Why
the ego cannot see the forest for the trees
The least you should know about the ego, Part 2.
A discourse by Jesus
NOTE: This
teaching was given on April 26, 2006, after the NEW
DIRECTION was implemented.
In this discourse I will give you the overall view – the big picture
– of how the ego manages to make and keep people spiritually blind
and what you can do to start getting yourself out of the trap set by
the ego. I know that for people who are still identifying with their
egos, this teaching will be impossible to understand. Yet, as I said
in the first discourse, most people who
find this website have made some contact with their Christ selves, and
thus they can benefit from having the big picture.
If there was one thing that I wish all spiritual seekers would understand,
it is the fact that the spiritual path is a process whereby you gradually
free your mind from all of the illusions created by the ego. As I explained
in the previous discourse, the ego can never experience the Spirit of
Truth. Therefore, the ego creates a description – a mental image
– of God’s truth (and collectively human beings have created
an almost infinite number of such graven images). The ego is absolutely
convinced that its description of truth is the real thing. Yet in reality,
the ego’s description is an idol that obscures your direct experience
of the Spirit of truth itself. Thus, the ego is in violation of the
first two commandments given by God to Moses:
3 Thou shalt have
no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image… (Exodus,
Chapter 20)
The first command is that
you have no other Gods before the real God, which means that you do
not accept any description in this world as a substitute for the direct
experience of the Spirit of Truth. The second one is that you
do not take unto yourself any graven image, which does not mean a statue
carved in stone but a mental image. The ego creates these mental images
and then it seeks to make you believe that you should accept an image
as the absolute, unchanging truth. You should be satisfied with the
idol, so that you do not attempt to go beyond it and experience the
Spirit of Truth.
The ego cannot experience the Spirit of Truth, but you can. And when
you do experience the Spirit of truth directly, you will no
longer believe the ego’s illusion, namely that its description
is the real thing or is all you need in order to be saved. Thus, the
ego will lose its power over you, and as you stop feeding the ego energy,
it will gradually wither away and it will eventually die. Because the
ego has a strong survival instinct, it does not want to die, and thus
it will do anything to keep you from seeing through its illusions. It
will do anything to prevent you from experiencing the Spirit of truth
directly, gradually expanding your vision so you can eventually rebuke
all of the lies created by the ego and the prince of this world.
Thus, we might say that the essence of the spiritual path is to gradually
clear your mind from the illusions of the ego so that you gain a progressively
purer experience of the Spirit of Truth. As Paul said it:
For now we see
through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part;
but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1Corinthians13:12)
The basic choice of life
In traditional religions you find the concept of the laws of God. We
might also call them the design principles that God used to create the
universe in which you live. The origin of all other design principles
is the principle of oneness, the Law of Oneness. It is described in
the Bible as follows:
1 In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made
that was made. (John, Chapter 1)
God created everything out
of its own Being and thus God’s Being is embedded in everything
that was created—without him was not anything made that was made.
The Word is what is also called the only begotten son of God:
No man hath seen
God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the
Father, he hath declared him. (John 1:18)
Many Christians think this
refers to me, the historical person of Jesus. However, as I explain
throughout this website, I came to Earth as a representative of something
far greater than any one person. That is why I said:
Why callest thou
me good? there is none good but one, that is, God. (Mark
10:18)
The concept of the word or
the only begotten son refers to what I today call the universal Christ
mind. This is the mind, the state of consciousness, that is created
by God as the very foundation for the principle of oneness. The fundamental
function of the Christ mind is to be one with God, one with God’s
overall vision for the universe and one with the specific design principles
that God created in order to make sure the universe reaches its intended
goal.
You now need to realize that you – meaning your lifestream, which
is more than your physical body and your outer mind and personality
– were created to be a co-creator with God. That is why the Bible
says:
And God said, Let
us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion…
(Genesis 1:26)
God has given human beings
dominion over the Earth, which means that God created this planet as
a foundation upon which human beings could build a house as a way to
express and develop their creative abilities. Human beings have been
given free will, so they must – individually and collectively
– decide what they do upon the Earth. The only catch is, of course,
that they will inevitably experience the conditions they create. God
did not create the current state of limitations, lack of resources and
other forms of suffering. Humankind has collectively created current
conditions, and everyone is experiencing them.
When God gave co-creators free will, a fundamental duality came into
being. As I said, the universal Christ mind is an expression of the
principle of oneness which is designed to make sure everything follows
God’s purpose and vision. Yet when co-creators gain free will,
it becomes possible that they can choose to go against the principle
of oneness. Thus, the mind of Christ logically has an opposite. The
basic reality of free will is that a co-creator can create in one of
two ways:
-
You can co-create by
using the mind of Christ, which means that everything you do is
in alignment with God’s purpose and the design principles
used by God.
