The New Birth Experience (A Psychological Perspective)

​      Through my palliative care ministry, one of my clients asked me about the Christian “born-again” experience.  One of his professional caregivers was highlighting it, and was asking if he had had a born-again experience.   He had no response for her for he was not sure what she was getting at.  In this blog, I want to explore these new birth experiences through the lens of Internal Family system for it provides a helpful framework from which to understand these sacred moments.
        

​      These born-again episodes are often stressed within the Evangelical tradition of the Christian Church.   I don’t remember them being highlighted within the United Church tradition I grew up in but when I got involved in the modern Mennonite Church in my teen and adult years, I became aware how these born-again experiences had often led to conflicts within this denomination, sometimes leading to church divisions.    These new birth  experiences often grew out of revival services that were designed to help people have such sacred moments which renewed these people’s faith in God. 
        Since not everyone had such ecstatic conversion moments, this led to questions and confusion around why this was  the case.   In many cases, judgement arose from both sides.  For those who didn’t have such renewal moments, their Christian faith was judged by those who did have a born-again experience as a mediocre faith, people not in touch much with God’s spirit.  On the other side, those, who didn’t have such sacred moments, often judged these moments of conversion as times of emotionalism that didn’t lead to significant change in a person’s character and how they lived their life.  Personally, I think there is truth in both of these critiques. 
      I became very aware of the conflictual nature of born-again experiences when I married into my wife Valerie’s family in 1986.   Such a renewal movement had divided her father’s family in the late 1960's.  Two of his brothers had left her father’s Mennonite church for a more evangelical church due to having profound rebirth experiences.  These brothers were also stressing to the rest of her father’s family how essential these conversions moments were to the Christian faith.  They believed that such salvation experiences determined one's destiny in the afterlife,  heaven or hell.   This often led to family tensions, and for my father-in-law, he struggled with his faith for his brothers’ questions often caused him to doubt his Christian faith: “Was he saved by God or not?”  Furthermore, these doubts fed his anxiety about his destiny in the afterlife.  
       

​       Personally, I was troubled by the conflict these born-again experiences were creating within the church, not just the Mennonite Church, but many churches leading to church divisions over the decades.   I also had questions.  Why did some people have born-again experiences while others did not when embracing the Christian faith? 
       Furthermore, I found these rebirth conversations interesting for I personally could relate to the born-again experience.
      During the third year of my university education , I had a profound sacred moment that shifted my faith dramatically from an intellectual faith based on theology and beliefs to one that was based on spiritual experience.   This shift was triggered due to a faith and self esteem crisis I was going through due to relationship mistakes I had made in my  high school/university years as well as struggles at university.  I remember reaching a place one evening when in tears I prayed to God to prove to me that God was real…and if God would do that, I would reset my life and reorient my life around my faith.  
      The next morning, I awoke and began looking for signs to see if God had answered my prayer.    In the process of looking, I sensed that something had changed in the way I experienced life.  I began to see signs of God’s spirit active in my life. Coincidences, here and there. My heart was more alive and sensitive.  I remember going to a movie theatre for a normal movie and throughout the film seeing connections and helpful insights that spoke key truths about life in general.   It felt like God was mysteriously speaking to me.   It’s hard to explain.  All I know is that these strange mystical experiences made me realize that there was another realm to life beyond the physical:  the spiritual.  I woke up to a new way of seeing life, a new way of being. 
  

