How
to surrender to God
Question from visitor: Dear
Kim, I thought I would take Jesus'
offer to ask you a question about spiritual initiations. I really
look forward to receiving these descriptions
of the path to Christhood. They are invaluable and so inspiring
to read.
My question is how and what do you think was the important steps that
brought you to total unconditional surrender—a surrender of all
expectations and desires? You are welcome to expand on my question.
Love, Mary
Answer from Kim: This is probably the central question
about the spiritual path, so I feel the question demands a comprehensive
answer. The problem is that it will be a long answer, so read it in
small installments if you like. The other problem is that the process
might seem so complex that is becomes overwhelming. Yet in reality each
of us has one major obstacle that stands in the way of our surrender.
We often have smaller issues that must be surrendered before we can
get a clear look at the big one. You might compare it to having to move
a huge boulder that is held in place by a bunch of smaller rocks and
dirt. You have to clear the small stuff away before you can start working
on the big one. My point being that if you focus on taking one doable
step at a time, it wont be as overwhelming.
Keep in mind that the steps I am describing below took place over a
25-year period. For some it might take less time, for some more, but
the point is that you have to keep going until you break through. I
had many periods where I felt I was getting nowhere. Yet what kept me
going was a motto that came to me early on: “From here, forward!”
Meaning that no matter how things seem, you always take one more step
than you think is possible or necessary.
There is an old saying that the darkest hour is the hour before dawn,
and it is true on the spiritual path. Things always seem the most hopeless
just before you break through to a new level, so you can never allow
that to get you down. You have to keep walking, and then you will suddenly
break through and the surrender will happen. You will then feel like
you are letting go of this huge weight you have been carrying around,
and you will feel so much more free and alive.
Also, while I did come to a point of completely surrendering myself
to God, it would be naive to think that this ends the process of surrender.
As long as we are in embodiment here on Earth, surrender is an ongoing
process. We must constantly surrender and be on guard against forming
new attachments. Yet once you have truly understood that surrender –
although it might sound like a passive measure – is the ultimate
power on the spiritual path, you will definitely find that things are
easier. And the more you surrender, the easier it becomes to surrender
more. It is like walking up a steep trail and suddenly realizing your
pockets are full of sand. You throw out some of the sand and you feel
lighter. How long does it take before you realize that the more sand
you “surrender,” the easier it will be to climb the path?
So one might say that here is the key that could make the rest of this
article unnecessary. It is the realization that what is holding us back
on the spiritual path is the baggage we carry around. This is our psychological
wounds and our limiting beliefs about ourselves, God and the world.
A number of years ago, I realized that because of free will, no one
– not even God – can take this away from me. The reality
is that at some point in the past, I made a decision that was not the
best possible, a decision that limits me to this day. I will not be
free of that decision and its limiting effects until I replace it with
a better decision. Yet an essential part of that process is to let go
of the old decision, to simply leave it behind.
I have been around spiritual seekers for 30 years, and I have seen people
take many different approaches to the path. Some believe they can power
their way through and that by doing certain techniques or taking certain
courses, they will automatically make progress. Yet it has been my clear
observation that you don’t make progress until the moment you
surrender one of your imperfect beliefs. Only then will the boulder
start rolling so that it no longer blocks the stream of life from flowing
through your consciousness.
What I am saying is that the key realization for any spiritual seeker
is that you cannot take Heaven by force. You can “take”
Heaven only by letting go of the beliefs that cause you to feel you
are not in Heaven—the beliefs that make you “take”
something on Earth. That is why Jesus said that if you seek to save
your life, you shall lose it, but if you are willing to lose your life
– meaning our attachments to anything in this world – you
shall find eternal life. I like the saying that it is not what you hold
on to that will get you to Heaven, it is what you let go of
that will get you to Heaven.
When you truly understand the reality of free will, you see that God
will not force you to enter Heaven. You must choose to enter. Yet in
order to enter the consciousness of “Heaven,” you must be
willing to leave the “Earth” consciousness, the consciousness
of duality, behind for good because you cannot serve two masters. And
before you can permanently leave the lower consciousness behind, you
simply have to let go of any attachments you have. So truly, until you
voluntarily surrender all attachments to the Earth and the Earth consciousness,
you cannot take the final step into the Christ consciousness.
Incidentally, I have seen many spiritual seekers who have not understood
this concept. Some have been following a certain teaching or practice
for decades, and they have done everything right according to the outer
rules. Some of them really think they have made great progress and that
they are advanced spiritual seekers. Yet in reality they have only used
the spiritual teaching and practice to build more solid walls of attachments
around their minds. And that is why Jesus said that unless we become
as little children – and stop puffing ourselves up as being so
sophisticated we no longer have to take the basic step of surrendering
our all to God – we cannot enter the kingdom.
For me there were a number of realizations that helped facilitate my
surrender to God, and let me describe some of them.
Global awareness
I recently read about Lance Armstrong, the American bicycle racer who
is a cancer survivor and has now won six Tour de France races
in a row. He described how he started treatment for cancer, and in the
beginning his questions to the doctors and nurses were all centered
around himself and his chances of survival. Yet after months of treatment,
his questions gradually turned to the disease itself and how to help
other people survive it. His main nurse finally said to him, “Lance,
you have gone global.”
I believe many of the people who are open to the spiritual path are
born with this global awareness. I was born in 1957, so when President
Kennedy was shot, I was about six years old. I lived in Denmark, and
America seemed very far away. It didn’t get much press in Denmark,
and I knew it mainly as the country of cowboys and indians. Yet when
I heard about Kennedy’s assassination, it stirred something in
me. I suddenly realized that I had a concern for what was happening
on the world stage. And it was not a self-centered concern, but a broader
awareness.
