Interestingly, I woke up with an article largely already composed in my head about much the same thing, and I also wrote a piece about the fact of how many cells change in us just the other day. We are largely ignorant of how much we are transforming second to second, which is simple science, just as we are terribly ignorant of how our thoughts change us over time. The idea of being "born again" was around long before Christ, and it has far more to do with dying to old beliefs and ways of thinking than anything else. That said it's still a spiritual practice, but when you strip away the dogma, it is still fundamentally all about emotional and spiritual maturity. We are constantly dying and becoming new, but not if we don't also challenge dying thoughts and beliefs. One reason I have kept a journal so religiously is for this very reason. It is hugely valuable to be able to identify, track and value where we have grown out of certain ways of being. Without a record, though, we have no way to identify where we have left buckets of an old self at the threshold of the new. Any one of us can be transformed, but it starts with challenging what we think we know, believe and "how things really are." I have found the best way to do this is admit, in truth, that I really know nothing. That leaves a great many doors wide open, just as it opens up the trash bin for whatever I'm holding onto to drop away. But that takes a certain courage to be wrong. In today's society, being willing to be wrong seems to be a moral failing. Which is precisely why we are where we are right now. But that's just me.