-
You can de-create by
using the mind of anti-christ, which is in opposition to the mind
of Christ. Thus, everything you create through the mind of anti-christ
is out of alignment with God’s purpose and laws.
The mind of anti-christ is
in opposition to the mind of Christ because it is based on the illusion
that it is separated from God. Thus, free will gives you two options
for expressing your creativity:
To better understand the
difference between following or going against God’s laws, consider
the law of gravity. This law is what makes it possible for you to live
on the surface of the Earth instead of floating into empty space. Is
the law of gravity a restriction of your creative freedom on this planet
or is it the foundation for it? So would it make sense to rebel against
the law of gravity and spend your entire life fighting it? (Take note
that flying is not a rebellion against the law of gravity but a result
of learning how to make more advanced use of all of God’s laws.)
My point here is that, as a co-creator, you have the option of co-creating
through the mind of Christ – the mind of oneness with God and
all life – or the mind of anti-christ—the mind that sees
itself as separated from God and all life. Thus, you now see that the
mind of anti-christ is based on a fundamental division, a division between
itself and God, God’s law and all other co-creators. The mind
of Christ is the mind of oneness, whereas the mind of anti-christ is
the mind of division, the mind of duality, the mind of separation. We
now need to take a closer look at the fundamental duality of the mind
of anti-christ.
The knowledge of good and evil
When you stay within the framework of God’s law, you have an absolute
standard for evaluating everything. There is that which is one with
God’s truth, God’s reality, and there is that which is apart
from God’s reality. When you move into the consciousness of anti-christ,
you lose this absolute guiding rod. Only the consciousness of Christ
can see God’s reality, and thus when you step outside the consciousness
of Christ, you can no longer see God’s absolute truth. You now
enter a state of mind in which truth becomes a relative concept, a concept
that is dominated by two opposites that can only exist in relation to
each other.
The Bible describes these concepts in the story of how Adam and Eve
were cast out of the Garden of Eden. You need to understand that the
literal, orthodox interpretation of this story is out of touch with
reality. Adam and Eve were not the only human beings in the Garden.
The story is meant to illustrate what has happened to every co-creator
on Earth. Thus, you are not being punished for the original sin of Adam
and Eve. Your present situation is the consequence of the fact that
your soul – for most people, many lifetimes ago – made the
same choice made by Adam and Eve.
What was that choice? In the beginning, all God’s co-creators
lived in a protected environment in which they had direct guidance from
a spiritual teacher—what Genesis calls “God.” This
teacher was teaching co-creators how to exercise their creative powers
while staying within the framework of God’s law. Yet because they
had free will, they also had the potential to go outside of God’s
law. This is what Genesis describes as follows:
16 And the LORD
God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest
freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not
eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die. (Genesis, Chapter 2)
What is the deeper spiritual
meaning behind the metaphor of the “tree of the knowledge of good
and evil?” It is a description of the consciousness of anti-christ,
the consciousness that sees itself as separated from God. Perhaps you
have wondered why God planted the tree in the Garden if he did not want
Adam to eat of it? The reason is now clear. The "tree" was
an inevitable consequence of giving God’s co-creators free will.
God could not give you free will without giving you the potential to
go outside of God’s law.
Having this potential does not mean that you have to exercise it. Being
able to hurt yourself does not mean that you have to hurt yourself.
However, having the potential does mean that you are exposed
to the temptation to go outside God’s law. Thus, the Serpent can
be seen (among other things) as a symbol for the fact that free will
does come with a price, namely the temptation to make choices that harm
yourself and all life.
The real meaning behind the expression “the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil” is that it represents a state of consciousness,
namely the consciousness of anti-christ. In this state of consciousness
you have stepped outside of oneness with God, and thus you no longer
see God’s reality. You now see everything as defined on a scale
with two opposites. On one side of the scale is good and on the opposite
side is evil. Yet for the scale to exist, both are necessary, meaning
that “good” and “evil” have now become relative
concepts. They exist only in relation to each other and one is defined
as the opposite of the other.
The consequence is that in the consciousness of anti-christ there is
no absolute truth. "Truth" has become relative, meaning that
it can be defined differently by different people. You have heard the
expression, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and
in the consciousness of anti-christ "truth" is in the eye
of the beholder. In other words, when you partake of the consciousness
of anti-christ you create your own definition of truth and it will be
outside of God’s absolute truth.
