The least you should know
about the ego, Part 9.
A discourse by
Jesus
NOTE: This
teaching was given on July 24, 2006.
In previous discourses
I have hinted at the fact that the ego has certain built-in contradictions,
and we will now take a closer look at them. The fact is that the ego
is based on an inescapable contradiction and therefore the ego will
always be a house divided. If you allow the ego to make you
divided against yourself, then you simply cannot stand in the light
of Christ truth. And you are not going to enter the kingdom of God
while you are lying down. You are going to enter only when you stand
on the one truth – the rock – of Christ.
In order to understand the ego’s systemic division, we need
to take a closer look at your own being and your purpose for being
here. As Mother Mary explains in her discourses,
everything is made from an interplay between two polarities, namely
the expanding force of the Father and the contracting force of the
Mother. Thus, in every aspect of life, there are two forces at work.
This is a truth that all spiritual seekers should fix in their minds
so they never forget it.
The consequence of this truth is that in every situation, there is
a high and a low potential. A sustainable creation can occur only
when the expanding and contracting forces are held in balance—so
they enhance each other. This is the high potential. The low potential
is that one force becomes dominant, which inevitably leads to an imbalance
that will cause the situation to deteriorate. If the expanding force
is too strong, everything will be exaggerated and if the contracting
force is too strong, everything will collapse upon itself.
What is it that keeps the two forces balanced? Well, it is the Christ
mind, the principle of the Son, which is designed to ensure oneness
between the two aspects of creation. From the viewpoint of a human
being, the two forces represent Spirit and matter, the spiritual realm
and the material world. Thus, the Christ mind is designed to ensure
oneness between Spirit and matter, which can happen only when matter
outpictures the blueprint designed by Spirit—the blueprint that
is stored in the universal Christ mind.
On a personal level, you have a spiritual aspect of your total being,
which we normally call your I
AM Presence. You also have a material aspect of your being, namely
your four lower bodies.
In order for you to fulfill your highest potential, you must have
oneness between your spiritual self and your lower self. We might
say this has always been the essential challenge for spiritual people.
The Bible describes it clearly:
For the good
that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
(Romans 7:19)
Watch and pray,
that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing,
but the flesh is weak. (Matthew 26:41)
So what can ensure this
oneness in your being? Only the Christ mind, but the Christ mind will
not do this as an external force that imposes oneness upon you. It
will do it only when it becomes an internal force, and that will happen
only when you – meaning the conscious self – makes the
decision to unite with the Christ mind, to become the Living Christ.
To do this, the conscious self must take full responsibility for your
life and being, even for your salvation. It must be willing to make
the critical decisions and seek balance in every situation.
Once you have the Christ mind, finding balance is not difficult, but
in order to have that mind, the conscious self must accept full responsibility,
and that is often a major stumbling block for spiritual seekers. That
is why the ego is so often successful in getting people to follow
the outer path, the automatic path that does not require you to take
full responsibility for making decisions. That is why the false
teachers so often trick you into believing they can make the decisions
for you.
The birth of the ego
In a previous discourse, I described
how you became enveloped in the consciousness of duality, the consciousness
of anti-christ. This caused you to make wrong decisions, until you
came to the point where the Conscious You decided that it would no
longer make decisions. Yet you were alive and you were in a particular
outer situation, and these facts were not changed by your decision
not to make decisions. So your outer situation demanded that decisions
be made, and since the conscious self would not make them, someone
else had to make decisions for you. That someone was what became the
ego.
Let me make sure you understand the basic dynamic here. You decided
that you did not want to make decisions because it seemed like all
your decisions led to undesirable consequences. You felt, “I’m
damned if I do and damned if I don’t.” Yet the ONLY reason
your decisions produced undesirable consequences was that they were
based on the murky waters of the duality consciousness. This caused
you to take everything too far into one of the two extremes, and the
result was that every situation led to suffering. If your decisions
are based on the clarity of the Christ mind, they will always lead
to growth, and then there is no burden associated with making decisions.