Denmark is a rather peaceful country, and war was not on the forefront
of anyone’s mind. Yet my mother had a brochure titled, If
war should come, and it talked about how to deal with a war. I
sometimes looked at it and was deeply concerned about the prospect of
war, mainly because I felt it could destroy so much of value and beauty,
from people to nature.
While conventional war was not much talked about in Denmark, nuclear
war was almost a non-topic. Yet my mother had a book that described
major world events and one of them was the bombing of Hiroshima. I was
deeply fascinated by the book in general, but I was especially concerned
about the prospect of nuclear war, which definitely was not a concern
I was taught from without.
I think most spiritual seekers have this expanded awareness. We simply
know we are not here to live an ordinary life of growing up,
getting a job, having kids, buying a house, etc. While we may do all
of these things, we know there is more to life. There is a purpose for
our personal lives, and it is to help move the entire planet to a higher
level.
I think that as I became more aware of this global awareness, I uncovered
more of my divine plan and the course my soul plotted before I took
embodiment. This gave me a determination to not let anything stand in
the way of the fulfillment of my divine plan. As one example, I never
cared about accumulating money and have been willing to give up both
a secure job and a promising career to pursue spiritual growth. In fact,
I have several times had to start over with nothing.
So the first element of total surrender is to tie in to your divine
plan, so you can get your priorities straight. What is most important—living
a materialistic life as most people around you or pursuing a higher
goal? Do you really want to spend a lifetime living only for yourself,
or do you want to make a contribution to the progression of humankind
and the planet?
We have all heard the saying, “Think globally—act locally.”
But I think it should be “Think globally—act globally.”
Act as if your life and your consciousness has an impact on the whole,
and if you raise yourself to a higher level of consciousness, you can
help raise the whole. None of us can do it alone, but if none of us
do anything, nothing will happen.
The real key to improving the Earth
Even as a child I would often think about how to improve life for all
people. During childhood I fantasized about how to rid the world of
all kinds of problems, from disease to war. I even dreamt about owning
an island so I could set up an ideal country, where everyone was treated
fairly. As a teenager, I attended the Gymnasium, which is a three-year
education similar to the American High School. They had three branches,
one focusing on language, one on math and one on political science.
I chose the latter, and it was my intent to go into politics. For a
couple of years, I was fully intent of becoming a member of Parliament,
and I often stated to my friends: “Just you wait until I become
prime minister . . .”
Yet after a couple of years, I suddenly lost interest in politics. I
felt something was missing and that politics was more about compromise
– doing whatever was needed to stay in power or following the
party line – than about doing what was right according to higher
principles. I simply gave up all thought of ever becoming involved with
politics, and a few months later I found the book, “Autobiography
of a Yogi,” by Paramahansa Yogananda. The book gave me so many
outer confirmations of what I had always sensed in my heart. Specifically,
it awakened me to the realization that politics is not the ultimate
key to improving society. Instead, the real key is consciousness, namely
to raise our consciousness individually and collectively.
I saw very clearly that political power struggles have been going on
for millennia, and we are no closer to creating real peace on Earth.
Instead, we have simply built more powerful weapons to kill more people
faster. In my early teens I had learned about the Holocaust and had
been deeply affected by it. I could not fathom how people could do this
to each other, yet I realized it was not the first time in history something
like this had happened. I also realized that political, economic or
military means could not stop these atrocities from happening. It became
clear to me that the only viable solution was to raise the collective
consciousness of humankind. And the only way to raise the collective
consciousness was to raise the individual consciousness. It had to be
done one person at a time, which led me to the realization that I had
to start with myself.
Ever since that realization, the most important goal for my life has
been to raise my consciousness, so I can make a contribution to raising
the collective consciousness. It has been my goal to reach the highest
possible state of spirituality so I can form a magnet and inspire others
to raise their consciousness. I realized early that you can’t
fake spirituality and that you have to experience it to teach it to
others. So at the age of 18, I gave up having a worldly career, seeking
to accumulate possessions and prestige, and instead my career has been
to pursue spiritual growth first and all else second.
Universality
Reading Yogananda’s book was my spiritual awakening, but not in
the sense that the book convinced me of anything. Instead, it awakened
my inner sense of knowing, a faculty I believe all of us have as an
integral part of our souls. The book helped me remember that there is
an alternative to the materialistic lifestyle led by most people. It
is a universal path that leads us toward a higher state of consciousness,
and by following it we can eventually escape all of the illusions that
trap most people. The book also helped me remember that there is a spiritual
movement behind all of the world’s outer religions, and this movement
is truly universal. I realized that behind this movement is a group
of spiritual beings, namely what Jesus on this website calls the Ascended
Host.
At the age of 18, it seemed completely obvious to me that the world
had entered a phase where people were beginning to wake up to the existence
of the spiritual path. At that time, I thought all people would be awakened
within a matter of a decades. I no longer believe that, realizing that
only a critical mass of people need be awakened before the world will
be changed. I also realized back then that this awakening cannot be
accomplished by one person working alone. A community, an organization,
is needed.
I knew such an organization could not be a religion in a traditional
sense, because I had grown up with a keen sense of the limitations of
organized religion. My parents were both very suspicious of organized
religion, believing it had many flaws and often exhibited a lot of hypocrisy.
I had personally been greatly disturbed by learning how many wars had
been fought in the name of God. I especially could not understand how
Christians, as for example in the crusades, could kill other people
in the name of Christ. So it seemed clear to me that what was needed
in this age was not another orthodox religion but an organization with
a much more universal message and approach.
Shortly after reading Yogananda’s book, I met some people who
were involved with the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement. At first,
it fascinated me because it did have a very universal approach. All
of our problems are caused by stress, and by meditating, we can remove
stress, thereby solving all problems. TM also used a lot of scientific
studies to prove the effects of meditation, and this also seemed like
a universal way to awaken people to the spiritual aspects of life.
