Jesus comments on Mother Teresa’s “interior darkness”
Part 4
Understanding the death consciousness
Kim: Jesus, I received
the following letter in response to the first discourses on Mother Teresa
and I was hoping you could shed further light on the death consciousness
and how to overcome it.
Dear Kim,
I wish to thank you and Jesus for the profound comments on Mother Teresa's
book and life. I had so many 'aha' experiences and insights from these
discourses, as never before from any other discourse.
Most of all, for the first time I found a description of the death consciousness
I've been carrying for all my life. As far back as I can remember, I
had this desire to die. When I didn't have idea of the spiritual path,
it was a thought of a suicide, but since I found the spiritual path,
it's been this desire of a 'total cessation of being', as Jesus describes
it. It's not truly a desire, except in my darkest moments, it's more
like an idea that I wouldn't mind ceasing to be totally, because then
I wouldn't know I ever existed, and I wouldn't need to strive and suffer
anymore. I mean, who wants to live forever, if this is all there is
to life. I have no conflict in myself about this, I can see this 'thought'
quite peacefully within me. It's just when I feel truly lacking of purpose
and love that this idea becomes a strong desire. I've tried to describe
this to people, but nobody seems to understand what I mean, so it was
a relief to see it described so clearly.
Now, I do not know whether this is my own consciousness or whether I
took on some of the collective consciousness. But if it can be of service
to God's creation, I really would like to overcome this consciousness.
I just don't know how. Jesus and other Masters keep talking about the
Oneness with them and with God, but I never understood what this really
means. I know with my outer mind that I am God and that I am one with
the Masters, lately I've been seeing them inside myself and not outside,
but I still think I don't quite understand what 'being One' truly means.
Again, I thank you and Jesus for your comments. Reading that Mother
Teresa doesn't need to incarnate on earth anymore, despite the fact
that she did not overcome this consciousness, gives me great hope.
With Christ love and gratitude,
P.
Jesus: I am indeed very willing to comment on the death
consciousness as it affects millions of people on Earth, often having
the effect of depriving them of the joy of living. In many cases it
even drives them toward the illusion that killing the physical body
will give them the cessation of consciousness and thus end their suffering—which,
of course, is not the case since consciousness survives the death of
the body.
It was indeed this state of consciousness that I was talking about when
I said:
I am come that
they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.
(John 10:10)
In other words, I came to
this planet for the purpose of freeing people from the death consciousness.
Take note of what I am saying here. I did NOT come to save people physically.
I came to free them from the consciousness that keeps them from salvation.
It is a somewhat dualistic idea to create a scale for the purpose of
comparing one thing to another. Thus, I am reluctant to say that the
consciousness of death is the hardest of all dualistic illusions to
overcome—for I know how the dualistic mind will use such a statement.
Nevertheless, the consciousness of death is, so to speak, the original
illusion that separated self-aware beings from their source and their
spiritual teachers. Thus, all other dualistic illusions spring from
and build upon this illusion, which means that it is the most subtle
of all illusions. And this, naturally, makes it rather difficult to
overcome, which is why even a mature soul like Mother Teresa was not
able to shake it off.
Yet please be alert and realize how the death consciousness itself will
immediately use this statement to discourage YOU from even trying: “There,
you see, if even someone as great as Mother Teresa could not overcome
this, who are you to think that YOU can do it? Just give up and sink
into the peace of death!”
The reality is that Mother Teresa – as I explained in the previous
discourse – had specific illusions that she was not willing to
question. So if you are more willing to question your personal illusions
– and the death consciousness comes in many clever disguises –
you can indeed overcome what Mother Teresa did not overcome. (As I also
said, her struggles did indeed help lighten the planetary load –
although not in the way she thought with her conscious mind –
and this has made it easier for others to throw off this yoke—so
her work was not wasted.)
In fact, the entire concept that one person is better or more capable
than another is an outcome of the death consciousness. For when you
see everything with the light of Christ, you see that the core of every
self-conscious being is the Conscious
You, which is an individualization of the Creator’s own Being.
Thus, it makes no sense whatsoever that one individualization of God
could have abilities that another individualization of God does not
have. What one has done, all can do—when the all realize that
they came from the ONE. Or, as we say in The Art of Non-war,
how can one expression of infinity be more than another expression of
infinity?
Now let me comment on the question raised above: “But if it can
be of service to God's creation, I really would like to overcome this
consciousness. I just don't know how.”
Well, it most certainly will be of immense service to God’s creation
if people who have taken on the death consciousness overcome it and
then show others how to do the same. The importance of this can hardly
be overstated.
How do you overcome the death consciousness? It is very simple.
You overcome the death consciousness the same way you overcome every
other illusion: By seeing that it is an illusion!
How do you overcome an illusion? By questioning the dualistic beliefs
that created the illusion—by questioning what the illusion itself
portrays as unquestionable.
To help you get started, I will now throw a completely radical and revolutionary
idea at you, and I am asking you to be very alert to what thoughts arise
as you read this idea.
What does it actually mean to be saved, reach enlightenment, make your
ascension or whatever you want to call the end goal of human striving?
