It is my intent with this series of discourses to give you a brief overview of the challenges that the human ego presents to all spiritual seekers, no matter which outer teaching or religion they follow. This is, so to speak, “the very least you should know about the human ego.”
Why do I give these discourses? Because overcoming the ego is the central aspect of the spiritual path. No matter which outer teaching or tradition you follow, you MUST overcome the ego in order to attain the higher state of consciousness . The basic reality is that the human ego simply cannot enter “Heaven,” or whatever you prefer to call it. Thus, even if a spiritual teaching does not talk directly about the ego, any true teaching is designed to help you separate yourself from the ego and build a new sense of identity that is not based on the ego.
One might think that I should start out by defining the human ego, but when you understand the ego, you see why this is not the most fruitful approach. The reason is that the main challenge presented by the ego is that it distorts the way you “see” everything. The ego forms a filter that “colors” the way your mind perceives everything, and this filter would distort my attempts to define the ego. Thus, I choose to first address the issue of spiritual blindness—for until you start seeing through this blindness, there truly is no point in saying anything else about the ego.
What is spiritual blindness?
When you normally think of a person who is blind, you think of a person who cannot see anything. Thus, you might think that spiritual blindness means that a person cannot see the spiritual aspects of life. Perhaps such a person would be an atheist or a scientific materialist, either denying the existence of God or denying that people have a spiritual nature. However, that is not the true definition of spiritual blindness.
In reality, most of the people who are spiritually blind are completely convinced that they are religious or spiritual people. A substantial portion of them can be found in Christian churches every Sunday. Others belong to the orthodox branches of other world religions and some of them belong to various New Age movements. Common for all of these people is that they are completely convinced that they belong to the only true religion or that they are following the highest possible guru or spiritual teaching.
These people are completely convinced that they will be saved, ascend, enter Nirvana, attain eternal life or however they define the final outcome of their religious efforts. In reality, this belief is based on an illusion created by the human ego. The ego has, so to speak, put a veil over these people’s eyes, causing them to see a distorted vision. The simplest possible illustration of this is that you put on a pair of colored glasses. Everything you see through the glasses is tinted by the color of the lenses.
Now imagine that a baby had a pair of yellow contact lenses put on shortly after birth. The child would grow up seeing everything through the yellow lenses, thus thinking the sky is green. The child would have no reason to question whether its view of “reality” is accurate, thus being completely convinced that the sky really is green. This is essentially how the ego has distorted the spiritual vision of every human being on this planet. Every person has grown up with a distorted view of “reality,” but most people have never seen an alternative and thus have no reason to question their world view.
The essential problem with the ego
This explains why so many people consider themselves very religious or spiritual, being completely convinced that they will be saved. Yet in reality, they are following a path that can never lead to salvation. The reason being that this false path is created by the ego, and thus it is exactly what the Bible describes as follows:
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. (Proverbs 14:12)
13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew, Chapter 7)
The wide gate and the broad way is the path created by the human ego. The ego has created an illusion, namely that you can be saved without overcoming the ego, without doing the hard and unpleasant task that I described as follows:
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. (Matthew, Chapter 7)
The essence of hypocrisy is an unwillingness to change. However, no hypocrite ever realizes that he or she is unwilling to change. The reason being that hypocrites always accept the illusions of their egos, meaning that they firmly believe they do not have to change. They base this belief on the fact that they belong to the only true spiritual/religious movement and – because they fulfill certain outer requirements – they are guaranteed to be saved. When you believe your salvation is guaranteed, why would you have to change? This is the wide gate and the broad way that leads to destruction. How can you avoid following this false path?
Your only way out
If there was no way out of the illusions created by the ego, I obviously would not be giving this discourse. There is indeed a way out, and we might say that it is a safety mechanism that God built into the design of the universe. In order to discover this way out, you have to reach beyond the veil of illusions created by the ego. The only way to do that is to establish a contact between your conscious mind and a mind that is above and beyond the ego. That mind can be called by many names, but the term most commonly used by the Ascended Host is the “mind of Christ.” That is why I said:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. (John, 6:53)
No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (John 1:18)
Thus, only the Christ mind can give you a sense of co-measurement that will empower you to see through the illusions created by the ego. Only the Christ mind will allow you to experience the Spirit of Truth. That is why I said:
24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. (Matthew, Chapter 7)
The rock is the Christ consciousness, and the sand is the consciousness of the ego. If you base your sense of identity – your house – upon the illusions of the ego, you will not be able to withstand the trials – rains – of life.
How can you contact the Christ mind? You already have the ability to do so, This ability is your personal Comforter, your Christ self that can connect you to a higher part of your being, namely your I AM Presence .The very fact that you have found this website shows that you have already opened up some connection to your Christ i you—otherwise you simply would not be open to the teachings I present. What you need to do next is a twofold action:
You need to strengthen your connection to your Christ in you. I give teachings and tools on how to do this throughout this website, but you might start
You need to become more conscious of the ego and the illusions that it uses to trap you in spiritual blindness. Only by consciously seeing through the illusions of the ego will your inner vision, your spiritual vision, be opened so that you can rise above the ego and put on the mind of Christ.
The discourses in this section are designed to help you get started on seeing through the illusions of the ego.
The basic illusion of the ego
The basic problem with the ego is that it distorts your spiritual vision so that you cannot perceive God’s reality, God’s truth. The essence of the Christ mind is that it is always one with God, and thus through the Christ mind you can experience – directly – the One Reality, the One Truth of God. That is why I said:
God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. (John 4:24)
The Christ mind perceives the Living Truth of God and it realizes that this truth is constantly growing, expanding and transcending itself. And because the Christ mind is experiencing this Living Truth, it has no need for a description of truth. Thus, you now realize that there is a difference between a description of truth and truth itself, namely the Spirit of Truth.
To help you understand this, let me give you an analogy. Imagine that you had never tasted an apple. You have heard people talk about apples, you have seen them on TV and you have read about them. Yet what you have received from these sources are only descriptions. Some of them may be very vivid descriptions of the delicious taste of an apple, and if they are really good they might make your mouth water. Yet no matter how good the descriptions are, they are not the same as the actual taste of an apple. In other words, not even the best description can make you taste an apple; no description is a substitute for the direct experience. Yet once you hold an apple in your hand and take a bite, the need for a description fades away. Why would you still read a book describing the taste of an apple, when you can just as easily take a bite of the real thing?
This is the central problem with the ego. As I will later describe in more detail, the ego was born when you separated yourself from God. The ego was born out of a division between yourself and God, and over time you became so blinded by the ego’s illusions that you no longer have the conscious experience of the “Spirit of Truth.” Thus, instead of experiencing God’s truth directly, you have come to rely on descriptions of God’s reality in the form of religious and spiritual teachings.
