| Answer
from Jesus:
Although I honor all questions and the people who ask them, I love questions
showing that people have thought deeply about spiritual matters. Your
questions touch upon a very important topic.
Let me begin by saying that this website is an example of progressive
revelation. One aspect of this is that as more and more teachings are
put on the website, those who study the website have a better and better
foundation for understanding more advanced concepts. In other words,
when the website was new, I used a more simple and simplistic language,
both in terms of words and concepts, than I am able to use today. So
in some of the earliest teachings I did used the term “soul”
in a broad and general way, which is not actually the highest possible
understanding.
Many spiritual seekers know that they are more than the physical body,
and they also sense that there is a part of them that resides in the
spiritual realm. Many people use the term “soul” to refer
to the totality of their beings. In reality, it is more correct to use
the term “soul” to refer only to that part of your being
which descends into a physical body. Your true identity is that part
of you which permanently resides in the spiritual realm. I have chosen
to call that part for the I AM Presence or the spiritual self.
The I AM Presence is an immortal spiritual being. It is an individualization
of God, and it was created by God for a dual purpose. One is to give
God a vehicle through which God can create the world of form from inside
this world. The other is to give God a vehicle for experiencing the
world of form from inside this world. Your I AM Presence has a unique
individuality, and it has resolved the seeming enigma that it has individual
identity yet is still part of the total being of God.
Your I AM Presence was born out of God’s love, which drives God
to continually self-transcend. This is explained in more detail in the
discourse by the Presence
of Unconditional Love, the discourse by the Presence
of Infinite Light and in Mother
Mary’s discourse. Your I AM Presence resides in the spiritual
realm, and it cannot descend into the denser energies of the material
universe. As an expression of the love of your I AM Presence, the drive
to become more than it is, your Presence decided to create an extension
of itself that could descend into the material universe. The purpose
was to give your Presence a vehicle through which it could experience
and co-create the material universe and help make this universe as self-aware
universe that is a permanent part of God's creation.
Returning to your question, it is your I AM Presence who “has
it all made” in the spiritual realm. Technically speaking, your
soul does not make the choice to descend into the spiritual realm, because
your soul does not exist as a separate being before its first descent.
Your soul was created to descend into the material universe, and immediately
upon being created, it was sent here by your I AM Presence.
Originally, your soul was meant to live in this universe until it had
reached its full awareness as a spiritual being. This is a subtle distinction,
and I understand it can be confusing to many people. Yet by reading
the other discourses I mentioned and pondering this enigma, you will
gradually gain a deeper understanding. When your soul was created, it
was created as an extension of your I AM Presence. Yet because the soul
has self-awareness and free will, it has the potential to attain a complete
and self-sufficient sense of identity as an immortal spiritual being.
In other words, your soul has the potential to resolve the enigma that
has already been resolved by your I AM Presence, namely that it is a
self-aware being who is part of a larger whole.
One might say that when your soul first descends into the material universe,
it sees itself as an extension of your I AM Presence. It cannot yet
see itself as a self-contained spiritual being. Yet as the soul continues
to build upon its sense of identity, it can attain the Christ consciousness
which enables it to say, “I and my Father – meaning the
I AM Presence – are one.” At that moment, the soul wins
an immortal sense of identity as a self-contained spiritual being. I
explain this in more detail in the new book, Save
Yourself.
To return to your question once again, your soul really did not make
the choice to descend into the material universe. It was born out of
the choice of your I AM Presence, and that choice sprang from love.
So really, it was not a dumb thing to do but a very loving thing to
do.
Furthermore, many of the souls who are still embodying on Earth descended
for the first time before the Fall of Man, and at that time there was
little risk associated with descending to Earth. It was only after the
Fall that this planet became a more treacherous environment, in which
it became easier for people to forget their spiritual origin. Yet even
after the Fall, many spiritual beings voluntarily chose to descend to
Earth on a rescue mission to save their brothers and sisters who were
stuck in the lower state of consciousness.
The only way to truly save another soul is to teach it by example. In
other words, the only way to truly serve as a spiritual teacher is to
descend to planet Earth and then win your Christhood, thereby demonstrating
that any human being has the potential to put on the mind of Christ
and win its immortality through the ascension to a higher state of consciousness.
To go into your second question, it is not technically correct to say
that higher knowledge was taken from the soul when it descended to Earth.