In other words, you decided to stop deciding ONLY because you had
lost contact with the Christ mind—or a spiritual teacher who
served as your link to the Christ mind.
My point is that when you decided to stop making decisions, you had
already created a certain momentum of making decisions based on the
dualistic mind. We might say you had created a computer program in
your subconscious mind. When the conscious self stopped making decisions,
that computer program took over and quickly developed into the ego.
The ego is more than a computer program in that it has a survival
instinct and is thus an aggressive force in your being. Once you have
given the ego control, it will rather die than give it up—because
giving it up means that the ego WILL die.
The important point is that the ego was born out of your separation
from the Christ mind, and thus the ego can perceive only the consciousness
of anti-christ, the consciousness of duality. The two basic forces
of creation do not stop operating because you make a decision, so
you are still faced with situations in which the two forces exist.
Here is the vital difference:
-
When you look at life
through the clarity of the Christ mind, you see the expanding
and contracting forces as complementary. You see how to balance
them so that every decision you make is balanced and produces
growth.
-
When you look at life
through the filter of the duality consciousness, you see the two
basic forces as opposites. Instead of complimenting each other,
you now see them as canceling out each other. The reason is that
when you do not balance these forces in your own being, they WILL
cancel out each other. The inevitable result is that your decisions
will produce an imbalance that leads to suffering.
My point here is that to
your ego, the two basic forces are seen as enemies that are out to
oppose its control over your circumstances. And since the ego can
never grasp the Christ mind, this is a fundamental problem that can
NEVER be solved at the level of the ego. The ego will always look
at life through the duality consciousness, and therefore it can NEVER
balance the expanding and contracting forces. Thus, the ego’s
decisions will ALWAYS produce suffering.
In fact, the ego is on a constant see-saw between one of two extremes.
It will first go into one extreme, for example by letting the expanding
force dominate. This leads you to be caught in the black-and-white
thinking described earlier. When you have finally had enough of
this form of thinking – and its unbalanced results – the
ego will not admit its mistake, for it can NEVER see its mistake.
Instead, the ego will take you toward the other extreme, namely gray
thinking. When you have had enough of that, the ego will take
you right back toward the other extreme, and this can go on for numerous
lifetimes.
In fact, it can go on indefinitely, unless the Conscious You finally
has had enough and decides that it will take back the responsibility
for making decisions. The problem here is that taking back responsibility
is not enough. You must also understand that in order to make right
decisions, you must reach for and put on the mind of Christ. Yet because
most religions teach the outer path to salvation, most people simply
do not know that they need to do this or how to do it. Which is why
they continue to cling to the dream of an outer, automatic path to
salvation—which leaves them at the mercy of the ego and false
teachers.
There is only one thing that will bring about a solution to your problems
and an end to your suffering. You must restore balance to your own
being by restoring balance between the expanding and contracting forces,
your spiritual self and your lower self. The ONLY factor that can
restore this balance is the Christ mind, the one, undivided truth
of the Christ mind. Yet the Christ mind will not enter your being
unless it is invited. Your ego will never invite the Christ mind to
enter, for it cannot even see the Christ mind as a solution to your
problems. If it could, it would know that the entry of the Christ
mind would mean the death of the ego. So the Christ mind can enter
ONLY when invited by the Conscious You.
The trick is that the Conscious You cannot invite the Christ mind
to enter until it has taken full responsibility for your life and
salvation by deciding that it is willing to make decisions and to
take the decision-making power away from the ego. The other trick
is that the Christ mind will not enter as an external force that will
fix your problems for you. The Christ mind can work in your life ONLY
when it becomes an internal force because the Conscious You has decided
that it is willing to put on the mind of Christ and become one with
your own higher Being. You are willing to base your sense of identity
in the material world on your spiritual identity. You are willing
to be here below all that you are Above. This idea deserves further
scrutiny.
Why are you here?
