For most of my life, I read Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus through the lens that I inherited from Christianity. When Jesus said, "You must be born again," I assumed he was speaking primarily about conversion, salvation, or perhaps water baptism. Yet the older I get, and the more I reflect on the mystical and non-dual dimensions of spirituality, the more I find myself reimagining this passage in a very different way.
When Nicodemus approaches Jesus in John 3, he immediately interprets Jesus' words literally. "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" That question has always fascinated me because it establishes the context of the entire conversation. Nicodemus is thinking about physical birth. He is thinking about the womb, the body, and the beginning of human life. Jesus responds by speaking of being born of water and Spirit. Traditionally, many Christians have understood the water to refer to baptism. I no longer find that interpretation convincing. In the flow of the conversation, water appears to be a reference to natural birth itself. Nicodemus is asking about being physically born again, and Jesus responds by distinguishing between two different kinds of birth: the birth into physical existence and the awakening into spiritual awareness.
This realization has caused me to rethink not only the passage but the relationship between flesh and spirit altogether. Much of Christian history has interpreted flesh and spirit as opposites. Flesh is often portrayed as lower, corrupt, fallen, or something to be overcome. Spirit is viewed as higher, pure, and closer to God. Yet I no longer see Jesus making that distinction. When he says, "That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of Spirit is spirit," I hear no condemnation of the flesh. I hear no suggestion that one is superior to the other. Instead, I hear a simple description of two dimensions of human existence.
The flesh is not bad. It is necessary. Without embodiment there is no experience. There is no relationship, no learning, no creativity, no struggle, no growth, no love. Flesh is the arena in which consciousness encounters existence. Spirit, on the other hand, is not an escape from flesh. Spirit is the dimension of awareness that allows us to recognize our relationship with the Divine. Flesh gives us experience. Spirit gives us understanding. Flesh allows us to participate in life. Spirit allows us to perceive the deeper meaning of that participation.
The more I contemplate this, the less interested I become in any theology that seeks to escape the material world. I do not believe Jesus was teaching a dualism between matter and spirit. Nor do I believe he was advocating a rejection of embodiment. From my perspective, flesh and spirit are not enemies. They are two poles of the same reality. They are as inseparable as the two sides of a coin. We can distinguish them conceptually, but they cannot be separated in actual experience. Spirit expresses itself through flesh, and flesh reveals spirit. The visible and the invisible, the material and the transcendent, are intertwined expressions of one sacred reality.
This understanding leads me toward a profoundly non-dual reading of the passage. The goal is not to move from flesh to spirit as though spirit were somehow higher. The goal is awakening. It is becoming conscious of the unity that has always existed. The new birth is not leaving the world behind. It is seeing the world differently. It is recognizing that what we call spirit and what we call matter are not two separate things but two aspects of a single divine process.
This perspective also transforms how I understand the purpose of incarnation itself. I do not believe the soul enters flesh because it has fallen from God. Nor do I believe the material world is a prison from which we must escape. Rather, I see embodiment as part of the great adventure of consciousness. The eternal soul, the divine spark within each of us, enters the realm of form for the sake of experience. Infinite consciousness explores its own infinite possibilities through finite lives.
In this view, every human life becomes a unique expression of divine exploration. Through embodiment we encounter joy and sorrow, success and failure, gain and loss, love and heartbreak. We experience limitation, and through limitation we discover possibilities that could never be known in abstraction alone. Experience becomes sacred because it is one of the ways the Infinite comes to know itself through the finite.
Spirit then becomes not an escape from experience but the awareness of what is experiencing. The new birth is the moment when we begin to recognize that we are more than our temporary identities. We are more than our bodies, our beliefs, our social roles, or our personal histories. Beneath all of those layers resides an eternal reality, a divine spark that has never been separate from God. To be born of Spirit is to awaken to that truth while still fully participating in the world of flesh and experience.
This is why I no longer view the Kingdom of God as a distant place or a future destination. The Kingdom is a transformed perception of reality. It is the realization that spirit and flesh, eternity and time, God and creation, are not locked in opposition. They are participating in a profound unity. The Kingdom emerges when we begin to perceive that unity consciously.
The image of the wind in Jesus' teaching becomes especially meaningful through this lens. The wind moves where it wills. We hear its sound but cannot trace its origin or destination. So it is with spiritual awakening. It cannot be manufactured, controlled, or institutionalized. It arrives as insight, as revelation, as a shift in consciousness. One day we find ourselves looking at the same world we have always inhabited, yet seeing it completely differently. The world has not changed. We have.
For me, the story of Nicodemus is no longer primarily about conversion. It is about awakening. It is about moving from unconscious participation in life to conscious participation in life. It is about recognizing that flesh and spirit are not rivals but partners. It is about understanding that embodiment itself is sacred. Most of all, it is about realizing that the divine spark within us entered this world not to escape experience but to embrace it, learn from it, and express infinite possibilities through it. The new birth is not becoming something we were not before. It is awakening to what we have always been: eternal expressions of the Divine exploring the endless mystery of existence.
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