| Answer
from Jesus:
Excellent questions that
demonstrate why religion must be renewed to remain useful.
If you are open to the teachings on this website, you are a spiritual
seeker. There is only one factor that can make you a spiritual seeker,
namely that you have had a supernatural encounter with God, a being
from the spiritual realm or your own Christ self. A spiritual seeker
is, according to my definition, a person who knows there is more to
life than what he/she experiences in the normal state of awareness.
And you can know there is more only because you have experienced a glimpse
of that more. Consider a very important passage:
13 When Jesus came
into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying,
Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?
14 And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias;
and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.
15 He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
16 And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son
of the living God.
17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona:
for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father
which is in heaven. (Matthew, Chapter 16)
Is it not clear that people
in a normal state of awareness, what Paul called the “natural”
or “carnal” man, could not recognize me as a spiritual master?
My disciples did because they had received a direct inner experience
that allowed them to feel a resonance between my Being and something
in themselves, as I explain elsewhere.
So unless you had already had what you call a supernatural encounter,
you would not even be asking this question. You would instead be an
agnostic or a “good Christian” who was satisfied that you
cannot know anything about God beyond what is stated in church doctrine.
In other words, you would not be seeking a more direct experience of
God unless you had already had such an experience. The question is,
“Did you recognize the supernatural experiences you have had,
or did you overlook them because they did not meet you outer expectations
of what a supernatural experience should be?" And this is where
religion comes into the picture, because so many people have allowed
their concept of supernatural experiences to be shaped by a particular
religion.
The key understanding that will help you move out of the sense of being
at an impasse is that there are levels of supernatural encounters. Yes,
it is possible that you can hear the voice of God talk to you in an
audible voice. Yet this is a rare experience, and before you have it,
you will have many more subtle experiences, where your Christ self talks
to you as the still, small voice within, which is what many people call
intuition. Thus, any intuitive experience, or "Aha" experience,
is a supernatural encounter.
Based on what I explained above, you can see that there are two possible
states of consciousness for a human being. One is what Paul called the
carnal mind or the natural man, the other is what he called the mind
of Christ. If you are completely trapped in the lower consciousness,
you either don’t think there is anything beyond the material universe
or you don’t think you could experience it directly. Many Christians
think that I could hear the voice of God because I was so special, yet
they couldn’t possibly do the same. Therefore, they reject the
gift of their Christ self, as I explain elsewhere.
Yet your Christ self is the very key to going beyond the natural state
of awareness and having a direct experience of the supernatural reality.
Many non-religious people are not open to the existence of the supernatural,
so they reject the inner voice of their Christ selves. Unfortunately,
many religious people, although open to the existence of the supernatural,
think a supernatural experience must live up to certain outer criteria.
Thus, they also reject the gentle voice of their Christ selves. In other
words, many Christians look at my life and think a supernatural experience
must be proven by some kind of physical evidence. One example of this
is the Catholic Church’s process for recognizing a miracle or
a saint. A saint is not necessarily a person who can produce outer miracles.
A saint is a person who has produced the inner miracle to "let
this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus" (Philippians
2:5).
In reality, a physical occurrence, even an occurrence that seemingly
defies the laws of nature, can never prove anything to a person who
is trapped in the natural state of mind. Many people saw me perform
miracles, yet they were not convinced that I was the real messiah. Some
even thought I used the power of the devil to perform these feats. My
point being that throughout history many people have witnessed what
we might call outer supernatural encounters, yet they were not changed
by it. They ended up doubting their experiences, and thus their faith
was not strengthened. So it is a simple fact that showing people a supernatural
phenomenon does not give them faith.
Faith is an inner phenomenon, and it takes place in your mind. Therefore,
you faith is always “all in your mind.” True faith must
be based on an inner experience, meaning that all truly supernatural
encounters are inner experiences. What I am saying is that even if I
appeared before you in a tangible body, you would not be convinced I
was real unless you also had an inner experience that only your Christ
self can give you. In other words, the “flesh and blood”
of an outer phenomenon cannot reveal truth to you.
Only the inner experience from your Christ self can give you true faith,
the kind of faith that can move mountains and cannot be shaken by the
forces of this world. True faith cannot be based on any outer, tangible
proof but must be based solely on an inner experience that is beyond
any proof in the material world. So one might say that for your faith
to be real, it must be "all in your mind."
We now see that you need to let go of your expectations that a supernatural
encounter must involve phenomena that can be detected by the "flesh
and blood" of the physical senses. Therefore, if you want to rise
to the next level of faith, you must let go of the expectation that
your faith has to be proven through material means. You must accept
that true faith must always come from within yourself. That is why I
said:
Jesus saith unto
him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed
are they that have not seen, and yet have believed (John
20:29).
Those who go within to find
true confirmation of their faith are blessed because their faith cannot
be threatened by any force in this world. Their faith has become supernatural
and independent of any natural proof.