The ego sees only the material world and it sees everything through
the duality consciousness. So to the ego there is no spiritual purpose
for life; the purpose for life must be defined in, defined by, the
material world. Thus, the human ego has defined any number of “life
purposes” that people spend lifetimes pursuing—always
without finding happiness, fulfillment, peace of mind or a sense of
purpose and meaning.
As Mother Mary describes in detail in her book,
the real purpose of life is your growth in self-awareness. This growth
comes from fulfilling your role as a co-creator with God. Your Being
is designed in the image and after the likeness of God, meaning that
you have the creative powers to use the Ma-ter light to create form.
You descended into the material universe in order to multiply your
creative powers and take dominion over the Earth, meaning the mastery
of mind over matter. You will be fulfilled ONLY when you fill this
role—a role you chose before coming into embodiment.
What does it mean to take dominion over the Earth? As everything else,
it has a Father and a Mother – an Alpha and an Omega –
aspect. The Alpha aspect is that you must start by taking dominion
over your own being by establishing oneness between your spiritual
self and your lower self. The key to this is that the conscious self
decides to fulfill its proper role of being the Christ in your being
and balancing the father and mother aspects, Spirit and matter.
The Omega aspect is that you take dominion over the Earth and do your
part to raise it into the kingdom of God. You do this by both exercising
your creative powers and by using the Christ mind to help other people
rise above the duality consciousness. The key to this phase is that
the conscious self decides to take up its role of being the Christ
on Earth by challenging the consciousness of anti-christ wherever
it is encountered.
We might say that when you are in embodiment, your own consciousness
is the Alpha aspect of your life and your environment is the Omega
aspect. Once again, your role is to establish oneness between the
two so that your environment reflects your inner being which reflects
your spiritual self.
As always, the key is to have the Christ balance between the two basic
forces. If you let the ego run your life, it will still seek to fulfill
your goals in an unbalanced way:
-
Dominion over
self: If the expanding force is dominant, your ego will
seek to control every aspect of your life. You will attempt to
force yourself by strictly following an outer system, be it a
religion or a diet. This is the dream that by living up to outer
requirements, you will be saved without looking at the beam –
the ego – in your own eye.
If the contracting force is dominant, your ego will take the if-it-feels-good-do-it
attitude. You will be completely unable to discipline yourself
or free yourself from the control of the ego or other people.
You will feel like a total victim of outer circumstances and find
a million excuses for not changing your life.
- Dominion over
the Earth. If the expanding force is dominant, you will
attempt to force other people to become a member of your belief
system, thinking that the end of saving them can justify the means.
This is what you see in fundamentalist people from any religion,
even the fundamentalist people in a political ideology or the ideology
of science. This leads to black-and-white
thinking.
If the contracting force is dominant, you will think you have no
right to influence other people and that you should be tolerant
of everything. Any idea is as valid as any other, so live and let
live for love is all you need. This leads to gray
thinking.
The key to fulfilling your
divine plan – the plan you made before coming into embodiment
– is to bring the Christ mind into your life so that it can
balance the two basic forces. Thus, instead of the perpetual tension
between the two forces – leading to conflict, loss and suffering
– your life can become an upward spiral of greater freedom and
fulfillment. The Christ is not somewhere between the two extremes
but transcends both extremes because it is above and beyond the duality
consciousness.
The Christ mind clearly sees that the Earth is out of alignment with
the Creator's vision and laws, which will eventually cause the material
universe to self-destruct. It therefore sees that the only solution
is to bring the Earth back into harmony with the purpose of creation.
In other words, the Christ mind realizes that the mother aspect cannot
be allowed to evolve on its own, creating its own laws instead of
following the Creator's laws. Thus, the material realm must always
be an expression of the spiritual realm, yet this can happen ONLY
when the co-creators that embody on this planet decide to become the
Living Christs. They must take dominion over the Earth rather than
letting the Earth have dominion over them.
The key to creating an upward spiral
When your conscious self stops making decisions and allows the ego
to run your life, you create a downward spiral. You will create a
mental prison for yourself, and it will result in outer suffering.