What is the secret of life, the hidden key behind the fact that most
religions known on Earth have talked about the need to strive for salvation?
The secret is that you will NOT be saved until you come to the point
of realizing that you do not need to be saved because THE ENTIRE CONCEPT
THAT YOU NEED TO BE SAVED IS AN ILLUSION, A CLEVERLY CRAFTED LIE!!!
Now consider some of the thoughts that came up in your mind as you read
that statement. And now consider the reality: ALL of those thoughts
came from the death consciousness itself and they serve only one purpose:
TO KEEP YOU TRAPPED IN THE DEATH CONSCIOUSNESS INDEFINITELY!!!
Yes, I know you can come up with all kinds of clever arguments against
my statement, but let us just step back and look at the big picture.
Let us perform a reality check.
What would you say about a drop of water in the ocean who believes it
is separated from the ocean by an impenetrable barrier or even believes
that the ocean does not exist? Well, since the ocean is finite in size,
it is possible that a drop can be separated from the ocean, but now
imagine that the ocean is infinite in size, that there is nothing but
the ocean. How could the drop be separated from something that is everywhere?
Most religions, and certainly Christianity, claims that God is omnipotent,
omniscient and omnipresent. This is reflected in the Gospel of John,
“Without him was not any thing made that was made.” Or as
we say through these teachings, everything is made from the Ma-ter Light,
which is made from the Creator’s own being and consciousness.
In other words, the very fact that you exist, that you have self-awareness,
actually proves that you cannot be separated from God, for anything
that exists – that was made – is made from God’s energy,
Being and consciousness.
When you contemplate this, you see that logically you cannot be separated
from God in reality. The appearance of separation can ONLY be an illusion.
Thus, it is simply not correct that you are actually separated from
God or that there is an impenetrable barrier or an uncross-able chasm
between you and God’s kingdom. If God is everywhere, how can you
find a place where God is not? If the kingdom of God is everywhere,
how could you be outside the kingdom.
The logical consequence is that the sense of being separated from God’s
kingdom can ONLY be an illusion. Which means that the concept that you
need to be saved by entering the kingdom is also an illusion. The key
to being free from the sense of separation is to awaken from the illusion.
Thus, the key to being saved is to awaken from the illusion that you
need to be saved by seeing that you were never actually separated from
God. You thought you were separated from God because you had come to
believe in the illusion that God’s kingdom was outside yourself.
The key to overcoming this illusion is to realize the truth in my statement
that the kingdom of God is within you.
This process of awakening must – inescapably – take place
where the illusion is found, namely inside your mind. Which is precisely
why I said that the kingdom does not come by observing an outer religion
because the kingdom of God is within you. You “enter” God’s
kingdom by discovering – within your mind – that you were
never actually outside the kingdom—you had only been fooled into
thinking you were outside. You “enter” by finally accepting
that you are already in the kingdom because the kingdom is everywhere.
Yes, I know that while this sounds logical, it makes it no easier for
most people to escape from the illusion. But it sets a foundation that
we will now build upon.
How can self-aware beings come to feel that they are separated from
God’s kingdom? Because they have been given imagination and free
will. Thus, they can use their imagination to build a mental image –
or accept an image made by others – and they can use their will
to accept that image as being more real than reality.
To fully understand this, you must understand that everything is made
from energy and that your mind has the capacity to use energy in ways
most people do not understand. Every thought and emotion you have “qualifies”
energy with a particular vibration and it imposes a mental image on
the energy, causing it to take on a particular pattern or matrix. And
as science says, energy cannot be created or destroyed (at least not
by the human mind) so once mental energy is qualified with a particular
vibration, it stays in that vibration and pattern.
So the reason why the illusion of separation seems to persuasive on
Earth is that for a very long time billions of people have reinforced
the belief in separation, thus adding to the “weight” of
the energy qualified by this belief and all the fear, anger and other
negative emotions that spring from it. This collectively created consciousness
surrounds this planet like a black energy cloud, and it affects every
individual being living within it, pulling on their minds and feelings.
The consequence is that when you are born in a physical body, you inevitably
enter the energy field, and since you were brought up in a culture that
is based on the illusion of separation, you come to believe in this
illusion.
What I am trying to help you see here is that the end goal of all spiritual
growth – the master key to salvation – is that you must
awaken from the illusion of separation. And theoretically, you can awaken
from this illusion at any moment—including right NOW!
I am well aware that there are some spiritual teachers who have talked
about this and who have basically told their followers that they just
need to wake up—which in most cases simply doesn’t work.
The reason is, as Mother Mary and Maitreya explain in their books, that
over time you have picked up many illusions that spring from the consciousness
of separation and you have come to accept them as truth. You have also
misqualified energy that has accumulated in your energy field and you
have made karma with other people. All of this pulls on your conscious
mind and, depending on the strength of the pull, can make it very difficult
for you to wake up from the illusion.
That is why we present people with the concept of a path that will gradually
lessen the pull on your mind, taking you progressively closer to the
point where your conscious mind has the ultimate “Aha experience”
and realizes that separation is an illusion. Yet take note of that the
true path is NOT an outer path. No matter how elaborate the outer rituals
you observe, it will not automatically give you the breakthrough. That
is why I said that the kingdom does not come with observation. Breaking
through is a creative process, and only YOU can turn the dial of consciousness
until you see the world in a totally different light than before.
