Ego game No. 5: Why the ego is always “right”
A discourse by Jesus
I will now address an ego game that is an offshoot of the previous game
for ultimate security. Nevertheless, I am addressing it as a separate
game because it is so subtle that myriad spiritual seekers – as
well as religious and non-religious people – have been stuck in
this game for lifetimes. Thus, they have been happily following the
false path – what I called the broad way that leads to destruction
– instead of finding the true path to spiritual freedom.
When you take an honest look at the world, you will notice that many
people are caught in the game of proving that some thought system is
the only right one and that all others are false. This game takes on
many disguises, and it can indeed keep people occupied for lifetimes.
Yet eventually, the real you will tire of this game and begin to wonder
if there isn’t something beyond the thought systems found in this
world, some form of ultimate truth, ultimate reality.
At that point, you are facing the essential choice that CAN take you
onto the path of Christhood. That choice is whether you are willing
to find truth or whether you will simply accept a more sophisticated
version of the ego game to establish the ultimate belief system. Most
people, of course, do not understand the choice they are facing. Thus,
my purpose for this discourse is to clarify the choice for those who
are willing to understand the deeper reality behind my statement:
22 Ye worship ye
know not what: …
23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall
worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh
such to worship him.
24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in
spirit and in truth. (John, Chapter 4)
How separation leads to idol worship
Let me ask you to conduct a simple thought experiment. When I say the
word “apples,” take note of what happens in your mind. Immediately,
a mental image comes up, a mental image of what apples mean to you.
Now imagine that I tell you that a new fruit has been discovered on
a remote island. I may describe it, and based on that description, you
will formulate a mental image. The difference is that you have had a
direct experience of apples, and thus your mental image of apples is
at least somewhat tied to reality (taking into account that the physical
senses cannot be entirely trusted). On the other hand, your mental image
of the unknown fruit is not tied to reality, since you have not experienced
it.
This shows the fundamental problem with the ego’s perception of
God. The ego is born from your separation from your source, and thus
the ego can NEVER have a direct experience of God. The ego will for
its entire existence be basing its concept of God on a mental image
that it can never compare to reality. Thus, the ego will always seek
to defend its mental image of God, which means it must prevent the conscious
self from actually experiencing God. The difference being, of course,
that because the conscious self is an extension of the Creator’s
Being, the Conscious You can actually have an experience of God.
My point being that worshiping God in Spirit and in truth means that
you make use of your conscious self’s ability to have a direct
experience of God’s Being. People who are not willing to make
use of this God-given ability – the key of knowledge – will
be worshiping idols, and their entire approach to religion is based
on a graven image of God. That is indeed why you see so many religious
people who insist that their religion is the only true belief system.
Of course, you also see people who are doing the exact same thing with
a political belief system or even the belief system called scientific
materialism.
Understanding the origin of duality
Let us now move on to consider what should seem like a peculiar fact,
namely why so many people can be absolutely convinced that their belief
system is the only true one—when in fact there are so many conflicting
belief systems that they cannot all be true. A fact that should make
people wonder whether perhaps all of them are out of touch with ultimate
reality.
Let me make an absolute statement. Any belief system that has ever existed
or that could ever exist on Earth will give an incomplete description
of God. Why is this so? Because the Creator is beyond its creation,
is beyond the totality of the material universe. Thus, no belief system
could ever give an accurate or complete description of God. It is like
trying to describe the sun by looking only at the moon.
You see the subtle difference? Because the ego is separated from God,
it cannot have a direct experience of God’s Being. Thus, the ego
thinks God can be reduced to a description, to a mental image—which
then inevitably becomes a graven image. Your conscious self can indeed
have a direct experience of God’s Being, and when you have this
experience, you will know that God could never be described by any belief
system. God can only be experienced, and as soon as you try to put words
on the experience, you degrade it.
So to the ego, God is not a real, Living Presence. God is a concept,
a mental image. The conscious self can experience God as a Living Being
that is right here, whereas the ego can only see God as a remote, conceptual
being. As I said with my analogy of apples and the unknown fruit, the
ego can never compare its mental image of God to reality, meaning it
can never overcome its idol worship. Which means it is up to your conscious
self to extricate itself from your ego’s graven images of God.
And in order to do that, you need to understand how the ego expresses
its insatiable desire for security in creating an infallible belief
system.
In order to understand this, I have to give you a concept that might
be difficult for you to grasp—if you have not yet had a direct
experience of God’s Being. Yet it is still valuable for you to
have this concept in your mind. You see, it is actually not entirely
correct to say that your conscious self can have an experience of God’s
Being. The reason is that using the word “experience” often
makes people think of experiences they have in their normal state of
awareness. For example, you may go to the beach and watch a beautiful
sunset, but you are aware that you are a separate observer watching
the scenery from a distance.
