Seven Circles Revival Prayer Ministries

Christ In You the Hope of Glory

The New You in Christ

The hidden virtues of magnificent confusion

I am quite aware that most of the people who sincerely study my discourses on the ego will end up feeling somewhat confused. They will feel as if it seems almost impossible to distinguish between what is the dualistic “truth” of the ego and what is the real truth of the Christ mind. They will feel as if it seems very difficult to know when they are acting from the ego and when they are not. Some will even feel a sense of hopelessness, as if it seems impossible to ever overcome the ego and its subtleties.

I understand these feelings, but I hope I can help you see that this is simply a necessary phase on the spiritual path that all seekers must pass through before they can rise above the ego. Every person who has ever attained the Christ consciousness has passed through this phase, myself included. Thus, I hope I can help you realize that you are not alone and that it is indeed possible to pass through this phase, even though it can seem hopeless at times.

What I truly hope to help you see is that the state of honest confusion is actually a magnificent state of consciousness. Instead of feeling despair or discouragement, you should congratulate yourself for having won an important victory. By being willing to move into a state of confusion, you have taken a very important step on the path of freeing yourself from the ego. Why is that so?

What I have endeavored to explain in the ego discourses is that the ego has an insatiable desire to be in control of every situation. It is constantly seeking to set itself up as an authority figure that cannot be questioned or gainsaid. Yet being an authority figure comes with a subtle temptation that has caused many otherwise sincere people – especially in the field of politics – to fail their missions in life. And certainly, the ego has no way of resisting this temptation. The temptation is that if you are an authority figure, it seems as if you should always be right. If you are not right, your authority is brought into question, and this gives rise to the fear that you could lose your position and its privileges.

The ego lives in a constant state of fear that if it is proven wrong, it will lose its control over you and thus it will die. This is a well-founded fear in the sense that once the Conscious You begins to see the fallacy of the ego’s dualistic, fear-based and control-seeking reasoning, the ego will lose its control over you and it will eventually die.

Now, here comes the subtle reasoning. The path that leads to freedom from the ego is that the Conscious You must stop identifying itself with the ego and the ego’s dualistic beliefs. If a person is completely identified with his or her ego, the person will feel the ego’s fear of losing control. Therefore, this person will feel compelled to defend the ego’s beliefs as if it was a matter of life and death. In other words, the person will feel it is of utmost importance never to be proven wrong.

How does the ego attempt to avoid being proven wrong? By creating beliefs that are based on either black-and-white thinking or gray thinking. The ego defines a world view, and as long as the person accepts this world view, the person can never be proven wrong. The person will always be able to twist any situation or argument so that it seems like he or she is never wrong.

Do you see the consequence of this approach to life? It truly gives a person a sense of certainty, which can make people feel very sure that they are right, that they are okay or even that they are superior to others. Yet, this is a false security that is in constant danger of being threatened or shattered by events over which neither the person nor the ego has any control.

I referred to this false sense of certainty when I said:

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)

When a person is completely identified with the ego, the person is using black-and-white or gray thinking to refute any idea or viewpoint that questions the ego’s dualistic world view. Thus, such a person simply is not teachable, and a spiritual teacher has little opportunity to reach the person, as I explained recently.

Do you now see my point? When you identify yourself with the ego, you have the ego’s superficial certainty, and thus you can deny any confusion. In a sense, you are never feeling confused, because the ego always has ready-made answers to any question or situation. Therefore, the very fact that you now feel confused and that you are willing to recognize that you feel confused is a clear demonstration that the Conscious You is no longer completely identified with the ego.


Recognizing the true teacher
I realize that in a certain way, the dissolution of the ego’s superficial certainty will feel like a loss, but only when you look at it from a narrow perspective. Once you step back and look at the forest instead of the trees, you see that being confused is a major step forward because you have now become teachable for both your Christ self and your spiritual teachers. And as the old saying goes, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Thus, instead of looking back toward the “good old days” when you thought you knew everything and had life under control, you need to refocus your attention and look for the teacher who is here with you right now and is ready to help you take the next step.

I see many spiritual seekers who finally see through the ego’s false certainty and who give up the security of the ego’s old belief system or world view. However, they do so reluctantly and they immediately start looking for some other source of security. In so doing they are often attracted to a guru or organization who makes very strong – even absolutist – claims. This often gives them a sense that because they are now with the true guru or savior, they can feel secure again. Obviously, this approach simply gives the ego a new lease on life because it will now start using the new belief system to enslave you.

I also see some seekers who give up the security of an old belief system, yet they adopt a new one that makes them think they are on the path to enlightenment. They think that once they reach that state, they will once again feel secure and have the certainty of knowing everything. However, even an enlightened person does not know everything, as I will explain shortly.

What I desire to see happen is that seekers go beyond the need for outer certainty and security by making conscious contact with the ultimate teacher, namely the inner teacher of their Christ selves and through that with their ascended teachers. The reason I said that the kingdom of God is within you is that you can enter the kingdom of God – the Christ consciousness – only through an inner process. It follows that in order to complete this process, you must make contact with your inner teacher.

I am not denouncing an outer teacher or teaching as both can be very helpful. What I am saying here is that you will always attract to you both the true teacher that can help you take the next step and the false teacher that will make you feel like you shouldn’t take the next step. If you look for certainty, you will inevitably be attracted to the false teacher. Only if you are willing to remain confused, will you find the true teacher. Why is that so?