So I am not hereby trying to say that every person who reads this can
or should wake up instantly and be free from the illusion of separation.
Yet what I AM saying is that every person who reads this has the potential
to partially wake up by realizing with the logical mind that what I
am saying makes sense. Once you realize this, it will become much easier
for you to walk the path of overcoming the death consciousness AND the
false path to “salvation” that has been created from the
death consciousness. It will become much easier for your conscious self
to realize it is more than the death consciousness and thus separate
itself from that illusion. This will make it much less painful for you
to follow the path, as I will explain next.
Why is there a false path to salvation, what I called the broad way
that leads to destruction? As Maitreya
explains in greater detail, certain beings have become so trapped
in the consciousness of death that they seek to pull all other beings
into it. Most of these beings are simply blinded by the illusion, but
there are a few among them who are actually aware that separation is
an illusion, but in their pride they are trying to prove God wrong by
pulling all other beings into the illusion.
These beings know that awakening from the illusion is just a matter
of flipping a switch in your mind—as you flip a light switch to
make the darkness disappear from a room. So in order to prevent people
from flipping that switch, they had to create a false path that makes
people believe they are on the ONLY road to salvation while actually
never getting closer to the point of awakening.
The creation of this false path – that promises salvation while
NEVER being able to deliver – is actually the most dangerous effect
of the death consciousness. I came to Earth precisely to help people
see the fallacy of this “broad way” so they could discover
the “strait and narrow way” that truly does lead to the
kingdom by awakening you from the illusion that the kingdom is somewhere
outside of you, somewhere else. Thus, everyone – including Mother
Teresa – who volunteered to take on the death consciousness have
as part of their mission to help awaken people from the false path—which,
naturally, means you have to start by awakening yourself by removing
the beam from your own eye. And this requires you to understand why
the false path is so seductive.
The very foundation for the false path is that it promises you a solution
to a problem that does not exist—at least not outside your mind.
In other words, it promises you a real solution, but since the problem
is not real, the solution cannot be real either. Thus, you are tricked
into pursuing a solution that promises you eternal salvation while in
reality keeping you stuck in the consciousness of separation. Yet because
you think you are moving toward salvation, you are unwilling to question
the illusion of separation and thus cannot awaken from it. That is why
the false path becomes a catch-22.
The very core of the false path is the illusion of separation. Once
you believe in this illusion, the inevitable companion of this belief
is the fear of death. The false path plays up this fear and then promises
you an escape from death. Yet the only true escape from death is to
realize that this last enemy is not real, whereby death will lose its
sting.
Why is death not real? As we say in The Art of Non-war, God
is the Infinite, and there can be no divisions in infinity. Thus, when
you realize that you are an extension of an infinite God, you also know
that your lifestream, your conscious self, simply cannot die.
Then why does the illusion of death seem so real? What actually happens
when your conscious self accepts the illusion of separation is NOT that
your conscious self becomes mortal but that a separate self is created,
a self that IS mortal. Your conscious self now steps into that separate
self and thus sees the world through the filter of the mortal self,
thinking the filter is real. It is like putting on a medieval suit of
armor from within which you see the world through a small slit, giving
you a very limited perspective. That is why the conscious self now believes
– or perceives – that it really is separated form God and
thus has the potential to die. Because the mortal self identifies itself
as the mortal self, and because the mortal self CAN die, the conscious
self begins to believe that it can die.
This fear of death is unbearable, and thus the conscious self begins
to look for a way out of it. As I have explained, the only true way
out is to awaken from the illusion. However, in order to do this, the
conscious self has to make an admission, namely that the sense of separation
is an illusion, that it created the mortal self and that it made a mistake
in doing so. In order to do this, the conscious self has to be willing
to let its own creation – to let Frankenstein’s monster
– die.
If you look at people on Earth, you will see that some would rather
die than admit that they made a mistake. In fact, millions of people
have died physically because they would not admit they had made various
mistakes. Yet what I am talking about here is that the conscious self
can be unwilling to admit that it made a spiritual mistake. That is
why it will not go back and face its spiritual teacher – who is
ready to help it free itself from the illusion without blame or guilt
– as Maitreya explains in great
detail in his book.
When a lifestream turns away from the true teacher, it sees no way that
it can escape the fear of death on its own (because it subconsciously
knows there is no such escape for the separate self). So it inevitably
becomes susceptible to the false teachers—who promise the lifestream
that it can escape death without having to admit that it made a mistake,
without having to give up the mortal self that makes death seem possible.
In other words, the false path is based on the promise that you can
be saved without overcoming the illusion that makes it seem like you
need to be saved.
Do you truly see what I am saying here? The entire problem is that the
conscious self is now looking at the world from inside the mortal self.
