Why
you can’t find common ground with some people
Have you ever encountered people with
whom you cannot find a common ground? Have you ever felt like they have
a hidden agenda or that they seem to have a different approach to the
spiritual path even though they claim to be very spiritual people? Have
you ever wondered why their arguments often seem contradictory to other
people, yet they can’t see it themselves? And no matter what you
say, it seems impossible to make them see beyond what they have decided
is the only truth. Have you ever wondered if they are from a different
planet?
Kim: Jesus, in our last discussion
on the mind of anti-christ, you said
that the essence of the spiritual path is the willingness to self-correct.
Obviously, in order to self-correct you have to be willing to see
that you need to change, that there is something you don’t know,
that you have made mistakes or that some of your current beliefs are
not (entirely) correct. I know many people who are quite willing to
do this, and they are sincerely striving to expand their understanding.
I see this type of people as true spiritual seekers, would you agree?
Jesus:
I do agree, but let me add that it is important not to fall into the
trap of degrading yourself or your potential to walk the spiritual path.
You have to recognize that the mind of anti-christ is based on a fundamental
duality, meaning that it always incorporates two opposites, such as
good and evil. So for every issue the mind of duality sets up two opposite
polarities, meaning that it is possible to go into one of two extremes.
The challenge of the spiritual path is to avoid either extreme and stay
on what the Buddha called the middle way—which is not a compromise
between the two extremes but above and beyond the level of duality.
In this context, some people go into the one extreme of pride and think
they know better than everyone else, so they don’t need to self-correct.
Others go into the opposite extreme of lack of self-worth, thinking
they should follow a leader who seems more sure of himself than they
are.
There are many people who are too willing to admit that they don’t
know everything or have made mistakes, often to the point of feeling
that they are not good enough or doubting that they are worthy to follow
a spiritual teacher or teaching. It is important to realize that this
feeling is one of the consequences of the mindset of duality and separation
from God.
In reality, your lifestream was created by God, and thus you are per
definition worthy to walk the spiritual path and be in the presence
of any spiritual teacher. You are worthy by the very fact that God created
you. God gave you free will, and you used it to remove yourself from
his kingdom. Yet that has not diminished God’s love for you or
your worthiness in God’s eyes. Therefore, God has no desire to
see you remain stuck in a limited sense of identity. God only wants
you to come back home, which means you must transcend all aspects of
the consciousness of separation, including the idea that because of
this or that earthly condition, you are not worthy to come back home.
The sense of unworthiness was induced through the mind of anti-christ,
and the false teachers will use it to keep you from following the true
path.
Okay, that actually leads into my question. As you said in
the last discussion, there are false teachers on this planet, and
they are often attracted to spiritual organizations. I believe I have
met a number of them, am I right?
Yes, as part of your training
you have been exposed to a number of people who identify with the consciousness
of anti-christ. Part of your mission is to help people free themselves
from such false teachers, so you needed to see them in action in order
to understand how they work.
What I have noticed is that these people are always very sure
of themselves. As you said, their number one rule is that they could
never be wrong, and because they have defined their own relative truth,
they can always argue their case so that it seems – at least
to themselves – that they are right. It is virtually impossible
to make them see that there is an understanding which is beyond what
they see as the absolute truth. Would you agree?
Certainly. The characteristics
you just described add up to what we call spiritual blindness. Contrary
to what one might expect, this does not mean that such people cannot
see the spiritual side of life. On the contrary, they are often very
good at portraying themselves as spiritual, exactly as the scribes and
Pharisees did 2,000 years ago. Today, you find them in both traditional
religions or in the New Age movement, even in the field of science.
So these people can see the spiritual path, and they often have great
intellectual knowledge of the path, which is why they can argue their
case with great conviction. Yet they completely fail to see the essence
of the path, namely that they need to change themselves, that their
egos must die. They are extremely good at pointing to the mote in the
eye of the sincere spiritual seekers, but it is very difficult to make
them see the beam in their own eyes. This is because of the pride that
makes them think they know better. They simply do not have the humility
that it takes to submit yourself to a spiritual teacher and to follow
the teacher’s directions even when they conflict your present
beliefs.
In other words, they see the path, yet they don’t see the true
path. They see only the way that seemeth right unto a person trapped
in the consciousness of duality. They are not sincerely looking for
the true path to Christhood. They are looking for the path of glorifying
their self-defined relative truth, elevating it as the “real”
truth to replace Christ truth.
