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Question from visitor:
Dear Kim, I thought I would take Jesus'
offer to ask you a question about spiritual initiations. I really
look forward to receiving these descriptions
of the path to Christhood. They are invaluable and so inspiring
to read.
My question is how and what do you think was the important steps that
brought you to total unconditional surrender—a surrender of
all expectations and desires? You are welcome to expand on my question.
Love, Mary
Answer from Kim: This is probably the central question
about the spiritual path, so I feel the question demands a comprehensive
answer. The problem is that it will be a long answer, so read it in
small installments if you like. The other problem is that the process
might seem so complex that is becomes overwhelming. Yet in reality
each of us has one major obstacle that stands in the way of our surrender.
We often have smaller issues that must be surrendered before we can
get a clear look at the big one. You might compare it to having to
move a huge boulder that is held in place by a bunch of smaller rocks
and dirt. You have to clear the small stuff away before you can start
working on the big one. My point being that if you focus on taking
one doable step at a time, it wont be as overwhelming.
Keep in mind that the steps I am describing below took place over
a 25-year period. For some it might take less time, for some more,
but the point is that you have to keep going until you break through.
I had many periods where I felt I was getting nowhere. Yet what kept
me going was a motto that came to me early on: “From here, forward!”
Meaning that no matter how things seem, you always take one more step
than you think is possible or necessary.
There is an old saying that the darkest hour is the hour before dawn,
and it is true on the spiritual path. Things always seem the most
hopeless just before you break through to a new level, so you can
never allow that to get you down. You have to keep walking, and then
you will suddenly break through and the surrender will happen. You
will then feel like you are letting go of this huge weight you have
been carrying around, and you will feel so much more free and alive.
Also, while I did come to a point of completely surrendering myself
to God, it would be naive to think that this ends the process of surrender.
As long as we are in embodiment here on Earth, surrender is an ongoing
process. We must constantly surrender and be on guard against forming
new attachments. Yet once you have truly understood that surrender
– although it might sound like a passive measure – is
the ultimate power on the spiritual path, you will definitely find
that things are easier. And the more you surrender, the easier it
becomes to surrender more. It is like walking up a steep trail and
suddenly realizing your pockets are full of sand. You throw out some
of the sand and you feel lighter. How long does it take before you
realize that the more sand you “surrender,” the easier
it will be to climb the path?
So one might say that here is the key that could make the rest of
this article unnecessary. It is the realization that what is holding
us back on the spiritual path is the baggage we carry around. This
is our psychological wounds and our limiting beliefs about ourselves,
God and the world. A number of years ago, I realized that because
of free will, no one – not even God – can take this away
from me. The reality is that at some point in the past, I made a decision
that was not the best possible, a decision that limits me to this
day. I will not be free of that decision and its limiting effects
until I replace it with a better decision. Yet an essential part of
that process is to let go of the old decision, to simply leave it
behind.
I have been around spiritual seekers for 30 years, and I have seen
people take many different approaches to the path. Some believe they
can power their way through and that by doing certain techniques or
taking certain courses, they will automatically make progress. Yet
it has been my clear observation that you don’t make progress
until the moment you surrender one of your imperfect beliefs. Only
then will the boulder start rolling so that it no longer blocks the
stream of life from flowing through your consciousness.
What I am saying is that the key realization for any spiritual seeker
is that you cannot take Heaven by force. You can “take”
Heaven only by letting go of the beliefs that cause you to feel you
are not in Heaven—the beliefs that make you “take”
something on Earth. That is why Jesus said that if you seek to save
your life, you shall lose it, but if you are willing to lose your
life – meaning our attachments to anything in this world –
you shall find eternal life. I like the saying that it is not what
you hold on to that will get you to Heaven, it is what you let
go of that will get you to Heaven.
When you truly understand the reality of free will, you see that God
will not force you to enter Heaven. You must choose to enter. Yet
in order to enter the consciousness of “Heaven,” you must
be willing to leave the “Earth” consciousness, the consciousness
of duality, behind for good because you cannot serve two masters.
And before you can permanently leave the lower consciousness behind,
you simply have to let go of any attachments you have. So truly, until
you voluntarily surrender all attachments to the Earth and the Earth
consciousness, you cannot take the final step into the Christ consciousness.
Incidentally, I have seen many spiritual seekers who have not understood
this concept. Some have been following a certain teaching or practice
for decades, and they have done everything right according to the
outer rules. Some of them really think they have made great progress
and that they are advanced spiritual seekers. Yet in reality they
have only used the spiritual teaching and practice to build more solid
walls of attachments around their minds. And that is why Jesus said
that unless we become as little children – and stop puffing
ourselves up as being so sophisticated we no longer have to take the
basic step of surrendering our all to God – we cannot enter
the kingdom.
For me there were a number of realizations that helped facilitate
my surrender to God, and let me describe some of them.
Global awareness
I recently read about Lance Armstrong, the American bicycle racer
who is a cancer survivor and has now won six Tour de France
races in a row. He described how he started treatment for cancer,
and in the beginning his questions to the doctors and nurses were
all centered around himself and his chances of survival. Yet after
months of treatment, his questions gradually turned to the disease
itself and how to help other people survive it. His main nurse finally
said to him, “Lance, you have gone global.”
I believe many of the people who are open to the spiritual path are
born with this global awareness. I was born in 1957, so when President
Kennedy was shot, I was about six years old. I lived in Denmark, and
America seemed very far away. It didn’t get much press in Denmark,
and I knew it mainly as the country of cowboys and indians. Yet when
I heard about Kennedy’s assassination, it stirred something
in me. I suddenly realized that I had a concern for what was happening
on the world stage. And it was not a self-centered concern, but a
broader awareness.
Denmark is a rather peaceful country, and war was not on the forefront
of anyone’s mind. Yet my mother had a brochure titled, If
war should come, and it talked about how to deal with a war.