The obvious solution is that the conscious self separates itself from
the mortal self and allows it to die—whereby the conscious self
is born of water and of spirit (John 3:5). The mortal self can NEVER
become acceptable in the eyes of God, and thus it can never enter God’s
kingdom, as I described in my parable about the wedding feast (Matthew
22:11). Yet the false path makes the promise that – through some
process in this world – the mortal self can become acceptable
and can gain entry into the kingdom of God—you only have to follow
the outer rules prescribed by the false path and then God simply has
to let the mortal self into the kingdom.
You may have visited a modern science museum and seen a demonstration
of virtual reality. A person walks up on an empty stage and puts on
a pair of goggles. What the person sees inside the goggles is a computer
simulation, but it seems very real. Thus, the person is walking around
on the stage convinced he is walking in a jungle and striking out at
the brush or poisonous snakes. The audience sees the illusion on a screen
but also sees that the person wearing the goggles is striking at thin
air—like Don Quixote fighting the windmills.
Planet Earth is like a giant computer simulation where everyone who
enters puts on a pair of mental virtual reality goggles. Yet because
people lose the memory of how the world looks without the goggles, they
grow up believing that the perspective on the world delivered by the
goggles is absolutely real. The task of each individual is to awaken
him or herself from the illusion and take off the goggles. The goal
of all true religion is to help people do this, whereas the goal of
all false religion is to keep people playing the game as long as possible.
That is why a number of religions have been created in order to lure
people deeper into the illusion. How can you identify such a false religion?
It always sets up certain doctrines or beliefs as infallible or unquestionable,
meaning that you are not allowed to question certain fundamental tenets
of the religion. To keep people from asking dangerous questions, a religion
will often define an elaborate world view that makes it seem very dangerous
to question certain ideas, one example being the possibility of burning
forever in hell. As if anything separated from God could possibly last
forever.
The purpose of this fear-based world view is to prevent people from
asking the very questions that could help them take off the virtual
reality goggles and wake up from the collective illusion. So mixed in
with the fear is also the carrot, the promise of what good will come
if you keep following the tenets of the outer religion. This is the
pattern found in all false religion—there is always a stick and
a carrot.
The reality is that the promise made by an outer religion is like the
carrot dangling on a stick in front of the donkey. When you walk toward
it, you push the carrot in front of you. If you run faster, the carrot
only moves away faster, but as long as you believe in the basic promise,
your only option seems to be to run even faster so that you will eventually
catch up to the carrot. And while you will never catch up, the belief
will keep you so preoccupied with the chase that you never have time
to step back and ask, “Why am I doing this? Will it actually lead
me to where I want to go?”
Do you truly see what I am saying here? The sense that you are separated
from God’s kingdom is an illusion. This sense of separation gives
rise to the further illusion that if you only do something in the world
that seems outside of God’s kingdom, you will be allowed into
the kingdom. Yet no matter what you do or how much of it you do, an
action based on the sense of separation – and the accompanying
fear of death – can never help you overcome separation. The more
you do in order to win salvation, the more you reinforce the illusion
that you are separated from God. The ONLY thing that will set you free
is to recognize and ADMIT that separation is unreal, thereby letting
the mortal self die.
Thinking that actions based on the illusion of separation can lead to
salvation is what gives rise to the belief that a simple outer act –
such as being baptized in a Christian church, declaring me to be your
Lord and Savior or a million other such devices – will “buy”
your salvation. In reality, this entire consciousness is based on the
illusion of separation. It says that there is a remote god and by pleasing
this god – by giving him something he supposedly needs and wants
from human beings – he will let you into the remote kingdom—after
you die.
The true salvation that I preached 2,000 years ago was that God is not
remote, and that no amount of earthly actions can buy your way into
heaven. That is why I said to people that unless their righteousness
exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees – who thought they had
bought their salvation through outer observances – you would not
enter the kingdom (Matthew 5:20). What I meant was that you must stop
thinking that the kingdom comes through the observance of an outer religion.
You must discover that the kingdom is within you because it comes only
through a change of consciousness.
That is why – after I had my own awakening experience through
my baptism by John – I went out and preached that the kingdom
of God is at hand (Matthew 3:2, 4:17, 10:7), meaning that you can reach
it right now on Earth rather than having to wait for some remote future
that never arrives. I was essentially saying that you will never find
the kingdom until you realize that you were never separated from it,
because it is right here, right NOW.
Yet as you will see from my life, the illusion of the false path is
very seductive, and many people are so firmly convinced of its reality
that they will completely refuse to admit the fallacy of the outer path
and the reality of the inner path. That is why they ranted against me
and accused me of being of the devil, as many mainstream Christians
would rant against this discourse if they ever were to read it.
We have now set the foundation for understanding why the death consciousness
gives some people the desire to die, to have the cessation of being,
to no longer be conscious. We can also explain why people trapped in
this state of consciousness see life as a never-ending string of strain
and suffering and feel like it has no purpose and that their only escape
is death—causing them to long for spiritual death. We can also
gain a deeper understanding of how this was outplayed in Mother Teresa’s
life.
Let us look at what happens to a lifestream that for the first time
incarnates in a Catholic culture. The person grows up uncritically accepting
the Catholic world view, thus believing that if it follows the tenets
and practices of the Church, it is guaranteed to enter heaven after
this life. The person then dies and the soul rises to the spiritual
realm, where it is confronted with the undeniable reality that it is
not ready to enter heaven but needs to reincarnate on Earth in order
to further purify its consciousness.
