| NOTE:
This
answer was given on July 14, 2007, during the Shangra-la conference
in Los Angeles, California.
Answer from Mother Mary:
My beloved, if you
have difficulty visualizing, stop trying to visualize. Do not have the
image, the mental image, that you are supposed to visualize anything
in particular. Allow the visualization to come on its own—and
if nothing comes, then be content with that. Be non-attached, simply
focus on giving a rosary, or reading a book, internalizing a teaching
and then let the visualization come spontaneously, if it comes at all. You
see, the more you strain, the more you push it away.
And this gives me an opportunity to comment on a question some of you
have had, about how you surrender. You see, my beloved, you have
been so programmed by the false teachers and the consciousness of duality
that you believe you have to DO something to earn your salvation. But,
in reality the reason why you have separated yourself from oneness is
that you started doing something with the dualistic mind, thereby
doing yourself away from oneness.
So you cannot DO yourself back to oneness. I am not thereby saying
that you do not need to do anything, because you do need to study teachings
to seek to internalize them, to practice rosaries or other appropriate
techniques to further your spiritual growth. Because, as we have said,
there are certain mechanical aspects of spiritual growth, such as the
transformation of energy. Nevertheless, the element that is the
essence of spiritual growth is to overcome your old limiting beliefs
and rise to a higher understanding and awareness.
And that transition cannot be forced, cannot be done with the dualistic
mind, for when you seek to do things on the spiritual path with the
consciousness of duality, then you are stepping onto the false path,
the outer path of thinking that by doing these outer things, God has
to let you into heaven.
So the real essence of the path is to let go of limitations, let go
of unreality, and this is something that you cannot force with the outer
mind. You cannot force it physically, you cannot force it emotionally,
you cannot force it mentally. And the more you seek to force it with
your outer conscious mind, with your feelings or with your thoughts,
the more you will cause yourself to hold on to the things you are trying
to surrender. Surrender can only happen spontaneously.
You can set the groundwork for surrender by studying a teaching and
coming to a greater and greater understanding of why you need to give
something up, so that you thereby set the stage for the spontaneous
surrender to occur. But you cannot force it, and if you get into
the mode of trying to force it, you will make it impossible for you
to surrender. And I can assure you that I see many people on the
spiritual path who have tried for decades, sometimes even for lifetimes,
to surrender a particular aspect of their psychology, a particular dualistic
illusion. Yet, because they keep trying to force it, it cannot
happen.
My beloved, the image that I gave this messenger yesterday, is this.
Consider that you are holding an object in your hand and someone tells
you to drop it, to let it go. Well, you might sit there with your mind
and decide, “Should I let it go, or should I hold on to it? Do
I want to get rid of it, or do I want to keep it?” And so,
your mind can go back and forth and the more you think about this –
the more intense you are in your thoughts – the more you
will subconsciously tighten your grip and hold on. Yet imagine
now that suddenly your nervous system signaled to your brain that the
object that you are holding is glowing hot. What would you do,
my beloved—you would spontaneously and instantly open your hand
and drop the object, would you not?
So you see, surrender can only happen spontaneously. There is no way
to force it, and if you try to force it, you push it away from you. And
so, what you can do is become aware of this, so that you can neutralize
the mind's tendency to hold on to things. You can also cultivate
what in traditional religion has been called faith, but which is more
because it is an inner knowing. And the inner knowing you can attain
is that by using the tools and tuning into your Christhood, you will
begin to realize that there is a part of your being that is beyond the
ego and the human conditions, beyond your outer situation.
And thereby, you will begin to know that you cannot lose anything by
giving something up in the material world, for you will not be plunged
into a black hole of having no identity. Instead, you will find a higher
identity in God. And this understanding and realization and internalization
then brings you to the point where you can willingly and gladly give
everything to God, and allow your Christ Self to give back to you what
is real. In other words, you can give up everything without focusing
on a specific belief, or habit, or practice.
You can simply give yourself into the hands of God and do what Jesus
did, when he said, “Father, if it be thy will, let this cup pass
from me. Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.” And
when you trust that that higher will is the will of your own higher
Being, the ultimate reality of your being, you will not fear letting
go, you will not fear losing something. And thus, it will be easier
for you to outsmart the ego and its attempts to create an attachment,
whereby you somehow fear or resist that state of surrender that is your
ultimate freedom from the ego.
Added September 25,
2007:
My beloved, take note of
what I am saying in my example. Once you actually experience that an
object is hot, you have no doubt about letting it go and the surrender
is spontaneous. This is obviously a sensory experience, yet you can
have a similar experience beyond the senses, namely what people call
an intuitive or "Aha" experience. Once you have this experience
and see why a certain condition is preventing you from getting where
you want to go, the surrender will be spontaneous.