The ultimate outcome of the consciousness of anti-christ is the belief
that evil
is the opposite of God, meaning that the devil (or however you picture
personified evil) is the opposite polarity of God and is a necessary
(even beneficial) part of the basic polarity of life. In reality, the
consciousness of anti-christ is not in a polarity with the consciousness
of Christ. Evil is not the opposite of God. Evil is outside of God,
and the consciousness of anti-christ is outside the consciousness of
Christ—the consciousness of oneness. Thus, relativity is a product
of the consciousness of anti-christ, and it is only in the sphere of
anti-christ that good and evil exist as relative concepts, as opposing
polarities where one cannot exist without the other.
The veil
The reality behind the story of the Fall of Man is that all human beings
on this planet have “fallen,” meaning that they have partaken
of the fruit of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
By allowing this consciousness of anti-christ to enter their beings,
they have succumbed to the basic illusion, namely that they are separated
from God instead of being co-creators with God, sons and daughters of
God, individualizations of God.
Remember, that without God was not anything made that was made, meaning
that you are an individualization of God’s Being. Thus, you can
never be separated from God in reality. How could you be separated from
God when God is everywhere and in everything? Thus, the belief that
you are separated from God can exist only in the mind. It is the result
of a free-will choice, namely the choice to partake of the consciousness
of anti-christ, whereby you begin to believe – even experience
– that you are separated from God.
The mind of Christ is the consciousness of oneness, so as long as you
are in the Christ mind, you cannot see yourself as separated from God.
Only by allowing the consciousness of anti-christ to enter your being
– whereby you see everything through the filter of this dualistic
mind – can you experience yourself as being separated from your
source. Through the consciousness of Christ, you see yourself as a drop
in the ocean of God’s being and you know all other drops came
from the same source. Through the consciousness of anti-christ, you
see yourself as drop that is separated from the ocean and from all other
drops in the ocean.
In reality, the fall into a lower state of consciousness did not happen
in one momentous event. It was a gradual process that took time, yet
as depicted in Genesis, there did come a moment of truth:
7 And the eyes
of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and
they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in
the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the
presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. (Genesis,
Chapter 3)
The deeper meaning is that
your soul did have a moment of realization in which it recognized that
it had separated itself from God—or rather from its spiritual
teacher. At that moment, the soul faced an epic choice. Would it go
back to its spiritual teacher or would it seek to hide from its teacher?
Would it seek the teacher’s help to come back to oneness with
God, or would it seek to hide its mistakes, hoping it could hide them
from the teacher?
There were many souls in the Garden of Eden who partook of the forbidden
fruit. Yet many of them did indeed go back to the teacher and they received
the loving guidance that helped them come back to oneness with their
source. Thus, the story of the Fall is the story of those souls who
tried to hide from the teacher. When you realize the importance of free
will, you realize that the teacher could not force them to come back.
He had to allow them to continue to hide. To this day, most people on
this planet are hiding from the spiritual teacher, and the spiritual
path can be seen as a process of making peace with your spiritual teacher.
The consequence of hiding from the teacher is that the student can no
longer remain in the mystery school of the Garden. I know Genesis gives
a very ominous description of how Adam and Eve were forcefully cast
out of the Garden, but the reality is that Paradise is the Christ consciousness,
the consciousness of oneness with God. Thus, when your soul partook
of the consciousness of separation, it could not remain in the consciousness
of oneness—you cannot be one and separate at the same time. Thus,
those souls who refused to go back to the teacher, cast themselves out
of the Garden.
As the Bible portrays, Adam and Eve were aware that they had suffered
a loss—and so was every soul that fell. When the soul lost is
connection to God – meaning its spiritual teacher – it felt
alone, even abandoned. Because this aloneness was unbearable, the soul
needed something to take the place of its spiritual teacher. That “something”
became the human ego which is designed as a way to compensate for the
soul’s loss of connection. The ego is designed to prevent the
soul from feeling alone.
The ego is born of the soul’s separation from oneness, and thus
it is born from the consciousness of anti-christ. Thus, it sees everything
through the filter of the consciousness of separation, meaning that
it will ALWAYS see itself as separated from God. It cannot see oneness
as the solution to the soul’s basic problem of aloneness. Instead,
it seeks to make the soul believe in any number of illusions that make
it seem like the soul does not have to come back to oneness. These illusions
range from the idea that there is no God to the idea that you can be
saved only through an outer religion.
My point here is that the ego is born out of separation and it cannot
see the absolute truth of God. The ego sees only the relative “truth”
that springs from the consciousness of anti-christ, which means that
everything the ego sees affirms the basic illusion that you are separated
from God. Thus, the ego and its relative, dualistic beliefs form a veil
that prevents you from seeing God and God’s truth. Walking the
spiritual path is a mattter of learning to see beyond this veil.
