind is ‘full’ of all these elements, this is the greatest ‘expansion’, the fullest experience of mind possible. This can be attained while still in the ‘sense-sphere realm’ not going into the deeper concentrations of jhanic practise.
Richard is now convinced that the virgin birth experience has a significant place as part of any spiritual practise, and now wishes to share his experiences with others, open to listen.
The fact that the virgin birth or rebirth teaching can be ‘backed up’ through the basic number system, numbers 0-9, also helps it to be seen as truly ‘universal’, not subject to any particular spiritual or religious belief system.