This suffering will become increasingly intense until you finally
“hit bottom” and decide that you cannot continue to live
this way.
It is an unfortunate fact that many people have to experience this
suffering for many lifetimes before they have had enough. Some do
not make the decision to turn around until they experience an extreme
form of crisis. Yet an outer crisis is not what turns your life around.
The ONLY thing that can turn your life around is an inner decision,
namely that your conscious self decides to start making decisions
again. Thus, the outer crisis is simply a tool – which you create
subconsciously – to get the conscious self to the point of being
willing to make that decision.
My point is that the conscious self can – at any moment –
make the decision to turn around through an inner revelation instead
of forcing itself to do so by precipitating an outer crisis. The conscious
self has the ability to change its sense of identity instantly, so
there are no outer circumstances that can prevent you from turning
around, nor do you need particular circumstances before you do so.
The only thing that really prevents you from making the decision is
the ego, which always seeks to make you believe that you cannot transcend
your present sense of identity, your present level of consciousness.
One thing that can help people overcome the manipulation of the ego
is to realize that the dream that you can escape making decisions
is an illusion. The conscious self can refuse to make decisions about
what to do, but it cannot refuse to be conscious. Thus, even when
you let the ego make decisions for you, you cannot escape experiencing
the consequences of those decisions. And when you do experience the
consequences, you are forced to react to them, meaning that the conscious
self must decide how it reacts to the decisions made by the ego.
My point being that although the conscious self can refuse to make
decisions about what you do in life, it can NEVER escape making decisions
about how you react to life. No intelligent person will want to be
forced to respond to the consequences of decisions that you did not
make. Thus, it is infinitely better for you to take back control over
both your actions and your reactions.
We might say that the first stage of the spiritual path is the process
of taking dominion over your self, over your lower being. The ego
will seek to derail this process by making you follow the outer path,
as described in previous discourses. Yet there are millions of people
on this planet who have followed the true path to the point of having
taken some measure of responsibility for themselves and having gained
some control over their lower beings.
However, this does not mean that they are home free, as the ego and
the false teachers will seek to make you believe. This brings us to
the point where we can understand what is the most critical point
on the path.
The most critical point on the spiritual path
As I said, there are two aspects of your mission on Earth. The Alpha
aspect is to take dominion over yourself, and the Omega aspect is
to take dominion over the Earth, over the matter universe. This requires
the Conscious You to make two critical decisions. The first is that
you are willing to take dominion over your lower self. The second
is to expand your sense of self and take dominion over the All, meaning
your environment on Earth.
Most of the people who are spiritual seekers – no matter what
outer belief system or organization to which they belong – have
made the first decision and have started to take dominion over self.
However, many of them have not yet realized the full consequences
of that decision, so they have not understood that it must lead to
the death of the ego. Thus, they are still allowing their egos to
run part of their lives, which is why they cannot make the second
decision.
Don’t get me wrong here. There are many, many spiritual seekers
who have developed a global awareness and a global sense of responsibility.
They feel a great love for the Earth and seek to preserve it through
various activities, ranging from the spiritual over political to environmental
causes. Yet the reality of the matter is that the only way to save
the environment is to bring the Earth back into alignment with the
Divine blueprint for this planet. It is precisely because the Earth
has been affected by the duality consciousness that you see so many
imbalances in nature and in human society.
The only factor that can bring the Earth back into alignment is the
Christ mind, but that Christ mind MUST be expressed through people
in embodiment. Demonstrating that this is possible was the primary
goal for my mission 2,000 years ago. In other words, if you really
want to save the Earth, you MUST become the Living Christ on Earth.
THERE IS NO OTHER WAY, even though the ego and the false teachers
have invented numerous clever schemes to lead the spiritual people
into blind alleys where they think they are saving the Earth but are
only treading water.
In order to fulfill your highest potential of becoming the Living
Christ on Earth, you must bring balance – meaning oneness in
purpose – between the higher and the lower parts of your own
being. The Alpha aspect is that you decide to take dominion over self
and that this decision is a total decision, meaning that you are willing
to let the ego die. You are willing to lose your life for my sake,
meaning losing your mortal sense of identity in order to be spiritually
reborn as the Living Christ.