The ego seeks to control you, and the last thing the ego wants is for you to become self-sufficient and spiritually independent. In return for letting it control you, the ego offers you the false sense of certainty—that you are always right, that you are guaranteed to be saved, that you are superior to others or whatever your particular need might be. In contrast, the true teacher wants you to become self-sufficient, and thus a true teacher will never seek to control you. Instead of offering you a superficial certainty, the true teacher offers you the true, inner path—and this is an ongoing process of expanding your consciousness.

The path never ends, meaning that there is no limit to how much you can grow in awareness and understanding. However, what exactly does that mean? If you are open to the possibility of never-ending growth in awareness, it means that there is no belief or viewpoint that can be considered absolute or infallible. In other words, the true inner path does not offer you the outer certainty of the ego, namely that this or that outer belief is absolute. On the contrary, on the inner path there are no absolute beliefs for any belief can be expanded or replaced by a broader awareness.

This leads to two essential considerations:.

  • On the inner path, there is no outer certainty or security. Therefore, it is essential that you develop an inner sense of certainty and security. The ego is trying to say that as long as you believe in its infallible doctrines, YOU are okay. What you need to do is go beyond this need for an external security and find an internal source of security. This will be our next consideration.


Finding true certainty
The key to finding inner certainty is to follow my command:

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. (Matthew 6:33)

Instead of seeking a human sense of certainty – by believing in a man-made doctrine or living within a set of man-made rules – you seek for God’s truth. However, and here is a point often overlooked, you will not find Christ truth until you are willing to let go of the ego’s certainty and be willing to be confused. You must let the ego’s sense of certainty die, as I let my physical body die on the cross. And only when you are willing to take a step into the unknown – by being willing to be confused for a time – will you begin to see beyond the veil of duality created by the ego. That is why I said:

Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go [and] sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come [and] follow me. (Matthew 19:21)

It does not literally mean that you have to give away everything you have. The spiritual meaning is that you are willing to give up the certainty of the ego and be willing to be confused for a time. As I attempted to explain in the previous ego discourses, Christ truth is entirely beyond the dualistic “truths” of the mind of anti-christ. Yet because you have grown up in a world that is so heavily influenced by the mind of anti-christ, it will take you some time to free your mind from this influence.

In reality, this means that you simply must go through a period in which it seems like there is nothing that is certain, nothing you know for sure. As I have argued, this should be embraced as a positive sign that you are rising above the ego and you should strive to keep your mind open to a higher understanding. Unfortunately, many seekers open their minds only for a brief period, which is enough to give their Christ selves a chance to give them direction to look at an outer teaching or teacher. Yet as soon as they enter that “safe zone,” they again close their minds to inner direction and focus on the outer direction.

Instead, you should strive to keep your mind open to the inner direction. The catch here is that inner direction will always seek to take you beyond your current mental box by questioning your “unquestionable” beliefs. Thus, there are actually some people who reject the true teacher as threatening their infallible beliefs, and they cling to the ego and a false teacher who does not question their most cherished beliefs.

Only one thing can take you beyond these reactions and the entire need for outer security, namely that you find an inner source of security. The key to doing this is to realize a very simple, yet profound truth. Behind the ego’s desire to set itself up as an infallible authority is the ego’s built-in insecurity. The ego feels that it is inherently unworthy, and this is true because the ego was never created by God. Yet the ego does not understand and cannot acknowledge this, which is why the ego is trying to create the appearance of its worthiness by using what is available to it in the material world. The ego is trying to build a tower of worthiness, and it inevitably becomes a tower of Babel. It will never reach into the heavens but will eventually collapse under its own weight.

The problem is, of course, that as long as you identify with the ego, you will also feel unworthy and fear that you are unacceptable in the eyes of God and that you will “burn forever in hell” or however you define the ultimate misfortune. So when you can no longer hold on to the ego’s certainty, your inner fear of damnation will surface and you have to deal with it. Some refuse to do so and thus throw themselves into an(other) outer belief system that offers them reprieve. Yet at some point in life, you have to deal with this ghost, and I highly recommend you do not wait until your deathbed.

The key to overcoming unworthiness is to realize that the core of your lower being is the Conscious You, and it is more than the ego. In fact, the Conscious You is more than your entire worldly sense of identity. The Conscious You is an extension of God’s own Being, and thus it is inherently worthy. You are worthy by the fact that God created you out of his own Being.

I realize you might not feel worthy, and that telling you that you are worthy might have little effect as long as you feel confused. So let us attempt to part the confusion somewhat. For many people, the concept of the Conscious You can seem abstract, but seeing is believing. When you experience the Conscious You, you will know you are more than the lower sense of identity. And the fact is that if you recognize that you feel confused, you have already experienced the Conscious You.

Your ego never feels confused, for it will simply replace a failed absolutist belief with another one. Yet the Conscious You has the capacity for self-awareness, and that is why it can recognize that it is confused and wonder about whether it is worthy. Your ego is incapable of self-observation, meaning that it cannot stand back, look at your life and reach the conclusion that it wants to change. Yet the Conscious You can do this, and therefore, the fact that you are studying a spiritual teaching means that you have started separating yourself from the ego. You have started becoming aware that you are a spiritual being who is more than your earthly identity.