I have noticed that when you put these two types of people
together, namely the true seekers who are willing to self-correct
and the spiritually blind people who are absolutely convinced that
they are right, you have a situation in which the true seekers are
often overpowered by the blind but aggressive people. Because they
are willing to self-correct, the true seekers are always willing to
look for a higher understanding, and when they meet people who are
very sure of themselves and very convincing, they often cannot avoid
being pulled into following them. Is that a correct assessment?
Certainly. That is why I
said, “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And
if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” (Matthew
15:14).
How can the true spiritual teachers avoid falling into this
trap?
Let me first make it clear
that the reason people descended into the duality consciousness was
that they blindly followed a blind leader. Eve followed the Serpent
because she had not reached for the higher understanding behind the
Master’s direction not to eat the forbidden fruit. It was only
because she did not have this understanding that she was persuaded by
the Serpent’s logic. Yet she did not have this understanding because
she had not gone within and reached for the truth inside herself. She
had not used the “key of knowledge” that God has placed
in the heart of everyone.
Before people can rise above duality, they must overcome the tendency
to follow blind leaders. They must develop and use their inner Christ
discernment instead of blindly following a leader outside themselves.
You see, the true teacher will not tell you everything you need to know
in order to pass a certain test. If he did, there would be no test and
thus no growth. Also, you would become codependent upon the teacher
and would essentially become a robot. The true teacher’s goal
is to make you spiritually self-sufficient, spiritually independent.
To do that, he gives you partial instructions so that by reaching for
a higher understanding, you will grow in Christhood.
My point is that the false teachers are allowed to remain on planet
Earth because they still have a function here. People fell because they
blindly followed the false teachers, so in order to manifest Christhood,
they must overcome this tendency to blindly follow an external leader.
To do this, people must be exposed to the false teachers, and that is
why God still allows them to remain on Earth. As I have explained elsewhere,
it is people who allow imperfect conditions to remain on this planet.
But I am sure some people would say you are contradicting yourself
here. You said in our first discussion that the essence of the path
is that you follow a Master’s instructions even though you can’t
fully understand them or they contradict your present beliefs. In
other words, you have to have faith in the Master. Yet you are now
saying that people should not follow any leader blindly. I mean, I
understand what you are saying, but I have met numerous people who
would call this a contradiction.
As I said in another discussion
about contradictions,
if you are looking for contradictions and if you look only at the outer
teaching – at the level of the words – you can always find
contradictions. The reason is that people have created a mental image,
a relative truth, and they project that unto the words. So they see
only what confirms their mental image and they are not reaching for
the higher understanding behind the words.
As I said in the first discussion, Eve was not meant to follow the Master’s
instructions blindly or mechanically. She was meant to stay away from
the forbidden fruit but she was meant to go inside herself and reach
for a higher understanding of why the fruit represents a danger. If
she had used the key of knowledge, she would have understood why she
would surely die by eating the fruit, and thus she would not have been
persuaded by the Serpent's claim that she would not surely die.
As I said, contradictions exist in the mind of the person, and if people
are caught in duality, you can never convince them that what they see
as a contradiction – and which in some cases is a contradiction
at the level of the words – can be resolved by using the key of
knowledge – your Christ discernment – to reach for a higher
truth, namely the truth of Christ that is beyond duality and thus beyond
all contradictions.
So does that explain why you can come to an agreement with
some people, whereas there are others with whom you can never really
communicate? I mean, I have friends who belong to different religions,
and we will never agree on specific issues. Yet we have a deeper contact
at the heart level that allows us to see beyond these disagreements
in beliefs that exist in the mind. We have a deeper agreement and
sense of oneness between us that allows us to see beyond the outer
beliefs. Yet I have also met people with whom it seems impossible
to establish this heart contact. They are seemingly incapable of or
unwilling to go beyond the words. It almost seems like they want to
keep arguing rather than finding a sense of oneness.
And I am sure most spiritual
seekers will recognize your experience from their own lives. It was
my hope that most Christians would come to this deeper sense of oneness
of heart that would allow them to see beyond the differences in the
mind’s beliefs. Yet even my disciples did not manage to get to
that point, at least not all of them.
However, you also need to be aware that there cannot be complete oneness
in a group of people as long as some of the members are trapped in the
mind of anti-christ. Whenever a group of spiritual people come together
in a true spirit of oneness, the false hierarchy will immediately send
their representatives to divide and conquer. If people don’t realize
this, they will often fall for the deception and this is how you have
seen many spiritual organizations deteriorate into divisions and power
plays. It is possible to avoid this but only through constant diligence
and Christ discernment. Your determination to keep the integrity of
the organization must be greater than the false hierarchy's determination
to destroy it.