Do you see my point? The central problem you face as a spiritual seeker is that you need to get back to a sense of oneness with God—for unless you have this sense of oneness, how could you possibly enter God’s kingdom? To do this, you must get back to the state of innocence in which you can directly experience God’s reality, so that you no longer need any description.
After you lost the direct contact with God’s reality, the ego created an – almost – infinite number of substitutes. Because the ego cannot experience God’s reality directly, it has created descriptions of that reality. No matter how good these descriptions might be, they can never replace the direct experience, which is why I said you must worship God in spirit and in truth. Unfortunately, the ego cannot fathom this truth, and thus the ego believes that its description is as good as the real thing—in fact, it believes the description IS the real thing.
The central problem with the ego is that it has substituted the reality of God with a description, yet it believes that if you keep following its description, you will eventually enter the kingdom of God. Billions of people see themselves as being very religious and they are convinced that they will be saved. Yet they are following the broad way that leads to destruction because they believe in the illusion that the ego’s path will take them to Heaven.
The Bible, the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, the Tao Te Ching released over the past century – including my teachings on this website – are all descriptions of truth, but they are NOT the Living Spirit of Truth. If the ego manages to convince you that following one of these teachings will get you to Heaven without giving up the ego, then you have fallen prey to the central illusion of the ego, the very illusion that the Serpent used to trick Eve – as a symbol for your soul – in the Garden of Eden.
Yet it is a fact that as long as you remain trapped in the ego’s illusions, you will not have eternal life. You can NEVER enter the kingdom of God without letting the ego die and putting on the wedding garment of the Christ consciousness:
11 And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment:
12 And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.
13 Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
14 For many are called, but few are chosen. (Matthew, Chapter 22)
In reality, all are called, but few choose to enter the straight and narrow path that leads them beyond the illusions of the ego. Thus, they remain in the mental darkness created by the ego in which life becomes a struggle. Therefore, “Choose life!”
In this discourse I will give you the overall view – the big picture – of how the ego manages to make and keep people spiritually blind and what you can do to start getting yourself out of the trap set by the ego. I know that for people who are still identifying with their egos, this teaching will be impossible to understand. Yet, most people who find this website have made some contact with their Christ selves, and thus they can benefit from having the big picture.
If there was one thing that I wish all spiritual seekers would understand, it is the fact that the spiritual path is a process whereby you gradually free your mind from all of the illusions created by the ego. As I explained in the previous discourse, the ego can never experience the Spirit of Truth. Therefore, the ego creates a description – a mental image – of God’s truth (and collectively human beings have created an almost infinite number of such graven images). The ego is absolutely convinced that its description of truth is the real thing. Yet in reality, the ego’s description is an idol that obscures your direct experience of the Spirit of truth itself. Thus, the ego is in violation of the first two commandments given by God to Moses:
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image… (Exodus, Chapter 20)
The first command is that you have no other Gods before the real God, which means that you do not accept any description in this world as a substitute for the direct experience of the Spirit of Truth. The second one is that you do not take unto yourself any graven image, which does not mean a statue carved in stone but a mental image. The ego creates these mental images and then it seeks to make you believe that you should accept an image as the absolute, unchanging truth. You should be satisfied with the idol, so that you do not attempt to go beyond it and experience the Spirit of Truth.
The ego cannot experience the Spirit of Truth, but you can. And when you do experience the Spirit of truth directly, you will no longer believe the ego’s illusion, namely that its description is the real thing or is all you need in order to be saved. Thus, the ego will lose its power over you, and as you stop feeding the ego energy, it will gradually wither away and it will eventually die. Because the ego has a strong survival instinct, it does not want to die, and thus it will do anything to keep you from seeing through its illusions. It will do anything to prevent you from experiencing the Spirit of truth directly, gradually expanding your vision so you can eventually rebuke all of the lies created by the ego and the prince of this world.
Thus, we might say that the essence of the spiritual path is to gradually clear your mind from the illusions of the ego so that you gain a progressively purer experience of the Spirit of Truth. As Paul said it:
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1Corinthians13:12)
The basic choice of life
In traditional religions you find the concept of the laws of God. We might also call them the design principles that God used to create the universe in which you live. The origin of all other design principles is the principle of oneness, the Law of Oneness. It is described in the Bible as follows:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John, Chapter 1)
God created everything out of its own Being and thus God’s Being is embedded in everything that was created—without him was not anything made that was made. The Word is what is also called the only begotten son of God:
No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (John 1:18)
Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God. (Mark 10:18)
You now need to realize that you – meaning your lifestream, which is more than your physical body and your outer mind and personality – were created to be a co-creator with God. That is why the Bible says:
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion… (Genesis 1:26)
God has given human beings dominion over the Earth, which means that God created this planet as a foundation upon which human beings could build a house as a way to express and develop their creative abilities. Human beings have been given free will, so they must – individually and collectively – decide what they do upon the Earth. The only catch is, of course, that they will inevitably experience the conditions they create. God did not create the current state of limitations, lack of resources and other forms of suffering. Humankind has collectively created current conditions, and everyone is experiencing them.
When God gave co-creators free will, a fundamental duality came into being. As I said, the universal Christ mind is an expression of the principle of oneness which is designed to make sure everything follows God’s purpose and vision. Yet when co-creators gain free will, it becomes possible that they can choose to go against the principle of oneness. Thus, the mind of Christ logically has an opposite. The basic reality of free will is that a co-creator can create in one of two ways:
You can co-create by using the mind of Christ, which means that everything you do is in alignment with God’s purpose and the design principles used by God.
You can de-create by using the mind of anti-christ, which is in opposition to the mind of Christ. Thus, everything you create through the mind of anti-christ is out of alignment with God’s purpose and laws.
The mind of anti-christ is in opposition to the mind of Christ because it is based on the illusion that it is separated from God. Thus, free will gives you two options for expressing your creativity:
You can co-create within the framework of God’s law. This ensures that you are in harmony with God’s purpose and that your efforts enhance your own life and the lives of everyone else. In other words, everything you do raises up all life.
To better understand the difference between following or going against God’s laws, consider the law of gravity. This law is what makes it possible for you to live on the surface of the Earth instead of floating into empty space. Is the law of gravity a restriction of your creative freedom on this planet or is it the foundation for it? So would it make sense to rebel against the law of gravity and spend your entire life fighting it? (Take note that flying is not a rebellion against the law of gravity but a result of learning how to make more advanced use of all of God’s laws.)
My point here is that, as a co-creator, you have the option of co-creating through the mind of Christ – the mind of oneness with God and all life – or the mind of anti-christ—the mind that sees itself as separated from God and all life. Thus, you now see that the mind of anti-christ is based on a fundamental division, a division between itself and God, God’s law and all other co-creators. The mind of Christ is the mind of oneness, whereas the mind of anti-christ is the mind of division, the mind of duality, the mind of separation. We now need to take a closer look at the fundamental duality of the mind of anti-christ.
