Making
LIFE decisions or Death decisions
A discourse
by Jesus
NOTE:
This teaching was given on August 29, 2006, after the NEW
DIRECTION was implemented.
We have now reached a turning point in my discourses on the ego. My
first nine discourses on “The
least you should know about the ego” form the Alpha polarity.
My last discourse on magnificent confusion
forms the nexus of the figure-eight, and we will now enter the lower
figure, the Omega polarity.
The first discourses presented the overall view, the big picture, so
that you have a foundation for knowing that you are more than the ego.
It was an attempt to show you the forest without focusing on the individual
trees. Why did I start out this way? Because you are not only a person
who is lost in the forest, you are a person who has grown up in the
forest. Thus, your upbringing has not given you a clear understanding
of the real cause that makes your life an ongoing struggle.
Therefore, I had to start out by showing you that you are lost but that
there is something outside the forest. It is not until you recognize
yourself as lost that you can start looking for a way out instead of
feeling hopeless – or even content – in the shadow of the
trees. You now understand that the core of your identity is the Conscious
You and that you are MORE than the earthly identity built by your ego.
You should also recognize that you already know you are more than the
ego, because it is the Conscious You who has studied my previous discourses
on the ego. You have done so only because you want to be more than what
you are right now. You don’t really think it was your ego that
compelled you to read these long and somewhat complex discourses on
the ego, do you? So you should allow yourself to recognize that you
already know there is something outside the ego forest.
However, having a mental image of the forest is not the same as being
outside that forest. You still have to follow the trail that leads you
out, and for a time your vision of what is outside will be blocked by
a number of individual trees. Thus, in this next section we will look
at the individual trees, namely the games that the ego has constructed
in order to keep you trapped in the forest. The strategy of the ego
is to get you so entangled in the branches of one or more individual
trees that you forget about the trail.
Let me assure you that having made it this far, especially if you have
recognized that you are in a state of magnificent confusion, is an accomplishment.
My first discourses were actually designed to act as a filter to filter
out those who are not ready to let go of their egos. I am in no way
passing judgment upon such people; I am simply stating the fact that
not everyone is ready to see through and leave behind the ego.
Virtually every human being on this planet is somewhat blinded by the
ego. Yet the vast majority is not ready to even acknowledge the existence
of the ego, let alone take a long look in the mirror and recognize:
“I have an ego, and I need to rise above it!” Such people
will have taken one of the “easy ways out” that I offered
between the lines in the first discourses, and their egos will have
found an excuse for not continuing. Yet anyone who starts the series
will have had certain seeds planted, and in good time they will sprout
and come to the surface of awareness so that the person can take another
look at the ego.
My point is that if you have sincerely studied my previous discourses,
you are ready to begin looking at the specific games that your own ego
is playing. In fact, you have already overcome some of these games or
you would still be so identified with the ego that you would not be
open to this teaching. Thus, as I describe the games, I hope you will
begin to recognize that as a spiritual seeker, you have risen above
some of the most destructive ego games.
I hope this will give you some encouragement in realizing that you might
be further along on the path than you thought. Even if you have overcome
the very lowest ego game, you are still in a much better place than
those who are trapped in that game. Thus, I hope you will recognize
that if you have overcome one ego game, you can overcome them all, for
they are truly all cut from the same cloth. As I will explain further,
the ego has only one game that comes in numerous disguises, some more
subtle than others. Yet once you see the basic strategy of the ego,
you can more easily expose the rest of its games.
My point is that as I expose the ego games in this section, I will start
with the most primitive and then gradually work up toward the most subtle.
I hope you will honestly look at yourself, recognize which games you
have left behind and build a positive momentum. As you build this momentum,
you should be able to acknowledge when you come to the first game that
you have not yet – completely – overcome. And then you can
use your momentum to avoid a negative reaction – such as guilt
or denial – and simply acknowledge that since you have already
risen above one or more games, you can surely rise above this next one
as well.
As you continue to build on your accomplishments, you will reinforce
the momentum until it becomes an unstoppable force that pulls you through
the forest and simply cuts down the trees that are in your way. Before
you know it, you will see the light filtering through the trees, and
one day you will break through the last brush and enter the open field,
where your eyes can finally see the horizon of Being.