What I want you to understand is that it is possible to make this
decision and attain a high degree of self-control without actually
becoming the Living Christ. Taking dominion over self is only one
side of the coin, and your Christhood will not be complete until you
make the second decision, namely that you are willing to take dominion
over the Earth.
Do you see my point? There are many sincere spiritual seekers who
have spent a long time seeking dominion over self. They have attained
a degree of self-control and can have all kinds of spiritual experiences.
I am in no way trying to belittle such experiences that can be genuine.
But I am saying that as long as you are focused on your own growth,
you are not the Living Christ. Christhood must be expressed –
in a selfless pursuit to raise all life – before it becomes
manifest.
Christhood is what establishes oneness between Spirit and matter,
a oneness that can occur only when there is a figure-eight flow from
Spirit to matter and back again. It is possible to establish a flow
from Spirit to matter in your own being, but until you selflessly
seek to raise others, the return current will not be there. And until
you close the figure-eight flow, you will not be the Living Christ
on Earth.
We can now see what is the most critical stage on the spiritual path.
Most of the sincere spiritual seekers started the downward path when
their conscious selves decided that they would no longer seek dominion
over the Earth. Why is that so? Because seeking dominion over the
Earth is a far more difficult task than seeking dominion over self.
This is caused by the fact that the Earth has become a planet dominated
by the duality consciousness. Thus, taking dominion means that you
must battle that duality consciousness.
There are forces and people on Earth who do not want to be raised
up to the perfection of the kingdom of God. They want the Earth to
remain a twilight zone, where they can hide behind appearances and
continue to do whatever they want. And when you come with the best
of intentions, they will resist your efforts, as they clearly resisted
me 2,000 years ago. This resistance might range from indifference
to outright hostility, culminating in their attempts to kill you physically
and destroy you spiritually.
Because of this resistance, many of the spiritual people on this planet
decided that they simply did not want to take dominion over the Earth.
This led them into many different types of blind alleys, and many
are still stuck in these. One of the more dangerous blind alleys is
that you feel you are actually doing something to save the Earth,
but your efforts are based on gray thinking. This causes you to think
that you need to be tolerant toward almost anything happening on the
Earth and just spread love and positive vibrations. You should never
challenge the consciousness of anti-christ. This has, in fact, caused
many spiritual people to form a subconscious pact with the devil,
saying, “If you leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone.
If you leave me alone in my pursuit of spiritual growth, I will leave
the Earth to you”
One example of this is the well-meaning drive to preserve any animal
species. In reality, many of the animal species currently found on
this planet were not created by God but are manifestations of humankind’s
lower consciousness. Thus, raising the Earth into the Golden Age will
necessitate that such species are allowed to die out. Spending your
life preserving a creation of the consciousness of anti-christ obviously
will prevent you from becoming the Living Christ. It will also prevent
the Earth from rising above the state of imbalance that leads to deterioration
from within.
In other words, if the mother aspect of creation, the material universe,
starts evolving in a way that is out of harmony with the father's
vision and laws, then the material realm will self-destruct. The ONLY
way to preserve the Earth is to bring her back into alignment with
the vision and laws stored in the Christ mind.
Do you see the central point here? The Earth is out of balance because
it is dominated by the duality consciousness. The ONLY thing that
can save this planet is to bring it back into balance and this can
be done ONLY by challenging the duality consciousness until a critical
mass of people have seen through its illusions and have decided to
rise above them. This challenge can come ONLY through the Christ mind,
and it can happen ONLY when the most spiritually advanced people embody
that Christ mind and stand up to challenge the representatives of
anti-christ.
That is why it is a tragedy when these people are misled into refusing
to make the decision to take dominion over the Earth. And that is
why the most critical stage on the spiritual path is the point where
you make or don’t make that decision. This is the real meaning
of “To be, or not to be!”