So it is always important to look at people’s intentions. As a
spiritual seeker, and also for you, Kim, as my messenger and representative,
it is essential to always be willing to self-correct. So if someone
comes to you with a concern, you listen to them. Yet you do not simply
listen at the level of the words they are saying. You listen with the
heart and you ask yourself what their intentions are? As I have said,
God only wants you to grow. The same is true for any true teacher and
for anyone who is in alignment with the hierarchy of light. Such people
may take issue with specific beliefs you have or statements you make,
but they will not seek to break down your belief in your ability to
grow and to fulfill your mission in life. They will seek to help you
become better able to fulfill your mission.
In contrast, those who are trapped in the mind of anti-christ do not
want you to fulfill your mission. They want to stop you in any way they
can. Thus, their criticism is not constructive criticism, it is destructive
criticism. They don’t seek to help you grow, they don’t
seek to help you better fulfill your mission, they seek to stop you
in your tracks so that you cannot fulfill your mission. They might not
realize this consciously, but you need to be sensitive to the hidden
motivation in the heart, and most people can learn to sense the toxic
vibration of this type of people.
You will never make heart contact with such people because their motivation
for interacting with you is in complete opposition to your motivation.
They will argue only at the level of the words, and they are so trapped
in separation that they see you as a threat. Your discussions always
turn into arguments, and they are always trying to win by making you
lose. They either see you as competition or as an enemy. So they are
not seeking to reach a deeper agreement, they are only seeking to prove
that they are right and you are wrong. They are the modern-day scribes
and Pharisees who are deliberately looking for faults in your beliefs
or your teachings. As I said, they are trying to separate you from the
path and from the lineage of true spiritual teachers.
What I would love to see more than anything is that people who study
this website will come to a deeper understanding of the path, so they
are firmly anchored on the inner path of Christhood and cannot be taken
off that path by anything that happens outside themselves or anything
that is projected at them by their egos.
The essence of the spiritual path is that you must rise above the consciousness
of duality and put on the mind of Christ. To rise above the dualistic,
relative “truth” of anti-christ, you must find the real
truth, the one truth of the Christ mind, which is the truth that will
make you free. Yet that truth cannot be found outside yourself, meaning
that no spiritual teaching – including this website – can
fully capture or define truth. Any truth expressed in words will be
affected by the fact that words are relative. The meaning is that as
soon as I give a concept on this website, a concept put into words,
that concept has been brought down to the level of duality.
This does not mean that the concept or the words are untrue. But it
does mean that it becomes possible to argue against both the concept
I give and the words I use. People who are in the duality consciousness
can and will disagree with what I am saying and how I am saying it.
They can argue against my points and my words, and they will be firmly
convinced that they are right. If you engage their arguments at the
level of duality, you might enter an endless cycle or bantering that
leads nowhere or perhaps takes you down.
The purpose of giving a spiritual teaching, as I explain in great detail
in Beyond Religious
Conflict, is to give you a springboard for contacting the Spirit
of Truth. That is why I said, “God is a Spirit: and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 2:24).
This statement is extremely important, especially coupled with the statement
that, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). If
you want to know the truth of Christ, you must go beyond the level of
the words, the outer teaching. You must go inside yourself and reach
for the Spirit of Truth. The truth of Christ exists on its own. It has
no opposite and therefore, there are no contradictions in it. When you
contact that one truth, you will gain an understanding that is beyond
the teaching that is expressed in words, a teaching that can always
be counteracted with dualistic arguments. Do you see my point?
I do, but I have met a number of people who seem unable to
see this point. I quite frankly cannot understand why it is so impossible
to find a deeper agreement with such people. I mean, I understand
what you are saying that they are so trapped in separation, but it
is still hard for me to understand that there isn’t some way
to break through. I realize the mind of anti-christ is based on a
contradiction, but it seems to me it should be possible to make people
see the contradiction and then realize they need to look beyond it.
During
my life I have been trying to understand how to help people recognize
and overcome their spiritual blindness, yet I have never found anything
that will allow me to reach these people. Is there something I don’t
understand—sometimes it really seems impossible to understand
this mindset?