The knowledge of good and evil
When you stay within the framework of God’s law, you have an absolute standard for evaluating everything. There is that which is one with God’s truth, God’s reality, and there is that which is apart from God’s reality. When you move into the consciousness of anti-christ, you lose this absolute guiding rod. Only the consciousness of Christ can see God’s reality, and thus when you step outside the consciousness of Christ, you can no longer see God’s absolute truth. You now enter a state of mind in which truth becomes a relative concept, a concept that is dominated by two opposites that can only exist in relation to each other.
The Bible describes these concepts in the story of how Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden. You need to understand that the literal, orthodox interpretation of this story is out of touch with reality. Adam and Eve were not the only human beings in the Garden. The story is meant to illustrate what has happened to every co-creator on Earth. Thus, you are not being punished for the original sin of Adam and Eve. Your present situation is the consequence of the fact that your soul – for most people, many lifetimes ago – made the same choice made by Adam and Eve.
What was that choice? In the beginning, all God’s co-creators lived in a protected environment in which they had direct guidance from a spiritual teacher—what Genesis calls “God.” This teacher was teaching co-creators how to exercise their creative powers while staying within the framework of God’s law. Yet because they had free will, they also had the potential to go outside of God’s law. This is what Genesis describes as follows:
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Genesis, Chapter 2)
What is the deeper spiritual meaning behind the metaphor of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil?” It is a description of the consciousness of anti-christ, the consciousness that sees itself as separated from God. Perhaps you have wondered why God planted the tree in the Garden if he did not want Adam to eat of it? The reason is now clear. The "tree" was an inevitable consequence of giving God’s co-creators free will. God could not give you free will without giving you the potential to go outside of God’s law.
Having this potential does not mean that you have to exercise it. Being able to hurt yourself does not mean that you have to hurt yourself. However, having the potential does mean that you are exposed to the temptation to go outside God’s law. Thus, the Serpent can be seen (among other things) as a symbol for the fact that free will does come with a price, namely the temptation to make choices that harm yourself and all life.
The real meaning behind the expression “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” is that it represents a state of consciousness, namely the consciousness of anti-christ. In this state of consciousness you have stepped outside of oneness with God, and thus you no longer see God’s reality. You now see everything as defined on a scale with two opposites. On one side of the scale is good and on the opposite side is evil. Yet for the scale to exist, both are necessary, meaning that “good” and “evil” have now become relative concepts. They exist only in relation to each other and one is defined as the opposite of the other.
The consequence is that in the consciousness of anti-christ there is no absolute truth. "Truth" has become relative, meaning that it can be defined differently by different people. You have heard the expression, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and in the consciousness of anti-christ "truth" is in the eye of the beholder. In other words, when you partake of the consciousness of anti-christ you create your own definition of truth and it will be outside of God’s absolute truth.
The ultimate outcome of the consciousness of anti-christ is the belief that evil is the opposite of God , meaning that the devil (or however you picture personified evil) is the opposite polarity of God and is a necessary (even beneficial) part of the basic polarity of life. In reality, the consciousness of anti-christ is not in a polarity with the consciousness of Christ. Evil is not the opposite of God. Evil is outside of God, and the consciousness of anti-christ is outside the consciousness of Christ—the consciousness of oneness. Thus, relativity is a product of the consciousness of anti-christ, and it is only in the sphere of anti-christ that good and evil exist as relative concepts, as opposing polarities where one cannot exist without the other.
The veil
The reality behind the story of the Fall of Man is that all human beings on this planet have “fallen,” meaning that they have partaken of the fruit of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” By allowing this consciousness of anti-christ to enter their beings, they have succumbed to the basic illusion, namely that they are separated from God instead of being co-creators with God, sons and daughters of God, individualizations of God.
Remember, that without God was not anything made that was made, meaning that you are an individualization of God’s Being. Thus, you can never be separated from God in reality. How could you be separated from God when God is everywhere and in everything? Thus, the belief that you are separated from God can exist only in the mind. It is the result of a free-will choice, namely the choice to partake of the consciousness of anti-christ, whereby you begin to believe – even experience – that you are separated from God.
The mind of Christ is the consciousness of oneness, so as long as you are in the Christ mind, you cannot see yourself as separated from God. Only by allowing the consciousness of anti-christ to enter your being – whereby you see everything through the filter of this dualistic mind – can you experience yourself as being separated from your source. Through the consciousness of Christ, you see yourself as a drop in the ocean of God’s being and you know all other drops came from the same source. Through the consciousness of anti-christ, you see yourself as drop that is separated from the ocean and from all other drops in the ocean.
In reality, the fall into a lower state of consciousness did not happen in one momentous event. It was a gradual process that took time, yet as depicted in Genesis, there did come a moment of truth:
7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. (Genesis, Chapter 3)
The deeper meaning is that your soul did have a moment of realization in which it recognized that it had separated itself from God—or rather from its spiritual teacher. At that moment, the soul faced an epic choice. Would it go back to its spiritual teacher or would it seek to hide from its teacher? Would it seek the teacher’s help to come back to oneness with God, or would it seek to hide its mistakes, hoping it could hide them from the teacher?
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The consequence of hiding from the teacher is that the student can no longer remain in the mystery school of the Garden. I know Genesis gives a very ominous description of how Adam and Eve were forcefully cast out of the Garden, but the reality is that Paradise is the Christ consciousness, the consciousness of oneness with God. Thus, when your soul partook of the consciousness of separation, it could not remain in the consciousness of oneness—you cannot be one and separate at the same time. Thus, those souls who refused to go back to the teacher, cast themselves out of the Garden.
As the Bible portrays, Adam and Eve were aware that they had suffered a loss—and so was every soul that fell. When the soul lost is connection to God – meaning its spiritual teacher – it felt alone, even abandoned. Because this aloneness was unbearable, the soul needed something to take the place of its spiritual teacher. That “something” became the human ego which is designed as a way to compensate for the soul’s loss of connection. The ego is designed to prevent the soul from feeling alone.
The ego is born of the soul’s separation from oneness, and thus it is born from the consciousness of anti-christ. Thus, it sees everything through the filter of the consciousness of separation, meaning that it will ALWAYS see itself as separated from God. It cannot see oneness as the solution to the soul’s basic problem of aloneness. Instead, it seeks to make the soul believe in any number of illusions that make it seem like the soul does not have to come back to oneness. These illusions range from the idea that there is no God to the idea that you can be saved only through an outer religion.
My point here is that the ego is born out of separation and it cannot see the absolute truth of God. The ego sees only the relative “truth” that springs from the consciousness of anti-christ, which means that everything the ego sees affirms the basic illusion that you are separated from God. Thus, the ego and its relative, dualistic beliefs form a veil that prevents you from seeing God and God’s truth. Walking the spiritual path is a mattter of learning to see beyond this veil.