I sometimes looked at it and was deeply concerned about the prospect
of war, mainly because I felt it could destroy so much of value and
beauty, from people to nature.
While conventional war was not much talked about in Denmark, nuclear
war was almost a non-topic. Yet my mother had a book that described
major world events and one of them was the bombing of Hiroshima. I
was deeply fascinated by the book in general, but I was especially
concerned about the prospect of nuclear war, which definitely was
not a concern I was taught from without.
I think most spiritual seekers have this expanded awareness. We simply
know we are not here to live an ordinary life of growing
up, getting a job, having kids, buying a house, etc. While we may
do all of these things, we know there is more to life. There is a
purpose for our personal lives, and it is to help move the entire
planet to a higher level.
I think that as I became more aware of this global awareness, I uncovered
more of my divine plan and the course my soul plotted before I took
embodiment. This gave me a determination to not let anything stand
in the way of the fulfillment of my divine plan. As one example, I
never cared about accumulating money and have been willing to give
up both a secure job and a promising career to pursue spiritual growth.
In fact, I have several times had to start over with nothing.
So the first element of total surrender is to tie in to your divine
plan, so you can get your priorities straight. What is most important—living
a materialistic life as most people around you or pursuing a higher
goal? Do you really want to spend a lifetime living only for yourself,
or do you want to make a contribution to the progression of humankind
and the planet?
We have all heard the saying, “Think globally—act locally.”
But I think it should be “Think globally—act globally.”
Act as if your life and your consciousness has an impact on the whole,
and if you raise yourself to a higher level of consciousness, you
can help raise the whole. None of us can do it alone, but if none
of us do anything, nothing will happen.
The real key to improving the Earth
Even as a child I would often think about how to improve life for
all people. During childhood I fantasized about how to rid the world
of all kinds of problems, from disease to war. I even dreamt about
owning an island so I could set up an ideal country, where everyone
was treated fairly. As a teenager, I attended the Gymnasium, which
is a three-year education similar to the American High School. They
had three branches, one focusing on language, one on math and one
on political science. I chose the latter, and it was my intent to
go into politics. For a couple of years, I was fully intent of becoming
a member of Parliament, and I often stated to my friends: “Just
you wait until I become prime minister . . .”
Yet after a couple of years, I suddenly lost interest in politics.
I felt something was missing and that politics was more about compromise
– doing whatever was needed to stay in power or following the
party line – than about doing what was right according to higher
principles. I simply gave up all thought of ever becoming involved
with politics, and a few months later I found the book, “Autobiography
of a Yogi,” by Paramahansa Yogananda. The book gave me so many
outer confirmations of what I had always sensed in my heart. Specifically,
it awakened me to the realization that politics is not the ultimate
key to improving society. Instead, the real key is consciousness,
namely to raise our consciousness individually and collectively.
I saw very clearly that political power struggles have been going
on for millennia, and we are no closer to creating real peace on Earth.
Instead, we have simply built more powerful weapons to kill more people
faster. In my early teens I had learned about the Holocaust and had
been deeply affected by it. I could not fathom how people could do
this to each other, yet I realized it was not the first time in history
something like this had happened. I also realized that political,
economic or military means could not stop these atrocities from happening.
It became clear to me that the only viable solution was to raise the
collective consciousness of humankind. And the only way to raise the
collective consciousness was to raise the individual consciousness.
It had to be done one person at a time, which led me to the realization
that I had to start with myself.
Ever since that realization, the most important goal for my life has
been to raise my consciousness, so I can make a contribution to raising
the collective consciousness. It has been my goal to reach the highest
possible state of spirituality so I can form a magnet and inspire
others to raise their consciousness. I realized early that you can’t
fake spirituality and that you have to experience it to teach it to
others. So at the age of 18, I gave up having a worldly career, seeking
to accumulate possessions and prestige, and instead my career has
been to pursue spiritual growth first and all else second.
Universality
Reading Yogananda’s book was my spiritual awakening, but not
in the sense that the book convinced me of anything. Instead, it awakened
my inner sense of knowing, a faculty I believe all of us have as an
integral part of our souls. The book helped me remember that there
is an alternative to the materialistic lifestyle led by most people.
It is a universal path that leads us toward a higher state of consciousness,
and by following it we can eventually escape all of the illusions
that trap most people. The book also helped me remember that there
is a spiritual movement behind all of the world’s outer religions,
and this movement is truly universal. I realized that behind this
movement is a group of spiritual beings, namely what Jesus on this
website calls the Ascended Host.
At the age of 18, it seemed completely obvious to me that the world
had entered a phase where people were beginning to wake up to the
existence of the spiritual path. At that time, I thought all people
would be awakened within a matter of a decades. I no longer believe
that, realizing that only a critical mass of people need be awakened
before the world will be changed. I also realized back then that this
awakening cannot be accomplished by one person working alone. A community,
an organization, is needed.
I knew such an organization could not be a religion in a traditional
sense, because I had grown up with a keen sense of the limitations
of organized religion. My parents were both very suspicious of organized
religion, believing it had many flaws and often exhibited a lot of
hypocrisy. I had personally been greatly disturbed by learning how
many wars had been fought in the name of God. I especially could not
understand how Christians, as for example in the crusades, could kill
other people in the name of Christ. So it seemed clear to me that
what was needed in this age was not another orthodox religion but
an organization with a much more universal message and approach.
Shortly after reading Yogananda’s book, I met some people who
were involved with the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement. At
first, it fascinated me because it did have a very universal approach.
All of our problems are caused by stress, and by meditating, we can
remove stress, thereby solving all problems. TM also used a lot of
scientific studies to prove the effects of meditation, and this also
seemed like a universal way to awaken people to the spiritual aspects
of life.