All you need to do is to
recognize that you cannot understand the mindset of anti-christ because
there is nothing to understand. Once you accept that there is nothing
to understand – because of its inherent contradictions that make
its “truth” relative – you can stop feeling like there
is something wrong with you because you cannot reach people trapped
in duality.
You need to contemplate my statement, “With men this is impossible;
but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). The meaning
is that nothing you could ever say to such people would make them see
beyond their own relative “truth.” There is no arguments
you can construct by using words that cannot be counteracted by using
words. Therefore, you can never define the ultimate argument by using
words. You can never resolve a disagreement by using words.
You can resolve differences between people only by reaching for the
Spirit of Truth, the one, undivided and indivisible truth of the Christ
mind, rather than the dualistic truth of the mind of anti-christ. To
find this truth, you must go beyond the level of words by using the
key of knowledge. Yet as I said, “Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye
have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves,
and them that were entering in ye hindered” (Luke 11:52). This
is the essence of the false teachers and those who follow them, the
false disciples. They will not use the key of knowledge – their
Christ selves – to find the absolute truth, the rock of Christ.
And they are aggressively trying to prevent others from discovering
or using the key of knowledge. They don’t want you to find Christ
truth inside yourself; they want you to remain stuck in duality so they
can control you with their “sophisticated” arguments.
They also want to hold on to their relative “truth.” Why
do they do this? Because as long as truth is relative, they can never
be proven wrong. They don’t want to self-correct, they don’t
want to come closer to God. Why Not? Because, “Men loved darkness
rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19).
My point is that no amount of understanding would allow you to construct
a line of reasoning that would convince such people to give up their
relative truth. I encountered such people many times and awakened very
few of them. There comes a point when you simply have to let go of such
people and respect the law of free will. As you explained in a recent
article you wrote under my direction, it is important for all spiritual
seekers to realize that is is not your job to save or convert anyone
else. It is your job to be who you are, to express your spiritual identity
and God Flame.
So how can we avoid being pulled into an argument with such people?
It helps to understand that
the mind of anti-christ is based on a very specific type of logic. It
is often called serpentine logic to link it to the Garden of Eden story.
It can be symbolized by the ancient symbol of the serpent swallowing
its own tail. Although this symbol has several valid interpretations,
it can be interpreted as illustrating the circular logic that causes
people to become completely focused on themselves. They are so busy
consuming their own self-created relative “truth” –
feeding on their own pride – that they have no attention left
over for the truth of Christ. They have become closed systems and are
unreachable for both other people, spiritual teachers and their own
Christ selves.
How did this happen? Very simple. When you separate yourself from the
one truth of Christ, you step into duality, and in duality there are
always two opposites. This is what the philosopher Hegel called the
dialectical
process. The essence is that for each possible thesis, there is
an opposing antithesis. The interaction of the two produces a synthesis
that becomes the new thesis with a new antithesis, and this can go on
indefinitely. Although Hegel made a correct observation of the pattern,
you have to add that there is more to the picture.
The concept of a thesis versus an antithesis has meaning only at the
level of duality. The false teachers would like you to think this is
not so. They pride themselves of having formed an antithesis to God,
and they believe they are actually changing God’s reality, God’s
truth, by creating a dialectical cycle, whereby the truth of God comes
more and more into alignment with what they think it should be, meaning
their own relative "truth."
This is a complete illusion that exists only in the minds of people
who are trapped in duality. As the Bible says, “Be not deceived;
God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”
(Galatians 6:7). In other words, God’s truth, the one truth of
the Christ mind, can never be affected or diluted by the mind of anti-christ.
The mind of anti-christ does not form an antithesis to the Christ mind,
because the mind of Christ is one, indivisible whole. There are no divisions,
contradictions or opposites in the Christ mind. There is only the oneness
that all life came from the same source. The mind of anti-christ is
born of separation, and therefore it is built upon duality. There is
a basic division in the mind of anti-christ that results in opposites.
It is these opposites that create the dialectical cycles of thesis versus
antithesis leading to synthesis.
My point is that the mind of anti-christ creates a state of mind that
is completely separate from the mind of Christ. It becomes a closed
system, and it can continue the cycles of thesis and antithesis until
it eventually creates such internal contradictions that it self-destructs.
This is what is described in the second law of thermodynamics. In a
closed mind, chaos and confusion will increase until all rationality
and logic breaks down and utter insanity is the result. This is what
you see in people with a severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia.