What confuses many spiritual
seekers is that they are still approaching the path with the outer mind,
with the mind that is vulnerable to duality. So they read a spiritual
teaching, and the teaching says to stop doing something, be it eating
meat or engaging in anger. So they get the idea that they need to let
go of – surrender – this condition, yet the idea is still
in the outer mind.
And so they are trying to
give up – to surrender – the idea with one part of the outer
mind, but another part of the outer mind – often below the level
of conscious awareness – is holding on to the condition. So they
have a division in their beings and are being pulled in opposite directions.
So they now see that they are not giving up the condition, and this
creates a frustration in the outer mind so they try even harder. But
this only increases the tension, so the other part of the mind will
hold on to the condition even more tightly. The tension can be maintained
for a long time or it can build to such a crescendo that the person
experiences a crisis and finally lets go.
The better way is to take your focus away from the outer condition and
follow Jesus' admonition to look first for the beam – the division
– in your own eye—meaning, obviously, your own psyche. You
see, my beloved, the subtle temptation of the outer path, the false
path, is that you can gain entry into heaven by doing – or by
giving up – things in this world. And this is what causes
people to focus attention on something – anything – outside
themselves.
For example, some people get very focused on pointing out the faults
of others or world conditions—which causes them to go on a crusade
instead of taking up their cross and following Jesus. Others get very
focused on overcoming certain conditions in themselves, but they still
do this in an outer way. You see, you can give up all of the outer behavior
and all of the imperfect emotions or thoughts specified by a spiritual
teaching and yet you still have not actually discovered the beam in
your own eye.
The beam in your own eye is your self-image, the image of yourself as
a mortal, human, separate being. This image is unique for each one,
even though there are certain similarities. Yet each person has a unique
reason for holding on to his or her image of the separate self. That
is why each person must come to a unique inner experience of seeing
the separate self and seeing – experiencing in an Aha experience
– how the separate self is unreal and is preventing your real
self – the Conscious You – from attaining oneness with your
higher being.
Once you have that total – undivided – experience, you will
spontaneously let go of the separate self, but as long as you are focused
on giving up only part of the separate self, well then all other parts
of that self will resist your surrender. Do you see that as long as
you are focusing on ANY outer condition, surrender will be very difficult?
You can have an Aha
experience that shows you that a particular condition is harmful, and
thus you surrender it. Thus, for some, the path is a continual process
of surrendering small things until they finally can see the big thing.
Yet for those who have trouble surrendering, I suggest taking your focus
off the outer conditions and seeking to look squarely for the separate
self that is seeking to hide itself by keeping you focused on the outer
conditions. As Albert Einstein said, "If you keep doing the same
thing and expect different results, you are insane." Thus, if you
have trouble attaining a particular goal on the path, do something different,
meaning look for what you have not so far seen.
My beloved, do you see that this is why progressive revelation is so
essential? People will quickly become familiar with a particular teaching
and their egos will use it to create a mental box. People then think
that as long as they stay in that box, they are guaranteed to be saved.
So once that happens, we have to attempt to give a different teaching
that challenges people's mental boxes and their sense of comfortability.
Some respond and grow, while other cling to the box, often by attacking
the new teaching by using clever arguments based on the old teaching.
The argument is always the same: Because the new teaching says something
that isn't in the old teaching, it cannot be true, for God would never
say that. Yet do you see, my beloved, that the new teaching MUST say
something beyond the old teaching if it is to have any possibility of
shaking you out of your mental box?
My beloved, attachment to anything, even a spiritual teaching, is the
enemy of growth, for growth comes only through surrendering ALL attachments
to anything on Earth. Thus, if you find yourself defending your present
beliefs, you have stepped off the true path, for you are no longer looking
for the Living Teacher in disguise. Thus, whenever you are defending
something, consider that you have of a division in the psyche. For if
you were in oneness, you would have no need to defend anything. In total
surrender there can be no division, so if there is division, there is
something you have not surrendered. And the reason you have not surrendered
is that there is something you have not seen, and that something is
the separate self itself—not the condition that takes your attention
into outer things.
My beloved, we always talk about a path. Yet as Jesus has
said before, even the concept of a path can be misused by the ego.
For it implies that you can go on forever [NOTE: See also this discourse.].
Yet there are stages on the path, and there does indeed come a point
where you are ready to see and surrender the separate self. And if you
keep thinking that you have to keep taking steps on the path, then you
will never actually come to that Aha experience that empowers you to
see – and then spontaneously surrender – the separate self.
In fact, if you could see and surrender that separate self right now,
you could become a Christed being instantly. So the question is how
many steps you have to take before you come to that realization, and
that will in large part depend on your understanding of surrender and
your willingness to focus on the separate self rather than the many
separate diversions it has created in order to hide itself from you.
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Copyright
© 2007 by Kim Michaels |