I joined TM and even took a 4-month training course in Switzerland,
but after the course I intuitively knew the organization was not for
me. I didn’t quite understand why at the time, but a big part
of it was that TM was seeing only one solution to the world’s
problems, namely that everyone had to learn TM and recognize the Maharishi
as their guru. I realized that simple wasn’t going to happen,
so I knew the organization wasn’t universal enough.
The experience taught me something important, which has since been
reinforced by my involvement with other spiritual organizations. I
believe that in this age, the Earth will indeed go through a spiritual
awakening that will open the minds of many people to the spiritual
path. Yet I don’t believe one organization, philosophy, guru
or religion will emerge as the one and only savior. Instead, I believe
many organizations and philosophies will be part of the awakening.
And the most successful ones will be the ones that are the most universal.
They are also the ones that are most likely to cooperate instead of
fighting each other.
So I personally decided that I could not allow my spirituality to
be confined to one particular organization or philosophy, and since
then I have indeed studied a broad range of spiritual ideas and continue
to do so. I also believe it is extremely important to avoid all fanaticism
when it comes to religion. I feel that I simply cannot allow myself
to flirt with the idea that one religion is the only true one and
that we need to awaken the world by getting them to join this one
organization. Instead, I believe it is my calling to work for a universal
awakening that makes people aware of the existence of the spiritual
path. This path has the following basic elements:
- We are currently trapped
in a lower state of consciousness that causes us to create problems
that we cannot solve.
- It is possible to rise
above that state of consciousness, as many saints and spiritual
leaders have demonstrated.
- The way to rise is
to follow the spiritual path. The path has certain universal elements,
yet it can be followed in the context of a number of religions or
spiritual philosophies. The essence of the path is not the outer
clothing but the universal core.
How does this relate to
my surrender to God? It was extremely important for me to realize
that God cannot be confined to one religion. Thus, if you seek to
force your relationship to God into the confines of a particular philosophy,
you will make it much more difficult for yourself to know God. You
will be following a graven image and thus overlooking the real God
who is beyond all images (more about this later).
It was also important for me to overcome the need to feel that I belong
to the one and only true church or the organization that would single-handedly
save the world. I simply got so fed up with these ego-games in a religious
disguise that I decided to surrender the need to believe that one
organization or guru can do it all. I realized that we will not truly
create the spiritual awakening until we abandon the idea that human
beings, philosophies or organizations are more important than God.
In short, I decided to put inner contact with God before any outer
religion. I decided God was too important of a topic to be left to
religion.
We can’t do it alone
After I realized the pitfalls of religion, I saw that the only way
to avoid religious fanaticism is to have direct contact with a higher
authority, one that can prevent us from being trapped in our ego-games.
Over the following years, I found several books that talked about
the existence of the Ascended Host and how they have attempted to
guide us for millennia. I realized that we humans have created many
problems that we cannot solve. I began to understand that we are creating
these problems because we are trapped in a consciousness of duality
that causes us to see ourselves as separated from God. I realized
that given our track record, demonstrated by the atrocities from history,
we simply cannot pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
The only way we can pull ourselves up is that someone from above lowers
a rope—and that rope can take the form of a religion or spiritual
philosophy. I also realized that the goal of our climb, the goal of
the spiritual path, is to rise above the egotistical frame of mind
so that we can escape our own egos. The ego is based on an illusion
and it has created innumerable illusions, which it seeks to hide behind
in order to preserve itself. As long as we are inside the box of such
illusions, we simply cannot see the truth of God and we cannot see
through the lies of the ego. That is why we need spiritual teachers
who have already made the climb and can therefore guide us as we seek
to escape the illusions of the human ego.
I gradually began to understand that he true goal of the spiritual
path is the death of the ego, so we can be reborn into a new spiritual
awareness in which we see ourselves as a part of a larger whole, as
a part of God. So it became clear to me that we have a basic problem.
When we are trapped in the consciousness of duality, our egos think
they know everything. So the ego doesn’t recognize the need
for a spiritual teacher—the ego literally believes it knows
better than God how the universe should be run. Since childhood I
had been fascinated by the fact that so many historical events demonstrate
the incredible blunders people make when they are blinded by their
egos. Take for example Napoleon and Hitler, who had great power but
made incredible mistakes because they were so blinded by their egos
that they lost touch with reality. I also began to see how many times
I had made personal mistakes because I allowed my ego to make me believe
that I knew better than anyone else or that I could do whatever I
wanted and get away with it.
I eventually came to the realization that while you are trapped by
the ego, you cannot see clearly enough to follow the spiritual path.
Therefore, you need the guidance of a teacher who is above the ego
and can therefore show you how to escape the subtleties of the ego.
And I realized that in the beginning stages, you simply have to submit
yourself to this teacher, even if your ego believes his guidance is
wrong or too extreme.
In other words, I realized that the spiritual path is a long string
of initiations, situations in which you have to make a choice. And
although there are innumerable variations – with each person
having his or her own personal tests – the central decision
is always this: Will you listen to the voice of the ego, or will you
reach beyond it to hear the voice of the spiritual teacher? Will you
follow the ego or follow the teacher—this is the central question
for a spiritual seeker. It is our version of “To be or not to
be.”
I was fascinated by the old saying, “If the teacher be an ant,
heed him.” In other words, the spiritual teacher will often
appear in a disguise to test you for the most dangerous enemy of spiritual
growth, namely pride. I have seen many spiritual seekers who have
no problem taking directions from the person they consider to be their
guru, but who are not willing to listen to advice from someone they
consider to be beneath them. I realized this was a very dangerous
approach that I could not afford, so I decided to watch out for my
pride and learn to listen for the teacher disguised as an ant.
So I began to understand that the spiritual path is a process, whereby
you gradually surrender every aspect of the ego and the beliefs that
spring from the ego. And to really make it to a higher spiritual consciousness,
you have to be willing to surrender every single aspect of your ego.