The impossible quest of the ego
As I said, the ego is born of the consciousness of separation. The logical consequence is that the ego can NEVER bring the soul back to oneness. Because a soul is created out of God’s being, it can never quite forget that it came from somewhere higher than this Earth, that there is more to life than what it experiences on Earth. Thus, the ego is faced with an impossible quest. The soul has an inner longing for oneness, but the ego can never fill that longing.
If the soul realizes this truth, it will no longer believe in the ego’s illusions and thus the ego will die. To stay alive, the ego must prevent you from realizing the basic truth about life, and it does so by seeking to trap you in its dualistic illusions. These illusions take many forms, and we will look at some of them in the following discourses. However, what I want to convey to you here is that the individual illusions created by the ego can be seen as trees in a forest.
Because you have been trapped by the ego, you are inside the forest and all you can see are the trees—the individual illusions created by the ego. As you begin to use your built-in ability to reach for the higher truth of Christ, you begin to cut down some of the trees in the forest. Eventually, your vision is less obscured, and you can begin to see the truth of Christ.
Yet the important concept here is that the ego is more than the individual illusions it has created, as the forest is more than the trees. Yet what is a forest? If you clear out all the trees, is there any forest left? Indeed, the forest is still in existence in the same place it always existed, namely in the human mind. The reality is that the forest is just a mental concept, an illusion created in the mind—and so is the ego. The ego has no reality in and of itself. It only has the reality that you give to it because you believe in its illusions.
As long as you are focusing your attention on the illusions, you cannot see the ego. As long as you believe in the illusions, you cannot discover the truth that the ego has no reality in God. And as long as you do not see that the ego has no reality, you believe the consciousness of anti-christ is real. Thus, you continue to believe in the illusion that you are separated from God.
My point is that all of the individual illusions – all of the trees in the forest – are designed to prevent you from seeing the forest, seeing the ego itself. For when you do see the ego and see it for what it is, you will realize that it is not real and thus has no power over you. Thus, you can surrender it, let it go and let it die as you walk away from it and enter the kingdom of God, the consciousness of oneness.
Do you now see why I did not start out by defining the ego? You really cannot define the ego because the ego has no actual substance. It seems to have substance because you believe in its illusions, as the forest seems to have substance as long as you focus on the trees. Yet a forest is a mental concept that can contain many kinds of trees. A pine forest is different from an oak forest. Likewise, the ego of one person is different from the ego of another person, and they are set apart by the individual illusions that each person has accepted.
In a sense one might say that the ego is like a chameleon that changes color so as to blend in with its environment and escape being detected. The ego is always trying to hide behind the trees so you do not see it. The consequence – and this is something all sincere spiritual seekers need to contemplate – is that your ego will not remain the same. As you climb the spiritual path, you will clear out some of the illusions of your ego – some of the trees in the forest – but that does not mean you have fully overcome the ego. As long as any illusions are left, the ego will hide behind them in its never-ending attempt to prevent you from seeing the forest.
This has many consequences, which we will explore in coming discourses, but one is that as long as you are in this world, it is wise not to believe that you have fully overcome the ego. It is wise to always be alert and look for something that is hiding, seeking to deceive you to the very end. That is why I said:
For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. (Matthew 24:24)
Some of these false prophets will be created by your own ego in an attempt to deceive you into continuing to give it power over you. Others will be created by the prince of this world in an attempt to get you to follow an outer guru instead of entering the kingdom of God that is within you. In the coming discourses, we will expose some of the largest trees in the ego’s forest, but I want you to remember the forest itself. For the truth is that every time a tree comes down, you have a split second where the ego is exposed. And if you pay attention, you can see it before it has time to hide itself again. Once you have seen the ego itself, it will become much easer for you to overcome its illusions, until you can dismiss even the basic illusion that the ego and the separation from God is real.
One might say that by seeing the ego itself, it becomes possible for you to step outside of the forest while there are still trees left in the forest. Once you no longer identify with the ego, it becomes so much easier for you to let go of the remaining illusions of your ego. This is the state of knowing – human, know thyself – to which all sincere spiritual seekers should aspire. Everything I give on this website serves the purpose of helping you reach that state of knowing that you are MORE than the ego.
You have heard the expression that someone is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, and it describes what the ego will continue to do until you allow it to die. The round hole is a symbol for the letter “O” which stands for Oneness. The square peg is a symbol for the four quadrants of the material universe, which the ego sees as the only road to eternal life.
The ascension or the eternal life is the Path of Oneness, whereby you come back to the correct sense of identity as a co-creator with your God. You will enter God’s kingdom ONLY by attaining a sense of oneness with God, whereby you can say as I did, “I and my father are one!” The ego was born when you decided to turn away from the Path of Oneness and instead join the path of separation. Thus, the ego can NEVER come into oneness with God. You created the ego because you separated yourself from God, and thus when you come back to oneness, the ego will no longer be needed and should be allowed to die.
Obviously, the ego will never recognize this fact, and thus it is constantly trying to build the false image that you can enter the kingdom without overcoming the ego, without letting it die. The ego is trying to create the appearance that you can enter the kingdom by living up to certain requirements in this world. In other words, the ego is trying to use something from the four planes of matter in an attempt to force its way into the kingdom of oneness. That is why anything created by the ego will be a square peg that will NEVER fit into the round hole of the kingdom of oneness. That is why I gave the following parable:
1 And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said,
2 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son,
3 And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.
8 Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy.
9 Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.
11 And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment:
12 And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.
13 Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
14 For many are called, but few are chosen. (Matthew, Chapter 22)
The reality is that the wedding garment symbolizes the Christ consciousness, which is the ONLY way to establish oneness with God. As I explained in the previous discourse, the ego is born of separation from God and thus everything the ego believes, every mental image it creates, springs from the mind of anti-christ—the mind of separation. Therefore, these images can never form the wedding garment that gives access to the kingdom, and the ego will always remain in the outer darkness of its own making. As long as you identify with the ego, you too will remain in the state of consciousness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
What is the you that can escape the ego?
This Conscious You is the core of your lower being. It is an individualization of your spiritual self, your I AM Presence. It was designed to descend into the material universe to both experience this realm and bring the light of your I AM Presence – your God Flame – into this world, helping to turn it into the kingdom of God. The Conscious You is what makes you aware that you exist and it is also the part of you that makes conscious decisions.
The Conscious You is meant to be the master of your lower being, which she calls your container of self. You are meant to make most of your decisions at the level of the Conscious You, under the direction of your I AM Presence and spiritual teacher. When you turned away from your spiritual teacher, you lost that divine direction, and thus you had to make decisions alone. This became painful for many co-creators, which is why they gradually allowed their egos to make more and more decisions for them.