A lifestream may go through this process several times and can take
two basic directions. Some end up becoming angry against Christianity,
a particular church or all religion, which explains why many people
in today’s world are hostile against organized religion. They
have for many lifetimes bought into the promise made by such religion,
have experienced its falsity and have retained some memory of it.
It might seem as if these lifestreams have become trapped in anger,
and while some of them do, this stage is actually a precursor to overcoming
the illusion represented by false religion, namely the willingness to
question what religion defines as beyond questioning. The catch is,
of course, that in order to become truly free, these lifestreams must
take responsibility for themselves and realize that instead of blaming
religion, they need to remove the beam from their own eyes—the
illusion of separation. Adopting a world view that denies God’s
existence, such as scientific materialism, will not accomplish this
goal.
Another reaction is that a lifestream re-embodies without being willing
to question the basic illusion of the false path. It often re-embodies
in the same or a similar culture in order to gain another opportunity
to overcome the illusion. This can go on for many lifetimes, and some
actually get trapped in the game I just described. They think that in
order to finally be saved, they simply have to become more diligent
in observing the outer religion, and for each embodiment, their striving
becomes more and more intense.
Eventually a lifestream can begin to free itself from this illusion,
and some will then develop a desire to go back to Earth to demonstrate
to others that it is possible to rise above the illusion without becoming
negative toward God or true spirituality. This was the case for Mother
Teresa and many other mature lifestreams who are now in embodiment for
the purpose of demonstrating the true, inner path. So in order to do
this, a lifestream will come into embodiment deliberately to take on
the death consciousness in its more extreme forms. What is the extreme
outcome of the death consciousness?
The false path makes a promise that if you do something in this world,
you will be guaranteed to enter heaven. So what happens when a lifestream
believes this promise and experiences that it did not come true? Well,
the false teachers have anticipated this and have thus created a very
elaborate set of illusions designed to make it seem like it is all your
fault. In other words, if you did not catch up to the carrot dangled
in front of your nose, it was because YOU did not do something right,
you were not running fast enough.
If a lifestream believes in this – which it MUST do as long as
it is not willing to admit that it made a mistake by following the promise
of salvation without giving up the mortal self – it will put itself
in a downward spiral where its life will become more and more intense.
In other words, if a lifestream will not question the illusion of separation
itself, it MUST continue to seek salvation based on this illusion, thus
believing it simply has to do more of the same in order to finally be
saved. Many people are born with a lack of self-worth or are driven
in various ways to strive for some goal that never seems to come true.
In other words, their lives are swallowed up by an impossible quest.
This is what Albert Einstein called the insanity that causes people
to continue doing the same thing while believing that some day they
will get a different result.
It should now be possible to see that as long as you stay in this downward,
self-reinforcing spiral, your life will become increasingly dominated
by tension and conflict. Your life becomes more and more conflicted,
which inevitably leads to various kinds of spiritual suffering as well
as psychological problems. Your conscious self will inevitably begin
to sense the futility of this quest, but as long as it refuses to question
its basic beliefs, it will seem as if there is no way out of the suffering.
Thus, a lifestream will begin to feel it is caught in a never-ending
spiral of suffering that is put upon it by some outside force, be it
an angry god or the devil. Such a lifestream can easily develop a desire
to end this suffering through some final form of spiritual death that
causes the cessation of being, the obliteration of self-awareness. God’s
ultimate gift of self-awareness – the Creator sharing its own
consciousness with you – is now seen as the ultimate curse. The
false teachers will laugh all the way to the bank.
How can a lifestream escape this death spiral? Only by recognizing and
admitting that the entire spiral is based on illusions—layer upon
layer of interwoven illusions. The sense of separation is an illusion.
The concept that you have to do something in this world in order to
gain entry into God’s kingdom is an illusion. The concept that
if you do not reach the goal, you have to run faster is an illusion.
The problem is that in order to overcome an illusion, you have to be
willing to question the false belief that creates the illusion—whereby
you come to see the contradictions that are built into any world view
based on the death consciousness. In other words, you must be willing
to question everything, and you must be willing to acknowledge the contradictions
in your world view—seeing the beam in your own eye. A lifestream
caught in the spiral is often reluctant to do this, as you clearly saw
with Mother Teresa. The death consciousness is a very clever and elaborate
attempt to create a prison with no exit.
As an example, consider the following statement by Mother Teresa:
When I see someone
sad, I always think, she is refusing something to Jesus. (page 33)
If Mother Teresa had been
willing to look for her own contradictions, she would have had an Aha-experience
that would have empowered her to see that the previous statement explains
her own interior darkness. Why was she suffering? Because she was refusing
something to me. What was she refusing? She was refusing to question
everything, thus refusing to follow the Living Christ – which
she had experienced in hear heart – while clinging to the Catholic
image of the suffering “Christ” on the cross.
The prison of death is so escape-proof that when a lifestream caught
in the spiral of suffering is presented with the true path, it can always
find a “watertight” argument for rejecting it. This might
be that it is coming from the devil or that it seems overwhelming to
follow the path. In fact, many people have found the true teachings
of the Ascended Host and have turned them into another rat race, where
it seems they have to run faster and faster in order to win their ascension.