I joined TM and even took a 4-month training course in Switzerland,
but after the course I intuitively knew the organization was not for
me. I didn’t quite understand why at the time, but a big part
of it was that TM was seeing only one solution to the world’s
problems, namely that everyone had to learn TM and recognize the Maharishi
as their guru. I realized that simple wasn’t going to happen,
so I knew the organization wasn’t universal enough.
The experience taught me something important, which has since been reinforced
by my involvement with other spiritual organizations. I believe that
in this age, the Earth will indeed go through a spiritual awakening
that will open the minds of many people to the spiritual path. Yet I
don’t believe one organization, philosophy, guru or religion will
emerge as the one and only savior. Instead, I believe many organizations
and philosophies will be part of the awakening. And the most successful
ones will be the ones that are the most universal. They are also the
ones that are most likely to cooperate instead of fighting each other.
So I personally decided that I could not allow my spirituality to be
confined to one particular organization or philosophy, and since then
I have indeed studied a broad range of spiritual ideas and continue
to do so. I also believe it is extremely important to avoid all fanaticism
when it comes to religion. I feel that I simply cannot allow myself
to flirt with the idea that one religion is the only true one and that
we need to awaken the world by getting them to join this one organization.
Instead, I believe it is my calling to work for a universal awakening
that makes people aware of the existence of the spiritual path. This
path has the following basic elements:
- We are currently trapped
in a lower state of consciousness that causes us to create problems
that we cannot solve.
- It is possible to rise
above that state of consciousness, as many saints and spiritual leaders
have demonstrated.
- The way to rise is to
follow the spiritual path. The path has certain universal elements,
yet it can be followed in the context of a number of religions or
spiritual philosophies. The essence of the path is not the outer clothing
but the universal core.
How does this relate to my
surrender to God? It was extremely important for me to realize that
God cannot be confined to one religion. Thus, if you seek to force your
relationship to God into the confines of a particular philosophy, you
will make it much more difficult for yourself to know God. You will
be following a graven image and thus overlooking the real God who is
beyond all images (more about this later).
It was also important for me to overcome the need to feel that I belong
to the one and only true church or the organization that would single-handedly
save the world. I simply got so fed up with these ego-games in a religious
disguise that I decided to surrender the need to believe that one organization
or guru can do it all. I realized that we will not truly create the
spiritual awakening until we abandon the idea that human beings, philosophies
or organizations are more important than God. In short, I decided to
put inner contact with God before any outer religion. I decided God
was too important of a topic to be left to religion.
We can’t do it alone
After I realized the pitfalls of religion, I saw that the only way to
avoid religious fanaticism is to have direct contact with a higher authority,
one that can prevent us from being trapped in our ego-games. Over the
following years, I found several books that talked about the existence
of the Ascended Host and how they have attempted to guide us for millennia.
I realized that we humans have created many problems that we cannot
solve. I began to understand that we are creating these problems because
we are trapped in a consciousness of duality that causes us to see ourselves
as separated from God. I realized that given our track record, demonstrated
by the atrocities from history, we simply cannot pull ourselves up by
our own bootstraps.
The only way we can pull ourselves up is that someone from above lowers
a rope—and that rope can take the form of a religion or spiritual
philosophy. I also realized that the goal of our climb, the goal of
the spiritual path, is to rise above the egotistical frame of mind so
that we can escape our own egos. The ego is based on an illusion and
it has created innumerable illusions, which it seeks to hide behind
in order to preserve itself. As long as we are inside the box of such
illusions, we simply cannot see the truth of God and we cannot see through
the lies of the ego. That is why we need spiritual teachers who have
already made the climb and can therefore guide us as we seek to escape
the illusions of the human ego.
I gradually began to understand that he true goal of the spiritual path
is the death of the ego, so we can be reborn into a new spiritual awareness
in which we see ourselves as a part of a larger whole, as a part of
God. So it became clear to me that we have a basic problem.
When we are trapped in the consciousness of duality, our egos think
they know everything. So the ego doesn’t recognize the need for
a spiritual teacher—the ego literally believes it knows better
than God how the universe should be run. Since childhood I had been
fascinated by the fact that so many historical events demonstrate the
incredible blunders people make when they are blinded by their egos.
Take for example Napoleon and Hitler, who had great power but made incredible
mistakes because they were so blinded by their egos that they lost touch
with reality. I also began to see how many times I had made personal
mistakes because I allowed my ego to make me believe that I knew better
than anyone else or that I could do whatever I wanted and get away with
it.
I eventually came to the realization that while you are trapped by the
ego, you cannot see clearly enough to follow the spiritual path. Therefore,
you need the guidance of a teacher who is above the ego and can therefore
show you how to escape the subtleties of the ego. And I realized that
in the beginning stages, you simply have to submit yourself to this
teacher, even if your ego believes his guidance is wrong or too extreme.
In other words, I realized that the spiritual path is a long string
of initiations, situations in which you have to make a choice. And although
there are innumerable variations – with each person having his
or her own personal tests – the central decision is always this:
Will you listen to the voice of the ego, or will you reach beyond it
to hear the voice of the spiritual teacher? Will you follow the ego
or follow the teacher—this is the central question for a spiritual
seeker. It is our version of “To be or not to be.”
I was fascinated by the old saying, “If the teacher be an ant,
heed him.” In other words, the spiritual teacher will often appear
in a disguise to test you for the most dangerous enemy of spiritual
growth, namely pride. I have seen many spiritual seekers who have no
problem taking directions from the person they consider to be their
guru, but who are not willing to listen to advice from someone they
consider to be beneath them. I realized this was a very dangerous approach
that I could not afford, so I decided to watch out for my pride and
learn to listen for the teacher disguised as an ant.
So I began to understand that the spiritual path is a process, whereby
you gradually surrender every aspect of the ego and the beliefs that
spring from the ego. And to really make it to a higher spiritual consciousness,
you have to be willing to surrender every single aspect of your ego.