How to really take dominion
What I want you to see here is that many seekers have been on the
spiritual path for lifetimes and have created an upward spiral. Yet
that upward path leads them toward the point where they started to
create the downward spiral, and that point was when their conscious
selves decided that they did not want to take dominion over the Earth.
In other words, you have experienced great and undeniable progress
compared to the low point from where the upward path started, the
point where you hit bottom.
Yet all you have really done is to turn the clock back to the point
where your downward path started. As the song goes, "California,
here I come, right back where I started from." You have been
moving back toward the central challenge of the spiritual path, namely
that you must undo the decision that created your ego. That decision
is the decision NOT to fulfill your reason for being, namely to BE
a co-creator and take dominion over the Earth. You will – once
again – have to face that decision. And this time you MUST –
if you are to be free of the ego and make genuine progress –
decide to accept your responsibility to take dominion.
If you do not make that decision, all of your spiritual progress will
come to a halt and you will INEVITABLY start to create another downward
spiral. Don’t get me wrong. When you first started the downward
spiral, you were not aware of what was happening. You thought you
were doing just fine and did not notice how you gradually slipped
down toward the abyss. The same thing can happen again, and I must
tell you that there are many people who think they are very spiritual,
yet they are imperceptibly sliding downward into a spiral of focus
on self that inevitably gives more and more control to the ego.
What is the key to really turning the corner and starting to go above
the point from were you started to descend? The key is to realize
a subtle difference that the ego can never fathom but which the conscious
self of most mature spiritual seekers will be able to grasp. The key
is to realize that although the Conscious You is designed to take
dominion over the Earth, it is not designed to do so by its own power
or through its own wisdom. While the conscious self must make decisions,
it can base those decisions on the vision of the Christ mind.
The Conscious You actually has no power of its own; it is designed
to direct power and it does so over its attention. When you place
your attention on something, power flows through your four lower bodies
over the bridge of your attention. Yet that power will be colored
by your sense of identity, which is why you need to contemplate these
statements of mine:
And Jesus looking
upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for
with God all things are possible. (Mark 10:27)
I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment
is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father
which hath sent me.
(John 5:30)
Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?
the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father
that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. (John
14:10)
The key message here is
that the Conscious You has the ability to identify itself as anything
it chooses. If it identifies itself as a human being – as a
being separated from its source, its own spiritual self – then
it must seek to take dominion over the Earth by using the power in
its four lower bodies—the power of men. This makes it impossible
to take dominion and it only envelopes you in the dualistic power
struggles that go on all over this planet, fueled by the ego and the
forces of anti-christ. It is precisely because they tired of this
dualistic struggle that many spiritual people decided they would no
longer attempt to take dominion.
Yet the real issue here is that if you seek to take dominion with
human power, it will be impossible, whereas if you seek it with God’s
power, all things are possible. So what will it take to have God’s
power flowing through you? It will take oneness between your own higher
being, your spiritual self, and your lower being. The key to establishing
this oneness is that the Conscious You accepts and fully integrates
its true identity as a co-creator with God who has the right to take
dominion over the Earth and subdue it according to the vision of the
Christ mind.
Do you see that the ego and the forces of anti-christ will do anything
in their power to prevent you from reaching this sense of identity?
They will do this by seeking to take you into one of the unbalanced
extremes created by the ego. They will play on the basic conflict
built into the ego and seek to make it the dominant force in your
being. They will attempt to make you take the black-and-white approach
of seeking to dominate the Earth through force or the gray approach
of refusing to take dominion. Either way – and a thousand other
ways – they will prevent you from fulfilling your ultimate destiny
and potential, namely to be the Living Christ on Earth. This, of course,
is the real goal of the ego and the forces of anti-christ.
The last thing they want is for you to BE the Christ. So the only
remaining question is, “Will you decide to BE, or will you allow
your ego and the forces of anti-christ to continue to manipulate you
into deciding not to be?” THAT is the question, and only the
Conscious You can answer it!
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© 2009 by Kim Michaels |