This “observing from a distance” is precisely how the ego
thinks of God and thinks of the concept of experiencing God—and
everything else for that matter. It thinks you have to experience God
as the remote being in the sky. Yet in reality, you will never experience
God as long as you look for him outside yourself, which is why I told
people that the kingdom of God is within you.
In order to experience God’s Being, you have to be willing to
stop seeing yourself as a separate being – at least for a moment
– and instead come to experience your oneness with God. You can
experience God only through what some of my early followers called “gnosis,”
which means a oneness between the knower and the known. In other words,
the normal separation between the object and the observer is set aside
and the observer becomes one with the object being observed. As a side
note, this is possible because everything has consciousness, and thus
your conscious self can experience oneness with the consciousness of
any object, even a rock.
Now, again, the ego can NEVER experience Gnosis, for if it did, it would
instantly cease to exist. So here comes the subtle point you need to
understand. Gnosis is oneness, and in oneness there is no room for separation,
meaning that there is no room for opposing viewpoints. Yet because the
ego was born from separation, its world view does indeed have room for
opposing polarities. In fact, the ego can never escape the form of thinking
that incorporates at least two polarities. Why is that so?
I have said that in God’s reality there is only oneness. So how
can you separate yourself from oneness? You can do so ONLY by creating
a distance, which can be done ONLY when there are two opposing polarities
that are seen as being completely separated—for in oneness there
is no room for distance. Only when there is distance is there room for
the illusion that you are separated from oneness and can have an existence
outside of oneness, even being able to hide something from God, as Adam
and Eve supposedly hid from God in the Garden.
Why are people so sure they are right?
So how does this allow the ego to believe it is always right? When you
create two opposing polarities, you have created a dualistic system,
a dualistic world view. The ego will then impose a value judgment upon
the system, defining one polarity as good, right or true and the other
as evil, wrong or false. Thus, if you belong to the good polarity, you
are always right compared to the people in the opposing polarity—but
NOT compared to God’s undivided reality.
Of course, the reality is that people on both sides are wrong because
they are all separated from the reality of God, which is oneness. Nevertheless,
the ego can never see this, and as long as people’s conscious
selves cannot see through the dualistic logic, they cannot see it either.
And thus, they are stuck in playing the ego game of seeking to prove
that their side is right—constantly being challenged by those in
the other polarity who – although they are obviously wrong –
still insist that they are right.
I now need you to sincerely ponder the mechanism that allows people
to be so convinced that they are right. Again, this is a subtle point
that many seekers fail to grasp. The essential realization here is that
when you are experiencing oneness, you are NOT having a mental image
of God’s reality. You experience oneness, and thus you clearly
experience that everything within the Sphere of Oneness is real, whereas
everything outside that sphere is unreal. Of course, you also experience
that only oneness exists, which means that what is outside oneness only
has a temporary existence in the minds of beings caught in duality.
My point is that when you experience oneness – the Christ consciousness
– you have no mental image and no value judgment. You distinguish
only between what is real and what is unreal, NOT what is good or evil.
When you separate yourself from this oneness, you become blinded by
the veil of duality, which hides oneness. Instead, everything you see
is based on a dualistic view in which there are two polarities. (As
a side note, a person in Christ consciousness still creates mental images
of what he or she wants to co-create. Yet such a person does not mistake
mental images for reality.)
You now need to understand that the ego was born from this separation,
and thus it is simply incapable of seeing beyond it or even questioning
it. The statements I have just made about oneness cannot be grasped
by the ego, which will struggle to fit them into its dualistic world
view. Likewise, when your conscious self has forgotten its origin, it
too does not think to look beyond or question the dualistic world view—although
it is capable of doing so. Thus, people blinded by duality do not question
the basic world view that everything can be defined based on two opposing
polarities, such as good and evil. In other words, they uncritically
accept the dualistic world view, which means they unknowingly accept
the basic concept of this world view, namely that there is a division
between right and wrong, true and false, good and evil AND that this
division is defined by the dualistic system itself.
Do you see the subtlety here? The Christ mind sees everything in terms
of what is real and unreal based on a direct experience of oneness.
The mind of anti-christ sees everything in terms of right and wrong—the
difference being that because it has no experience of oneness, its definition
of right and wrong is based on a mental image. In other words, in the
dualistic mind, right is defined in RELATION to – is defined as
the opposite of – wrong—yet both right and wrong are defined
by the dualistic mind and have no connection to the reality of oneness.