You cannot make it to a true spiritual awareness by retaining parts
of the ego. As long as you seek to justify the ego or think you can
perfect the ego, you are not following the true spiritual path but “the
way that seemeth right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways
of death.”
The ego has to die. It has to be surrendered, completely and unconditionally.
Thus, I began to understand that complete and unconditional surrender
of the ego is the core of the spiritual path. I also began to realize
that I couldn’t simply surrender the ego, because that would leave
me in a vacuum. So at the same time as I surrendered my ego, I had to
start integrating with a higher part of my being, namely what Jesus
on this website calls the Christ self. So I began to see the spiritual
path as a collaborative effort between my conscious mind and my spiritual
teachers, meaning my Christ self and ascended beings. I began to realize
I don’t need to walk the path alone.
Take responsibility for yourself
For a number of years I learned a lot about the spiritual path by studying
the teachings released by the ascended masters through the I AM movement
and the Summit Lighthouse. Both organizations have books that give profound
teachings about the path, the ego and our Christ self and I AM Presence.
These teachings were given by the Ascended Host through direct revelation,
and I felt a very strong vibration of truth in them.
The teachings of the masters helped me understand the importance of
free will, which is a topic that the Lutheran state church in Denmark
doesn’t talk much about. I realized that everything on Earth revolves
around our free will. God didn’t create our misery—we did
by co-creating from the consciousness of duality. We allowed our egos
to trick us into creating a society and culture based on fear and lack.
And the more we seek to solve our problems without challenging the dualistic
belief system of the ego, the more we create new illusions that result
in new problems. I began to see how this can create a downward spiral
that in the past has caused several civilizations to self-destruct.
I realized this also applies to our personal lives, and I began to feel
a very strong urge to escape this treadmill of the ego. I eventually
came to a "moment of truth" (one among many) in which I felt
a determination well up from the bottom of my soul. I decided that I
was going to take full and complete responsibility for my personal life,
my beliefs and illusions, my psychology and my spiritual path. I decided
to acknowledge the fact that I have created my current situation, and
therefore it is naive to think I can pray to God and he will whisk away
all my problems through a miracle.
I decided that I was going to acknowledge that God gave me free will,
and he will not violate his own laws. Because I decided to create the
ego and decided to let it lead me down the garden path of duality, I
have created my current situation. So it is up to me to separate myself
out from the ego and its illusions, so that I can begin to create a
situation that is not based on fear and lack but on love and oneness.
Obviously, as I just explained in the previous section, I realized I
cannot escape the ego on my own. So I do need an ascended master and
my Christ self – even an embodied guru if one is available – to
help me escape the labyrinth of ego illusions. Yet my spiritual teachers
will not live up to the common Christian image of a savior who will
do all the work for me. I created the ego, and it is up to me to uncreate
it. If a master took it away from me, he would be violating God’s
law of free will. Because the purpose of free will is to give us the
opportunity to learn, I would learn nothing from a master taking my
ego.
I realized that up until that point, so much of my life had been consumed
by futile attempts to defend my ego and maintain its illusions. This
had consumed so much time and energy that it seemed completely futile.
I finally came to a point where I saw these ego-games in all of their
mind-numbing insanity and I cried out: “I can’t do this
any more, I don’t want to do this any more—God, help me!”
It was an incredible relief to let go of this need to defend the ego.
Gradually, a great burden began to be lifted from me, and I literally
felt like I was being reborn and had received a second chance at life.
I truly understood that until you take responsibility for yourself,
you simply cannot experience true freedom. You will be trapped in a
mental prison, condemned to the hard labor of defending the fragile
illusions of the ego, always seeking to fend off the calamity of having
your ego proven wrong. I realized that the only true form of freedom
is spiritual freedom, meaning freedom from the ego.
I stopped believing in magic
As a result of my starting to take responsibility for myself, I gave
up the belief in magic. I have noticed that this is a belief that many
spiritual seekers are really attached to. We love to think that there
is some magic bullet that will automatically turn us into spiritual
masters. So we often turn our lives into a never-ending chase for the
pot of gold at the end of the spiritual rainbow. We think that if only
we can find the right religion, meditation technique, guru or protein
shake, we will have it made.
Many people find a guru who makes golden promises, and they follow his
directions for a while. When the promises aren’t fulfilled, they
don’t stop to think, but immediately start looking for the next
guru, who must be the right one. I eventually realized that what was
wrong in this picture was not the outer gurus but the approach of thinking
someone else can change you for you.
I realized this desire is driven by the ultimate illusion on the spiritual
path, namely that of an outer savior. You created your ego, so you are
the only being who can uncreate it. No guru can do it for you, and those
who claim they can either don’t know better or they are trying
to make you codependent upon them so you will give them money or energy.
As the logical consequence of this realization, I came to a –
for me – earth-shattering conclusion. It can be expressed most
simply in this way: “Nobody ever did anything to me!”
I realized that nobody had ever hurt or manipulated me. Sure, other
people had done various things that affected me physically, but what
had hurt me mentally and emotionally was not the actions of other people—it
was my reactions to their actions. In other words, I was the
one who had hurt myself.
In one sense, this can be a very tough realization to accept because
it does place all responsibility for your personal misery right smack
in you lap. You can run, but you can’t hide. In the end, you are
responsible for how you allowed the world to affect you. Yet once you
get over the initial shock, you realize that although this is a tough
pill to swallow, it does have some fringe benefits. The most important
one is that if you created your misery, you also have the power to uncreate
it. You are not dependent upon any force outside yourself in order to
improve your life and your experience of life. You can actually take
command over yourself and your life, and you can start doing so right
NOW. You don’t need anyone’s permission, you don’t
need to wait for better weather, for the stock market to go up or until
you win the lottery. You have the power to change your life and you
can start using it RIGHT NOW!