Think about what it is like to be lost in a forest. The biggest problem
is that you have no absolute point of reference, you have no horizon
but only a very limited field of view. You only see trees and have no
way of knowing which direction to follow in order to get out of the
forest. Yet as you cut down the individual trees, you will eventually
catch a glimpse of the horizon and now you will have a firm direction
to follow. In the beginning it might seem like overcoming the ego is
hopeless, but if you keep overcoming the individual ego games, you WILL
one day break through and catch a glimpse of your own Higher Being.
From then on, you will never again be completely lost in the forest.
The master game of the ego
Although I will describe the individual games used by the ego, I will
start out by describing the master game. You may not be able to clearly
see this game at this point, but I want to plant the seed in your mind
so that it can germinate and eventually break through to your conscious
awareness.
As I explained in my first discourses, the Conscious You created the
ego by deciding that it would no longer make decisions. This is illustrated
in the old fairy tale about the sleeping beauty. The princess is the
Conscious You and one day she falls victim to a plot hatched by the
evil Godmother, namely the prince of this world. Thus, the princess
falls asleep and an impenetrable forest grows up around her castle.
The forest, of course, is the ego and the individual trees are the illusions
of the ego, the ego games. One day a prince comes by, penetrates the
forest and kisses the princess who awakens. The prince symbolizes the
Living Christ who can take on many forms, both as an outer teacher and
as the inner teacher of your Christ self. Regardless of the form, the
Living Christ always serves to awaken the Conscious You to the need
to come up higher.
In the fairy tale, the prince and the princess live happily ever after,
and here is where the fairy tale departs from reality. In the real world,
the Conscious You is not home free by being awakened. It/you must personally
cut down all of the trees that surround the castle, and only then will
you live happily ever after.
The master strategy of the ego involves two elements. The first one
is that the ego will do anything it can to prevent the Conscious You
from awakening to the realization that there must be more to your identity.
For the majority of human beings, this strategy is still working and
they still identify themselves completely with the identity that the
ego has built in the material world. The fact that you are reading this
means that you are a spiritual seeker, and thus your ego’s first
strategy has failed. You know there is more to your identity and you
are actively looking for it.
Thus, you are now the target for the ego’s second strategy, which
is to prevent you from clearing the thorny trees around the castle.
Each of these trees represents a decision, a decision based on the mind
of anti-christ, the mind of duality and separation. This is where I
would like to leave the fairy-tale analogy behind and instead refer
to the image of a spiral staircase. Each decision that was based on
the mind of anti-christ took you further down the spiral staircase,
the staircase that leads into the darkness of separation from your higher
Being. This is what the Bible refers to as “the valley of the
shadow of death” (Proverbs 23:4).
The separation from your I AM Presence and your true sense of identity
truly is the consciousness of spiritual death. Thus, the decisions based
on the illusions of the mind of anti-christ brought you further into
the consciousness of death. We might say that each of these decisions
was a Death decision. One kiss from the prince is not enough to raise
you out of the shadow of death. You must consciously walk the staircase
and undo each of the decisions that brought you down the staircase.
And this is precisely what the ego will do everything in its power to
prevent you from doing.
In order to take a step up the spiral staircase, you must come to see
through the dualistic illusion that brought you down to that step. You
can do this only by seeing the Christ truth that counteracts the illusion,
the truth that makes you free. And then you must choose the truth of
Christ over the “truth” of anti-christ. You must choose
life over death. I would like to call each of these decisions a “LIFE
decision.”
What I am hoping to help you see is that the ego will do anything to
prevent you from making these LIFE decisions. And in order to accomplish
this overall goal, the ego – and the forces of anti-christ –
have invented a number of subtle games. The goal is to keep you entangled
with a particular illusion, so that you cannot let go of it and rise
to the next step on the path.
What is a LIFE decision?
When I talk about LIFE decisions, I am not talking about minor decisions,
such as whether to bring an umbrella or what to have for lunch. Nor
am I talking about big decisions in your material life, such as what
career to pursue or what person to marry. I am talking about the kind
of decisions that affect how you see yourself, God, the world and the
relationship between these three factors in your life. I am talking
about decisions that affect your sense of identity.