You cannot make it to a true spiritual awareness by retaining parts
of the ego. As long as you seek to justify the ego or think you can
perfect the ego, you are not following the true spiritual path but
“the way that seemeth right unto a man, but the ends thereof
are the ways of death.”
The ego has to die. It has to be surrendered, completely and unconditionally.
Thus, I began to understand that complete and unconditional surrender
of the ego is the core of the spiritual path. I also began to realize
that I couldn’t simply surrender the ego, because that would
leave me in a vacuum. So at the same time as I surrendered my ego,
I had to start integrating with a higher part of my being, namely
what Jesus on this website calls the Christ self. So I began to see
the spiritual path as a collaborative effort between my conscious
mind and my spiritual teachers, meaning my Christ self and ascended
beings. I began to realize I don’t need to walk the path alone.
Take responsibility for yourself
For a number of years I learned a lot about the spiritual path by
studying the teachings released by the ascended masters through the
I AM movement and the Summit Lighthouse. Both organizations have books
that give profound teachings about the path, the ego and our Christ
self and I AM Presence. These teachings were given by the Ascended
Host through direct revelation, and I felt a very strong vibration
of truth in them.
The teachings of the masters helped me understand the importance of
free will, which is a topic that the Lutheran state church in Denmark
doesn’t talk much about. I realized that everything on Earth
revolves around our free will. God didn’t create our misery—we
did by co-creating from the consciousness of duality. We allowed our
egos to trick us into creating a society and culture based on fear
and lack. And the more we seek to solve our problems without challenging
the dualistic belief system of the ego, the more we create new illusions
that result in new problems. I began to see how this can create a
downward spiral that in the past has caused several civilizations
to self-destruct.
I realized this also applies to our personal lives, and I began to
feel a very strong urge to escape this treadmill of the ego. I eventually
came to a "moment of truth" (one among many) in which I
felt a determination well up from the bottom of my soul. I decided
that I was going to take full and complete responsibility for my personal
life, my beliefs and illusions, my psychology and my spiritual path.
I decided to acknowledge the fact that I have created my current situation,
and therefore it is naive to think I can pray to God and he will whisk
away all my problems through a miracle.
I decided that I was going to acknowledge that God gave me free will,
and he will not violate his own laws. Because I decided to create
the ego and decided to let it lead me down the garden path of duality,
I have created my current situation. So it is up to me to separate
myself out from the ego and its illusions, so that I can begin to
create a situation that is not based on fear and lack but on love
and oneness.
Obviously, as I just explained in the previous section, I realized
I cannot escape the ego on my own. So I do need an ascended master
and my Christ self – even an embodied guru if one is available
– to help me escape the labyrinth of ego illusions. Yet
my spiritual teachers will not live up to the common Christian image
of a savior who will do all the work for me. I created the ego, and
it is up to me to uncreate it. If a master took it away from me, he
would be violating God’s law of free will. Because the purpose
of free will is to give us the opportunity to learn, I would learn
nothing from a master taking my ego.
I realized that up until that point, so much of my life had been consumed
by futile attempts to defend my ego and maintain its illusions. This
had consumed so much time and energy that it seemed completely futile.
I finally came to a point where I saw these ego-games in all of their
mind-numbing insanity and I cried out: “I can’t do this
any more, I don’t want to do this any more—God, help me!”
It was an incredible relief to let go of this need to defend the ego.
Gradually, a great burden began to be lifted from me, and I literally
felt like I was being reborn and had received a second chance at life.
I truly understood that until you take responsibility for yourself,
you simply cannot experience true freedom. You will be trapped in
a mental prison, condemned to the hard labor of defending the fragile
illusions of the ego, always seeking to fend off the calamity of having
your ego proven wrong. I realized that the only true form of freedom
is spiritual freedom, meaning freedom from the ego.
I stopped believing in magic
As a result of my starting to take responsibility for myself, I gave
up the belief in magic. I have noticed that this is a belief that
many spiritual seekers are really attached to. We love to think that
there is some magic bullet that will automatically turn us into spiritual
masters. So we often turn our lives into a never-ending chase for
the pot of gold at the end of the spiritual rainbow. We think that
if only we can find the right religion, meditation technique, guru
or protein shake, we will have it made.
Many people find a guru who makes golden promises, and they follow
his directions for a while. When the promises aren’t fulfilled,
they don’t stop to think, but immediately start looking for
the next guru, who must be the right one. I eventually realized that
what was wrong in this picture was not the outer gurus but the approach
of thinking someone else can change you for you.
I realized this desire is driven by the ultimate illusion on the spiritual
path, namely that of an outer savior. You created your ego, so you
are the only being who can uncreate it. No guru can do it for you,
and those who claim they can either don’t know better or they
are trying to make you codependent upon them so you will give them
money or energy.
As the logical consequence of this realization, I came to a –
for me – earth-shattering conclusion. It can be expressed most
simply in this way: “Nobody ever did anything to me!”
I realized that nobody had ever hurt or manipulated me. Sure, other
people had done various things that affected me physically, but what
had hurt me mentally and emotionally was not the actions of other
people—it was my reactions to their actions. In other
words, I was the one who had hurt myself.
In one sense, this can be a very tough realization to accept because
it does place all responsibility for your personal misery right smack
in you lap. You can run, but you can’t hide. In the end, you
are responsible for how you allowed the world to affect you. Yet once
you get over the initial shock, you realize that although this is
a tough pill to swallow, it does have some fringe benefits. The most
important one is that if you created your misery, you also have the
power to uncreate it. You are not dependent upon any force outside
yourself in order to improve your life and your experience of life.
You can actually take command over yourself and your life, and you
can start doing so right NOW. You don’t need anyone’s
permission, you don’t need to wait for better weather, for the
stock market to go up or until you win the lottery. You have the power
to change your life and you can start using it RIGHT NOW!
