Why
the ego is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole
The least you should know about the ego, Part 3.
A discourse by Jesus
NOTE: This
teaching was given on April 26, 2006, after the NEW
DIRECTION was implemented.
You have heard the expression that someone is trying to fit a square
peg into a round hole, and it describes what the ego will continue to
do until you allow it to die. The round hole is a symbol for the letter
“O” which stands for Oneness. The square peg is a symbol
for the four quadrants
of the material universe, which the ego sees as the only road to
eternal life.
In reality, the ONLY road to salvation, the ascension or the eternal
life is the Path of Oneness, whereby you come back to the correct sense
of identity as a co-creator with your God. You will enter God’s
kingdom ONLY by attaining a sense of oneness with God, whereby you can
say as I did, “I and my father are one!” The ego was born
when you decided to turn away from the Path of Oneness and instead join
the path of separation. Thus, the ego can NEVER come into oneness with
God. You created the ego because you separated yourself from God, and
thus when you come back to oneness, the ego will no longer be needed
and should be allowed to die.
Obviously, the ego will never recognize this fact, and thus it is constantly
trying to build the false image that you can be saved without overcoming
the ego, without letting it die. The ego is trying to create the appearance
that you can be saved by living up to certain requirements in this world.
In other words, the ego is trying to use something from the four planes
of matter in an attempt to force its way into the kingdom of oneness.
That is why anything created by the ego will be a square peg that will
NEVER fit into the round hole of the kingdom of oneness. That is why
I gave the following parable:
1 And Jesus answered
and spake unto them again by parables, and said,
2 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a
marriage for his son,
3 And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the
wedding: and they would not come.
8 Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which
were bidden were not worthy.
9 Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find,
bid to the marriage.
11 And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man
which had not on a wedding garment:
12 And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having
a wedding garment? And he was speechless.
13 Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and
take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping
and gnashing of teeth.
14 For many are called, but few are chosen. (Matthew, Chapter
22)
The reality is that the wedding
garment symbolizes the Christ consciousness, which is the ONLY way to
establish oneness with God. As I explained in the previous discourse,
the ego is born of separation from God and thus everything the ego believes,
every mental image it creates, springs from the mind of anti-christ—the
mind of separation. Therefore, these images can never form the wedding
garment that gives access to the kingdom, and the ego will always remain
in the outer darkness of its own making. As long as you identify with
the ego, you too will remain in the state of consciousness where there
is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
What is the you that can escape the ego?
Obviously, you do not have to remain trapped by the ego. The inner message
of every true spiritual teaching – often disguised in metaphors
or mythical stories – is that you can slay the dragon of the ego,
be rescued the knight on the white horse of the Christ self and inherit
the kingdom of God. But what is the “you” that can do this?
In her groundbreaking book, Master Keys to the Abundant Life,
Mother Mary calls it the “Conscious You.” You might also
call it the “Conscious I” or the “Conscious Self.”
This Conscious You is the core of your lower being. It is an individualization
of your spiritual self, your I
AM Presence. It was designed to descend into the material universe
to both experience this realm and bring the light of your I AM Presence
– your God Flame – into this world, helping to turn it into
the kingdom of God. The Conscious You is what makes you aware that you
exist and it is also the part of you that makes conscious decisions.
As Mother Mary explains in her book, the Conscious You is meant to be
the master of your lower being, which she calls your container of self.
You are meant to make most of your decisions at the level of the Conscious
You, under the direction of your I AM Presence and spiritual teacher.
When you turned away from your spiritual teacher, you lost that divine
direction, and thus you had to make decisions alone. This became painful
for many co-creators, which is why they gradually allowed their egos
to make more and more decisions for them.
We might say that the problem faced by most people is that they have
put their conscious selves to sleep and have allowed their egos to run
their lives. That is why many of their decisions are not made at the
level of the conscious mind but are made through a subconscious process
ruled by the ego. We can compare the ego to a computer that is not actually
able to think but that has a sophisticated enough programming to give
the appearance that it can think.
This analogy is fruitful when compared to my previous analogy of the
forest and the trees. The ego has created a large number of relativistic,
dualistic illusions that are like individual computer programs. You
might compare them to the trees in the forest, and each program is designed
to handle specific situations in life. Thus, when you encounter a particular
type of situation, one of these programs kicks in and takes over your
reactions to the situation. You are no longer making conscious choices
as to how to best handle the situation; it is all run by the computer
of the ego.
You probably know that a computer has a number of specific programs
that all function within the framework of what is called the operating
system. This is what gives the computer its identity as a Windows, Macintosh
or UNIX computer. The operating system is the ego itself, and it compares
to the forest in the previous discourse. This operating system is the
very core of the ego, and it was born out of the decision to turn away
from your teacher. In other words, the specific reasoning that the Conscious
You used in order to justify turning away from the teacher became the
very core of your ego. This is important, because when you realize that
your ego was born out of this decision, you see why the ego will NEVER
question the validity of that decision. The ego is like a computer that
can never question its operating system but will forever continue to
function according to its programming.