As I explained in the previous discourses, when you descend one step
on the spiral staircase, your old identity dies and a new one is born.
Thus, in order to ascend one step, the old – human – identity
must die and a new more spiritual one must be born. That is why I said:
5 Jesus answered,
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and
of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born
of the Spirit is spirit. (John, Chapter 3)
This spiritual rebirth requires
you to voluntarily and consciously – if it is not conscious, it
cannot be voluntary – let the old human identity die and accept
that you are reborn into a higher spiritual sense of identity. To make
this less abstract, let me give an example.
Many people struggle with alcoholism and use various programs, such
as Alcoholics Anonymous, to combat this condition. Some manage to stop
drinking by using the force of conscious will to suppress the urge to
drink. This is commendable, but it comes with a price, namely that you
must struggle to uphold the decision, often for the rest of your life.
An organization such as AA maintains that you are an alcoholic for life
and that you must continue to suppress the urge to drink. I am not denouncing
this approach
for people at a certain level, but there is a higher approach.
You see, there is only one reason why you could become susceptible to
alcoholism in the first place, namely that you have accepted a sense
of identity as a human being who has no real purpose to life and who
is powerless to overcome certain problems. Thus, if you can’t
overcome a problem (to stop the pain) and if you really are not worth
anything, it is okay to dull the pain through alcohol.
You then gradually slide into a physical and emotional addiction, but
one day the Conscious you wakes up and realizes this cannot go on or
you will die. So you go into a treatment program and use the force of
will to suppress what is seen as the cause of the problem, namely the
urge to drink. However, the real cause is your sense of identity as
a basically worthless human being whose life has no higher purpose.
The real solution is to transcend that state of consciousness, which
you can do by internalizing the Christ truth that you are a unique,
spiritual being who is infinitely loved by God and who came to Earth
for a specific spiritual purpose. Once you accept this new sense of
identity – once you let the old identity die and are spiritually
reborn – you will see that you are worthy and that your life has
a mission that is far too important to let alcohol stand in the way
of its fulfillment.
Thus, you have not simply suppressed the urge to drink –
which is only the effect and not the cause – but you have accepted
a higher sense of identity. For the new person that you now are, drinking
is simply unthinkable. It is not even an option and the ego and the
prince of this world have no way to tempt you into drinking. You are
so focused on your mission that you do not even notice their temptations.
(This leads them to stop and attempt to come up with another kind of
temptation that works at your new level of consciousness. Nevertheless,
you have still made significant progress and it has become harder for
them to tempt you.)
Do you now see the overall strategy of the ego? You have descended the
staircase by accepting a lower sense of identity than your true identity,
which is that you are a unique spiritual being. You have accepted that
you are a human being with certain limitations. The ego is trying to
prevent you from letting go of a limited sense of identity and accepting
a higher one. It does this by either keeping you in spiritual blindness
(so you don’t see your limitations or the alternative) or making
you so attached to your current sense of identity that you are not willing
to let go of it.
Your current sense of identity is based on something in this world,
it is a worldly or material sense of identity. Thus, the ego is trying
to keep you so entangled with or attached to the “things of this
world” that you either cannot see or cannot accept your true spiritual
identity. The ego seeks to accomplish this through the individual ego
games, each of which is designed to keep you so focused on something
in the material world that you cannot or will not look beyond it. You
are not willing to give up your limited sense of identity in order to
rise to a broader sense of identity. You are not able or willing to
let go of your belief that you ARE the lower identity and that there
is nothing more to you than what that identity specifies.
How did you descend the staircase of life?
Let us now consider how you descended the staircase that led you to
your present level of consciousness. Here this is where the fairy tale
– and even the Bible – gives an incorrect description of
the process. The Bible describes the Fall of man as one momentous event.
In a sense it is true that losing contact with your spiritual teacher
was a momentous event, but it happened as the result of a gradual process.
Many religions and many New Age teachings present the Fall of Man as
one event and they present the solution – salvation or whatever
it is called – the same way. This is one of the illusions created
by the prince of this world. He wants you to believe that if only you
belong to the right Christian church and believe all its doctrines,
I – or rather the church’s idolatrous image of Christ –
will one day appear in the sky and save you. Or he wants you to believe
that if only you are loving and kind to everyone, you will one day spontaneously
wake up and be enlightened.