I suddenly started realizing that all of the spiritual books I had read
talked about the spiritual path as the path of self-mastery. So far,
I had focused my attention of the word “mastery” thinking
how great it would be to have all these supernatural abilities that
masters have. Now I realized that the real important word was “self.”
I needed to master myself, my self, before I would get anywhere close
to being a spiritual master. And the first step was to take command
over my own reactions to other people’s actions, so that
I could be free to decide my reactions instead of simply reacting according
to a preprogrammed pattern.
So, once again, I was left standing in the middle of a circle with all
the arrows pointing to the center, namely myself. It was all up to me.
I realized I couldn’t do it alone, yet no master can do it for
me. So what is the middle way? It is that I have to be willing to take
responsibility for who I am and what I have done to myself in the past.
Then I have to be willing to ask for guidance from a source that is
beyond the mental box of my ego. I have to be open to hearing that guidance
and accept it even though – as it invariably will – it contradicts
what my ego wants me to believe. Then I have to have the courage to
act on that guidance even when I don’t have the full picture—which
my conscious mind simply cannot fathom.
The bottom line is this: I have to start walking even if I don’t
know where I will end up. I once heard a person give this analogy. Imagine
a tire that is standing upright on the ground. If you push it on one
side, it will tumble over and go nowhere. Yet if the tire is rolling,
a push will only make it change direction. The lesson is that in order
to get spiritual guidance from above, we have to demonstrate that we
are willing to move. We have to stop waiting for some stroke of magic
that will suddenly turn us into spiritual masters. We have to be willing
to move based on the knowledge we have, trusting that when we take the
next step, we will receive further guidance.
I later realized this is an essential principle on the spiritual path,
as demonstrated by Jesus' parable of the talents. A true spiritual master
will not start out by giving you the full truth. He will give you only
what you need in order to take the next step on your personal path.
If you make full use of his directions, you will get to a higher level,
and then you will be able to fathom the next level of instructions.
Yet if you refuse to move, your consciousness hasn’t changed,
and thus you cannot fathom the next level of instructions.
I also began to realize that in the beginning stages of the path, we
are definitely tested on obedience. Are we willing to let go of some
of our old beliefs and habits, even if we don’t have anything
to put in their stead? Are we willing to start walking in a certain
direction, even if we don’t know why or where we are going? Are
we willing to have faith in the process and take the time for it to
work, even if we have no written guarantee? It gradually became very
obvious to me that my outer mind doesn’t know everything and never
will be able to fathom everything. So I didn’t necessarily need
to know everything with my outer mind because my outer mind was so trapped
in duality that it simply could not grasp the vision of my Christ self.
As I began to understand this, it became much easier for me to surrender
myself to the inner guidance of my Christ self. I began to trust the
process. I stopped kicking against the pricks and started flowing with
the river of life.
Do you want to find truth or confirm your illusions?
I came to the conclusion that the ego doesn’t want truth and it
doesn't want me to know the truth. The ego was born of an illusion,
namely that any part of God’s creation can be separated from the
whole. The ego can survive only as long as it manages to keep me believing
in the illusion that I am separated from my source, from my I AM Presence,
from God. So the ego has created innumerable illusions aimed at maintaining
this basic illusion. It wants to keep me trapped in these lesser illusions,
so I never uncover – and therefore can’t question –
the basic illusion.
I also realized that pride is one of the major obstacles on the spiritual
path—which is mentioned in almost every true spiritual book. Yet
pride is not a faculty of the soul but a faculty of the ego. The ego
creates a mental image of what the world is like. And because this image
is based on the ego’s dualistic belief system, it is inevitably
incomplete and flawed. Yet once a mental image is created, the ego will
not look at evidence that contradicts or goes beyond the image. The
ego hates being proven wrong. So as long as we are trapped by the ego,
our whole lives are a process during which we are constantly threatened
by the pain of being proven wrong. We are constantly seeking to defend
the illusions of our egos, and in extreme cases people are willing to
kill others to defend their mental images.
I eventually came to the conclusion that this entire scenario was completely
unnecessary and was, in fact, a form of sophisticated masochism. I decided
that I wasn’t going to play this game, so I adopted a new approach
to life.
I decided that I am first and foremost a spiritual seeker. As a spiritual
seeker, my most important goal is to find truth, and in order to find
truth, I simply have to look beyond my present knowledge and beliefs.
I realized that to find truth, I have to go beyond the mental box of
the ego.
I took stock of myself and admitted that I currently did not have truth
in the highest form. This was partly a product of my upbringing, because
I had been programmed to accept a lot of dualistic illusions. Yet it
was also a product of my own spiritual development—or lack of
it. So I decided that I wanted to know the truth far more than I wanted
to defend the ego illusion that my current beliefs were the absolute
truth.
When I made that decision, I realized that there was no longer any point
in feeling threatened by the truth. It was my ego who felt threatened;
not me. Thus, finding truth was no longer associated with the fear and
pain of being proven wrong. On the contrary, it was associated with
the joy and freedom of escaping a crippling illusion. This was incredibly
liberating. I realized how uptight I had been throughout my life, always
fearing some revelation that would prove me wrong. I now realized that
it really isn’t a matter of being proven wrong.
This is perhaps one of the most sacred beliefs of the ego, namely that
if your beliefs are proven wrong, you are wrong and thus you are a bad
person. I now decided that given who I was and how I was brought up
in a dualistic culture, God didn’t require me to know everything
or to be perfect. I decided that I am a spiritual seeker, and thus my
current beliefs are not the absolute truth. They are the highest understanding
I have been able to grasp with my current level of consciousness. So
when I find a higher understanding, it doesn’t mean I am proven
wrong or that I am a bad person. Thus I have no need to defend my limited
understanding. Instead, I can simply let it go and accept my newfound
higher understanding.