There are two potential outcomes. One is that you make the switch in
consciousness and “see” the falsity of the false path and
the reality of the real path. You then see that the true path is NOT
a continuation of the suffering of the false path. Instead, you attain
progressively greater freedom from all human burdens and thus experience
progressively greater joy and peace. The true path is NOT a matter of
running faster but of stepping back and giving up the illusions that
cause people to run—without seeing they are running away from
God rather than toward God. It is not by holding on to the things of
this world that you get to heaven but by letting go of ALL the things
of this world.
The false path has created an elaborate illusion that by admitting you
made a mistake, you will be condemned by God or should feel guilt or
shame. The reality is that when you truly admit that you made a mistake,
you are instantly free from the very consciousness created by the mistake—including
the fear, anger, guilt, shame and lack of self-worth that spring from
the illusion of separation. God does NOT want you to feel guilty for
making a mistake, God only wants you to rise above the consciousness
of separation that is the foundation for all mistakes.
Do you see what I am saying? The consciousness of death makes it seem
like you cannot simply be free of a mistake by admitting it and surrendering
the consciousness of the mistakes. No, no, this is too easy. Instead,
you have to go through some elaborate ritual to free yourself from the
“sin” of your mistake, including experiencing untold suffering
before God will finally forgive your sins. The reality is that God will
instantly forgive your sin the moment you forsake the consciousness
of separation. You may still have karma to balance, but that can be
done without any sense of guilt or shame—thus without suffering.
The false path says that you cannot be free until sometime in a remote
future. The true path says you can be free right NOW because the kingdom
of God is at hand!
What happens to those who cannot abandon the false path and accept the
true path? Well, the reality is that you can actually return to oneness
by following the false path!
You see, in the end, you have to come to the point of surrendering yourself
completely unto God, which means that you give up the mortal self. So
the only question is what kind of experiences – self-created experiences
– a lifestream has to go through in order to reach that point
of total surrender. Some can come to that point by following the path
of the true teachers, while others must follow the path of acting upon
the illusions of the false path until they reach a breaking point and
simply cannot believe in these illusions anymore.
For this perspective, one might think that we who are the true teachers
would lean back and simply let lifestreams walk whatever path they chose.
However, we do not because we see clearly that a lifestream on the false
path often has to go through almost unfathomable amounts of suffering
before it finally gives up on this path and cries out for deliverance.
If you will take this perspective and look at humankind, you will see
that some people will go to incredible extremes in order to defend their
beliefs in the false path, usually causing – almost – unbearable
suffering for themselves and those around them.
I came to this world to spare people from this suffering—which
is why I said I have come to give people life and that more abundantly.
Of course, there is also a real risk that those who follow the false
path will end up at the point of actually welcoming spiritual death
and thus NOT being able to surrender the separate self, preferring instead
to die with it and experience cessation of individual awareness.
If you will look at the life of Mother Teresa, you will see that she
took on one of the more extreme expressions of the false path, namely
the entire concept of the Via Dolorosa, the concept that you have to
go through suffering in order to be saved—in fact that God and
Christ require you to do this.
As I said in the last discourse, the Catholic Church never represented
the true path. If you look at the Catholic belief in sharing the suffering
of Christ, you might wonder where it came from. But it should be clear
to those who read the scriptures that it did not come from me, nor from
the early Christians.
According to Mother Teresa’s belief – and the belief of
many Catholics, including some who are considered saints within the
church – the most important aspect of my life and mission was
my suffering on the cross. Thus, they focus on the crucified Jesus and
the belief that my suffering and the spilling of my blood was the sacrifice
that paid for humankind’s sins. This has caused many to believe
that if they suffer, it is because they share in my passion and that
their suffering will either alleviate my suffering or serve the same
function of “buying” souls for God.
Now, we could go into a long discussion of where this belief came from,
but my immediate point is that my early followers did not go around
saying to each other: “Christ was crucified and he suffered for
our sins!” No, they went around saying to each other: “Christ
is risen!”
My early followers understood that it was not truly significant that
I was crucified. What WAS significant is that I rose again after the
death on the cross, thus demonstrating the potential that all have to
conquer not simply death but the death consciousness itself. The cross
is a symbol for the consciousness of separation that cause people to
be trapped in a fixed position that causes suffering. My resurrection
is a symbol of people's potential to rise above the cross by giving
up the ghost of the mortal self.
Why was this realization lost? Because Christianity was taken over by
those who were so trapped in the death consciousness that they could
not let go of the firm belief in the external God who requires some
kind of compensation, sacrifice or payment in order to let you into
heaven. Why could they not let go of this? Because they would not let
go of the dream that the mortal self can somehow become acceptable to
God and thus they can be saved without letting the mortal self die.
The psychological effect was that even my example of overcoming death
was perverted and turned into a path that offered the possibility of
buying your way into heaven by sharing in my suffering, my passion on
the cross. You might say that this was an understandable belief given
the physical suffering that people experienced during the middle ages
and before, but which came first—the chicken or the egg?