Both philosophies – and the many others that spring from the same
consciousness – have the same goal, namely to pacify you so that
you do not realize the true key to salvation, spiritual growth, enlightenment
or whatever you want to call it. That key is to understand the mechanics
of how you descend and ascend the spiral staircase and the role of LIFE
decisions. Let me explain.
The consciousness of anti-christ is subtle, which means that the Fall
did not happen as the result of one decision on your part. You gradually
started experimenting with the dualistic mind, and you gradually descended
the spiral staircase. At some point the Conscious You did make the momentous
decision that it would no longer be in command of your life, but most
people did this without fully realizing what was at stake. They had
already become so partially blinded by the duality of the mind of anti-christ
that they did not fully understand what had happened. They did not understand
that they had just made the quintessential Death decision.
Compare this to descending a staircase. If you walk down the steps,
each step will send a jolt up your legs, and you know you have descended
one step. You experience each step as a discrete and distinct event
and you know you have gone one step down. Yet now imagine that you lie
down on the staircase and allow gravity to pull your body down. You
simply slide down the steps and because your body spans several steps,
it becomes harder to realize that you have descended a step and that
this is a discrete event. After all, which step did you just descend,
the one under your head or the one under your feet? And when you do
not clearly see that you have taken a step down, you can slide quite
far down the spiral staircase before you even realize what has happened.
My point is that when you descended the staircase of consciousness,
you did not clearly see what was happening. You did not realize that
each step was a discrete event that caused your old sense of identity
to die and a new – more limited one – to be born. The reason
why you did not see this was that you were blinded by the dualistic
logic of the mind of anti-christ, as Eve was blinded by the serpent
in the Garden of Eden when he said, “Thou shalt not surely
die!”
Do you see that this is the very same lie that is behind each of the
steps you have taken down the staircase? You think that you will not
surely die by making a death decision. After all, you have
already gone part of the way suggested by the ego and you are still
alive, so why not follow the ego a bit further? This is the logic that
allowed you to slide down the spiral staircase until you could no longer
see the exit door at the top and even forgot there is something at the
top of the staircase. This is when the conscious you accepted a sense
of identity as a human being instead of a spiritual being.
Now, here is where we must once again correct the fairy tale. It is
true that the Conscious You is asleep, but only metaphorically speaking.
You are asleep in the sense that you do not see the reality of life,
namely that you are more than a material, human being and that the world
is more than the material universe. Yet you are not asleep in the sense
that you are unconscious. Thus, you are painfully aware of the consequences
of the ego-based decisions and you cannot escape experiencing those
consequences. Here is where we need to take a closer look at what exactly
it means that the Conscious You stopped making decisions.
How you can make decisions without making decisions
In my previous discourses, I said that at some point the Conscious You
decided that it would no longer make decisions, and it allowed the ego
to make decisions for you. This is true, but there is a deeper understanding
that we now need to uncover.
The fact is that there are some decisions that can be made by the ego
and there are some decisions that can only be made by the Conscious
You. The Conscious You is an extension of your I AM Presence and a spark
of God’s Being. It is sent into the material world with the command
to multiply and have dominion. This means that you must multiply your
sense of identity as a co-creator, and only the Conscious You can make
decisions about your sense of identity. Only the Conscious You can make
a Death decision – a decision that leads you to a lower sense
of identity – or a LIFE decision – a decision that
leads you to a higher sense of identity. The ego cannot make such decisions,
but it can influence how the Conscious You makes such decisions.
To illustrate this, consider a company that is owned by one person.
The owner does not want to make all the day-to-day decisions and has
hired a CEO to run the business while he spends time in his private
office or in his country club. The CEO can make most of the decisions
related to running the business, but some decisions must still be made
by the owner. One year the CEO makes some bad decisions and the company
loses money. Yet he does not admit this to the owner. Instead, he comes
up with a plan that makes it seem like it was market conditions that
led to the loss, and if only the owner will approve a loan from the
bank, the company will regroup and be much stronger next year.