In short, I decided the following:
- I am a seeker of truth,
and I am always willing to look for a higher understanding.
- At any given moment, I
am doing the best I can given my present understanding of life.
- I am constantly seeking
to expand my understanding and to raise my spiritual awareness so
I can grasp a higher understanding.
- There is no part of my
beliefs that I am not willing to have replaced by a higher understanding.
- Thus, I am growing as
fast as I can, meaning that I have no need to feel guilty about not
being perfect.
I realized that as long as
I sincerely followed these rules, God or my spiritual teachers didn’t
require anything more of me. I was literally blameless before God because
even though I am far from perfect, I am constantly striving to improve—and
that is what God requires. God does not require us to know everything
or to be perfect; God requires that we are always willing to transcend
ourselves and our present understanding of life. I realized there is
more to know about life—there is always more to know, and thus
I gave up the need to ever know everything.
These realizations accelerated my growth more than anything else because
I no longer needed to spend so much time, energy and attention on defending
the mental images of my ego. Yet the key concept was the realization
that in this world it is impossible to give a truly accurate and complete
description of God and God’s truth. Thus, all our our beliefs
and mental images are only approximations. In other words, none of my
current beliefs represent an absolute – meaning an unchangeable
– truth. I have no beliefs that are above change. I am constantly
open to the possibility that my Christ self or Jesus could give me a
higher understanding that would expand my beliefs beyond what I can
even fathom today.
When you are trapped by the ego, you fear a higher understanding and
you hang on to your present beliefs, thinking they are absolute and
infallible. A typical example is fundamentalist Christians who cling
to a literal interpretation of the Bible as if it was a matter of life
or death. And it is a matter of life or death—for their egos!
I decided to leave behind this fear-based outlook on life and instead
acknowledge the fact that my soul loves truth. Consequently, there is
no illusion of my ego that I am not willing to surrender in order to
find truth. When you can truly feel this way, you will experience an
entirely new sense of freedom. You will also truly find the understanding
you seek, because you will no longer limit what your spiritual teachers
can tell you. You will listen to the teacher more than to your ego.
Spiritual seeker—heal thyself!
When I was four or five years old, there was a popular song that was
often played on Danish radio. It was a father singing to his son and
telling him about the hardships he had encountered in this life. The
refrain went something like, “My son, my hope for you is that
you will become better than I.” At one time, my own father started
singing that song to me, and when he sang the refrain, I got very upset
and shouted, “No Dad, you have to become better too!” I
later realized that this was an illustration of my deep desire to help
people escape the human limitations that affect all of us.
Incidentally, my father gave me several demonstrations of how easily
such limitations can affect our entire lives. He used to tell me stories
about his school days and how he had become disgusted with he injustices
and corporeal punishment (this was in the early 1930s) inflicted by
the teachers. He eventually rebelled and went from being first in the
class to being last, leaving school as soon as he could. Yet he also
told me how his childhood dream was to become an engineer and travel
all over the world building bridges. Well, even as a child, I could
see that there aren’t a whole lot of engineers who left school
after the 7th grade, so I realized that the conflicting forces in my
fathers psychology had set him on a track at the age of 10 that prevented
him from realizing his life’s dream.
Based on this and many similar observations from my childhood, I decided
I wasn’t going to let my life be derailed by my own psychology.
Finding the spiritual path and learning about the ego was a great inspiration,
but I eventually realized something was missing. I had been doing several
forms of spiritual techniques for years, but I finally realized that
no spiritual technique works against your free will. So it cannot resolve
your incorrect beliefs, the mental images of your ego. You have to resolve
them, and you have to do so by making a better decision that replaces
the decision which caused you to accept one of the ego’s illusions.
This can only be done consciously, and to replace an imperfect decision
from the past, you have to uncover that decision and make it conscious.
I then realized that there was only one logical step to take, namely
to make use of some of the many techniques for psychological healing
that are available in this age. We have better tools for healing our
psychology than at any point in recorded history, so if I was as serious
about spiritual growth as I claimed to be, it simply didn’t make
sense not to make use of these tools.
Yet before I could do so, I had to overcome some major hurdles. First
of all, I was brought up in a culture where only people who were really
crazy went to a psychologist. I mean, basically no one did so unless
they arrived in a straightjacket. Although this attitude had softened
a bit with the self-help revolution, I still felt hesitant. I knew people
who had had a terrible childhood, and it seemed very clear that they
needed psychological healing. Yet I had a very easy childhood, so why
should I? I also had a fear of what I might uncover, and I didn’t
overcome it until I decided I wanted truth more than my ego, as described
above.
After hesitating for a couple of years, I finally decided to go into
therapy with a psychologist who had a spiritual approach to healing.
Over the next six months I resolved some major issues, and I was amazed
at how differently I felt. Over the next years I made use of other healing
techniques, and it helped me immensely. I can truly say it left me wondering
why I hadn’t done so much sooner. Why carry around this psychological
baggage when a bit of determined work can help you throw it off for
good?
Don’t take responsibility for others—or the world
One of the major revelations that came out of my therapy was that I
eventually realized I didn’t accept myself. I realized my life
up until that point had been highly dominated by this fact. In essence,
because I did not accept myself, I was always seeking acceptance from
others and from the world. When I healed this psychological wound, I
was suddenly set free from this need for acceptance.
I realized that I didn’t accept myself because I had come to believe
that unless I lived up to a certain outer standard, I would not be acceptable
in the eyes of God. I came to understand that this standard was a worldly
standard that was not defined by God. I also realized it was an impossible
standard, meaning that no one could possibly live up to it. I had simply
been trying to do the impossible—I had been trying to fit a square
peg into a round hole.