​    I remember going to the local library and reading tons of pop psychology and spirituality books, going on prayer retreats, and attending church growth retreats for I was longing to understand better what I had and was experiencing within my life.  Eventually after four years being a computer programmer/analyst for Canada Trust, I went to seminary to get my Master of Divinity and became a pastor.    As I reflect back over my life now, I see that my life journey has been about seeking to understand the mystery of this mystical rebirth experience through training as a pastor (1989-1993) , then training as a spiritual director (1997-1999), then training as a psychospiritual therapist (2001-2006), and then training as a supervisor-educator of psychospiritual therapy (2017-2020).  
      I have come to see this spiritual rebirth experience as something essential to the Christian tradition, and an experience that appears to be unique to the Christian faith.   
       Biblically, there are many places where this rebirth experience is highlighted.   A key story occurs when Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader (Pharisee), secretly meets with Jesus one night.  Here, Jesus tells him that  “no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’" (John 3:  5-7).    Within the story, it is apparent that Nicodemus had no idea what Jesus meant by spiritual rebirth.  It was a foreign experience to him.    So, it should not be surprising that Christian leaders today would also struggle in understanding this "born again" experience. 
       Apostle Paul also talks about the spiritual rebirth in many of his letters to the early church.  In his letter to the Roman church, he stresses being "buried with Christ through baptism into death so that we will be resurrected into a new way of life"  (Rom. 6:4).   To the Galatian church, he highlights the importance of being crucified in Christ for it doing so, the spirit of Christ will live in us (Gal. 2: 20).  Finally, to the Church of Ephesus, he emphasizes the dying to the old corrupted self so that we can put on a new self and mind that reflects the righteousness and holiness of God (Eph. 4:22-24).  

     So, what is happening psychologically in these "born-again" or spiritual rebirth experiences?   It is here that I have found Internal Family System (IFS) teaching of "unblending" so helpful in unpacking what is actually psychologically happening in  these sacred experiences.  
       Blending occurs when our sense of “I” merges with the egoic structures within our soul.   This is a very common human experience.   When we become angry, our sense of “I” often merges with that egoic part of us that contains the feeling of anger along with our thoughts, beliefs, memories, body sensations and narratives  that are connected to this angry part.   As a result, we just experience ourselves as an anger person.   Then something happens and we feel anxious, and our sense of self merges with this anxious egoic part that contains all our thoughts, beliefs, memories,  body sensations, and narratives to this anxiety. We now experience ourselves as an anxious person.    From an IFS perspective, these egoic parts are protective in nature.  They keep us from feeling the pain often found in parts from trauma in life or attachment wounds from our childhood.  
       Now for most people, this merging process is what happens to them almost all of time.  Their sense of “I” is constantly merging with egoic parts within their soul...an anxious part, then a “pleasing others” part, then a numbing or avoiding part, then a video gaming part, and so on.   They rarely experience themselves, their sense of “I”,  from their egoic parts.   Even when we go to church or to our faith institution, many of us find themselves worshiping the Sacred from a place where we are blended with our parts:   “pleasing God” part, “making sure one believes the right things” part, “fitting in with expectations of others in the faith community” part, etc.  We rarely experience ourselves when we are not blended with one of our many parts. 
        When we unblend from our egoic parts, the opposite happens.  Instead of us merging with our anger, or anxiety, or lust, or addiction, or depression, or grief, or hatred,  we find ourselves unblending from these intense parts and moving internally into a more spacious, open, and calmer space.          

   Within this unblended place, separate from my parts, we experience this unblended space as a "being" space.   In this being space, there is no managing my feelings, no thinking, no striving or pushing to make things happen.   Instead, we are simply being with our experience of life, observing and noticing what is happening within that experience.  We may also choose to join with the dynamics we notice arising within us.  When we are in this unblended place, the spiritual dynamics of Being/Sacred start to emerged within our experience toward what we are noticing.  
      I still remember clearly the time one of my clients, who lives with Dissociative Identity Disorder, experienced the dynamic of unblending for the first time.   They had always experienced themselves through the blending of one of their parts or alters.  The feelings of self rejection and worthlessness had dominated their life for decades.  Now, with unblending happening, they were were having experiences of  "me" that were free of this merge.   In this unblended place, they were far more accepting of self, still had a little doubt, but much more accepting of self and feeling more capable.  Now, they felt it was OK to be "me" and that was good enough.  They noted that when this unbending was happening, their sense of internal struggle was missing.  Instead, they felt that they would be OK no longer matter if others accepted them or not.  
      Can you imagine what happens when these people, who are often merged with their egoic parts. go to a spiritual revival meeting?   Sometimes during that event,  due to the moving music or the powerful influence of a dynamic speaker, their sense of “I” unblends from their many parts, and they drop into a deeper nondual experience of the sacred where no merging is happening.