Because the owner really does not want to run the company himself, he
believes the CEO and approves the loan. This obviously takes the company
one step down the ladder of debt, but the owner thinks it will only
be a temporary setback and he again retreats into his private world.
The next year the company is still not showing a profit, but again the
CEO comes up with a convincing plan and the owner – who really
doesn’t want to leave his private world – approves another
loan.
Obviously, this process can continue for as long as the owner believes
the CEO. As long as the CEO can avoid something that shakes the owner’s
trust, he can get away with quite a lot and the company can slide into
hopeless debt before the owner realizes what is going on. Once the situation
gets so bad that the owner can no longer ignore it, he will have to
wake up and run the company himself. However, what will it take to get
to that point? That depends on the balance between the owner’s
desire to stay in his private world and his desire to avoid having the
company go down. As long as there is no distinct event that shatters
the owner’s illusion, the slide can continue indefinitely.
Yet what is the real problem here? Although the owner has retreated
from running the company, he is not completely isolated. He still feels
the consequences of the company not making a profit and he still has
to make the most important decisions. So although he might feel as if
he is no longer making decisions, this is only an illusion. He is still
making the Death decisions that take the company to a distinctly lower
level, yet what he is NOT doing is taking charge of gathering the information
UPON WHICH THESE DECISIONS ARE BASED. He allows the CEO to present to
him a selective picture of the situation and then he bases his LIFE
and Death decisions on the image presented by the CEO.
This is the exact dynamic between the Conscious You and the ego. The
Conscious You decides that it no longer wants to be in command of your
life, so it allows the ego to make the day-to-day decisions. Yet the
ego cannot decide on your sense of identity, so the ego can only make
decisions within the framework of how the Conscious You sees itself.
The ego’s decisions are based on the duality consciousness, which
means they will inevitably lead to undesirable consequences.
The Conscious You will experience these consequences, but the ego will
present you with a “company report” that makes it seem like
this is just a temporary setback. You are the victim of circumstances
beyond your control, but if only you will make the decision recommended
by the ego, you will see that things will get better. The ego will present
you with a view of the situation that is based on dualistic thinking.
The ego really believes its solution will work, but in reality a solution
based on the duality consciousness cannot solve problems created by
the duality consciousness.
Yet if you still do not want to take back the responsibility for running
the company, you might believe the ego. You will then make a Death decision
that takes you down to a distinctly lower sense of identity. You might
not realize what is happening, but the ego will now begin to make decisions
based on this lower sense of identity. By accepting a lower sense of
identity, you have given the ego more freedom to act, and this will
lead to even more unpleasant consequences. Thus, you have already set
the stage for the next crisis.
Do you see the mechanics?
You make a Death decision that takes you to a lower level of identity.
The ego now takes over and makes the minor decisions based on this new
sense of identity. Each of these decisions leads to unpleasant consequences,
and in order to escape those consequences, you will – as long
as you refuse to take command of your life – make another
Death decision that takes you further down the staircase.
When it comes time for the next company report, the ego will present
a rosy picture that makes it seem like it is not the ego’s fault,
and certainly not your fault. Sure things are tough right now, but they
are sure to get better. And in the meantime, why don’t you –
the new HUMAN being – simply make yourself comfortable by taking
advantage of the pleasures the material world has to offer. Stop worrying
about the purpose of life and simply have a little fun. Live a little—until
you have to die some more.
The only way out
Once you have forgotten your higher identity, you cannot see any way
out of your dilemma. You do not understand that the unpleasant consequences
are the inevitable result of decisions based on the duality consciousness.
You have forgotten that there is an alternative to this state of consciousness,
so you think the only way to escape the unpleasant consequences is to
make better dualistic decisions. You think you can solve your problems
without transcending your current sense of identity—which is the
source of your problems. And this is precisely what your ego and the
prince of this world want you to keep believing. They want you to believe
in the illusion that you can solve a problem with the same state of
consciousness that created the problem (which is what they believe).
At some point, the Conscious You will experience such severe consequences
that it will wake up and say, “I can’t keep doing this anymore;
I have to change something.” Yet even after this awakening, the
ego will do anything to prevent you from realizing the reality I have
just described. That reality has the following components:
-
Only the Conscious You
can make LIFE and Death decisions, decisions that take you up or
down the staircase of identity.