We might say that the problem faced by most people is that they have put their conscious selves to sleep and have allowed their egos to run their lives. That is why many of their decisions are not made at the level of the conscious mind but are made through a subconscious process ruled by the ego. We can compare the ego to a computer that is not actually able to think but that has a sophisticated enough programming to give the appearance that it can think.
This analogy is fruitful when compared to my previous analogy of the forest and the trees. The ego has created a large number of relativistic, dualistic illusions that are like individual computer programs. You might compare them to the trees in the forest, and each program is designed to handle specific situations in life. Thus, when you encounter a particular type of situation, one of these programs kicks in and takes over your reactions to the situation. You are no longer making conscious choices as to how to best handle the situation; it is all run by the computer of the ego.
You probably know that a computer has a number of specific programs that all function within the framework of what is called the operating system. This is what gives the computer its identity as a Windows, Macintosh or UNIX computer. The operating system is the ego itself, and it compares to the forest in the previous discourse. This operating system is the very core of the ego, and it was born out of the decision to turn away from your teacher. In other words, the specific reasoning that the Conscious You used in order to justify turning away from the teacher became the very core of your ego. This is important, because when you realize that your ego was born out of this decision, you see why the ego will NEVER question the validity of that decision. The ego is like a computer that can never question its operating system but will forever continue to function according to its programming.
The ego literally lives and dies by the original decision to turn away from God. If the Conscious You ever looked at that decision, realized that is was not a constructive choice and replaced it with a better decision – by choosing life over death – the ego would die. Thus, the Conscious You can now begin to understand that the ego will do anything in its power to prevent you from ever uncovering and reevaluating the original decision that created the ego. Returning to the computer analogy, you know that an individual program cannot alter the operating system—it must function within the framework defined by the system. Thus, the ego seeks to make the Conscious You so focused on its individual beliefs – the trees – that you will never see the underlying belief – the forest – that created the ego.
Even many sincere spiritual seekers have been fooled by this trick. They have realized that there is an entity – whether they call it the ego or something else – that is blocking their spiritual growth. And they have realized that it is necessary to cut down some of the trees in the forest in order to remove the veil of illusions that separates them from God. Yet they have not yet seen that there is something hiding behind the trees. Thus, although many seekers are sincerely questioning aspects of their egos, they have not yet seen behind the veil to start questioning the ego itself. Obviously, a beginning seeker is not yet ready to do this, but many of the people who have been on the spiritual path for decades – or even lifetimes – could benefit immensely from considering the teachings I am giving. They are ready to begin to question the basic illusions of their egos.
You are more than the ego
The first step toward overcoming the ego is to realize that there is more to “you” than the ego and its individual illusions. You need to realize that you are more than a highly evolved animal, that you are more than the computer programs of the ego. When you look at the world, you will see many people who have not yet come to that realization. These are what the Bible calls the “multitudes” and you will note that I spoke to them in parables and then gave my disciples a more sophisticated teaching.
My disciples had realized that they were more than their egos, but they had not begun to truly see their egos. This is comparable to the situation of many spiritual seekers today. In today’s world millions of people are at the same or a higher level of spiritual maturity as were my disciples 2,000 years ago. Thus, if you are consciously aware of the spiritual path, you already know there is more to “you” than the ego, that there is more to reality than the material world. Yet to take the next step, you need to come to a more sophisticated understanding of the “you” that is more than the ego.
The crucial understanding that most spiritual seekers are missing is the realization that the Conscious You is designed to make decisions and that it makes those decisions based on its sense of identity. Thus, the Conscious You can identify itself as a highly evolved animal, and it will then make decisions as an animal. If the Conscious You identifies itself as a mortal sinner, it will make decisions as a sinner and it will consider it blasphemy to see itself as a son or daughter of God.
In other words, the Conscious You is designed to be a co-creator in the material universe, and it expresses its creative abilities through the filter of its sense of identity. Every decision the Conscious You makes is colored by the sense of identity you have come to accept, The crucial point is, however, that the Conscious You is NEVER confined to or permanently trapped in its current sense of identity. The Conscious You has the ability to mentally project itself anywhere it wants, meaning that it can also project its sense of self outside its current identity—the identity built in this world.
It is this very ability to separate yourself from your current sense of identity, and realize that there is more to life, that is the key to all human progress, be it material or spiritual progress. If you could see yourself only through the filter of your current sense of identity, you could never rise above that identity. And thus human beings could never come back to oneness after they had descended into the consciousness of separation.
The essential key is that the Conscious You can step outside your current sense of identity at any moment. NOTHING binds the Conscious You to your current sense or identity—except your belief that there is nothing outside of it or that you cannot escape your current sense of identity. The catch is that most people have come to identify themselves with their egos to the point where they cannot conceive and believe that they can escape the ego at any moment. In a sense this belief is true because you cannot simply walk away from the forest of the ego. You must systematically cut down the trees – illusions – of the ego before you can see your true identity. Yet even though these illusions must be removed, the Conscious You can – at any moment – choose to stop identifying itself with the ego and this will make it far easier for yourself to let go of the ego. This process is what I described in the following quote:
3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?
5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. (John, Chapter 3)
Being born of the Spirit means – among other valid interpretations – that you realize that the Conscious You can walk away from the mental prison of the ego and reclaim its true identity as a co-creator with God. You can realize that your current sense of identity is deeply affected by the illusions of your ego and the illusions of the collective consciousness of humankind. It is based on the sense of separation from God, and thus it is mortal because anything that is outside the kingdom of oneness cannot have eternal life. Your mortal sense of identity is unreal and can never inherit the eternal life. That is why I said:
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. (Matthew 16:25)
If you seek to hold on to the sense of identity – life – built by the ego, you will not find eternal life. Yet if you are willing to lose that sense of life in order to win the Christ consciousness and come back to oneness, you will indeed find eternal life.
Starting to lose your life
How do you – the Conscious You – begin the process of separating yourself from the ego? This is a twofold process, and the first part is – as I said – that you must reestablish some connection to your higher being, your I AM Presence. Only when you have that connection – through your Christ self – will you know that you will not die when the ego dies. And only when you know this, can you fully commit yourself to the path that leads to the death of the ego. The Conscious You cannot bear to have no sense of identity, so before you can give up the identity based on separation, you must begin to reconnect to your true identity of oneness.
The second step is to expand your understanding of the fact that the ego exists and then learn how to see through its illusions. The major illusion you need to see is that the ego is on an impossible quest, as I explained in the previous discourse. The prince of this world knows that the Conscious You can never fully forget its origin. Thus, it is virtually impossible for the forces of this world, including your ego..