They are both graven images.
Do you see the consequence of this? In the Christ mind, reality is NOT
defined in relation to or in opposition to unreality. Oneness simply
IS, and it does not have, nor does it need, an opposite. Again, in oneness
there can be no opposites. Yet because of free will, it must be possible
to step outside of oneness, and this can be done only by stepping into
duality.
Thus, when you do step behind the veil of duality, you suddenly see
everything as being on a relative scale with an opposing polarity at
each end. What exactly does this mean? It means that ANY dualistic thought
system is based on a mental image of the world NOT on reality itself.
And this mental image is created by defining two opposites, such as
God and the devil.
Now comes the subtle point. When a dualistic thought system is defined,
it is OF NECESSITY based on an assumption, what is often called an “axiom”
in logic. Do you see why this is so? It is because duality cannot experience
oneness, and thus it MUST make an assumption about what is real and
unreal. Only the assumption MUST of necessity be limited BECAUSE it
is separated from reality, from oneness! The assumption is based on
a mental image that is disconnected from reality and can never be compared
to reality—by the ego.
An axiom is a statement or premise that is thought to be self-evident
or universally true, and thus it does not need to be proven or questioned.
Thus, once people have accepted a dualistic thought system, they rarely
question the basic assumption upon which it is based. They accept it
as universally true, and that is why they are so absolutely convinced
that their thought system is the only right one and has ultimate authority.
Do you see the mechanism? Someone defines an axiom that is an absolute
truth, and then builds a thought system upon that “truth,”
meaning that the thought system must of necessity be true. As long as
you do not question the basic axiom, you will be absolutely convinced
that your system is superior to any other—and you will have the
perfect excuse for ignoring conflicting views. You might even feel justified
in seeking to destroy such ideas or the people who promote them. The
excuse is, of course, that since your thought system is based on an
infallible truth, any opposing views must – per definition –
be false.
Examples of infallible belief systems
Let us look at a couple of examples. Fundamentalist Christianity is
based on an axiom which states that the Bible is the infallible word
of God, meaning that it has the highest possible authority, and thus
anything conflicting or going beyond the Bible must be false. Another
axiom is that the Bible should be “interpreted” literally
(of course, the words “literal” and “interpretation”
are contradictory), meaning that a fundamentalist church will claim
that its particular literal interpretation of the Bible is the only
true one. All conflicting interpretations must therefore be of the devil,
which means fundamentalists have the perfect excuse for ignoring them.
Of course, they fail to see that they are using the exact same logic
that the scribes and Pharisees used against me, when I stood before
them in the flesh.
Another example is materialistic philosophy, which holds as an axiom
that science – for example through the theory of evolution –
has proven that there is nothing beyond the material universe, thus
there is no God. Again, such people have the perfect excuse for ignoring
any contradictory evidence – even when produced by science itself
– since it is just superstition or the subjectivity of the mind.
Of course, you also have political thought systems, such as the Marxist
belief that the driving force in society is the struggle between the
ruling class and the workers. Thus, again, any conflicting system must
be false, which then leads to the struggle between capitalism and communism.
Of course, capitalism is also a dualistic thought system based on the axiom
that capitalism represents free enterprise, as opposed to a communist
system with state ownership and control. Obviously, capitalism is simply
another elitist system (as is communism) and thus has nothing whatsoever
to do with freedom.
My overall point is that all of these systems cause people to accept
the underlying axiom as something that should never be questioned. Which
means that the systems form closed boxes, and once people accept the
underlying axiom, they can remain trapped indefinitely—unless
they dare to question the unquestionable.
Of course, any dualistic thought system has the perfect way to prevent
people from questioning its axioms. That way is to engage people in
the dualistic struggle against the enemies of the system, which can
then keep people’s minds so preoccupied that they never actually
get around to questioning the underlying assumption of their own system
or of duality itself. However, this epic struggle will be the topic
of the next ego game.
Do you truly see that ANY thought system in this world is based on an
axiom, an assumption, a mental image? Such a system may still help you
make progress by expanding your understanding, as many spiritual thought
systems can do. Yet any such system sets limits for how far you can
go in your quest for ultimate truth—for in order to remain within
the system, you cannot question its basic axioms. You will not go beyond
those limits until you are willing to question the basic assumptions
upon which the system is built. This is the difference between a religious
person – who never questions the basic tenets of his or her religion
– and a mystic who accepts no limits for the mind.