I suddenly started realizing that all of the spiritual books I had
read talked about the spiritual path as the path of self-mastery.
So far, I had focused my attention of the word “mastery”
thinking how great it would be to have all these supernatural abilities
that masters have. Now I realized that the real important word was
“self.” I needed to master myself, my self, before I would
get anywhere close to being a spiritual master. And the first step
was to take command over my own reactions to other people’s
actions, so that I could be free to decide my reactions instead of
simply reacting according to a preprogrammed pattern.
So, once again, I was left standing in the middle of a circle with
all the arrows pointing to the center, namely myself. It was all up
to me. I realized I couldn’t do it alone, yet no master can
do it for me. So what is the middle way? It is that I have to be willing
to take responsibility for who I am and what I have done to myself
in the past. Then I have to be willing to ask for guidance from a
source that is beyond the mental box of my ego. I have to be open
to hearing that guidance and accept it even though – as it invariably
will – it contradicts what my ego wants me to believe. Then
I have to have the courage to act on that guidance even when I don’t
have the full picture—which my conscious mind simply cannot
fathom.
The bottom line is this: I have to start walking even if I don’t
know where I will end up. I once heard a person give this analogy.
Imagine a tire that is standing upright on the ground. If you push
it on one side, it will tumble over and go nowhere. Yet if the tire
is rolling, a push will only make it change direction. The lesson
is that in order to get spiritual guidance from above, we have to
demonstrate that we are willing to move. We have to stop waiting for
some stroke of magic that will suddenly turn us into spiritual masters.
We have to be willing to move based on the knowledge we have, trusting
that when we take the next step, we will receive further guidance.
I later realized this is an essential principle on the spiritual path,
as demonstrated by Jesus' parable of the talents. A true spiritual
master will not start out by giving you the full truth. He will give
you only what you need in order to take the next step on your personal
path. If you make full use of his directions, you will get to a higher
level, and then you will be able to fathom the next level of instructions.
Yet if you refuse to move, your consciousness hasn’t changed,
and thus you cannot fathom the next level of instructions.
I also began to realize that in the beginning stages of the path,
we are definitely tested on obedience. Are we willing to let go of
some of our old beliefs and habits, even if we don’t have anything
to put in their stead? Are we willing to start walking in a certain
direction, even if we don’t know why or where we are going?
Are we willing to have faith in the process and take the time for
it to work, even if we have no written guarantee? It gradually became
very obvious to me that my outer mind doesn’t know everything
and never will be able to fathom everything. So I didn’t necessarily
need to know everything with my outer mind because my outer mind was
so trapped in duality that it simply could not grasp the vision of
my Christ self.
As I began to understand this, it became much easier for me to surrender
myself to the inner guidance of my Christ self. I began to trust the
process. I stopped kicking against the pricks and started flowing
with the river of life.
Do you want to find truth or confirm your illusions?
I came to the conclusion that the ego doesn’t want truth and
it doesn't want me to know the truth. The ego was born of an illusion,
namely that any part of God’s creation can be separated from
the whole. The ego can survive only as long as it manages to keep
me believing in the illusion that I am separated from my source, from
my I AM Presence, from God. So the ego has created innumerable illusions
aimed at maintaining this basic illusion. It wants to keep me trapped
in these lesser illusions, so I never uncover – and therefore
can’t question – the basic illusion.
I also realized that pride is one of the major obstacles on the spiritual
path—which is mentioned in almost every true spiritual book.
Yet pride is not a faculty of the soul but a faculty of the ego. The
ego creates a mental image of what the world is like. And because
this image is based on the ego’s dualistic belief system, it
is inevitably incomplete and flawed. Yet once a mental image is created,
the ego will not look at evidence that contradicts or goes beyond
the image. The ego hates being proven wrong. So as long as we are
trapped by the ego, our whole lives are a process during which we
are constantly threatened by the pain of being proven wrong. We are
constantly seeking to defend the illusions of our egos, and in extreme
cases people are willing to kill others to defend their mental images.
I eventually came to the conclusion that this entire scenario was
completely unnecessary and was, in fact, a form of sophisticated masochism.
I decided that I wasn’t going to play this game, so I adopted
a new approach to life.
I decided that I am first and foremost a spiritual seeker. As a spiritual
seeker, my most important goal is to find truth, and in order to find
truth, I simply have to look beyond my present knowledge and beliefs.
I realized that to find truth, I have to go beyond the mental box
of the ego.
I took stock of myself and admitted that I currently did not have
truth in the highest form. This was partly a product of my upbringing,
because I had been programmed to accept a lot of dualistic illusions.
Yet it was also a product of my own spiritual development—or
lack of it. So I decided that I wanted to know the truth far more
than I wanted to defend the ego illusion that my current beliefs were
the absolute truth.
When I made that decision, I realized that there was no longer any
point in feeling threatened by the truth. It was my ego who felt threatened;
not me. Thus, finding truth was no longer associated with the fear
and pain of being proven wrong. On the contrary, it was associated
with the joy and freedom of escaping a crippling illusion. This was
incredibly liberating. I realized how uptight I had been throughout
my life, always fearing some revelation that would prove me wrong.
I now realized that it really isn’t a matter of being proven
wrong.
This is perhaps one of the most sacred beliefs of the ego, namely
that if your beliefs are proven wrong, you are wrong and thus you
are a bad person. I now decided that given who I was and how I was
brought up in a dualistic culture, God didn’t require me to
know everything or to be perfect. I decided that I am a spiritual
seeker, and thus my current beliefs are not the absolute truth. They
are the highest understanding I have been able to grasp with my current
level of consciousness. So when I find a higher understanding, it
doesn’t mean I am proven wrong or that I am a bad person. Thus
I have no need to defend my limited understanding. Instead, I can
simply let it go and accept my newfound higher understanding.