The ego literally lives and dies by the original decision to turn away
from God. If the Conscious You ever looked at that decision, realized
that is was not a constructive choice and replaced it with a better
decision – by choosing life over death – the ego would die.
Thus, the Conscious You can now begin to understand that the ego will
do anything in its power to prevent you from ever uncovering and reevaluating
the original decision that created the ego. Returning to the computer
analogy, you know that an individual program cannot alter the operating
system—it must function within the framework defined by the system.
Thus, the ego seeks to make the Conscious You so focused on its individual
beliefs – the trees – that you will never see the underlying
belief – the forest – that created the ego.
Even many sincere spiritual seekers have been fooled by this trick.
They have realized that there is an entity – whether they call
it the ego or something else – that is blocking their spiritual
growth. And they have realized that it is necessary to cut down some
of the trees in the forest in order to remove the veil of illusions
that separates them from God. Yet they have not yet seen that there
is something hiding behind the trees. Thus, although many seekers are
sincerely questioning aspects of their egos, they have not yet seen
behind the veil to start questioning the ego itself. Obviously, a beginning
seeker is not yet ready to do this, but many of the people who have
been on the spiritual path for decades – or even lifetimes –
could benefit immensely from considering the teachings I am giving.
They are ready to begin to question the basic illusions of their egos.
You are more than the ego
The first step toward overcoming the ego is to realize that there is
more to “you” than the ego and its individual illusions.
You need to realize that you are more than a highly evolved animal,
that you are more than the computer programs of the ego. When you look
at the world, you will see many people who have not yet come to that
realization. These are what the Bible calls the “multitudes”
and you will note that I spoke to them in parables and then gave my
disciples a more sophisticated teaching.
My disciples had realized that they were more than their egos, but they
had not begun to truly see their egos. This is comparable to the situation
of many spiritual seekers today. In today’s world millions of
people are at the same or a higher level of spiritual maturity as were
my disciples 2,000 years ago. Thus, if you are consciously aware of
the spiritual path, you already know there is more to “you”
than the ego, that there is more to reality than the material world.
Yet to take the next step, you need to come to a more sophisticated
understanding of the “you” that is more than the ego.
The crucial understanding that most spiritual seekers are missing is
the realization that the Conscious You is designed to make decisions
and that it makes those decisions based on its sense of identity. As
Mother Mary explains in greater detail, the Conscious You IS an individualization
of God, but in time and space, the Conscious You is who it thinks it
is, who it sees itself as being. The Conscious You has the ability to
identify itself as absolutely anything it can conceive and accept as
real. Thus, the Conscious You can identify itself as a highly evolved
animal, and it will then make decisions as an animal. If the Conscious
You identifies itself as a mortal sinner, it will make decisions as
a sinner and it will consider it blasphemy to see itself as a son or
daughter of God.
In other words, the Conscious You is designed to be a co-creator in
the material universe, and it expresses its creative abilities through
the filter of its sense of identity. Every decision the Conscious You
makes is colored by the sense of identity you have come to accept, based
on your upbringing in this life and your experiences from past lives.
The crucial point is, however, that the Conscious You is NEVER confined
to or permanently trapped in its current sense of identity. The Conscious
You has the ability to mentally project itself anywhere it wants, meaning
that it can also project its sense of self outside its current identity—the
identity built in this world.
It is this very ability to separate yourself from your current sense
of identity, and realize that there is more to life, that is the key
to all human progress, be it material or spiritual progress. If you
could see yourself only through the filter of your current sense of
identity, you could never rise above that identity. And thus human beings
could never come back to oneness after they had descended into the consciousness
of separation.
The essential key is that the Conscious You can step outside your current
sense of identity at any moment. NOTHING binds the Conscious You to
your current sense or identity—except your belief that there is
nothing outside of it or that you cannot escape your current sense of
identity. The catch is that most people have come to identify themselves
with their egos to the point where they cannot conceive and believe
that they can escape the ego at any moment. In a sense this belief is
true because you cannot simply walk away from the forest of the ego.
You must systematically cut down the trees – illusions –
of the ego before you can see your true identity. Yet even though these
illusions must be removed, the Conscious You can – at any moment
– choose to stop identifying itself with the ego and this will
make it far easier for yourself to let go of the ego. This process is
what I described in the following quote:
3 Jesus answered
and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be
born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old?
can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?