Such people eventually become so involved in their own circulatory logic
that they lose all connection to “reality” or the “real
world.” They become unreachable for other people and often end
up in a mental hospital. Everyone else can see these people are wrong,
but they cannot see it and will not seriously consider it. Unfortunately,
some of these people have ended up in leadership positions in society,
and they have created most of the major calamities in history.
What I am saying here is that the Serpentine logic forms a closed system
because no matter how you define the thesis and the antithesis, the
synthesis will always be a relative “truth.” There is no
way you can go from a relative thesis to a non-dualistic synthesis.
Your only way out of the closed loop is to go beyond duality and reach
for the mind of Christ. Yet once people are too trapped in duality,
they cannot see the need to do this. Why should they change their entire
approach to life when they are so eloquent at supporting their own beliefs?
Such people become self-fulfilling prophecies and they will keep walking
toward the abyss while thinking they are absolutely right. If you define
the thesis and the antithesis, you can always arrive at a synthesis
that supports what you want to believe. This has been called the “privilege
of formulating the problem,” whereby you can control the outcome
of any discussion (as long as people accept your definition).
I am beginning to see why it has been very naive of me to
assume I could come up with some kind of reasoning that could help
people break free of this cycle. How can people get out of this, once
they have descended into it?
Simple. They have to admit
that there is something they don’t know, something that isn’t
working, and then they have to look for a teacher who can help them
self-correct. For some people this happens through the dialectical process.
They are smart enough to see that they are simply going around in circles
or that some of their arguments are contradictory. If people are willing
to admit this, they can actually come to see some of the fallacies of
the mind of anti-christ and then reach for something higher.
Unfortunately, some people are not smart enough to see the weaknesses
in their own line of reasoning, so they continue defending their relative
truth even beyond all reason. As we discuss in Save
Yourself, such people can turn their lives around only by hitting
rock bottom. The basic problem is that before such people can step unto
the path of self-correction, their pride has to be broken. As a spiritual
teacher, one always hopes that people’s pride is broken before
their spirit is broken, but unfortunately that isn’t always the
case and insanity is often the result.
So you are saying that we have to accept the fact that there
are some people we simply cannot help. There is nothing we could say
that could help these people break out of their circular logic?
That is correct. As you well
realize, God did not make you responsible for other people’s salvation.
So you must respect other people’s free will and not be attached
to saving or converting them.
This can be hard to do, though. I have noticed it in myself
and in many other spiritual seekers. Sometimes I wonder if there is
a certain element of pride that makes me want to convince these people.
Yet I also feel there is more to it than that, a deeper desire to
help others.
Pride is always a concern
that must be considered. Attachments usually spring from pride or fear.
As I said, you are not responsible for the salvation of other people,
but you are responsible for your own salvation. And you truly jeopardize
your salvation by becoming emotionally attached to people who are trapped
in the mind of anti-christ. Allowing this can only pull you down, and
some spiritual seekers have eventually become caught in the mind of
duality because they wanted to save someone else.
Yet you are right that there is a deeper motivation. Many – but
not all – of the people who are on the spiritual path came into
embodiment because they want to help bring in a new and more spiritual
age. They have a deep love for God, for the earth and for the souls
who are trapped in duality. In some cases people have embodied to help
others that are part of their spiritual families. Many spiritual people
are motivated by love, and that is why they feel so strongly for awakening
others.
Yet it is important to stay clear of the conditional, possessive, human
love that makes you attached to a certain outcome. The real point of
helping others is to present them with the opportunity to choose whom
they will serve. You do this by striving to embody the mind of Christ
and demonstrate that mind. Thus, you teach more by example than by words,
although words do serve an important function.
If you give people an example of a person who responds to them from
the Christ mind, you have done all you can do. What they do with that
demonstration, that lifeline, is entirely up to them. That is the way
God set up free will, and anyone with love for God can understand and
respect that, thereby letting go of attachments to people who are not
willing to self-correct.
So are you saying that if we try to interact with the mind
of anti-christ on its own terms, trying to convince it by using an
argument based on words alone, we run the risk of becoming trapped
by it?
Yes, it is like seeking to
catch the greased pig. You end up covered in mud with nothing to show
for it. That is why I rebuked the devil without trying to convince him
of anything (Matthew 4:1).
But if many of us came into embodiment to help awaken other people,
how do we deal with that. I mean, we are here to awaken people who
are trapped in the mind of anti-christ, so how can we do that without
interacting with such people?