When you realize that the universe is a mirror, you see that by focusing
on suffering, people precipitated more suffering, which became a self-reinforcing
spiral. My teachings were meant to prevent this, but instead the perverted
versions of my teachings actually accelerated the spiral and made it
harder for people to escape it. That is why the only way out was for
so many people to abandon all faith in Christianity and instead turn
to science for a less limiting world view.
So to claim that the path of suffering actually is the true
path of Christ is a complete failure to understand what my mission is
about.
However, that being said, we of the Ascended Host never give up on any
soul. No matter how deeply people sink into the duality consciousness,
we always seek to offer them what seems – with their current level
of consciousness – to be a viable way out. And if people are stuck
in the belief that they need to suffer and sacrifice in order to be
saved, we still seek to help them. However, in many cases the ONLY way
in which we can help them is to actually encourage them to take the
path of suffering to such an extreme that they finally break through
and see the unreality of it all. We must take the non-attractive option
of seeking to bring people to the breaking point as quickly as possible
in order to shorten their suffering.
Take the following remark that Mother Teresa made to one of her superiors
when she was trying to convince him of the genuineness of her mission:
. . . does the
Good God give these desires and not mean them to come true? (page
94)
Mother Teresa reasons the
way many other religious people have reasoned when they feel they have
received some kind of higher direction for their lives. They interpret
the directions with their current state of consciousness, assuming their
interpretation is completely accurate. Thus, if they believe they have
received genuine direction, they MUST believe the direction was given
for its stated purpose. They cannot conceive of the possibility that
the direction was given in order to achieve God’s ultimate goal,
which is to set all lifestreams free from the illusions of death. Thus,
it is entirely possible – and much more common than most spiritual
people will be willing to admit – that people receive a higher
direction that is NOT meant to be taken literally. And if the direction
IS taken literally, it will actually push people further into a catch-22
that will hopefully bring them to the point of surrender as quickly
as possible.
You see, when you begin to follow the path of seeking to buy your salvation,
you are putting yourself in a mental box. Your beliefs that doing outer
things will “force” God to let you into his kingdom form
the sides of the box. And the more you push in order to secure your
salvation, the more you close in the box. You come to the breaking point
when the box has become so narrow that you can no longer move and thus
hopefully cry out for deliverance, realizing there must be a better
way.
Now, you must understand that if a lifestream is truly caught in the
death consciousness, the law of free will prevent us from doing anything
to help such a lifestream. But when a lifestream has taken on this consciousness
as part of its mission – as Mother Teresa did – we are allowed
to follow the desires of the higher mind of that lifestream, even when
the outer mind has lost awareness of them. Thus, we can indeed push
such people in order to bring them to the point of surrender that is
the very key to the fulfillment of their mission—if they accept
it and actually surrender.
I know full well that these concepts are not for those who are new on
the spiritual path. Yet take note that they are given in order to help
those who are burdened by the death consciousness. My purpose is to
show you that the essence of the death consciousness is that you think
there is something you simply cannot question. Yet the key to freedom
from the death consciousness is to question what it says you must not
question. ONLY in doing this will you see through the illusion that
is keeping you trapped in a mental prison that is completely unreal!
As an example of the kind of catch-22 you need to overcome, consider
the following vow by Mother Teresa:
I made a vow to
God, binding under [pain of] mortal sin, to give God anything that
he may ask, “Not to refuse him anything.” (page 29)
This vow, made early in her
life, was a major factor in preventing her from totally surrendering
to God, including surrendering her dualistic view of the remote god.
There are many things wrong with the consciousness behind this vow,
but let me point out the ones that are most relevant to this discussion:
-
It is based on the view
of God as an external being who is making demands upon you that
you might not want to follow with your outer mind. When you rise
above the illusion of the external God, you see that “God’s
will” is an synonym for the will of your own higher being.
There is no external being seeking to force his will upon you. It
is your own higher being that is seeking to help you do what you
decided to do before you came into embodiment and were blinded by
the collective consciousness on Earth.
-
Why would you feel the
need to make such a vow? Because you had not fully surrendered to
God and thus you are afraid that you might refuse the external God
what he demands. So you make a vow to scare yourself into never
refusing the external God. When you fully surrender to God, you
also surrender the illusion of the external God, and thus you spontaneously
follow “God’s will” because you know it is your
own higher will. Thus, you have no need to make such a vow.
-
Only the mortal self
can resist your own higher will, so if you fear that you might resist,
it proves that you have not surrendered the mortal self. Mother
Teresa believed that by making this vow, she had surrendered herself
fully to God, yet the vow itself proves that she had not fully surrendered
the mortal self and its built-in belief in the external God.
- Not only does this consciousness
see God as the external God, it even thinks it has power over that
God. What Mother Teresa was saying between the lines is that she thought
she could force God to send her to hell if she refused God anything.
This is the extreme outcome of the death consciousness, where beings
are so blinded by pride that they think that what they do based on
the death consciousness actually has an effect of God. Yet God is
not mocked and is no respecter of persons. Nothing that could ever
be done through the death consciousness can affect God. That which
is unreal cannot affect that which is real.