My point is that you are already experiencing the Conscious You, because only the Conscious You can step back from your life and even consider that you have an ego and that you are more than the ego. And only this realization will make you aware of and interested in following the spiritual path. You simply need to deepen this experience so that you begin to internalize the fact that you are MORE than your outer viewpoints and beliefs. Doing this has a very important psychological effect.


You are more than your beliefs
In reality, the ego has no inherent or self-sufficient sense of identity. The ego IS its beliefs and viewpoints. That is why the ego must base its sense of identity and worth on its beliefs. And if one of those beliefs is threatened, the ego feels its worth, even its very existence, is threatened. That is why people who are identified with their egos are willing to kill other people in order to destroy a threat to their belief system.

The Conscious You does have an inherent sense of identity and worth that is independent of your outer beliefs, opinions and viewpoints. As you begin to focus on the fact that you are the conscious self, you can gradually reconnect to that pure sense of being. You can even experience a state of consciousness in which you are aware, but your mind is free of specific thoughts. You experience pure consciousness, and when you have such a transcendental or mystical experience, you know you are more than the contents of your mind.

All spiritual seekers have had at least brief glimpses of this pure consciousness or they would not be longing for something beyond what this world has to offer. Yet not all seekers are consciously aware of what they have experienced. Many even take these experiences for granted because they seem so natural or because they have never been taught what they mean. Yet as you begin to contemplate these concepts, you will realize that you know you are more than your beliefs.

And as you become more aware of the you that is behind the contents of your consciousness, you naturally become less attached to those contents. You begin to realize that any belief or viewpoint you hold on Earth is simply a particular expression of truth. Yet as you are more than the contents of your mind, truth is more than any particular expression. 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)

Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. (John 14:17)

When you recognize that truth is more than ANY expression of truth found on Earth, how can you remain attached to one particular expression? And thus you lose your fear of letting go of your present understanding of truth and letting it be replaced by a higher understanding.

As you stop holding on to the dualistic beliefs of the ego, you will become gradually more open to the non-dual directions of your Christ self and spiritual teachers. This will eventually give you a conscious connection to the universal Christ mind, and you will then begin to gain a foundation for avoiding the negative aspects of confusion, namely the sense that you don’t know what is right and wrong, true or false. You will begin to experience the Spirit of truth directly, and this will remove confusion although it will not give you an outer certainty as many people imagine.


Being wrong without being wrong
The greatest advantage of this shift in consciousness is that you lose your fear of being wrong. Take a few seconds to step back and look at what a heavy burden has been put upon you by the ego and perhaps also by your upbringing. Take an honest look at how much the world revolves around the compulsive desire to always be right. See how it creates conflicts between people, often leading to wars. See how it creates conflict in yourself, often putting you on a downward path, where all of your energy is fed into proving that you are right so you have no attention left over for enjoying life.

This obsessive-compulsive desire to be right springs from the ego’s belief that if its viewpoints are proven wrong, then IT is proven wrong. And this belief is perfectly true—for the ego. Yet it is not true for the Conscious You because you are more than your viewpoints. Thus, if one of your beliefs is proven wrong, it does not mean that you are wrong or that you are a bad person. And this means you can let go of the entire weight of having to always be right.

I can assure you that once you do this, you will literally feel as if the weight of the world has been lifted from your shoulders. You will feel reborn and that you have received a chance to start life anew. That is why I said:

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. (Mark 10:15)

Look at a child who is learning how to walk. It does not carry the heavy burden that it has to be perfect every time or that it should feel guilty for falling down. It simply gets up and tries again, laughing at its own mistakes while still learning from them. When you separate yourself from the ego’s need to be right, you too can become as joyful as a little child, and then the spiritual path becomes a joy-filled journey rather than the Via Dolorosa.

Take note that children are always eager to learn, meaning that they don’t think they know everything or that they have to know everything. Thus, they have no resistance to learning something new. The ego will always resist having a belief proven wrong, but once you connect to who you are, you can actually see it as a great opportunity to have a belief proven wrong. Instead of continuing to live with a limited or incorrect belief, you can now rise to a higher understanding which can only enrich your life. Thus, having a belief proven wrong becomes a stepping stone for growth rather than a loss.


Let go of certainty and embrace the magnificent confusion
The ego wants you to believe that if one of your beliefs is proven wrong, you will lose something and you will end up in a black hole. The reason is that the ego’s sense of identity is based on its beliefs, so if one is taken, the ego loses part of its identity. Yet once you realize the Conscious You is MORE than your beliefs, you can avoid this trap.

Instead, you can see that losing a limited belief never leaves you in a vacuum, for the limited belief is always replaced by a broader understanding. Your inner teacher will question your limited beliefs, but will never leave you empty. Your inner teacher will always offer you a higher understanding to replace the limited one. And when you embrace this process, you will never feel a loss. Instead, your life will become a constant process of discovery that leads to a greater and greater understanding of life.

Yet for this to happen, you must become aware of the ego’s fear of loss and you must consciously choose to dismiss it. Instead, you must embrace the true inner path as an ongoing journey that never stops. On the true path, you will never again have the outer security that is based on specific beliefs and viewpoints. Instead, you will develop an inner certainty that is based on knowing who you are and that who you are is perfectly worthy in the eyes of God.