5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be
born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom
of God. (John, Chapter 3)
Being born of the Spirit
means – among other valid interpretations – that you realize
that the Conscious You can walk away from the mental prison of the ego
and reclaim its true identity as a co-creator with God. You can realize
that your current sense of identity is deeply affected by the illusions
of your ego and the illusions of the collective consciousness of humankind.
It is based on the sense of separation from God, and thus it is mortal
because anything that is outside the kingdom of oneness cannot have
eternal life. Your mortal sense of identity is unreal and can never
inherit the eternal life. That is why I said:
For whosoever will
save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for
my sake shall find it. (Matthew 16:25)
If you seek to hold on to
the sense of identity – life – built by the ego, you will
not find eternal life. Yet if you are willing to lose that sense of
life in order to win the Christ consciousness and come back to oneness,
you will indeed find eternal life.
Starting to lose your life
How do you – the Conscious You – begin the process of separating
yourself from the ego? This is a twofold process, and the first part
is – as I said – that you must reestablish some connection
to your higher being, your I AM Presence. Only when you have that connection
– through your Christ self – will you know that you will
not die when the ego dies. And only when you know this, can you fully
commit yourself to the path that leads to the death of the ego. The
Conscious You cannot bear to have no sense of identity, so before you
can give up the identity based on separation, you must begin to reconnect
to your true identity of oneness.
The second step is to expand your understanding of the fact that the
ego exists and then learn how to see through its illusions. The major
illusion you need to see is that the ego is on an impossible quest,
as I explained in the previous discourse. The prince of this world knows
that the Conscious You can never fully forget its origin. Thus, it is
virtually impossible for the forces of this world, including your ego,
to keep you from contemplating the need for what most religious people
call salvation.
Although you live in a culture where many people have denounced religion,
most people still cannot let go of their spiritual questions. The ego
would prefer to keep you either denying or being indifferent to spiritual
growth. But if it cannot achieve that, it will go to Plan B, which is
to create a false path to salvation and make you absolutely convinced
that by following this path, you will be saved—however you define
salvation. Thus, the prince of this world and the ego have created an
almost infinite variety of such false paths, meaning a spiritual or
religious system that promises to bring you salvation but can never
deliver on this promise because it does not take you beyond the identity
built by the ego. Proverbs describes it this way;
There is a way
which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of
death. (Proverbs 14:12)
I described it as follows:
13 Enter ye in
at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that
leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth
unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew, Chapter
7)
Many sincere religious and
spiritual people have been tricked by their egos into following such
a false path to salvation, while being firmly convinced that they belong
to the only true church and – because they live up to certain
outer requirements – their salvation is guaranteed. Take note
that this belief can be very comforting, and thus it can actually be
necessary at the lower levels of the path. Many people cannot bear the
fear of not being saved, so believing their salvation is guaranteed
can help them gradually grow out of the paralysis caused by extreme
fear.
The problem is that this belief can so easily be used by the ego to
take you into a blind alley where you believe that, because you are
a member of this outer church and follow its outer requirements, you
do not have to truly change yourself, you do not have to follow my command:
3 And why beholdest
thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the
beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out
of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and
then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's
eye. (Matthew, Chapter 7)
The mote in your own eye
is the ego and its false sense of identity that keeps the Conscious
You trapped in the consciousness of separation—which will keep
you outside the kingdom of oneness until you separate yourself from
the sense of separation and come into oneness with your God. Thus, a
more mature spiritual seeker MUST abandon the belief in an outer salvation
– the outer path – and discover the true inner Path to Oneness.
Only then will you find the straight and narrow way that leads to the
kingdom of God within yourself.
My point is that once you begin to realize that the ego’s main
purpose is to keep you from discovering and following the true Path
of Oneness – by making you believe you can follow an outer path
to salvation – you can begin to see through the specific illusions
that your ego is using to keep you trapped. It will then be far easier
for you to identity these illusions and to avoid the sense that you
somehow have to believe in them. In the following discourses we will
look at some of these illusions and how the ego is a master in making
you feel you somehow cannot just walk away from them.
Remember that the Conscious You is what it thinks it is, and you can
at any moment change who you think you are. The ego and the prince of
this world will try to make you believe you cannot change your mind,
but it simply is not the case. God wants you to come home, and thus
God wants you to change your mind so you can overcome the ego’s
illusions. The ego wants to keep you trapped in a limited sense of identity,
and thus it wants to make you think you cannot or should not change
your mind. It wants to make you think that once you have partaken of
the forbidden fruit, you cannot escape that decision. You are trapped
forever.
In the material universe, nothing is forever. Everything is created
through a choice, and it will continue to exist only as long as you
continue to affirm that choice. That is why the central challenge is
to choose life instead of continuing to choose death.
Part
4. Why the ego becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
Back
to Main Ego Page
Back
to top
Copyright
© 2005 by Kim Michaels |