I didn’t say you can’t
interact with people. I said you must interact without attachments to
whether or not you awaken or convince them. You must strive to get to
the point of complete non-attachment, where the prince of this world
comes and has nothing in you (John 14:30). The way to achieve this is
to increase your understanding of how the mind of anti-christ works,
so you can interact with people in this frame of mind without being
pulled into their circulatory logic. Obviously, I have already given
some understanding of this, but let me approach it from another perspective.
The only way to avoid being tempted by the serpentine logic is to increase
your Christ discernment, so that you can see through the logic used
by those trapped in the dualistic mind. Ultimately, this ability must
come from within, but as a start, let us look at the following quote:
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.
18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock
I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it.
21 From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how
that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders
and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again
the third day.
22 Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far
from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.
23 But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan:
thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that
be of God, but those that be of men. (Matthew, 16)
It is unfortunate that most
mainstream Christians only look at the first part of this passage and
pay no attention to the last part. They think I was talking about the
person of Peter and that my church is based upon him. This is not correct,
as an objective evaluation of the last part of the passage will show.
How could the church of Christ be built upon a person that I rebuked
as Satan?
So the real question people should be asking themselves based on this
passage is how I could first say that Peter represented the rock upon
which I would build a church that Hell could not destroy, and then shortly
afterward say to the same person that he was a representative of Satan?
Obviously, some will say this is a contradiction, but the mind of Christ
can resolve it.
The deeper meaning is that “Peter” is not simply one person,
as “Eve” was not simply one person. Peter represents the
potential that each person has for recognizing and rejecting the Christ.
Each person has the potential to recognize the embodied Christ, the
Christ that appears in the flesh. I am not saying every person has developed
this ability, but everyone can do so. The ability to recognize the Christ
in the flesh is the rock upon which the true church of Christ is built.
In order to follow the Christ, you must first recognize the embodied
Christ as a representative of the hierarchy of true teachers. You must
recognize and admit that the embodied Christ has something you do not
have.
At the same time, and as the inevitable consequence of free will, each
person also has the ability to reject the Christ or refuse to follow
the Christ (all the way). Some people have not sharpened their ability
to know the Christ, and thus they simply cannot recognize the living
Christ even if he or she stands before them in the flesh. These people
are trapped in ignorance. Yet some people have the ability to recognize
the Christ but they do not have the willingness to follow the Christ
until they become one with the Christ, until they become the Living
Christ themselves. These people are trapped in spiritual blindness.
My point being that Peter represents a person who has risen above ignorance
but is still influenced by spiritual blindness. Obviously, the purpose
of the embodied Christ is to help people escape spiritual blindness
so they can manifest their Christhood. Yet Peter was not willing to
do so because he did not want to identify himself fully with me, which
is why he denied me three times before my trial.
That is why the Catholic Church, from its inception, has been heavily
influenced by the mindset of Peter, which also explains why Padre
Pio did not fulfill his mission. He was meant to declare his oneness
with the Living Christ, to declare himself as the Living Christ, yet
he could not rise above the centuries-old denial of the Christ that
permeates the Catholic Church. The same holds true for other saints,
including Francis of Assisi who did not ascend after that embodiment.
What prevented Peter from going all the way? It was spiritual blindness,
but we can be even more specific. Look at the statement, “thou
savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.”
When you compare it to what I said in the previous discussion about
the mind of duality, you can now see the true meaning. The essence of
the mind of anti-christ is that it is based on duality, which means
that it defines a relative ”truth.” This dualistic truth
becomes the graven image mentioned in the second commandment, it becomes
an idol that prevents people from recognizing and worshiping the true
God, and instead they dance around their self-made golden calf.
Do you see my point? Peter represents a person who has the ability to
recognize the Christ but who is not willing to let go of his own relative
"truth." He has created a mental image of what he thinks the
Christ should be like – the things that are of men – and
he projects it upon the Living Christ. He then wants the Living Christ
to conform to this graven image, and this prevents him from following
the teachings and the example of the true teacher. He cannot see the
things that are of God because they are obscured by his graven image.
Take note of what I said after the above quote:
24 Then said Jesus unto
his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself,
and take up his cross, and follow me.
25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will
lose his life for my sake shall find it. (Matthew, 16)
What does it mean to deny
yourself? It means to deny your human, mortal sense of self, your ego
and the mental images created by your ego through the mind of anti-christ.