-
You have descended that
staircase because you made Death decisions.
-
You made those decisions
because you allowed the ego to gather the information upon which
you based the decisions.
-
Because the ego can
see only the mind of anti-christ, all of its information was dualistic
in nature and could only create more problems.
-
The ONLY way out is to
start making LIFE decisions.
-
Such decisions must
be based on the reality of the Christ mind rather than on the illusions
of the mind of anti-christ.
-
Only the Conscious You
can access the Christ mind. The ego can NEVER do so.
- The Conscious You ALWAYS
has the option to reach for the mind of Christ. No matter how far
you have descended down the staircase, you can still ask for guidance,
and you will receive it. When the student is ready, the teacher will
ALWAYS appear, and the teacher will give the student exactly what
is needed to take the very next step up the spiral staircase. The
challenge for you is to recognize the teacher and be willing to follow
his/her directions.
The problem is that before
you can make use of this “open door that no man can shut,”
you – meaning the Conscious You – must decide to take back
responsibility for your life. You must take back responsibility for
making LIFE decisions and you must take back responsibility for gathering
the information upon which you base those decisions. You must refuse
to allow the ego to back you into a corner, where it seems like you
have to make decisions based on two extremes that are both defined by
the mind of anti-christ. You must refuse to be manipulated into a situation
where it seems like your only option is to choose the lesser evil. You
must take back your responsibility to discern between the truth of Christ
and the illusions of anti-christ.
My overall point is this. Once you have made the decision not to take
command, you allow the ego to provide the information upon which you
make the big decisions, and you slide down the staircase without realizing
what is happening. You experience it as a blur rather than as a string
of discrete events, each one causing the death of the old you and the
birth of the new you. However, you cannot ascend the staircase the same
way. You cannot simply slide up the staircase—you must walk by
your own efforts. You cannot expect a spiritual teacher to pull you
up the staircase as the ego pulled you down. You must stand up and decide
to walk by your own effort.
The real key is to realize that walking up the staircase requires you
to take a number of discrete and distinct steps. In order to climb to
the next step, you must remove both feet from the previous step, meaning
that you must decide to leave that step behind forever. This requires
you to willingly let the old sense of identity die and allow yourself
to be reborn into a new sense of identity. This is what Paul described:
22 That ye put
off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt
according to the deceitful lusts;
23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;
24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness
and true holiness. (Ephesians, Chapter 4)
For each step you take up
the spiral staircase, YOU must make a decision. This decision must be
based on the following:
-
You see that what brought
you to your current step on the staircase was a decision that YOU
made.
-
You see that the decision
was based on the illusions of the mind of anti-christ presented
by the ego.
-
You see why this illusion
is wrong and why it could only lead to unpleasant consequences.
-
You see this because
you have recognized the truth of Christ that makes you free from
the illusion.
- You now consciously
and with no regrets or attachments choose to let go of the illusion
and accept and internalize the truth of Christ.
By making this LIFE decision,
you have allowed the old you to die and you have been spiritually reborn
into a new sense of identity. This does not mean you are now saved and
will live happily ever after. It means you have ascended one step on
the spiral staircase, and you are now ready to face the next challenge.
Only when you have faced every decision that brought you down the staircase,
will you reach the top and live happily ever after.
The ultimate LIFE decision
Let me summarize what I have revealed in this discourse: You can sleepwalk
your way down the spiral staircase of life, but you CANNOT sleepwalk
your way back up! You can get down by making unconscious decisions,
but you can get back up ONLY by making conscious decisions.
Let me return to the analogy of the owner of a company. After several
years of bad financial results, the owner finally wakes up and realizes
his CEO has fed him a distorted view of the company’s situation.
Yet he now faces the crucial decision of whether to take back charge
of the company or whether to simply fire the bad CEO and hire another
one so he can continue to retreat into his private world. He decides
to do the latter and hires a new CEO. Yet he is unaware that it is actually
the old CEO who has taken on a disguise and has presented himself as
a different person.