The true spiritual path is the River of Life and it is always flowing. Everything in the River of Life is constantly transcending itself and becoming MORE. The ego cannot be part of this process, but the Conscious You can—as long as you are willing to flow with the river instead of resisting it. People who identify with their egos are resisting the river, they are refusing to flow with it.

They are like people in a river, who are desperately clinging to a branch on the river bank. They think flowing with the river is dangerous and thus they cling to the sense of security and stability that the bank seems to offer. Once in a while, the current becomes so strong that they lose their grip and must let go. They feel a sense of panic and desperately grasp for anything they can hold on to. Thus, their entire lives are swallowed up by feeling threatened and by resisting their own growth.

The wise spiritual seekers realize that true growth means that you never stand still, and thus you never have the false sense of security that can only come from standing still. Instead, these seekers embrace the process and start enjoying the journey instead of either obsessing about or fearing the destination. They voluntarily let go of whatever they are holding on to on the river bank and lovingly embrace the river itself. They decide to flow with the current instead of resisting it. And they soon realize that flowing with the river is so much more enjoyable and peaceful than fighting the current that only seeks to carry them toward the ocean of self.

The really wise ones even realize that the ocean is not nearly as important as the journey. After all, the ocean is made of water, and so is the river. Thus, you will be no more wet in the ocean than you are in the river. In fact there is a distinct enjoyment in feeling the water moving and feeling yourself moving with the water. If you embrace the flow, you will not fear leaving the bank behind, nor will you feel that you will be incomplete until you reach the ocean. You will feel complete in being in the flow and you will enjoy watching the journey unfold all around and within you. You will then BE ONE with the River of Life, and thus you will be one with the creator’s ongoing dance of self-transcendence.

There is no greater certainty than this oneness with the Spirit of Truth, yet it is not based on outer beliefs. In fact, in oneness with the process of self-transcendence there is no belief that cannot be expanded and replaced with a broader understanding. For if your present understanding could not be expanded, how could self-transcendence be possible? And if there is no self-transcendence, life itself will have stopped. Thus, stillstand is never a reality but only an illusion created by the ego.

Embrace the process of life and go with the flow. The sooner you let go of the need to always be right or the need for certainty, the sooner you can embrace the state of magnificent confusion. This means you have no outer certainty but that you have the inner certainty of knowing you are one with the River of Life itself.

New Creature

Making LIFE decisions or Death decisions

We have now reached a turning point in my discourses on the ego. My first nine discourses on “The least you should know about the ego” form the Alpha polarity. My last discourse on magnificent confusion forms the nexus of the figure-eight, and we will now enter the lower figure, the Omega polarity.

The first discourses presented the overall view, the big picture, so that you have a foundation for knowing that you are more than the ego. It was an attempt to show you the forest without focusing on the individual trees. Why did I start out this way? Because you are not only a person who is lost in the forest, you are a person who has grown up in the forest. Thus, your upbringing has not given you a clear understanding of the real cause that makes your life an ongoing struggle.

Therefore, I had to start out by showing you that you are lost but that there is something outside the forest. It is not until you recognize yourself as lost that you can start looking for a way out instead of feeling hopeless – or even content – in the shadow of the trees. You now understand that the core of your identity is the Conscious You and that you are MORE than the earthly identity built by your ego.

You should also recognize that you already know you are more than the ego, because it is the Conscious You who has studied my previous discourses on the ego. You have done so only because you want to be more than what you are right now. You don’t really think it was your ego that compelled you to read these long and somewhat complex discourses on the ego, do you? So you should allow yourself to recognize that you already know there is something outside the ego forest.

However, having a mental image of the forest is not the same as being outside that forest. You still have to follow the trail that leads you out, and for a time your vision of what is outside will be blocked by a number of individual trees. Thus, in this next section we will look at the individual trees, namely the games that the ego has constructed in order to keep you trapped in the forest. The strategy of the ego is to get you so entangled in the branches of one or more individual trees that you forget about the trail.

Let me assure you that having made it this far, especially if you have recognized that you are in a state of magnificent confusion, is an accomplishment. My first discourses were actually designed to act as a filter to filter out those who are not ready to let go of their egos. I am in no way passing judgment upon such people; I am simply stating the fact that not everyone is ready to see through and leave behind the ego.

Virtually every human being on this planet is somewhat blinded by the ego. Yet the vast majority is not ready to even acknowledge the existence of the ego, let alone take a long look in the mirror and recognize: “I have an ego, and I need to rise above it!” Such people will have taken one of the “easy ways out” that I offered between the lines in the first discourses, and their egos will have found an excuse for not continuing. Yet anyone who starts the series will have had certain seeds planted, and in good time they will sprout and come to the surface of awareness so that the person can take another look at the ego.

My point is that if you have sincerely studied my previous discourses, you are ready to begin looking at the specific games that your own ego is playing. In fact, you have already overcome some of these games or you would still be so identified with the ego that you would not be open to this teaching. Thus, as I describe the games, I hope you will begin to recognize that as a spiritual seeker, you have risen above some of the most destructive ego games.

