2. Not Seeing the Forest for the Trees

The spiritual path is a process whereby you gradually free your mind from the illusions created by the ego.

The ego has created descriptions of what it thinks is reality, it has created idols and it worships them as its god. It also seeks to make you worship them as a god, meaning you never question their “reality.”

When you experience the Spirit of Truth directly, you have a frame of reference for seeing through the ego’s illusions. This will cause the ego to lose power over you. 

The ego has a survival instinct and will do anything it can to prevent you from becoming free of its illusions.

The origin of all creative principles is the Law of Oneness. God created everything out of its own Being, and thus God’s Being is embedded in everything that was created.

The fundamental function of the Christ mind is to be one with God, one with God’s overall vision for the universe.

Your lifestream, which is more than your physical body and your outer mind and personality, were created to be a co-creator with God.

God has given human beings dominion over the earth. Human beings have been given free will, so they must – individually and collectively – decide what they do upon the earth. 

People will inevitably experience the conditions they co-create. Humankind has collectively created current conditions, and everyone is experiencing them.

When co-creators gain free will, it becomes possible that they can choose to go against the principle of oneness.

A co-creator can create in two ways:

  • Co-create by using the mind of Christ. Everything you do is in alignment with God’s purpose and the design principles used by God.
  • De-create by using the mind of anti-christ. Everything you create 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.

Free will gives you two options for expressing your creativity:

  • You can co-create within the framework of God’s law. 
  • You can de-create outside the framework of God’s law.

De-creating is the cause of all limitations and suffering seen on earth.

The mind of anti-christ is based on a fundamental division between itself and God, God’s law and all other co-creators.

When you step outside the consciousness of Christ, truth becomes a relative concept, dominated by two opposites that can only exist in relation to each other.

The story of Adam and Eve symbolizes what has happened to every lifestream, namely the choice to partake of the “forbidden fruit” of the duality consciousness.

The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” is a description of the consciousness of anti-christ. It sees itself as separated from God. This is a consequence of giving lifestreams free will.

In the consciousness of anti-christ everything is defined on a scale with two opposites. On one side 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.

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.

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 is the belief that evil is the opposite of God, meaning that the devil is the opposite polarity of God and is a necessary part of life. 

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 oneness. 

Relativity is a product of the consciousness of anti-christ. It is only in the sphere of anti-christ that good and evil exist as relative concepts where one cannot exist without the other.

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.” They have succumbed to the basic illusion that they are separated from God instead of being co-creators with God. 

You can never be separated from God in reality. The belief that you are separated from God can exist only in the mind. It is a result of the choice to partake of the consciousness of anti-christ, whereby you begin to believe – even experience – that you are separated from God.

The fall into a lower state of consciousness was a gradual process that took time, yet there did come a moment of truth.

Your lifestream did have a moment in which it recognized that it had separated itself from its spiritual teacher. At that moment, the Conscious You faced an epic choice. Would it go back to its spiritual teacher or would it seek to hide from its teacher?  

The story of the Fall is the story of those lifestreams who tried to hide from the teacher. Most people on this planet are still hiding from the spiritual teacher. The spiritual path can be seen as a process of making peace with your spiritual teacher.

Paradise is the Christ consciousness. When the Conscious You 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.

When the Conscious You lost is connection to its spiritual teacher it felt abandoned. Because this aloneness was unbearable, the Conscious You needed something to take the place of its spiritual teacher. That “something” became the ego.

The ego 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 Conscious You’s basic problem of aloneness. 

The ego seeks to make the Conscious You believe in illusions that make it seem like the conscious self does not have to come back to oneness. They range from the idea that there is no God to the idea that you can be saved only through an outer religion.

Everything the ego sees affirms the basic illusion that you are separated from God. 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 matter of learning to see beyond this veil.

The Conscious You is created out of God’s being. It can never forget that there is more to life than what it experiences on earth. The ego is faced with an impossible quest. The Conscious You has an inner longing for oneness, but the ego can never fill that longing.

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. The individual illusions created by the ego can be seen as trees in a forest.

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.

The ego is more than the individual illusions it has created, as the forest is more than the trees. If you clear out all the trees, is there any forest left? The forest is still in existence in the same place it always existed, namely in the human mind. 

The forest is 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. 

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. 

All of the individual illusions are designed to prevent you from seeing the ego itself. When you do see the ego, you will realize that it is not real and has no power over you. 

You really cannot define the ego because the ego has no actual substance. It seems to have substance because you believe in its illusions.

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.

The ego is like a chameleon that changes color so as to blend in with its environment and escape being detected.

Your ego will not remain the same. As you climb the spiritual path, you will clear out some of the illusions of your ego 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.

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.

Every time an illusion is overcome, you have a split second where the ego is exposed. 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. 

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.

 

Copyright © 2013 Kim Michaels