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. (Proverbs 14:12)
I described it as follows:
13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew, Chapter 7)
Many sincere religious and spiritual people have been tricked by their egos into following such a false path to salvation, while being firmly convinced that they belong to the only true church and – because they live up to certain outer requirements – their salvation is guaranteed. Take note that this belief can be very comforting, and thus it can actually be necessary at the lower levels of the path. Many people cannot bear the fear of not being saved, so believing their salvation is guaranteed can help them gradually grow out of the paralysis caused by extreme fear.
The problem is that this belief can so easily be used by the ego to take you into a blind alley where you believe that, because you are a member of this outer church and follow its outer requirements, you do not have to truly change yourself, you do not have to follow my command:
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. (Matthew, Chapter 7)
The mote in your own eye is the ego and its false sense of identity that keeps the Conscious You trapped in the consciousness of separation—which will keep you outside the kingdom of oneness until you separate yourself from the sense of separation and come into oneness with your God. and discover the true inner Path to Oneness. Only then will you find the straight and narrow way that leads to the kingdom of God within yourself.
My point is that once you begin to realize that the ego’s main purpose is to keep you from discovering and following the true Path of Oneness –– you can begin to see through the specific illusions that your ego is using to keep you trapped. It will then be far easier for you to identity these illusions and to avoid the sense that you somehow have to believe in them. In the following discourses we will look at some of these illusions and how the ego is a master in making you feel you somehow cannot just walk away from them.
Remember that the Conscious You is what it thinks it is, and you can at any moment change who you think you are. The ego and the prince of this world will try to make you believe you cannot change your mind, but it simply is not the case. God wants you to come home, and thus God wants you to change your mind so you can overcome the ego’s illusions. The ego wants to keep you trapped in a limited sense of identity, and thus it wants to make you think you cannot or should not change your mind. It wants to make you think that once you have partaken of the forbidden fruit, you cannot escape that decision. You are trapped forever.
In the material universe, nothing is forever. Everything is created through a choice, and it will continue to exist only as long as you continue to affirm that choice. That is why the central challenge is to choose life instead of continuing to choose death.
The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. (Luke 11:34)
The point being that when your eye is single – meaning that the Conscious You sees the one, undivided truth of Christ – your lower being is an open door for the light of God to shine into this world. Yet when your vision is divided – meaning that the Conscious You sees through the dualistic filter – your being if filled with the darkness of the duality consciousness. The light from your I AM Presence simply cannot shine through your mind in its pure form but is colored by your ego’s beliefs and thus turned into darkness.
The essence of the relative logic is that when everything is relative, nothing can be proved or disproved in an absolute sense. It is not a matter of WHAT is right and wrong; it is only a matter of WHO is “right and wrong,” meaning who is able to convince others. This gives a clear advantage to the beings who are most skilled in using the relative logic of the mind of anti-christ and who are the most willing to manipulate, lie and coerce in order to control others.
The story of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden is meant to illustrate that once you start partaking of the duality consciousness – the tree of the knowledge of RELATIVE good and evil – you are easily manipulated by those who have spent lifetimes in this frame of mind and have no scruples about lying in order to control you. There is only one way out. You cannot use the mind of anti-christ to escape the consciousness of separation. Thus, you must realize that the ego has created a giant illusion in which everything appears to be relative. As long as you stay within the framework of this illusions, you can NEVER escape the grips of the ego.
I have seen many sincere spiritual seekers who have fallen prey to the illusion that they can use the intellect to outsmart their egos and the prince of this world. Some even think it is their job to convince their own ego, the egos of other people or the forces of this world that they are wrong. Yet this will inevitably cause you to engage in the dualistic struggle created by the ego, and thus you will only become more involved with that struggle. If you try to use the mind of anti-christ to outsmart the forces of anti-christ, how can you avoid becoming more involved with the mind of anti-christ?
This is the illusion that caused many co-creators to fall in the first place. As explained by the Elohim of Peace, many co-creators fell for the illusion that they should turn off the light of their God flames until certain conditions were met in this world. We might also say that some co-creators began to believe that instead of letting the light of their God flames consume the darkness in this world, they needed to engage in a debate with the darkness and seek to persuade those trapped in it to come back to God. Yet when you try to catch the greased pig, you inevitably end up covered in mud.
When it comes to dealing with the duality consciousness of the ego, there is only one approach that will work. You cannot out-reason the consciousness of anti-christ, for when everything is relative, there can be no final argument. The devil loves to have you engage him in an attempt to outsmart him, and he will even allow you to feel that you have won the argument. Yet the devil is not trying to prove himself right; he is only trying to keep you engaged in the consciousness of anti-christ. Likewise, your ego is not concerned about you winning one battle, as long as it wins the war by keeping you trapped in the dualistic struggle so that you do not see the forest behind the trees.
This is an essential point that too many spiritual seekers have not understood, and thus you need to ponder it very carefully. You simply CANNOT WIN by engaging in the dualistic arguments of the ego. You cannot convince or convert your ego because it can NEVER experience the Spirit of Truth but will ALWAYS see only a dualistic description. Thus, you can NEVER make the ego see absolute truth, and instead you get pulled into a senseless argument of trying to prove the superiority of one dualistic description over another dualistic description. To avoid this eternal trap, ponder my words:
Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. (Matthew 10:16)
You must learn from the example of how I dealt with the devil after my fasting in the wilderness (Luke, Chapter 3).You can NEVER win by engaging in a dualistic argument, nor can you further God’s cause by fighting dualistic battles. You can win only by rising above the consciousness of duality, simply leaving behind the dualistic arguments and struggles of your ego. And to do that, you must reach for the undivided truth of Christ that empowers you to see the fallacy of the ego’s dualistic form of thinking.
In the coming discourses, I will give you some examples of how the ego seeks to keep you trapped in the dualistic struggle by setting up various belief systems that are based on duality. The purpose is to keep you fighting the dualistic battle that allows both your ego and the forces of anti-christ to steal your life force in order to survive.
The most obvious example of the ego’s relativistic, dualistic way of thinking is what I prefer to call black-and-white thinking. This plot by the ego makes blatant use of the basic duality built into the mind of anti-christ. It defines two opposites that are opposites in every way, meaning that there is no overlap or potential for compromise. There is no grey zone because the opposites cannot co-exist but must cancel out each other—or so it seems. One opposite is defined as being absolutely good and the other is defined as being absolutely evil, thus setting up an inevitable, to-the-death struggle between them.
The ego makes people believe that the only way for them to please God and be saved is to take the side of good and to fight against evil. An extreme outcome of this scenario is the definition of two religions or ideologies that both claim to be the only true one, making their respective followers believe it is their duty to fight the other. The ultimate triumph of the prince of this world is to get two groups of religious people to kill each other in the name of the same God, as for example in the Crusades.