I hope this will give you some encouragement in realizing that you might be further along on the path than you thought. Even if you have overcome the very lowest ego game, you are still in a much better place than those who are trapped in that game. Thus, I hope you will recognize that if you have overcome one ego game, you can overcome them all, for they are truly all cut from the same cloth. As I will explain further, the ego has only one game that comes in numerous disguises, some more subtle than others. Yet once you see the basic strategy of the ego, you can more easily expose the rest of its games.

My point is that as I expose the ego games in this section, I will start with the most primitive and then gradually work up toward the most subtle. I hope you will honestly look at yourself, recognize which games you have left behind and build a positive momentum. As you build this momentum, you should be able to acknowledge when you come to the first game that you have not yet – completely – overcome. And then you can use your momentum to avoid a negative reaction – such as guilt or denial – and simply acknowledge that since you have already risen above one or more games, you can surely rise above this next one as well.

As you continue to build on your accomplishments, you will reinforce the momentum until it becomes an unstoppable force that pulls you through the forest and simply cuts down the trees that are in your way. Before you know it, you will see the light filtering through the trees, and one day you will break through the last brush and enter the open field, where your eyes can finally see the horizon of Being.

Think about what it is like to be lost in a forest. The biggest problem is that you have no absolute point of reference, you have no horizon but only a very limited field of view. You only see trees and have no way of knowing which direction to follow in order to get out of the forest. Yet as you cut down the individual trees, you will eventually catch a glimpse of the horizon and now you will have a firm direction to follow. In the beginning it might seem like overcoming the ego is hopeless, but if you keep overcoming the individual ego games, you WILL one day break through and catch a glimpse of your own Higher Being. From then on, you will never again be completely lost in the forest.


The master game of the ego
Although I will describe the individual games used by the ego, I will start out by describing the master game. You may not be able to clearly see this game at this point, but I want to plant the seed in your mind so that it can germinate and eventually break through to your conscious awareness.

As I explained in my first discourses, the Conscious You created the ego by deciding that it would no longer make decisions. This is illustrated in the old fairy tale about the sleeping beauty. The princess is the Conscious You and one day she falls victim to a plot hatched by the evil Godmother, namely the prince of this world. Thus, the princess falls asleep and an impenetrable forest grows up around her castle. The forest, of course, is the ego and the individual trees are the illusions of the ego, the ego games. One day a prince comes by, penetrates the forest and kisses the princess who awakens. The prince symbolizes the Living Christ who can take on many forms, both as an outer teacher and as the inner teacher of your Christ self. Regardless of the form, the Living Christ always serves to awaken the Conscious You to the need to come up higher.

In the fairy tale, the prince and the princess live happily ever after, and here is where the fairy tale departs from reality. In the real world, the Conscious You is not home free by being awakened. It/you must personally cut down all of the trees that surround the castle, and only then will you live happily ever after.

The master strategy of the ego involves two elements. The first one is that the ego will do anything it can to prevent the Conscious You from awakening to the realization that there must be more to your identity. For the majority of human beings, this strategy is still working and they still identify themselves completely with the identity that the ego has built in the material world. The fact that you are reading this means that you are a spiritual seeker, and thus your ego’s first strategy has failed. You know there is more to your identity and you are actively looking for it.

Thus, you are now the target for the ego’s second strategy, which is to prevent you from clearing the thorny trees around the castle. Each of these trees represents a decision, a decision based on the mind of anti-christ, the mind of duality and separation. This is where I would like to leave the fairy-tale analogy behind and instead refer to the image of a spiral staircase. Each decision that was based on the mind of anti-christ took you further down the spiral staircase, the staircase that leads into the darkness of separation from your higher Being. This is what the Bible refers to as “the valley of the shadow of death” (Proverbs 23:4).

The separation from your I AM Presence and your true sense of identity truly is the consciousness of spiritual death. Thus, the decisions based on the illusions of the mind of anti-christ brought you further into the consciousness of death. We might say that each of these decisions was a Death decision. One kiss from the prince is not enough to raise you out of the shadow of death. You must consciously walk the staircase and undo each of the decisions that brought you down the staircase. And this is precisely what the ego will do everything in its power to prevent you from doing.

In order to take a step up the spiral staircase, you must come to see through the dualistic illusion that brought you down to that step. You can do this only by seeing the Christ truth that counteracts the illusion, the truth that makes you free. And then you must choose the truth of Christ over the “truth” of anti-christ. You must choose life over death. I would like to call each of these decisions a “LIFE decision.”

What I am hoping to help you see is that the ego will do anything to prevent you from making these LIFE decisions. And in order to accomplish this overall goal, the ego – and the forces of anti-christ – have invented a number of subtle games. The goal is to keep you entangled with a particular illusion, so that you cannot let go of it and rise to the next step on the path.


What is a LIFE decision?
When I talk about LIFE decisions, I am not talking about minor decisions, such as whether to bring an umbrella or what to have for lunch. Nor am I talking about big decisions in your material life, such as what career to pursue or what person to marry. I am talking about the kind of decisions that affect how you see yourself, God, the world and the relationship between these three factors in your life. I am talking about decisions that affect your sense of identity.

As I explained in the previous discourses, when you descend one step on the spiral staircase, your old identity dies and a new one is born. Thus, in order to ascend one step, the old – human – identity must die and a new more spiritual one must be born. That is why I said:

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.
6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John, Chapter 3)

This spiritual rebirth requires you to voluntarily and consciously – if it is not conscious, it cannot be voluntary – let the old human identity die and accept that you are reborn into a higher spiritual sense of identity. To make this less abstract, let me give an example.