As soon as I realized I didn’t accept myself, I was able to put
that together with my experience of God (described later). Because I
knew God’s love is unconditional, I could now dismiss the belief
that I need to live up to any standard to be acceptable to God. I knew
God loved me unconditionally, and therefore I am acceptable in the eyes
of God the way I am. After all, God created me that way. It was then
relatively easy for me to replace this age-old, outworn belief in my
own non-acceptability with a new belief that I am acceptable the way
I am.
This was quickly followed by the realization that I have a right to
be who I am. From early childhood I had felt that I never quite fit
in because I was so different from most of the people around me. The
primary reason was that I was more spiritual than most of the people
around me. Because of the non-acceptance issue, I naturally had assumed
that since I was different from most people, there had to be something
wrong with me. So I had created a subconscious habit of being very non-assuming
and never challenging people or displaying my spirituality. I simply
tried to stay below the radar screen, almost feeling like I had to make
excuses for being a spiritual person in a non-spiritual society.
I now realized this was completely unnecessary and, in fact, detrimental
to my divine plan. I am here to openly display that I am a spiritual
person, so that other people can see an example of the fact that it
is possible to live a more spiritual life-style. I have a right to be
a spiritual person, and I have a right to show it. After that, I staked
my claim on Earth and I often used the mantra, "I have a right
to be here!" After a while, it was amazing how much more at peace
I felt, and the reason was that the dark forces no longer had my own
non-acceptance as an inroad into my consciousness. The prince of this
world had nothing – or at least not as much – in me.
In a sort of twisted way, I realized that what I had been doing up until
that point was that I had felt responsible for other people and the
world. My desire for acceptance had made me feel that in order to fulfil
my divine plan, I had to be accepted by other people. And in order to
be accepted by them, I had to not display my spirituality too openly.
I had to turn myself into someone else in order to be accepted. Obviously,
turning myself into someone else can never fulfill my divine plan, but
the lower mind can’t reason that way.
As soon as I discovered the root of the problem, namely my non-acceptance
of myself, I was able to pull the plug and the whole ball of wax went
down the drain. I could now fully integrate the fact that I had taken
responsibility for myself and I could complete the circle by realizing
that when I take full responsibility for myself, I no longer need to
take responsibility for others.
Other people have their free will, given to them by God. I realized
that each person is judged by his or her actions. I am fully responsible
for my own choices, but God had not made me responsible for the choices
of other people. In other words, I am responsible for my own salvation,
but I am not responsible for the salvation of anyone else.
So the practical offshoot is that my responsibility is to save myself,
which I do by being who I am, by being who God created me to be. When
I do that, and openly display the fact that I am a spiritual person
and that I love God more than anything else, I have done my job. It
is completely up to others what they do or don’t do based on seeing
my example. Yet that is none of my concern. My job is to be who I am
and then be non-attached to how that affects others (obviously, when
I am being who I am in God, I will treat people according to the laws
of God).
So, I suddenly realized I had been set free from this subtle sense that
I was responsible for the salvation of other people or even responsible
for saving the world. I think many spiritual people feel this responsibility,
and that is why I started out by talking about the global awareness.
It is perfectly right for us to have global awareness, but we must be
on guard against developing a subtle form of savior complex. The key
to avoiding this is to understand the law of free will, whereby we are
not responsible for the choices made by other people. When I dropped
that sense of responsibility, I felt as if I could finally start fulfilling
my divine plan of being who I am instead of being who I thought the
world wanted me to be. I could be and let be—and that’s
the only way to be.
Why are you here?
In the early 1990’s I had a life-changing experience. During a
meditation on divine harmony, I was lifted out of my body and found
myself in the Great Central Sun, which is the seat of Alpha and Omega,
the highest representatives of the Father/Mother God in the world of
form. I saw myself standing in this enormous hall, shaped like an amphitheater.
There were gigantic columns along the walls and they appeared to be
made of solidified light.
I walked down a center isle until I stood right in front of a throne,
upon which sat Alpha and Omega. I saw them as two spheres of white light,
and the light was so strong that only their eyes were visible. My attention
was drawn to a flow of energy between these two magnificent beings,
and I saw it as a horizontal figure-eight flow of liquid light.
I then focused on the nexus of the figure-eight, and as I looked at
it, it was as if a portal opened up and I was know looking outside the
world of form. Outside was a seemingly endless space, that truly can
best be described as a “void,” as you find in some religious
and mystical teachings. At first, the void appeared empty, but I then
became aware that it was not. It was filled with a Being, a Presence,
that was conscious yet had no form whatsoever. This being simply IS.
In a flash, the thought came to me, “This is God!” At that
moment, I connected with God, and I knew this is my source, it is from
this Being that I came into being. This connection was beyond time and
space, and it might have lasted a split second or longer—there
was simply no sensation of time or distance. There was no sense of separation;
only timeless oneness.
Suddenly, I found myself seated on a cube of white light directly between
Alpha and Omega, and in the nexus of the figure-eight flow between them.
I experienced a complete peace and a feeling I can only describe as
unconditional love. After a time, I noticed that the entire universe
was stretched out before me, and I could see a myriad of galaxies like
our Milky Way. Then, my attention was drawn down into this vast space,
until I came back to my normal state of awareness in my chair on planet
Earth.
At the time, this experience was quite earth-shattering to me. I thought
I had a good grip on understanding spiritual teachings, and I felt I
had a good intellectual understanding of God. Yet experiencing the Presence
of God was so far beyond any of my paradigms that there was only one
thing to do: throw all of my paradigms, expectations and preconceived
opinions out the window. I had experienced the Presence of God, yet
there was absolutely no way to describe that presence through words
or images that are intelligible to a human being. Moreover, I realized
clearly that any attempt to describe God’s Presence would be a
degradation of that Presence; it would be creating a graven image. I
suddenly began to understand why the first two commandments are the
first two commandments.