You must take up your cross, and one meaning is that you must be willing
to do the work necessary to free yourself from the consciousness of
anti-christ. You must be willing to lose your dualistic self in order
to be reborn into the Christ consciousness.
Another meaning is that you must be willing to be the hands and feet
of God, meaning that you are willing to do or say whatever God wants,
no matter how it conflicts with your outer expectations or beliefs.
You must never allow any dualistic expectations to prevent God –
your I AM Presence – from expressing himself through you
because this is a denial of God where you are, which is the hallmark
of the mind of anti-christ. As I said:
For it is not ye that speak,
but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you (Matthew 10:20)
Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man,
then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself;
but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.(John 8:28)
For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he
gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.
(John 12:49)
If you are not willing to
let the Spirit speak through you and say something that goes beyond
your human expectations or those of others, you are trapped in duality
and thus cannot possibly be a messenger for the Ascended Host. You will
not have the Holy Spirit but a lower spirit that speaks from the duality
of anti-christ.
My point is that as a spiritual seeker, you need to understand that
the essence of the spiritual path is that you overcome the consciousness
of duality. You can do this only by building upon your ability to recognize
the embodied Christ or Christ truth. Yet to sharpen this ability, you
must understand the workings of the mind of anti-christ, namely that
it projects a dualistic image upon the embodied Christ and upon the
truth of Christ. You must learn to recognize this tendency in yourself,
so you can stop being a blind follower of your own ego. And you must
learn to recognize it in others, so you can stop being a blind follower
of the false teachers or the false disciples.
The key is to realize that you have an inner ability to recognize Christ
truth, namely through your Christ self. One might say that the spiritual
teacher who is most important to you is your Christ self because only
by learning how to recognize truth from within yourself will you be
spiritually self-sufficient. The role of a true teacher is to help you
sharpen your ability to recognize truth by reconnecting you to your
Christ self. The goal of a false teacher is to have you follow him blindly,
so you become codependent upon the outer teacher or your ego.
That is very enlightening to me because I couldn't understand
how we can have both of these tendencies within us. I mean, how come
some people find the spiritual path and follow it for many years,
yet they never really seem to change. Now I see why, because they
simply aren’t willing to give up their mental images of what
the path should be like, they are not willing to let their ego’s
die in order to become one with the inner Christ. Yet I sometimes
wonder how these people find the spiritual path in the first place.
I mean how come they recognize the path yet do not recognize the need
to let go of all dualistic images of the path?
The explanation is that most
people who find the spiritual path do so because they have been given
a dispensation, a grace, from a true spiritual teacher. As I said, “And
except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved:
but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened” (Matthew
24:22). So a spiritual teacher can give a person the grace of a transfer
of light that enables the person to discover a true teacher or teaching.
Yet this does not mean that the person is home free. As I explain in
my parable about the talents (Matthew 25:14), every gift from above
must be multiplied.
There are some people who find a spiritual teaching and refuse to multiply
their talents. As a result they attain a great intellectual understanding
of the path, but they never internalize the teaching. They follow the
teaching mechanically instead of using it as a springboard for reaching
the Spirit of Truth inside themselves. Therefore, they never come closer
to Christhood but only envelop themselves more deeply into spiritual
blindness and pride. They think that because they have been following
a particular teaching for so long and have done so many outer things,
they are very advanced students. Yet in reality they have not taken
the very first step unto the inner path to Christhood. That is why I
said, “For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no
case enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).
That is a rather humbling realization, yet I still don’t
fully understand something about this. I mean I can see how a person
who is completely trapped in the mind of anti-christ can be spiritually
blind. Yet it seems that Peter was not completely blind, is that correct?
It is. If Peter had been
completely blind, he would not have been willing to become one of my
followers. He would have either ignored me or condemned me. So one could
say that the rock upon which I built my church is the ability to recognize
the Christ and the willingness to start following him or her. The problem
is that you cannot forever follow the Christ—at some point you
must rise to the next level and become the Christ. Nevertheless, you
have to start by following a teacher—you must crawl before you
can walk.
Okay, so would you say the scribes and Pharisees were totally
blind or at least more blind than Peter?
Yes.
So how come they could still recognize you as a threat to
them? I mean, if they had not seen the Christ in you, why would they
have been threatened by you and have condemned you? If these people
were trapped in the mindset of anti-christ, how come they could recognize
the Christ. I guess what I really mean is, how can the mind of anti-christ
recognize the Living Christ without recognizing the truth of Christ
and following that truth? How can a person recognize Christ yet remain
trapped in the mind of anti-christ?