The result of this ego-manipulation is that people adopt a very simplistic view of the world. Their religion is completely true and all others are completely false. There is no room for any nuances in between, which means that people almost inevitably become extremists and fanatics. This is a very easy approach to life because it really does not require people to think for themselves. They simply accept the definitions created by the leaders of their society without making any personal attempts to discern whether their leaders are right according to the Christ standard. They believe these leaders are absolutely right and that God himself would agree with them.
The consequence of this approach to life is that once people have accepted that a particular belief system is absolutely good, they will never question it. Thus, they will blindly follow what the leaders of their religion has defined as absolutely right, and this has led to some of the worst atrocities in history. I described this scenario as follows:
Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. (Matthew 15:14)
Yet instead of leaving the blind leaders alone, people follow them uncritically. They never question that the black-and-white definition of life might not be in alignment with God’s truth. Such people have defined an enemy or scapegoat and they believe they must do God’s work by destroying the enemy.
As long as people are trapped in this extreme form of black-and-white thinking, they are absolutely convinced that they are working for good and will be saved. Yet the stark reality is that everything they do to fight the self-defined enemy only serves to trap them more firmly in the dualistic state of consciousness. This obviously prevents them from putting on the wedding garment of the Christ consciousness, that is the ONLY way to enter Heaven.
It can be extremely difficult for extremists to admit that they are wrong. They cannot admit that what they have seen as a work for God has not promoted God’s cause but has only served to reinforce the dualistic struggle created by the forces of anti-christ. Such people tend to become very defensive and hostile toward anyone who questions the validity of their approach. This is why the scribes and the Pharisees wanted me dead and why some people in today’s world become fanatical in defending their “truth.”
The sad fact is that such people are unapproachable for a spiritual teacher. You see this illustrated in how the scribes and Pharisees rejected my attempts to show them the higher way of Christ. They literally used their black-and-white viewpoints to justify rejecting the Living Christ, meaning that they had put their own graven image before the Living God. They used a relative image to justify not reaching for the direct experience of God’s absolute reality—the experience I came to offer to all who were willing to lose their mortal sense of identity for my sake.
Overcoming extreme selfishness
You will remember that I earlier said that the ego creates a false path to salvation. By using black-and-white logic, the ego creates the impression that being saved is a matter of belonging to the only true religion and meeting its outer requirements. The more people identify with their egos, the more prone they are to believe this illusion. It seems so easy that instead of doing the hard work of pulling the beam from your own eye, you simply have to believe a predefined doctrine and follow a set of outer rules.
At the beginning level of the spiritual path, people are prone to accept the black-and-white approach to salvation. Thus, they become very zealous – even fanatical – in following their particular belief system – be it religious, political or scientific in nature – and they absolutely refuse to question it. That is why some people can believe that by killing the enemies of God, they will instantly be saved.
Now comes one of the subtleties that the more mature spiritual seekers need to understand. The extreme outcome of being blinded by black-and-white thinking is that people become entirely self-centered and selfish. They often believe they have a supreme right to do what they want and that anyone who opposes them – including the rest of the human race – is wrong. They start acting like predatory animals who take whatever they want and are unwilling to consider how their actions affect other people, affect themselves in the long run or compare to higher principles. In the past, humankind was at a much lower level of consciousness than today, as illustrated by the cave man society in which the law of the jungle ruled. In today’s world, you see this level of consciousness in many criminals, from leaders of organized crime to pedophiles or serial killers.
How do you take people who are completely selfish and raise them to a more spiritual level? Extreme selfishness is the ultimate outcome of the relative logic of the ego. In the Christ mind you see that all life is one, and thus when you hurt another, you are hurting yourself. When you are completely trapped in the mind of anti-christ, you think you can hurt others without hurting yourself, you even think you have the right to do whatever you want, regardless of how it affects others. You justify this by using the relative logic of the ego, which can truly make it seem like anything – including total selfishness – is justified.
How do people start rising above this level of consciousness? They do so by realizing that there is something beyond the ego’s relative logic, that there is something that is right or wrong according to a higher standard. Do you see the point here? When you are completely selfish, you see nothing beyond the relative logic of your ego and thus you think you have the right to do anything you want. To begin the process of escaping total selfishness, you must realize that there is a higher standard for evaluating your behavior, so that you choose to limit certain types of selfish behavior.
For most people who are trapped in selfishness, this realization comes only when someone “puts the fear of God in them.” In other words, these people begin to realize that there is such a thing as long-term consequences. Their souls can be affected in an afterlife by what they do in this life, and they will either be rewarded in Heaven or burn forever in hell. Thus, from a purely selfish motive, these people begin to modify their short-term egotistical behavior according to a higher standard.
Because these people are still identified with their egos, they cannot yet see the limitations of the relative logic of the ego. So they need a very simplistic, black-and-white belief system with clearly defined rules for how to avoid hell and get into Heaven. Here comes the subtle point. When people start modifying selfish behavior, they have reached a turning point from which genuine progress is possible. Yet there is a real danger that these people will be fooled by their egos to enter the blind alley of fanaticism, where they think they serve God by fighting what their belief system defines as the enemies of God. This will, of course, abort such people’s progress.
However, if people avoid going into fanaticism, it is possible to make genuine spiritual progress by following a black-and-white belief system. The reason being that when you believe certain types of behavior will send you to Hell, you gain a very strong motivation for modifying selfish behavior. , and thus the soul can gradually free itself from at least some of the downward pull of the dualistic struggle. When you are completely selfish, that only reinforces the sense that you are in a struggle against everyone else. When you relieve some of this pressure, you can begin to see through the more selfish beliefs, and thus you can free yourself from some of the illusions of the ego.
Judge not
My point is that even though most fundamentalist Christians will reject this website as the work of the devil, there are actually people who have made progress by following a fundamentalist belief system. The problem is that this progress will only last for a time. A black-and-white approach simply cannot take you above a certain level of the spiritual path. And because this approach is still so heavily influenced by the relative logic of the ego, it can very easily become a blind alley that begins to take you into a downward spiral of judgment and pride, which is only marginally better than the downward spiral of selfishness.
The problem is that a black-and-white belief system automatically implies a value judgment. “The members of our church are automatically good and everyone else is bad.” This inevitably causes people to judge others based on a relative standard, defined by their egos. As I said:
1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. (Matthew, Chapter 7)
Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. (John 7:24)
Judging according to appearance means that you judge based on a relative, dualistic standard created by the ego. Judging righteous judgment means that you discern absolute truth based on the vision of the Christ mind. When you judge based on the ego, you inevitably feel that you are better than other people, and this leads to spiritual pride, which binds you to the duality consciousness.
Do you see my point? The ego wants a relative standard because it allows it to build the appearance that it is better than others. It can then create the illusion that because you are better than certain other people, you are guaranteed to be saved. As I explained in a previous discourse, there is no such value judgment in the Christ mind. That which is in alignment with God’s law is real, and that which is out of alignment with God is unreal. The Christ does not use the relative terms good and bad—it does not compare things on a relative scale that leads gradually from one extreme (good) to the opposite extreme (evil). The Christ mind does not judge based on appearance but is only concerned about whether something is real or not real.