The beliefs behind this vow
made Mother Teresa think that whatever she felt God demanded of her,
she had to fulfill in order to avoid mortal sin. Yet much of what God
demanded of her was designed to push her into a corner, where she would
finally say no and begin to question her entire image of the external
God, her belief in buying salvation through suffering, and the false
path itself.
She had these questions come up in her mind:
What do I labour
for? If there be no God—there can be no soul.—If there
is no soul then Jesus—You also are not true. (page 192-93)
My very life seems so contradictory. I help souls—to go where?—Why
all this? (page 210)
Yet instead of acknowledging
these thoughts as coming from her higher self, she rejected them as
coming from the devil.
In reality sin is the consciousness of separation, the consciousness
of death. Do you see what I am saying? Sin is not an action you commit.
An action simply creates a reaction in the form of misqualified energy
or karma. You need to pay this back, but the process does not require
you to feel guilty or separate yourself from God. Sin IS the sense of
separation from God, for it is this state of consciousness – and
only this state of consciousness – that keeps you outside God’s
kingdom.
Nothing you could do while inside the death consciousness can secure
your salvation. The ONLY way to salvation is to separate yourself completely
from the death consciousness, which can ONLY be done by surrendering
all aspects of this consciousness, including the belief that you need
to do fulfill certain worldly conditions in order to buy your salvation.
Thus, Mother Teresa’s dualistic concept of sin and paying back
sin through suffering actually kept her outside the kingdom of God for
50 years, whereas my desire was for her to have been inside the kingdom
the entire time and demonstrating this to others.
What is my point for this long discourse? If you are one of the people
who have struggled with the death consciousness, then I hope you will
finally come to the conscious realization that ALL of your troubles
are caused by the fact that there is something you have not surrendered.
And the reason you have not surrendered it is that you have not questioned
certain beliefs—precisely because those beliefs are designed in
such a way as to prevent you from questioning them.
So to finally escape this treadmill of ongoing pain and suffering, what
you need to do is to question the unquestionable and surrender what
is surely illusions. You see, what has really happened is that the prince
of this world has managed to make people believe that in order to be
free of the death consciousness, they have to meet certain conditions.
Yet those very conditions are defined by the death consciousness, and
thus as long as you believe in their reality, you cannot escape this
consciousness.
The ONLY way out is to surrender ALL conditions by realizing that God’s
love for YOU is absolutely unconditional. Why? God loves you as himself
because you ARE himself, you are an extension of the Creator’s
being and nothing you have done in this world could ever change that
fact. The prince of this world wants to make you believe that what you
did in the past has changed the reality of who you are, but it is not
true. You need to surrender all aspects of this illusion, until you
come to the point of total surrender, where the prince of this world
cometh and has nothing in you. At that point, the Christ will have risen
in you, and you will be able to proclaim to the world, “He is
risen!” – knowing the true meaning of this statement.
You can do that right now if you like!
If you find it absolutely necessary to wait for some unspecified future
time, then all I can do is accept your choice. However, don’t
come to me later and say that I did not make an effort to spare you
for the suffering that lies between now and your future awakening.
***
In closing, let me comment on the following question from above, “Now,
I do not know whether this is my own consciousness or whether I took
on some of the collective consciousness.”
Let me give you a way to evaluate whether you are one of the beings
who are trapped in the death consciousness or whether you have volunteered
to take it on in order to help others. The key is your level of identification
with it.
People who are trapped in the death consciousness are usually very reluctant
to question their basic assumptions and feel they know better than others,
even better than the true spiritual teachers—in some cases even
better than God. These are the people who will read this and who will
immediately start picking apart what I have said, interpreting it according
to the beliefs they think are infallible and that they therefore do
not need to question. In other words, some people fear to question the
death consciousness, but those who are most trapped are those who –
out of spiritual pride – do not think they need to question their
beliefs because they are fully convinced that they could not be wrong.
Those who have merely taken on the death consciousness are those who
are much more meek and humble, thus being more willing to consider that
they could be wrong or have something to learn. So if you are willing
to admit that you are affected by the death consciousness, it is a good
sign that you have either taken it on or are well on your way to overcoming
it.
In essence, no being was ever created in the death consciousness, so
all beings have taken it on. However, some took in on in a higher sphere
and are thus more identified with it than those who took in on here
on Earth. So by the fact that you ask the question, you prove it is
something you have taken on here on Earth in order to demonstrate how
to overcome it. So get on with overcoming it, so you can fulfill your
desire to help others do the same!
Obviously, this teaching applies to many of those who have studied this
website for a while—whether you have taken on this or that aspect
of duality. Many of you are already made sincere efforts to balance
your karma and work through your psychology. You are ready to awaken
from the illusions of the death consciousness—to simply leave
the last shackles behind. All that is standing between you and victory
is one final act of total surrender—setting you free to start
your real missions. So let us all move higher together and call the
bluff of those who portray themselves as the true teachers of humankind,
but inside they are like whitened sepulchers filled with dead men’s
bones.
We have yet other worlds to conquer—but let us start by conquering
this one.
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Copyright
© 2007 by Kim Michaels |