        Here, in this unblended state, they experience Divine love, compassion, and many truths that speak to their hearts and minds, and their sense of “I” feels so alive.   They often feel a deep sense of being God’s beloved, just as Jesus encountered in his baptism when he heard God say these words to him “You are my beloved child and I treasure you”  (Mark 1: 11).  They encounter deeply a totally different way of experiencing themselves, one that feels very real and authentic. 
       What I have described from an IFS perspective is a born-again moment, a rebirth experience that arises when unblending happens in profound ways.   Clearly such profound moments are very healing to people.  No wonder these people get so excited by what had happened to them and want others to experience it too.  
       The challenge with such strong born-again experiences is that sometimes our ego quickly finds ways to structure such powerful moments into a  "born-again" egoic part that keeps deeper healing from happening.    That sacred born-again moment can become a powerful rigid identity structure where people believe that they are fully saved,  that they are going to heaven, and that God has chosen them to be a missionary whose goal is to save "unsaved" souls.    As a result of these fixed beliefs, these people  can fall into the trap of believing that they are fully saved and that no further spiritual transformation is needed.    In reality, these significant spiritual rebirth occurrences are just the beginning of the faith journey and often provide the way for deeper healing to happen in the future.   ​

       Another way these born-again experiences can become structured is that they become like an addictive drug.  This is why some people almost become addicted to having such born-again experiences over and over again.   We are constantly seeking these sacred born-again experiences.   When this issue arises, we now have a “born-again” egoic part that we merge with that keeps us from unblending and dropping in the mysterious dynamics of Being that opens the door to healing aspects of our often unconscious fallen egoic nature.    
     From an IFS perspective, this born-again experience is just one unblending moment, a powerful one for sure, but many more transformational unblending times are needed on the journey toward spiritual integration and wholeness. ​

​       So far I have focused on people who have had rebirth experiences.  While many people are often blended with their egoic parts, there are also many people who are either not blended most of the time with their parts, or their parts are not as problematic.   
       Due to being raised in more caring environments and not being exposed to traumatic events in our life, we find themselves having less powerful egoic parts in our soul that we merge with fully.   Instead, our sense of “I” is more present in our life, and when our egoic parts do become active, merging does happen, but we are able to unblend more easily and return to our more natural unblended state, or when we are merged, our egoic parts don't affect our lives as severely.   We don’t experience the rebirth experience in profound ways like some people do for our sense of identity was never connected consistently to our merged parts.  
        However, many of us still long to experience that sense that we are one of God’s beloved children.  Within our western culture, there is a huge emphasis on the mind and learning.  We spend a lot of our awake time in what is called dualistic awareness, where there is sense of “I” that is analyzing and interacting with a world outside ourselves.   Through an IFS lens, I would call this persistent dualistic way of interacting with life a sign that our sense of “I” is merged with our mental egoic part.   We can do lots of theological, Biblical and ethically thinking from this mental part, but thinking about God is very different than mystically sensing and joining with the dynamics of God's spirit. 
        We cannot experience any aspect of God or the sacred when we are merged with this mental part.   We can only experience the presence of Sacred and all the different aspects of Spirit when we are unblended from this mental part.  When that unbending happens, we drop into the nondualistic dimension of life where everything is connected and part of one reality.  It is here within this nondual aspect of life that we discover this profound sense that we are one of God’s beloved children, which people who have born-again experiences also sense.   Jesus encountered this sacred "beloved child" moment when he was baptized, that profound sense that he was God's beloved son and that God treasured him (Mark 1:  9-11).  This is why the practice of unblending is important for those who have not had a rebirth experience.   It can lead people to discovering that God does love them and opens the doorway to them developing a rich ongoing relationship with the Divine.  

        From this discussion, I am hoping that you are beginning to understand better the “born-again” experience from a psychological  perspective.  The key thing I want you to take away from this blog is the importance of the unblending experience.   For those of us who have had difficult lives, our first full unblending experience often leads to something that is called the “born-again” experience, especially within a Christian context.    But for those who have not had that born-again moment, many of us still long for that sense of being a special beloved child of God.   For this to happen, another form of unblending happens, one which opens the way for us to have a more personal relationship with the Sacred. 

Gord Alton MDiv RP Supervisor-Educator ​