In short, I decided the following:
- I am a seeker of truth,
and I am always willing to look for a higher understanding.
- At any given moment,
I am doing the best I can given my present understanding of life.
- I am constantly seeking
to expand my understanding and to raise my spiritual awareness so
I can grasp a higher understanding.
- There is no part of
my beliefs that I am not willing to have replaced by a higher understanding.
- Thus, I am growing
as fast as I can, meaning that I have no need to feel guilty about
not being perfect.
I realized that as long
as I sincerely followed these rules, God or my spiritual teachers
didn’t require anything more of me. I was literally blameless
before God because even though I am far from perfect, I am constantly
striving to improve—and that is what God requires. God does
not require us to know everything or to be perfect; God requires that
we are always willing to transcend ourselves and our present understanding
of life. I realized there is more to know about life—there is
always more to know, and thus I gave up the need to ever know everything.
These realizations accelerated my growth more than anything else because
I no longer needed to spend so much time, energy and attention on
defending the mental images of my ego. Yet the key concept was the
realization that in this world it is impossible to give a truly accurate
and complete description of God and God’s truth. Thus, all our
our beliefs and mental images are only approximations. In other words,
none of my current beliefs represent an absolute – meaning an
unchangeable – truth. I have no beliefs that are above change.
I am constantly open to the possibility that my Christ self or Jesus
could give me a higher understanding that would expand my beliefs
beyond what I can even fathom today.
When you are trapped by the ego, you fear a higher understanding and
you hang on to your present beliefs, thinking they are absolute and
infallible. A typical example is fundamentalist Christians who cling
to a literal interpretation of the Bible as if it was a matter of
life or death. And it is a matter of life or death—for their
egos!
I decided to leave behind this fear-based outlook on life and instead
acknowledge the fact that my soul loves truth. Consequently, there
is no illusion of my ego that I am not willing to surrender in order
to find truth. When you can truly feel this way, you will experience
an entirely new sense of freedom. You will also truly find the understanding
you seek, because you will no longer limit what your spiritual teachers
can tell you. You will listen to the teacher more than to your ego.
Spiritual seeker—heal thyself!
When I was four or five years old, there was a popular song that was
often played on Danish radio. It was a father singing to his son and
telling him about the hardships he had encountered in this life. The
refrain went something like, “My son, my hope for you is that
you will become better than I.” At one time, my own father started
singing that song to me, and when he sang the refrain, I got very
upset and shouted, “No Dad, you have to become better too!”
I later realized that this was an illustration of my deep desire to
help people escape the human limitations that affect all of us.
Incidentally, my father gave me several demonstrations of how easily
such limitations can affect our entire lives. He used to tell me stories
about his school days and how he had become disgusted with he injustices
and corporeal punishment (this was in the early 1930s) inflicted by
the teachers. He eventually rebelled and went from being first in
the class to being last, leaving school as soon as he could. Yet he
also told me how his childhood dream was to become an engineer and
travel all over the world building bridges. Well, even as a child,
I could see that there aren’t a whole lot of engineers who left
school after the 7th grade, so I realized that the conflicting forces
in my fathers psychology had set him on a track at the age of 10 that
prevented him from realizing his life’s dream.
Based on this and many similar observations from my childhood, I decided
I wasn’t going to let my life be derailed by my own psychology.
Finding the spiritual path and learning about the ego was a great
inspiration, but I eventually realized something was missing. I had
been doing several forms of spiritual techniques for years, but I
finally realized that no spiritual technique works against your free
will. So it cannot resolve your incorrect beliefs, the mental images
of your ego. You have to resolve them, and you have to do so by making
a better decision that replaces the decision which caused you to accept
one of the ego’s illusions. This can only be done consciously,
and to replace an imperfect decision from the past, you have to uncover
that decision and make it conscious.
I then realized that there was only one logical step to take, namely
to make use of some of the many techniques for psychological healing
that are available in this age. We have better tools for healing our
psychology than at any point in recorded history, so if I was as serious
about spiritual growth as I claimed to be, it simply didn’t
make sense not to make use of these tools.
Yet before I could do so, I had to overcome some major hurdles. First
of all, I was brought up in a culture where only people who were really
crazy went to a psychologist. I mean, basically no one did so unless
they arrived in a straightjacket. Although this attitude had softened
a bit with the self-help revolution, I still felt hesitant. I knew
people who had had a terrible childhood, and it seemed very clear
that they needed psychological healing. Yet I had a very easy childhood,
so why should I? I also had a fear of what I might uncover, and I
didn’t overcome it until I decided I wanted truth more than
my ego, as described above.
After hesitating for a couple of years, I finally decided to go into
therapy with a psychologist who had a spiritual approach to healing.
Over the next six months I resolved some major issues, and I was amazed
at how differently I felt. Over the next years I made use of other
healing techniques, and it helped me immensely. I can truly say it
left me wondering why I hadn’t done so much sooner. Why carry
around this psychological baggage when a bit of determined work can
help you throw it off for good?
Don’t take responsibility for others—or the world
One of the major revelations that came out of my therapy was that
I eventually realized I didn’t accept myself. I realized my
life up until that point had been highly dominated by this fact. In
essence, because I did not accept myself, I was always seeking acceptance
from others and from the world. When I healed this psychological wound,
I was suddenly set free from this need for acceptance.
I realized that I didn’t accept myself because I had come to
believe that unless I lived up to a certain outer standard, I would
not be acceptable in the eyes of God. I came to understand that this
standard was a worldly standard that was not defined by God. I also
realized it was an impossible standard, meaning that no one could
possibly live up to it. I had simply been trying to do the impossible—I
had been trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
As soon as I realized I didn’t accept myself, I was able to
put that together with my experience of God (described later). Because
I knew God’s love is unconditional, I could now dismiss the
belief that I need to live up to any standard to be acceptable to
God. I knew God loved me unconditionally, and therefore I am acceptable
in the eyes of God the way I am. After all, God created me that way.