For several years, I told no one about the experience, because I needed
time to internalize and digest it. Yet it affected me deeply, and here
are just some of the affects:
- I was freed from all
desire to think one particular religion was the only true one. I realized
no religion could possibly give a complete description of the Presence
of God. That Presence can only be experienced. So the best a religion
can do is give a description that helps people attain the direct experience,
and I began to understand that this is the true purpose behind all
true religions. This gave me an entirely new perspective on religion.
I realized that if a religion takes me closer to a direct experience
of God’s Presence, then it is doing its job. If it is blocking
my direct experience, then the religion is working against God’s
intent. Thus, the idea that one religion is the only key to salvation
is completely alien to God. I now had a direct proof that I could
not sell my soul to one particular church but that I am here for a
more universal mission.
- I realized that the most
important aspect of taking personal responsibility for my spiritual
path is that I cannot allow anything to stand between me and God.
If I allow a guru or organization – or my own ego – to
stand between me and a direct experience of God, I am worshiping an
idol. And if I do so, I will never experience the true God who is
beyond all idols.
- I realized that compared
to the experience of being connected to God, all else paled in comparison.
Literally, nothing on Earth seemed to have the same value to me. It
became very clear to me why nothing on this little planet is worth
dying for, and with that I mean the death of the soul. The saying
“What does it profit a man to gain the whole world yet lose
his soul” took on a whole new meaning. I realized it is worth
it to give up anything – even your physical life – to
attain this sense of oneness with God.
- I knew God is always
within me, and I realized we humans have been programmed to limit
God’s expression through us. I realized it was my foremost job
on the spiritual path to undo that programming so I can stop limiting
God in me and allow God to do the works through me that he desires
to do.
After having digested this
experience for a couple of years, it culminated in a real breakthrough.
I read something that inspired me to contemplate the question, “Why
am I here?” I took a walk, sat down in the hills and looked up
into the deep, blue sky. I posed the question, “Why am I here?”
and from deep within my soul came the answer, “Because I love
God!”
At first this was almost a shock to my outer mind, because I had always
been trying to understand God, but never quite considered myself as
loving God. I now took a closer look at myself, and I realized that
behind all of the outer personality and beliefs, the bottom line is
that I – the real me – truly loves God beyond anything else.
This is simply my basic psychological make-up; an infinite love for
God.
As I began to integrate this realization, I gradually began to see that
it is my love for God that brought me to Earth. I am here because I
love God and because I can see that all other people are God wearing
a disguise—they have simply forgotten who they are. So I volunteered
to come here to inspire others to discover their true identity and thereby
discover their love for God.
I then realized my personal God flame is Love and Truth. I came out
of the flame of unconditional Love, and I came to Earth to bring the
flame of Truth. I came to awaken people to love by giving them the truth
of who they are and who God is. After having realized this, I felt as
if nothing in my personal life or outer personality had any real importance
any more. I realized that it truly is not about me; it is all about
God. And this realization led me to the total surrender which opened
the door to my messengership for Jesus.
Incidentally, that is worth a remark or two.
You are never done surrendering
When I started working with Jesus, I had been on the spiritual path
for over 25 years. I had worked hard, practicing spiritual techniques
for hours a day, studying spiritual teachings and generally arranging
my entire life around the overarching need for spiritual growth. During
this time, I had inevitably built up certain opinions that I thought
were true, accurate and very much necessary. In other words, during
my journey, I had built up a certain world view, and I believed it had
been supported by my experiences and studies.
I have seen his happen to many other spiritual seekers, especially people
who have been on the path for many years and who have put great effort
into it. The subtle, but all-important, point is that my world view
was not necessarily wrong. However, neither was it complete or the only
possible view. In other words, I had built a world view that portrayed
myself as a spiritual seeker, and I had some ideas of how I would be
living the rest of my life. I am sure this world view could have taken
me far, and I probably could have made my ascension by following it
for the rest of my life.
The problem was that in my world view there was not even a hint of the
thought that I could step up to a higher level and personally become
a messenger for Jesus. So while my world view was not wrong, it did
limit God’s ability to express himself through me. Thus, while
it gave me a platform for spiritual growth, it also boxed me in in a
way that prevented me from exercising my full potential and fulfilling
my divine plan.
I believe many other spiritual seekers are in the exact same situation.
They have built a world view that is not wrong but not the ultimate
view either, and it is holding them back. I think that had I not had
the direct experience of God’s Presence – seeing how it
is completely beyond any world view that could possibly be formulated
– I might not have had the frame of reference to look beyond my
personal world view. I might not have dared to surrender myself completely
to God, thereby essentially giving God a blank check that allowed him
to take my life in a new and completely unexpected direction.
I believe this is an all-important thought. We can actually follow the
spiritual path so successfully that we begin to believe we are doing
everything we need to be doing. Yet despite the fact that we are doing
well, we have not unleashed our true potential. In essence, we might
say that all people are born inside a mental box. Some of us find the
spiritual path and use it to climb out of our former box. Yet we must
constantly be on the alert against the possibility that our egos can
use the path itself to build another mental box.
My point being that a wise master once said that eternal vigilance is
the price we pay for discipleship. And to that I would venture to add
that perpetual surrender – of everything we think we need or have
earned – is the only way to avoid being trapped somewhere along
the journey. In other words, no matter how far you have traveled on
the spiritual path, as long as you are still on Earth, there is the
possibility that you can build a mental box that traps your soul. And
only by always remaining willing to surrender your mental box and everything
in it can you avoid being trapped on a plateau that is below your full
potential.
I realize clearly that even working with Jesus on the books and website
can become a trap, if I am not alert. It is so easy to build the expectation
that things have to be a certain way and that if only they continue
on the present track, everything will be okay. If you see me falling
into that trap, please let me know! Yet don’t forget to look in
the mirror as well. Bottom line is: You can never stand still; you must
constantly self-transcend.
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© 2005 by Kim Michaels |