This brings us to a point that is important for the spiritual seekers
of today. As I explain in detail elsewhere,
there is a progression in the spiritual life of planet Earth. When I
walked the Earth 2,000 years ago, humankind had a lower level of spiritual
awareness than today. I know that might seem hard to believe, but it
is true. As a result of this denser state of consciousness, it was more
difficult for people to recognize spiritual truth from within, meaning
that it was more difficult for them to believe without seeing some outer
proof.
In reality, very few people would have paid any attention to me if they
had not seen physical miracles. So to get the Christian movement started,
it was necessary to give people some physical phenomena that they could
detect with their senses. This would demonstrate to people that there
was more to life, and it was not easy for their outer minds to deny
a visible miracle.
In today’s age, humankind faces a higher spiritual initiation,
and one aspect of it is that they need to overcome all dependency upon
outer phenomena or material proof. If your faith requires some material
proof, it is not true faith. And in today’s age, people are meant
to become spiritually self-sufficient, meaning that they cannot allow
their faith to depend on anything outside themselves.
As a result of this, the Ascended Host are no longer allowed to produce
outer phenomena to the extent we did in the past. The reason being that
experience has shown that if you give people a phenomenon, they will
want more. And thereby many people become codependent upon the outer
phenomenon, or the person producing it, instead of going within themselves.
Remember my statement:
20 And when he
was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come,
he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the
kingdom of God is within you. (Luke, Chapter 17)
In this age, people need
to find the kingdom within them, because only by doing so will they
become spiritually self-sufficient. And it truly is time for the spiritual
people of Earth to grow up and walk the spiritual path on their own.
In fact, many spiritual seekers have deliberately chosen to walk a path,
where they are denied any outer proof. They want to pass the test of
building a solid faith based solely on inner experiences. This is one
reason so many seekers reject formal religions, especially religions
that base their legitimacy on miracles that took place 2,000 years ago.
One might say that many seekers don't want their spiritual teachers
to give them outer proof. So if we did give such proof on a widespread
basis, it would be a violation of many people’s free will. My
point being, that as a spiritual teacher, I often cannot give a person
an outer supernatural experience, because the person’s soul does
not want it. The reason being that it would prevent the soul from going
within. One might say that if your outer mind thinks you need a supernatural
experience in order to have faith, you can’t have that experience
because it would prevent you from building true faith from within.
One might even say that the essence of the spiritual path is to overcome
all sense that your wholeness as a spiritual being depends on anything
in the material world. So consider the saying: "If you think you
need it, you can't have it!"
You see, in this age, people need to become aware of their true identity
as co-creators with God. And when you are a co-creator, you realize
that you create through the power of your mind. Thus, all the misery
on Earth is created through the minds of human beings, and it continues
to exist only because people believe it is real. The key to bringing
God’s kingdom to Earth is that people must develop the faith that
allows them to replace all human misery with the kingdom of God. And
you can have that faith only when you find the kingdom of God that is
within you. That is why the Bible says:
1 Now faith is
the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
2 For by it the elders obtained a good report.
3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word
of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which
do appear. (Hebrews, Chapter 11)
To co-create God’s
kingdom on Earth, people must have the rocklike faith that all visible
imperfections and suffering can be transformed by the light of God.
And obviously, the visible phenomena of this world can never give you
evidence of things not seen.
To give a more direct answer to your question of where you are going
wrong, one might say that you are putting the cart before the horse.
You think you are supposed to have faith, and you think that if you
had what you define as a supernatural experience, you would automatically
have faith. As I have tried to explain, that is not the case, and, in
fact, your soul might not want such an experience. What your soul really
wants is to attain Christ consciousness, so that you don’t need
an outer proof because you know truth from an inner source. One might
say that what you need is not faith but certainty, and that can come
only from an inner experience. You must replace outer faith with inner
knowing. Therefore,
contemplate my statement:
But seek ye first
the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall
be added unto you. (Matthew 6:33)
The kingdom of God is the
Christ consciousness. So instead of striving to achieve a supernatural
experience, use the tools
I give on this website to attain a conscious connection to your Christ
self. You can never find certainty in life as long as your faith is
built on the sand of the carnal, or natural, state of mind. You can
find certainty only when your faith is built on the rock of Christ—and
that rock is within you.
So you now know why God doesn’t give people more signs and wonders.
I understand that when a loved one dies, you naturally have a desire
to know if they are all right. Yet if you will study some of the books
on near-death experiences and listen to the inner voice of your Christ
self, you will always get the confirmation you need. Again, the religious
dogma that denies reincarnation [see elsewhere
for more detail] will actually prevent you from getting the inner knowledge
that your loved ones are not truly dead but have simply moved on to
a different mansion
in my Father’s house.
My point is that if you want to move to a higher level of spiritual
awareness, you need to look beyond the expectations that spring from
your religious background and start listening to my voice in your heart.
It is only in your heart that you will find what you seek and receive
that for which you ask. If you silence my inner voice, you will push
the supernatural encounter away from you on an indefinite basis. If
you truly open your heart to your Christ self, the encounter can happen
in the twinkling of an eye.
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Copyright
© 2004 by Kim Michaels |