It was then relatively easy for me to replace this age-old, outworn
belief in my own non-acceptability with a new belief that I am acceptable
the way I am.
This was quickly followed by the realization that I have a right to
be who I am. From early childhood I had felt that I never quite fit
in because I was so different from most of the people around me. The
primary reason was that I was more spiritual than most of the people
around me. Because of the non-acceptance issue, I naturally had assumed
that since I was different from most people, there had to be something
wrong with me. So I had created a subconscious habit of being very
non-assuming and never challenging people or displaying my spirituality.
I simply tried to stay below the radar screen, almost feeling like
I had to make excuses for being a spiritual person in a non-spiritual
society.
I now realized this was completely unnecessary and, in fact, detrimental
to my divine plan. I am here to openly display that I am a spiritual
person, so that other people can see an example of the fact that it
is possible to live a more spiritual life-style. I have a right to
be a spiritual person, and I have a right to show it. After that,
I staked my claim on Earth and I often used the mantra, "I have
a right to be here!" After a while, it was amazing how much more
at peace I felt, and the reason was that the dark forces no longer
had my own non-acceptance as an inroad into my consciousness. The
prince of this world had nothing – or at least not as much –
in me.
In a sort of twisted way, I realized that what I had been doing up
until that point was that I had felt responsible for other people
and the world. My desire for acceptance had made me feel that in order
to fulfil my divine plan, I had to be accepted by other people. And
in order to be accepted by them, I had to not display my spirituality
too openly. I had to turn myself into someone else in order to be
accepted. Obviously, turning myself into someone else can never fulfill
my divine plan, but the lower mind can’t reason that way.
As soon as I discovered the root of the problem, namely my non-acceptance
of myself, I was able to pull the plug and the whole ball of wax went
down the drain. I could now fully integrate the fact that I had taken
responsibility for myself and I could complete the circle by realizing
that when I take full responsibility for myself, I no longer need
to take responsibility for others.
Other people have their free will, given to them by God. I realized
that each person is judged by his or her actions. I am fully responsible
for my own choices, but God had not made me responsible for the choices
of other people. In other words, I am responsible for my own salvation,
but I am not responsible for the salvation of anyone else.
So the practical offshoot is that my responsibility is to save myself,
which I do by being who I am, by being who God created me to be. When
I do that, and openly display the fact that I am a spiritual person
and that I love God more than anything else, I have done my job. It
is completely up to others what they do or don’t do based on
seeing my example. Yet that is none of my concern. My job is to be
who I am and then be non-attached to how that affects others (obviously,
when I am being who I am in God, I will treat people according to
the laws of God).
So, I suddenly realized I had been set free from this subtle sense
that I was responsible for the salvation of other people or even responsible
for saving the world. I think many spiritual people feel this responsibility,
and that is why I started out by talking about the global awareness.
It is perfectly right for us to have global awareness, but we must
be on guard against developing a subtle form of savior complex. The
key to avoiding this is to understand the law of free will, whereby
we are not responsible for the choices made by other people. When
I dropped that sense of responsibility, I felt as if I could finally
start fulfilling my divine plan of being who I am instead of being
who I thought the world wanted me to be. I could be and let be—and
that’s the only way to be.
Why are you here?
In the early 1990’s I had a life-changing experience. During
a meditation on divine harmony, I was lifted out of my body and found
myself in the Great Central Sun, which is the seat of Alpha and Omega,
the highest representatives of the Father/Mother God in the world
of form. I saw myself standing in this enormous hall, shaped like
an amphitheater. There were gigantic columns along the walls and they
appeared to be made of solidified light.
I walked down a center isle until I stood right in front of a throne,
upon which sat Alpha and Omega. I saw them as two spheres of white
light, and the light was so strong that only their eyes were visible.
My attention was drawn to a flow of energy between these two magnificent
beings, and I saw it as a horizontal figure-eight flow of liquid light.
I then focused on the nexus of the figure-eight, and as I looked at
it, it was as if a portal opened up and I was now looking outside
the world of form. Outside was a seemingly endless space, that truly
can best be described as a “void,” as you find in some
religious and mystical teachings. At first, the void appeared empty,
but I then became aware that it was not. It was filled with a Being,
a Presence, that was conscious yet had no form whatsoever. This being
simply IS.
In a flash, the thought came to me, “This is God!” At
that moment, I connected with God, and I knew this is my source, it
is from this Being that I came into being. This connection was beyond
time and space, and it might have lasted a split second or longer—there
was simply no sensation of time or distance. There was no sense of
separation; only timeless oneness.
Suddenly, I found myself seated on a cube of white light directly
between Alpha and Omega, and in the nexus of the figure-eight flow
between them. I experienced a complete peace and a feeling I can only
describe as unconditional love. After a time, I noticed that the entire
universe was stretched out before me, and I could see a myriad of
galaxies like our Milky Way. Then, my attention was drawn down into
this vast space, until I came back to my normal state of awareness
in my chair on planet Earth.
At the time, this experience was quite earth-shattering to me. I thought
I had a good grip on understanding spiritual teachings, and I felt
I had a good intellectual understanding of God. Yet experiencing the
Presence of God was so far beyond any of my paradigms that there was
only one thing to do: throw all of my paradigms, expectations and
preconceived opinions out the window. I had experienced the Presence
of God, yet there was absolutely no way to describe that presence
through words or images that are intelligible to a human being. Moreover,
I realized clearly that any attempt to describe God’s Presence
would be a degradation of that Presence; it would be creating a graven
image. I suddenly began to understand why the first two commandments
are the first two commandments.