Many people struggle with alcoholism and use various programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, to combat this condition. Some manage to stop drinking by using the force of conscious will to suppress the urge to drink. This is commendable, but it comes with a price, namely that you must struggle to uphold the decision, often for the rest of your life. An organization such as AA maintains that you are an alcoholic for life and that you must continue to suppress the urge to drink. I am not denouncing this approach for people at a certain level, but there is a higher approach.

You see, there is only one reason why you could become susceptible to alcoholism in the first place, namely that you have accepted a sense of identity as a human being who has no real purpose to life and who is powerless to overcome certain problems. Thus, if you can’t overcome a problem (to stop the pain) and if you really are not worth anything, it is okay to dull the pain through alcohol.

You then gradually slide into a physical and emotional addiction, but one day the Conscious you wakes up and realizes this cannot go on or you will die. So you go into a treatment program and use the force of will to suppress what is seen as the cause of the problem, namely the urge to drink. However, the real cause is your sense of identity as a basically worthless human being whose life has no higher purpose.

The real solution is to transcend that state of consciousness, which you can do by internalizing the Christ truth that you are a unique, spiritual being who is infinitely loved by God and who came to Earth for a specific spiritual purpose. Once you accept this new sense of identity – once you let the old identity die and are spiritually reborn – you will see that you are worthy and that your life has a mission that is far too important to let alcohol stand in the way of its fulfillment.

Thus, you have not simply suppressed the urge to drink – which is only the effect and not the cause – but you have accepted a higher sense of identity. For the new person that you now are, drinking is simply unthinkable. It is not even an option and the ego and the prince of this world have no way to tempt you into drinking. You are so focused on your mission that you do not even notice their temptations. (This leads them to stop and attempt to come up with another kind of temptation that works at your new level of consciousness. Nevertheless, you have still made significant progress and it has become harder for them to tempt you.)

Do you now see the overall strategy of the ego? You have descended the staircase by accepting a lower sense of identity than your true identity, which is that you are a unique spiritual being. You have accepted that you are a human being with certain limitations. The ego is trying to prevent you from letting go of a limited sense of identity and accepting a higher one. It does this by either keeping you in spiritual blindness (so you don’t see your limitations or the alternative) or making you so attached to your current sense of identity that you are not willing to let go of it.

Your current sense of identity is based on something in this world, it is a worldly or material sense of identity. Thus, the ego is trying to keep you so entangled with or attached to the “things of this world” that you either cannot see or cannot accept your true spiritual identity. The ego seeks to accomplish this through the individual ego games, each of which is designed to keep you so focused on something in the material world that you cannot or will not look beyond it. You are not willing to give up your limited sense of identity in order to rise to a broader sense of identity. You are not able or willing to let go of your belief that you ARE the lower identity and that there is nothing more to you than what that identity specifies.

How you can make decisions without making decisions
In my previous discourses, I said that at some point the Conscious You decided that it would no longer make decisions, and it allowed the ego to make decisions for you. This is true, but there is a deeper understanding that we now need to uncover.

The fact is that there are some decisions that can be made by the ego and there are some decisions that can only be made by the Conscious You. The Conscious You is an extension of your I AM Presence and a spark of God’s Being. It is sent into the material world with the command to multiply and have dominion. This means that you must multiply your sense of identity as a co-creator, and only the Conscious You can make decisions about your sense of identity. Only the Conscious You can make a Death decision – a decision that leads you to a lower sense of identity – or a LIFE decision – a decision that leads you to a higher sense of identity. The ego cannot make such decisions, but it can influence how the Conscious You makes such decisions.

To illustrate this, consider a company that is owned by one person. The owner does not want to make all the day-to-day decisions and has hired a CEO to run the business while he spends time in his private office or in his country club. The CEO can make most of the decisions related to running the business, but some decisions must still be made by the owner. One year the CEO makes some bad decisions and the company loses money. Yet he does not admit this to the owner. Instead, he comes up with a plan that makes it seem like it was market conditions that led to the loss, and if only the owner will approve a loan from the bank, the company will regroup and be much stronger next year.

Because the owner really does not want to run the company himself, he believes the CEO and approves the loan. This obviously takes the company one step down the ladder of debt, but the owner thinks it will only be a temporary setback and he again retreats into his private world. The next year the company is still not showing a profit, but again the CEO comes up with a convincing plan and the owner – who really doesn’t want to leave his private world – approves another loan.

Obviously, this process can continue for as long as the owner believes the CEO. As long as the CEO can avoid something that shakes the owner’s trust, he can get away with quite a lot and the company can slide into hopeless debt before the owner realizes what is going on. Once the situation gets so bad that the owner can no longer ignore it, he will have to wake up and run the company himself. However, what will it take to get to that point? That depends on the balance between the owner’s desire to stay in his private world and his desire to avoid having the company go down. As long as there is no distinct event that shatters the owner’s illusion, the slide can continue indefinitely.