The impossible quest of the ego
As I said, the ego is born of the consciousness of separation. The logical
consequence is that the ego can NEVER bring the soul back to oneness.
Because a soul is created out of God’s being, it can never quite
forget that it came from somewhere higher than this Earth, that there
is more to life than what it experiences on Earth. Thus, the ego is
faced with an impossible quest. The soul has an inner longing for oneness,
but the ego can never fill that longing.
If the soul realizes this truth, it will no longer believe in the ego’s
illusions and thus the ego will die. To stay alive, the ego must prevent
you from realizing the basic truth about life, and it does so by seeking
to trap you in its dualistic illusions. These illusions take many forms,
and we will look at some of them in the following discourses. However,
what I want to convey to you here is that the individual illusions created
by the ego can be seen as trees in a forest.
Because you have been trapped by the ego, you are inside the forest
and all you can see are the trees—the individual illusions created
by the ego. As you begin to use your built-in ability to reach for the
higher truth of Christ, you begin to cut down some of the trees in the
forest. Eventually, your vision is less obscured, and you can begin
to see the truth of Christ.
Yet the important concept here is that the ego is more than the individual
illusions it has created, as the forest is more than the trees. Yet
what is a forest? If you clear out all the trees, is there any forest
left? Indeed, the forest is still in existence in the same place it
always existed, namely in the human mind. The reality is that the forest
is just a mental concept, an illusion created in the mind—and
so is the ego. The ego has no reality in and of itself. It only has
the reality that you give to it because you believe in its illusions.
As long as you are focusing your attention on the illusions, you cannot
see the ego. As long as you believe in the illusions, you cannot discover
the truth that the ego has no reality in God. And as long as you do
not see that the ego has no reality, you believe the consciousness of
anti-christ is real. Thus, you continue to believe in the illusion that
you are separated from God.
My point is that all of the individual illusions – all of the
trees in the forest – are designed to prevent you from seeing
the forest, seeing the ego itself. For when you do see the ego and see
it for what it is, you will realize that it is not real and thus has
no power over you. Thus, you can surrender it, let it go and let it
die as you walk away from it and enter the kingdom of God, the consciousness
of oneness.
Do you now see why I did not start out by defining the ego? You really
cannot define the ego because the ego has no actual substance. It seems
to have substance because you believe in its illusions, as the forest
seems to have substance as long as you focus on the trees. Yet a forest
is a mental concept that can contain many kinds of trees. A pine forest
is different from an oak forest. Likewise, the ego of one person is
different from the ego of another person, and they are set apart by
the individual illusions that each person has accepted.
In a sense one might say that the ego is like a chameleon that changes
color so as to blend in with its environment and escape being detected.
The ego is always trying to hide behind the trees so you do not see
it. The consequence – and this is something all sincere spiritual
seekers need to contemplate – is that your ego will not remain
the same. As you climb the spiritual path, you will clear out some of
the illusions of your ego – some of the trees in the forest –
but that does not mean you have fully overcome the ego. As long as any
illusions are left, the ego will hide behind them in its never-ending
attempt to prevent you from seeing the forest.
This has many consequences, which we will explore in coming discourses,
but one is that as long as you are in this world, it is wise not to
believe that you have fully overcome the ego. It is wise to always be
alert and look for something that is hiding, seeking to deceive you
to the very end. That is why I said:
For there shall
arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs
and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive
the very elect. (Matthew 24:24)
Some of these false prophets
will be created by your own ego in an attempt to deceive you into continuing
to give it power over you. Others will be created by the prince of this
world in an attempt to get you to follow an outer guru instead of entering
the kingdom of God that is within you. In the coming discourses, we
will expose some of the largest trees in the ego’s forest, but
I want you to remember the forest itself. For the truth is that every
time a tree comes down, you have a split second where the ego is exposed.
And if you pay attention, you can see it before it has time to hide
itself again. Once you have seen the ego itself, it will become much
easer for you to overcome its illusions, until you can dismiss even
the basic illusion that the ego and the separation from God is real.
One might say that by seeing the ego itself, it becomes possible for
you to step outside of the forest while there are still trees left in
the forest. Once you no longer identify with the ego, it becomes so
much easier for you to let go of the remaining illusions of your ego.
This is the state of knowing – human, know thyself – to
which all sincere spiritual seekers should aspire. Everything I give
on this website serves the purpose of helping you reach that state of
knowing that you are MORE than the ego.
Part
3. Why the ego is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole
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© 2005 by Kim Michaels |