As a spiritual seeker, you have already made some LIFE decisions, and
for each decision, you fired the ego which caused you to rise to a higher
sense of identity. The problem is that the ego will immediately change
its disguise and present itself as a capable CEO who can run your new
company for you. My point is that many spiritual seekers have made significant
progress, yet they have not yet come to the point of making the ultimate
LIFE decision.
This decision is the firm commitment that you will take charge of your
life and that you will remain in charge. You will make the important
decisions and you will take responsibility for attaining the vision
of Christ before you make such decisions. You will keep making one LIFE
decision after another, and you will keep doing so until you reach the
top of the spiral staircase. You will never again allow your ego to
talk you into abandoning your responsibility to discern between the
reality of Christ and the unreality of anti-christ.
Now, before you become discouraged and start feeling like it is an insurmountable
task to overcome all of the ego’s illusions, let me make it clear
what you are up against. You might take an honest look at yourself and
see that you still have a ways to go before you are free of the ego.
And in your current state of confusion it might seem very difficult
to see through the ego’s illusions. Yet who ever said you have
to see through the ego’s illusions all at once or that you have
to do so with your current level of consciousness?
Why do you think I keep talking about a spiral staircase? The key to
climbing a staircase is to take one step at a time, and all you need
to do is focus on two steps at a time—the step you are on right
now and the one right above it. You don’t need to look at the
top step and you certainly don’t need to climb the staircase by
taking one giant leap. You simply keep putting one foot above the other,
and as long as you keep taking one doable step at a time, you WILL make
it to the top. The ego can stop you only by preventing you from rising
above a certain step.
Let us say that the spiral staircase has 33 steps. You take stock of
your life and realize you are on Step 10. At this stage you do not have
the Christ discernment and insight to see through the ego illusion that
prevents you from rising from Step 32 to Step 33. Yet you don’t
have to see through that illusion right now. You only have to see through
the illusion that prevents you from rising from Step 10 to Step 11.
And I can assure you that you do have what it takes to dismiss that
illusion. You simply need to ask for the Christ vision you need, and
if you ask with an open mind, you WILL receive an answer.
It is a spiritual law, that when the student is ready, the teacher WILL
appear. The teacher may appear as the inner teacher of your Christ self
or as an outer teacher that might have a variety of disguises. Yet the
teacher will ALWAYS find a way to present you with the insight you need
in order to rise to the next step. If your mind is open, you will recognize
the Divine direction and use it to rise to a higher level of identity.
And once you have that higher sense of identity, you will have what
it takes to dismiss the next ego-illusion and take another step.
I hope you now see what is the ego’s master strategy. It is to
prevent you from making the ultimate LIFE decision, but also
to prevent you from making the next LIFE decision. It is precisely
to accomplish this goal that the ego and the prince of this world have
come up with a number of games that are designed to make you stuck at
a particular step. As you begin to study these games, you will see that
you have already overcome some of them. And this should give you the
inner knowing that you can overcome all of them by simply taking one
step at a time.
I realize that it can still seem like climbing the staircase is an overwhelming
task. Yet the fact that you are reading this teaching proves that you
are not at the lowest step. So how did you rise to your current step?
You did so because the Living Christ in some form reached out to you
and you heeded the call. You accepted the teacher’s directions
and used them to make a LIFE decision that brought you one step higher.
And you continued to do this until you reached your current step.
My point is that so far the teacher has been there for you for every
step of the way and you have followed the teacher’s instructions.
Based on this fact, is it rational to doubt that the teacher will be
there for each of the following steps as well? Is it rational to doubt
that you can and will follow the teacher as you have already done? Why
not simply realize that you have already stepped on to the true path,
and as long as you keep following it by reaching for the higher vision
of Christ, you WILL make it all the way home. Thus, you should accept
the message in the full quote that I gave in part earlier:
Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for
thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
(Proverbs 23:4)
Trust that the teacher will
be with you each step of the way, and as long as you keep moving, you
will make it to the goal. As the old saying goes, “A journey of
a thousand miles begins with one step.” However, the journey is
completed only by those who keep taking the NEXT step.
How
to make LIFE decisions
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Copyright
© 2006 by Kim Michaels |