Yet what is the real problem here? Although the owner has retreated from running the company, he is not completely isolated. He still feels the consequences of the company not making a profit and he still has to make the most important decisions. So although he might feel as if he is no longer making decisions, this is only an illusion. He is still making the Death decisions that take the company to a distinctly lower level, yet what he is NOT doing is taking charge of gathering the information UPON WHICH THESE DECISIONS ARE BASED. He allows the CEO to present to him a selective picture of the situation and then he bases his LIFE and Death decisions on the image presented by the CEO.

This is the exact dynamic between the Conscious You and the ego. The Conscious You decides that it no longer wants to be in command of your life, so it allows the ego to make the day-to-day decisions. Yet the ego cannot decide on your sense of identity, so the ego can only make decisions within the framework of how the Conscious You sees itself. The ego’s decisions are based on the duality consciousness, which means they will inevitably lead to undesirable consequences.

The Conscious You will experience these consequences, but the ego will present you with a “company report” that makes it seem like this is just a temporary setback. You are the victim of circumstances beyond your control, but if only you will make the decision recommended by the ego, you will see that things will get better. The ego will present you with a view of the situation that is based on dualistic thinking. The ego really believes its solution will work, but in reality a solution based on the duality consciousness cannot solve problems created by the duality consciousness.

Yet if you still do not want to take back the responsibility for running the company, you might believe the ego. You will then make a Death decision that takes you down to a distinctly lower sense of identity. You might not realize what is happening, but the ego will now begin to make decisions based on this lower sense of identity. By accepting a lower sense of identity, you have given the ego more freedom to act, and this will lead to even more unpleasant consequences. Thus, you have already set the stage for the next crisis.

Do you see the mechanics? You make a Death decision that takes you to a lower level of identity. The ego now takes over and makes the minor decisions based on this new sense of identity. Each of these decisions leads to unpleasant consequences, and in order to escape those consequences, you will – as long as you refuse to take command of your life – make another Death decision that takes you further down the staircase.

When it comes time for the next company report, the ego will present a rosy picture that makes it seem like it is not the ego’s fault, and certainly not your fault. Sure things are tough right now, but they are sure to get better. And in the meantime, why don’t you – the new HUMAN being – simply make yourself comfortable by taking advantage of the pleasures the material world has to offer. Stop worrying about the purpose of life and simply have a little fun. Live a little—until you have to die some more.


The only way out
Once you have forgotten your higher identity, you cannot see any way out of your dilemma. You do not understand that the unpleasant consequences are the inevitable result of decisions based on the duality consciousness. You have forgotten that there is an alternative to this state of consciousness, so you think the only way to escape the unpleasant consequences is to make better dualistic decisions. You think you can solve your problems without transcending your current sense of identity—which is the source of your problems. And this is precisely what your ego and the prince of this world want you to keep believing. They want you to believe in the illusion that you can solve a problem with the same state of consciousness that created the problem (which is what they believe).

At some point, the Conscious You will experience such severe consequences that it will wake up and say, “I can’t keep doing this anymore; I have to change something.” Yet even after this awakening, the ego will do anything to prevent you from realizing the reality I have just described. That reality has the following components:

  • Only the Conscious You can make LIFE and Death decisions, decisions that take you up or down the staircase of identity.

  • You have descended that staircase because you made Death decisions.

  • You made those decisions because you allowed the ego to gather the information upon which you based the decisions.

  • Because the ego can see only the mind of anti-christ, all of its information was dualistic in nature and could only create more problems.

  • The ONLY way out is to start making LIFE decisions.

  • Such decisions must be based on the reality of the Christ mind rather than on the illusions of the mind of anti-christ.

  • Only the Conscious You can access the Christ mind. The ego can NEVER do so.

  • The Conscious You ALWAYS has the option to reach for the mind of Christ. No matter how far you have descended down the staircase, you can still ask for guidance, and you will receive it. When the student is ready, the teacher will ALWAYS appear, and the teacher will give the student exactly what is needed to take the very next step up the spiral staircase. The challenge for you is to recognize the teacher and be willing to follow his/her directions.

The problem is that before you can make use of this “open door that no man can shut,” you – meaning the Conscious You – must decide to take back responsibility for your life. You must take back responsibility for making LIFE decisions and you must take back responsibility for gathering the information upon which you base those decisions. You must refuse to allow the ego to back you into a corner, where it seems like you have to make decisions based on two extremes that are both defined by the mind of anti-christ. You must refuse to be manipulated into a situation where it seems like your only option is to choose the lesser evil. You must take back your responsibility to discern between the truth of Christ and the illusions of anti-christ.

My overall point is this. Once you have made the decision not to take command, you allow the ego to provide the information upon which you make the big decisions, and you slide down the staircase without realizing what is happening. You experience it as a blur rather than as a string of discrete events, each one causing the death of the old you and the birth of the new you. However, you cannot ascend the staircase the same way. You cannot simply slide up the staircase—you must walk by your own efforts. You cannot expect a spiritual teacher to pull you up the staircase as the ego pulled you down. You must stand up and decide to walk by your own effort.

The real key is to realize that walking up the staircase requires you to take a number of discrete and distinct steps. In order to climb to the next step, you must remove both feet from the previous step, meaning that you must decide to leave that step behind forever. This requires you to willingly let the old sense of identity die and allow yourself to be reborn into a new sense of identity. This is what Paul described:

22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;
23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;
24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. (Ephesians, Chapter 4)

For each step you take up the spiral staircase, YOU must make a decision. This decision must be based on the following:

  • You see that what brought you to your current step on the staircase was a decision that YOU made.