The “advantage” of a dualistic system
So why do people accept these dualistic thought systems? They do so
because the systems offer some very clear advantages—that is,
advantages for people who are trapped in duality. In the last ego game,
I talked about the ego’s need for security, and it should be obvious
that this need is cleverly filled by a dualistic thought system. The
system promises that its members are superior to all other people, and
thus the egos of the members can feel secure. For example, a fundamentalist
Christian system promises that its members are the only ones who will
go to heaven, whereas all others will burn in hell—for all eternity.
Yet even beyond that, there is another more subtle advantage. When you
accept an absolute thought system, you can no longer be proven wrong—and
the ego hates nothing more than being proven wrong. You can feel secure
in knowing that no matter what arguments other people come up with,
you will ultimately be proven right. And thus, you can easily brush
aside or ignore anything that conflicts your beliefs.
This basically means that you can avoid looking at the beam in your
own eye, for since you are already right or superior, it can only be
other people who have a problem—not you. Just look at how many
fundamentalist Christians feel they are my true followers and feel they
can safely ignore the beam in their own eye—and instead focus
on the splinters in the eyes of all other people.
Of course, there is an even more subtle advantage. Once you accept an
infallible belief system, you can basically stop thinking about the
more difficult questions of life. This makes your ego feel very secure
and comfortable, because on a surface level it can never be proven wrong
by anything outside yourself. Yet the real “advantage” is
that the ego can feel it has you under control. For as long as you are
not thinking, there is no risk that you will question the reality of
your ego. And thus, you are truly trapped—growth has come to a
complete stop.
Your choice
So what is the basic choice you have to make as a result of reading
this discourse? You have to decide whether you want to be right with
God or whether you want to be “right” in a dualistic world.
Do you want to experience God’s ultimate reality, or do you want
to remain in the dualistic world, where you can always be proven right
in opposition to something that is wrong?
If you want to be right with God – which ultimately means being
in oneness – how do you get started? You need to start by taking
an honest look at your belief system, your world view. You need to consider
the axioms – the underlying assumptions – upon which your
world view is based. And then you need to systematically – not
all at once, but one at a time – question your axioms.
Can you see that this will make your ego very uncomfortable, because
it will feel it as the ultimate threat to its control over you and its
very survival? Thus, you should not be surprised that your ego will
do everything it can to prevent you from starting or completing the
process. What is its primary weapon? It is the argument that there MUST
be something in your world view that is true—there must be something
you can trust, something you can rely upon.
Can you see the argument? It might take any number of forms, but here
is one: “Come on, now, how can this ‘Jesus’ say that
everything you believe is wrong? You have been a student of the ascended
masters for decades. You have studied all these teachings that were
given directly by the ascended masters, and surely those teachings couldn’t
be all wrong. Kim has simply lost it and is no longer talking to the
real Jesus, for the real Jesus would never say something like that!”
But you see, my beloved, your ego can turn ANY spiritual teaching into
a closed mental box, into an absolutist belief system that supports
its quest for security. And I can tell you that many of the people who
have been following the spiritual path the longest are precisely the
ones who have allowed their egos to use spiritual teachings to build
a sense of security—without seeing what was happening. How can
you tell? Well, if you sense any uncomfortability toward questioning
your basic beliefs about life, then that uncomfortability can ONLY come
for your ego.
Again, I am not actually saying that everything you know or believe
is wrong. I am only saying that if you truly want to make progress on
the REAL path to Christhood, you have to be willing to question ANY
aspect of your world view. For that which you are not willing to question
will inevitably keep you from reaching the ultimate goal of the path.
And what is that goal? It is the complete oneness with God’s reality.
And what happens when you are in that oneness? You no longer need any
thought systems, for when you have a direct experience of oneness, why
would you need a mental image of anything?
You can still use an outer teaching as a way to communicate with other
people. Take note that I am not here saying that spiritual teachings
are worthless. They are – at their best – tools for communicating
an understanding that can help people progress toward a direct experience
of oneness. Yet the problem is that far too many spiritual seekers fall
prey to the ego game of using a spiritual teaching to build the ego’s
sense of security, its sense of always being right.
And thus, the spiritual teaching that was meant to liberate them from
duality now becomes an extremely efficient tool for keeping them trapped
in duality. For there are no people who are more firmly trapped in duality
than those who have used a dualistic system to convince themselves that
they are already saved. No one is more firmly trapped than he who thinks
he is free. And ultimate freedom comes ONLY through oneness.
Those who have ears had better hear, for I speak from that oneness,
and I seek to bridge the gap between separation and oneness. Your conscious
self has ears to hear—if you will stop listening to the subtle
temptations of the ego and admit that even if every person on Earth
thinks you are right, you are not right with God until you are one with
God. For in oneness there is no right or wrong. Oneness is all there
IS.
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Copyright
© 2008 by Kim Michaels |