For several years, I told no one about the experience, because I needed
time to internalize and digest it. Yet it affected me deeply, and
here are just some of the affects:
- I was freed from all
desire to think one particular religion was the only true one. I
realized no religion could possibly give a complete description
of the Presence of God. That Presence can only be experienced. So
the best a religion can do is give a description that helps people
attain the direct experience, and I began to understand that this
is the true purpose behind all true religions. This gave me an entirely
new perspective on religion. I realized that if a religion takes
me closer to a direct experience of God’s Presence, then it
is doing its job. If it is blocking my direct experience, then the
religion is working against God’s intent. Thus, the idea that
one religion is the only key to salvation is completely alien to
God. I now had a direct proof that I could not sell my soul to one
particular church but that I am here for a more universal mission.
- I realized that the
most important aspect of taking personal responsibility for my spiritual
path is that I cannot allow anything to stand between me and God.
If I allow a guru or organization – or my own ego –
to stand between me and a direct experience of God, I am worshiping
an idol. And if I do so, I will never experience the true God who
is beyond all idols.
- I realized that compared
to the experience of being connected to God, all else paled in comparison.
Literally, nothing on Earth seemed to have the same value to me.
It became very clear to me why nothing on this little planet is
worth dying for, and with that I mean the death of the soul. The
saying “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world
yet lose his soul” took on a whole new meaning. I realized
it is worth it to give up anything – even your physical life
– to attain this sense of oneness with God.
- I knew God is always
within me, and I realized we humans have been programmed to limit
God’s expression through us. I realized it was my foremost
job on the spiritual path to undo that programming so I can stop
limiting God in me and allow God to do the works through me that
he desires to do.
After having digested this
experience for a couple of years, it culminated in a real breakthrough.
I read something that inspired me to contemplate the question, “Why
am I here?” I took a walk, sat down in the hills and looked
up into the deep, blue sky. I posed the question, “Why am I
here?” and from deep within my soul came the answer, “Because
I love God!”
At first this was almost a shock to my outer mind, because I had always
been trying to understand God, but never quite considered myself as
loving God. I now took a closer look at myself, and I realized that
behind all of the outer personality and beliefs, the bottom line is
that I – the real me – truly loves God beyond anything
else. This is simply my basic psychological make-up; an infinite love
for God.
As I began to integrate this realization, I gradually began to see
that it is my love for God that brought me to Earth. I am here because
I love God and because I can see that all other people are God wearing
a disguise—they have simply forgotten who they are. So I volunteered
to come here to inspire others to discover their true identity and
thereby discover their love for God.
I then realized my personal God flame is Love and Truth. I came out
of the flame of unconditional Love, and I came to Earth to bring the
flame of Truth. I came to awaken people to love by giving them the
truth of who they are and who God is. After having realized this,
I felt as if nothing in my personal life or outer personality had
any real importance any more. I realized that it truly is not about
me; it is all about God. And this realization led me to the total
surrender which opened the door to my messengership for Jesus.
Incidentally, that is worth a remark or two.
You are never done surrendering
When I started working with Jesus, I had been on the spiritual path
for over 25 years. I had worked hard, practicing spiritual techniques
for hours a day, studying spiritual teachings and generally arranging
my entire life around the overarching need for spiritual growth. During
this time, I had inevitably built up certain opinions that I thought
were true, accurate and very much necessary. In other words, during
my journey, I had built up a certain world view, and I believed it
had been supported by my experiences and studies.
I have seen his happen to many other spiritual seekers, especially
people who have been on the path for many years and who have put great
effort into it. The subtle, but all-important, point is that my world
view was not necessarily wrong. However, neither was it complete or
the only possible view. In other words, I had built a world view that
portrayed myself as a spiritual seeker, and I had some ideas of how
I would be living the rest of my life. I am sure this world view could
have taken me far, and I probably could have made my ascension by
following it for the rest of my life.
The problem was that in my world view there was not even a hint of
the thought that I could step up to a higher level and personally
become a messenger for Jesus. So while my world view was not wrong,
it did limit God’s ability to express himself through me. Thus,
while it gave me a platform for spiritual growth, it also boxed me
in in a way that prevented me from exercising my full potential and
fulfilling my divine plan.
I believe many other spiritual seekers are in the exact same situation.
They have built a world view that is not wrong but not the ultimate
view either, and it is holding them back. I think that had I not had
the direct experience of God’s Presence – seeing how it
is completely beyond any world view that could possibly be formulated
– I might not have had the frame of reference to look beyond
my personal world view. I might not have dared to surrender myself
completely to God, thereby essentially giving God a blank check that
allowed him to take my life in a new and completely unexpected direction.
I believe this is an all-important thought. We can actually follow
the spiritual path so successfully that we begin to believe we are
doing everything we need to be doing. Yet despite the fact that we
are doing well, we have not unleashed our true potential. In essence,
we might say that all people are born inside a mental box. Some of
us find the spiritual path and use it to climb out of our former box.
Yet we must constantly be on the alert against the possibility that
our egos can use the path itself to build another mental box.
My point being that a wise master once said that eternal vigilance
is the price we pay for discipleship. And to that I would venture
to add that perpetual surrender – of everything we think we
need or have earned – is the only way to avoid being trapped
somewhere along the journey. In other words, no matter how far you
have traveled on the spiritual path, as long as you are still on Earth,
there is the possibility that you can build a mental box that traps
your soul. And only by always remaining willing to surrender your
mental box and everything in it can you avoid being trapped on a plateau
that is below your full potential.
I realize clearly that even working with Jesus on the books and website
can become a trap, if I am not alert. It is so easy to build the expectation
that things have to be a certain way and that if only they continue
on the present track, everything will be okay. If you see me falling
into that trap, please let me know! Yet don’t forget to look
in the mirror as well. Bottom line is: You can never stand still;
you must constantly self-transcend.
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Copyright
© 2009 by Kim Michaels |