  • You see that the decision was based on the illusions of the mind of anti-christ presented by the ego.

  • You see why this illusion is wrong and why it could only lead to unpleasant consequences.

  • You see this because you have recognized the truth of Christ that makes you free from the illusion.

  • You now consciously and with no regrets or attachments choose to let go of the illusion and accept and internalize the truth of Christ.

By making this LIFE decision, you have allowed the old you to die and you have been spiritually reborn into a new sense of identity. This does not mean you are now saved and will live happily ever after. It means you have ascended one step on the spiral staircase, and you are now ready to face the next challenge. Only when you have faced every decision that brought you down the staircase, will you reach the top and live happily ever after.


The ultimate LIFE decision
Let me summarize what I have revealed in this discourse: You can sleepwalk your way down the spiral staircase of life, but you CANNOT sleepwalk your way back up! You can get down by making unconscious decisions, but you can get back up ONLY by making conscious decisions.

Let me return to the analogy of the owner of a company. After several years of bad financial results, the owner finally wakes up and realizes his CEO has fed him a distorted view of the company’s situation. Yet he now faces the crucial decision of whether to take back charge of the company or whether to simply fire the bad CEO and hire another one so he can continue to retreat into his private world. He decides to do the latter and hires a new CEO. Yet he is unaware that it is actually the old CEO who has taken on a disguise and has presented himself as a different person.

As a spiritual seeker, you have already made some LIFE decisions, and for each decision, you fired the ego which caused you to rise to a higher sense of identity. The problem is that the ego will immediately change its disguise and present itself as a capable CEO who can run your new company for you. My point is that many spiritual seekers have made significant progress, yet they have not yet come to the point of making the ultimate LIFE decision.

This decision is the firm commitment that you will take charge of your life and that you will remain in charge. You will make the important decisions and you will take responsibility for attaining the vision of Christ before you make such decisions. You will keep making one LIFE decision after another, and you will keep doing so until you reach the top of the spiral staircase. You will never again allow your ego to talk you into abandoning your responsibility to discern between the reality of Christ and the unreality of anti-christ.

Now, before you become discouraged and start feeling like it is an insurmountable task to overcome all of the ego’s illusions, let me make it clear what you are up against. You might take an honest look at yourself and see that you still have a ways to go before you are free of the ego. And in your current state of confusion it might seem very difficult to see through the ego’s illusions. Yet who ever said you have to see through the ego’s illusions all at once or that you have to do so with your current level of consciousness?

Why do you think I keep talking about a spiral staircase? The key to climbing a staircase is to take one step at a time, and all you need to do is focus on two steps at a time—the step you are on right now and the one right above it. You don’t need to look at the top step and you certainly don’t need to climb the staircase by taking one giant leap. You simply keep putting one foot above the other, and as long as you keep taking one doable step at a time, you WILL make it to the top. The ego can stop you only by preventing you from rising above a certain step.

Let us say that the spiral staircase has 33 steps. You take stock of your life and realize you are on Step 10. At this stage you do not have the Christ discernment and insight to see through the ego illusion that prevents you from rising from Step 32 to Step 33. Yet you don’t have to see through that illusion right now. You only have to see through the illusion that prevents you from rising from Step 10 to Step 11. And I can assure you that you do have what it takes to dismiss that illusion. You simply need to ask for the Christ vision you need, and if you ask with an open mind, you WILL receive an answer.

It is a spiritual law, that when the student is ready, the teacher WILL appear. The teacher may appear as the inner teacher of your Christ self or as an outer teacher that might have a variety of disguises. Yet the teacher will ALWAYS find a way to present you with the insight you need in order to rise to the next step. If your mind is open, you will recognize the Divine direction and use it to rise to a higher level of identity. And once you have that higher sense of identity, you will have what it takes to dismiss the next ego-illusion and take another step.

I hope you now see what is the ego’s master strategy. It is to prevent you from making the ultimate LIFE decision, but also to prevent you from making the next LIFE decision. It is precisely to accomplish this goal that the ego and the prince of this world have come up with a number of games that are designed to make you stuck at a particular step. As you begin to study these games, you will see that you have already overcome some of them. And this should give you the inner knowing that you can overcome all of them by simply taking one step at a time.

I realize that it can still seem like climbing the staircase is an overwhelming task. Yet the fact that you are reading this teaching proves that you are not at the lowest step. So how did you rise to your current step? You did so because the Living Christ in some form reached out to you and you heeded the call. You accepted the teacher’s directions and used them to make a LIFE decision that brought you one step higher. And you continued to do this until you reached your current step.

My point is that so far the teacher has been there for you for every step of the way and you have followed the teacher’s instructions. Based on this fact, is it rational to doubt that the teacher will be there for each of the following steps as well? Is it rational to doubt that you can and will follow the teacher as you have already done? Why not simply realize that you have already stepped on to the true path, and as long as you keep following it by reaching for the higher vision of Christ, you WILL make it all the way home. Thus, you should accept the message in the full quote that I gave in part earlier:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. (Proverbs 23:4)

Trust that the teacher will be with you each step of the way, and as long as you keep moving, you will make it to the goal. As the old saying goes, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” However, the journey is completed only by those who keep taking the NEXT step.