One might say that the deepest level of ego-identification is to be completely selfish. You are completely identified with the dualistic struggle, thinking that life is a battle between you and the world. As you rise above this, you stop indulging in the most extreme selfish behaviors, but this makes you feel you are better than those who are still acting in “primitive” ways. At the lower level, you might engage in religion in order to destroy all threats to your religion, thinking God will reward you for doing so. At the next stage, your motivation for being involved with religion is to prove the superiority of your religion and thus create the appearance that you are so good that God simply has to save you.
A closed circle
The problem is that as long as you think the world is black and white, you cannot grow beyond a certain point. Black-and-white thinking sets up a scale with two extremes and then makes people think they have to choose one of the two polarities. In other words, if the world is engaged in an epic struggle between God and the devil, then you must obviously choose the side of God in order to be saved. Yet when this struggle is defined in black-and-white terms, it will seem as if choosing the side of God means choosing a particular religion in this world. And once you have chosen that religion, you must uncritically accept all of its doctrines—for if you don’t, the devil will get you and take you to hell.
This line of thinking obviously leads to a fear-based approach to salvation, which gives rise to two problems. One is that you simply cannot enter the kingdom of God while there is ANY fear left in your being. That is why I said:
36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. (Matthew, Chapter 22)
Until you overcome fear, you cannot put on the Christ consciousness. Yet how do you overcome fear? Partly by using the rational mind to reason that your fear is based on a lack of knowledge and partly by reaching for a direct experience of God’s transcendent reality, whereby you will experience the perfect love that casts out all fear. The problem here is that as long as you are trapped in a black-and-white belief system, you will be afraid of doing either.
Your belief system will strongly discourage you from thinking for yourself and questioning the beliefs that give rise to fear. And any black-and-white belief system on this planet states that you cannot experience God directly; you need the outer church and its priesthood as a mediator between you and God. That is why the black-and-white thinkers of the Jewish religion killed me after I stated that the kingdom of God is within you.
So fear itself makes a black-and-white belief system a closed circle, a trap for your mind. It creates a prison for your mind, and once the Conscious You is inside, your ego throws away the key. The Conscious You can step outside at any moment, but in order to do so, it must be willing to confront its fear and confront the fact that a black-and-white belief system is based on an illusion.
You see, the psychological effect of a black-and-white belief system is that it focuses your attention on a scale with two polarities, and then it makes it seem like truth has to be found somewhere on that scale. In other words, there is nothing beyond the relative scale. Yet any time – and I mean ANY TIME – you have a belief system with two opposites, you have a dualistic belief system. And in such a belief system BOTH OPPOSITES WILL BE DEFINED BY THE MIND OF ANTI-CHRIST.
I know this can be a startling statement considering the fact that most religions – including Christianity – define the world as an epic struggle between good and evil, between God and the devil. Yet as I have said, there is a stage on the spiritual path where people need to overcome the extreme selfish behavior by following a black-and-white belief system. However, there comes a point in your growth, when you MUST move beyond that stage in order to make further progress. And you do this ONLY by reaching for the Christ mind, which is beyond either of the two extremes defined by ANY black-and-white belief system!
Do you see my point? As I explained in previous discourses, the reality of God CANNOT be put on a relative scale and it has no opposite polarity. God’s reality has no opposite because that which is outside of God’s reality has no reality. And that which has no reality cannot be in opposition to that which has reality. Thus, in the Christ mind, there is only that which is real and that which appears to be unreal because the law of free will has allowed it to take on a temporary appearance outside God’s reality. Yet this unreality can exist only in the minds of co-creators who are trapped in duality.
It is only when you step into the mind of anti-christ that opposites become possible. In this frame of mind there seems to be two opposites, such as good and evil, true and false. These opposites cancel out each other, and because one can destroy the other, it seems like both of them have – the same – reality. This is what gives rise to fear of evil because people in a dualistic frame of mind think evil is real and has real power over them. When you attain the Christ mind and see that evil is not real and that its appearance has no power over you, you lose all fear. Yet as long as you believe evil has the same reality as good, you cannot overcome that fear. The trick is that evil DOES have the same reality as relative good. Thus, you need to use the Christ mind to see the absolute good of God.
My point here is that a black-and-white belief system makes you think that you have to move toward relative good and avoid its opposite, namely evil. It makes you think that a statement must be either true or false, meaning that you must side with what you – or your belief system – have defined as true and avoid anything that contradicts or goes beyond it.
People think that by moving toward relative good, they are moving closer to God. This is both true and untrue. If you move away from selfish behavior, you are moving away from the extreme forms of egotistical behavior. This gives you the potential – but ONLY the potential – to rise above duality—which will bring you closer to God. The big question is whether you keep moving toward a relative extreme (good as defined by the ego) – and thus inevitably become trapped in pride – or make the leap and reach for something beyond the dualistic extremes.
Christ truth cannot be forced into a dualistic belief system, and thus Christ truth can NEVER be found on a scale with two opposites! Christ truth is beyond duality and thus you can find it ONLY by reaching beyond the black-and-white belief systems of this world. As I have said, only when a soul reaches a certain maturity will it be ready to question its belief system and realize that the world is not black and white.
Likewise, many scientifically minded people believe there is nothing beyond the material universe. Thus, any belief system that proposes a “supernatural” cause is unscientific and the product of the subjectivity of the mind. The effect of a black-and-white approach is ALWAYS that it closes your mind to growth. As I said in a previous discourse, you settle for a description of truth – a description created through the mind of anti-christ – and you use it to justify not reaching for a direct experience of the Spirit of Truth.
Billions of people are trapped in some version of a black-and-white belief system. Yet most of the people who are open to this They have started seeing through the illusion that there is only one true religion and that “our side is always right and the other side is always wrong.” They have started realizing that life is not as simple as the black-and-white thinking implies and that a more sophisticated approach is needed. They have also started distancing themselves from the extremism and fanaticism – often even the value judgment and pride – that is so common for the black-and-white approach.
We might say that such people have started seeing through the black-and-white illusions of the ego. Yet although this clearly represents a higher level, it is extremely important for spiritual seekers to realize that they are still not above the relative logic of the ego. I have said that the ego has a built-in contradiction and seeks to create two opposite viewpoints in every situation. Obviously, black-and-white thinking defines such opposites, but this form of thinking also forms its own polarity. In other words, black-and-white thinking has its own opposite and when people start rising above black-and-white thinking, it is quite common that they jump into the opposite extreme. In the next discourse we will examine this extreme, and I hope I can prevent sincere seekers from being stuck in that extreme longer than necessary.