You are getting very subtle
here aren’t you? It is a very good question, but the answer cannot
be grasped by people in the duality consciousness. As I said in our
first discussion, the mind of Christ is the only begotten Son of God.
This means that the mind of Christ was created by God, and therefore
it has a permanent existence. It is self-sufficient, meaning that it
can exist on its own.
The mind of anti-christ was not created by God and thus it has no permanent
existence. Likewise, it is not self-sufficient and cannot exist on its
own. It is born as a reaction (based on free-will choices) against the
mind of Christ. Thus it can exist only in opposition to the Christ mind.
It is defined only as being against the mind of Christ, whereas the
mind of Christ is defined as being one with God. The mind of Christ
can exist without the mind of anti-christ but the reverse is not true.
My point is that because the mind of anti-christ exists only in opposition
to the mind of Christ, it does have the ability to recognize Christ.
That is why the devil came to tempt me and try to prevent me from manifesting
my Christhood. You see, false teachers are not trapped in ignorance.
They are trapped in spiritual blindness, which means that they know
that Christ and Christ truth exist. Yet they do not accept the Christ
as being the savior and they do not accept Christ truth as being superior
to their own relative “truth.” They don't see Christ truth
as one and indivisible, and they think it is just one more viewpoint
that can be debated through an endless dialectical cycle.
The reason for this is that the mind of anti-christ is born from separation,
which creates an inevitable, built-in, duality in this mind. The mind
of anti-christ can never see the one truth of the Christ mind. It can
see only a dualistic, relative “truth” that is defined by
two polar opposites. In the Christ mind there is no good and evil in
the sense that good and evil exist only in relation to each other. In
the Christ mind, good is not defined as the opposite of evil because
the absolute good of God can have no opposite. The mind of Christ can
see this but the mind of anti-christ cannot.
One might say that the mind of anti-christ sees everything through the
filter of duality, and therefore it can see only concepts that have
opposites. To this mindset, good has meaning only in relation to evil,
meaning that good can exist only if evil also exists. Therefore, good
and evil are relative concepts. In the Christ mind, good is completely
self-sufficient and its existence or definition does not depend on an
opposite concept of evil. Absolute good is that which is in harmony
with God’s laws, is one with God. Something that is out of harmony
with God’s laws is not evil to the Christ mind. It is simply unreal
and exists only as a temporary result of choices made by self-conscious
beings trapped in the mind of anti-christ. It is the absence of truth
as darkness is the absence of light. When people replace those choices
with choices based on the rock of Christ, evil ceases to exist.
People trapped in the mind of anti-christ think evil has a real existence.
They often think it is necessary and even beneficial, and thus it is
okay to make choices based on the consciousness of anti-christ. This
leads to the belief that people have a right to define their mental
images of what Christ truth should be like and how a representative
of Christ should behave. Such people also believe they can define what
a Christed being should and should not say. Which explains why some
people find this website and reject it as soon as they find one statement
that does not conform to their mental image of what Christ should say.
So based on everything we have discussed here, what is the
one thing that prevents agreement between people?
Kim, do you have any absolute
beliefs? Is there anything you believe in so firmly that it could never
be expanded by a higher understanding?
No, I no longer have any absolute beliefs. I realize that what I know
and believe right now is simply the highest truth I am able to grasp
with my current level of consciousness, and at any moment you –
or another teacher (even a teacher disguised as an ant) – could
help me discover a higher understanding.
So you recognize that there
is a higher source of truth than your own mind, your own sense of logic?
I do.
As a result of that, you
will be able to come to a deeper agreement, a deeper sense of oneness,
with anyone who has that same approach to life. There can be oneness
among people only when they are open to the possibility that their current
beliefs are not the absolute truth and that there is a higher authority,
the authority of Christ, who is beyond any earthly authority, including
false teachers and people’s own egos. When people do not recognize
an authority beyond their own minds, there can be no deeper sense of
oneness. There can be only an agreement based on words, and it will
always be a house built on sand.
Yet when people are willing to look beyond the dualistic “truth”
of anti-christ and reach for the one truth of Christ, they can form
a sense of oneness even if they have many different beliefs at the level
of words. This is the oneness that is based on the perfect love that
casts out all fear. This is the true rock upon which I will build my
church in this age. And truly, as long as people remain committed to
always resolving differences by reaching for the higher authority of
the Christ mind, the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
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© 2005 by Kim Michaels |