When the soul first descended, meaning before the Fall, it did have
an intuitive connection to the I AM Presence, and it did have outer
contact with a spiritual teacher, illustrated as the God in the garden
of Eden. So the soul was not left without guidance. It was only by descending
into the consciousness of duality that souls gradually lost their intuitive
connection as well as their outer contact with their spiritual teachers.
So for the souls who have reincarnated, it is correct that many came
into this lifetime without higher knowledge. However, this is a result
of their own past choices and not God’s punishment.
After a soul descended into the consciousness of duality, that soul’s
I AM Presence could no longer contact the soul directly. Therefore,
the Christ self was created out of the universal Christ consciousness.
This state of consciousness is embedded in everything in the world of
form, yet it can never become trapped in any particular form. The universal
Christ consciousness always knows that it is an extension of God’s
being. Therefore, your Christ self enables you to tell the difference
between the illusions created by the consciousness of duality and the
reality of God, namely that you are a spiritual being. So yes, your
I AM Presence does have free will, as does your Christ self. However,
the choices of your I AM Presence and your Christ self can never override
the free will of your soul. At the level of your soul, your free will
is the ultimate law, and no spiritual being has authority to override
it. It is only dark forces who will violate the free will of your soul.
You talk about knowing that you would not have descended without having
a contract. One might say that when your I AM Presence created your
soul, it knew the reality that the energies embedded in your soul could
never be lost. Those energies are expressions of God's immortal being
that can never be lost. So one might say that there is a sort of contract
which guarantees that the light of God that makes up your soul can never
be lost. However, you are more than God’s energy because your
soul has a sense of awareness, a sense of identity. Your soul has a
God-given individuality, but it is meant to expand upon that individuality
through its experiences in the material universe. This is what I explained
in my parable about the talents. So your soul descends with a certain
sense of identity, and it will then add to it through its experiences
in the material universe.
Because your soul has free will, it does have the potential to take
on a sense of identity as being a mortal, human being restricted by
all kinds of limitations. This sense of identity is out of touch with
the reality of God’s being and God’s energy. Therefore,
it follows logically that this limited sense of identity can never become
permanent. And because it cannot become permanent, it must logically
be temporary. And anything that is temporary can come to an end. That
is why your soul’s sense of identity as a limited mortal being
can eventually come to an end.
Thereby, this limited sense of identity is lost, but your original divine
individuality, out of which your soul was created, is not lost. The
energies that made up your soul will simply be returned to their original
purity and can therefore be recreated as another soul that has your
divine individuality without having any of the limited sense of identity
or the memory that was created through the consciousness of duality.
So one might say that there is a contract which guarantees that the
energies of your soul and your divine individuality will ultimately
be brought back home. However, it is the hope of your I AM Presence
that your soul will not simply be brought home but will return home
triumphantly by becoming a self-aware, self-contained, immortal spiritual
being.
You say that God can show everyone the spiritual reality, but this is
not true because no spiritual being can violate the free will of embodied
souls. God can offer you knowledge of your spiritual identity, God can
lead you to the waters of living truth, but God cannot force you to
drink those waters. Yet God has not left you alone on the battlefield
of life. God has sent you a Christ self as a spiritual teacher, and
God has sent you numerous outer teachers. Throughout the ages, many
beings – including myself – have taken embodiment on Earth
and attained the Christ consciousness, thereby demonstrating the path
that all souls have the potential to follow.
You talk about soldiers on the battlefield, and it is a good illustration
because currently planet Earth truly is a battlefield. Yet when a soldier
goes to war, there is no guarantee that he or she can be rescued. The
soldier will know that all possible attempts will be made to rescue
him, but there is no guarantee that those attempts will be successful.
Likewise, a soul can know that all possible attempts will be made to
rescue that soul on the battlefield of Earth. Yet there is no guarantee
that those attempts will be successful, not so much because the enemy
will interfere with them but because the soul might not see the rescue
attempt or might not accept the hand that is being stretched out from
above.
In order to fulfill its mission on Earth and become a self-sufficient
spiritual being, a soul must have free will. Yet it is an inevitable
potential of free will that the soul can choose to abandon its original
mission and build a sense of identity as being a mortal human being
that is forever separated from its God and can never put on the Christ
consciousness and win its immortality. As long as the soul maintains
this sense of identity, no being in Heaven can rescue that soul. Yet
the soul can, at any moment, choose to abandon the limited sense of
identity and decide to engage in the spiritual path that will lead it
to the Christ consciousness. Nevertheless, no being in Heaven can make
that choice for any being on Earth.
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Copyright
© 2004 by Kim Michaels |
