Most spiritual people have a longing for something more, the desire to understand, the sense that there must be answers to life’s questions. This is a safety mechanism that prevents you from becoming totally lost in the duality consciousness.

Many people have an awakening experience as a result of finding an outer teaching.

Your ego’s main goal is to prevent you from awakening to a higher sense of identity as a spiritual being.

The ego will take the teaching that served as the outer tool for your awakening, and it will seek to use it to neutralize your quest for truth.

The essence of your quest for truth is a longing for a direct experience of the Spirit of Truth.

The ego is seeking to misdirect your search for truth and make you believe you can find a truth in this world that can guarantee your salvation.

A common result of an awakening experience is that people begin to believe that by joining an outer organization they have “made it.” 

The ego wants you to believe that as long as you stay in the organization and keep following its outer requirements, your salvation is guaranteed. The ego has then neutralized your quest for truth. 

The driving force behind your quest for truth is that you ask questions. Yet when the ego makes you believe in a guaranteed salvation, there are certain questions you do not ask.

This will prevent or abort the direct inner contact with the Spirit of Truth, which is the only factor that can take you beyond the dualistic beliefs of the ego.

The ego has now created the perfect mental prison in which you feel relatively content. You think you should never look outside the prison.

Should you begin to see through the illusion of an automatic salvation through, the ego can still win. Many people give up on the spiritual path.

When you take the black-and-white approach, you become stuck in one belief system and can never move beyond it. This approach is based on fear, the fear that opening your mind makes you vulnerable to false ideas. 

When you take the gray approach, you think there are no false ideas. Yet if you do not have the willingness to discern, people often go from teacher to teacher until they find one that confirms their belief that they can be saved without discerning and confronting their egos. Or they continue to go from guru to guru, constantly thinking that the next one will do it all for them.

Both approaches are based on the same basic psychology, namely an unwillingness to reach beyond the duality of the ego and attain the discernment that can come only from the Christ mind.

Only God’s forever self-transcending truth that will make you free from the dualistic “truth” defined by the ego and the prince of this world.

The ego is constantly seeking to stop your quest for truth. If it cannot stop you from asking questions, it will seek to divert your attention. 

The ego is trying to make you believe that ultimate, absolute truth can be found in this world.

Your ego will never see that the Spirit of Truth cannot be confined. Yet the Conscious You can see this truth and then decide to reach for the direct experience.

As long as you are searching for truth outside yourself, you will never find the Living Truth.

In order to make ultimate spiritual progress, you must become aware of the mechanism whereby your ego turns the outer belief system into a closed box.

The ego can use even a valid spiritual teaching to create a closed box. Once a teaching is expressed in words, it enters the realm of duality, and it can now be used by the ego.

In order to expose a dualistic truth created by the ego, you must have a frame of reference. This can be attained only through a direct, inner experience of the Spirit of truth. There is no substitute for this direct experience.

The ego is subtle, and it is precisely the people who think they are above the ego who are trapped in the most subtle weapon of the ego, namely intellectual and spiritual pride.

There are a number of teachings that can potentially lead you beyond the duality consciousness of the ego. Do not allow your ego to make you attached to the particular form of one teaching. 

No true teaching is designed to give you absolute truth. It is designed to take you to a direct experience of the Spirit of Truth. It is this direct experience that will raise your consciousness, not an intellectual understanding of the outer teaching.

The message of a true spiritual teaching is that there is something beyond the teaching. The outer teaching is only meant to show the way to the kingdom of God that is within you. 

If you allow your ego to make you believe you can reach the kingdom by staying in a closed box you will never enter the kingdom.

There are two ways whereby your personal ego can use an outer teaching to trap you in a closed box:

• The ego looks for a ready-made belief system that claims to have some form of infallible or absolute authority. The purpose is to make you believe that your salvation is guaranteed, so you no longer need to think.
• Your ego will come up with a set of personalized versions of the outer doctrines. These are designed according to your personality and beliefs, so they vary greatly from person to person. These personalized versions allow their egos to hide and allow people to live their lives the way they want to—while still believing they will be saved. 

The ego is not seeking for absolute truth. It is seeking to take a relative expression of “truth” and elevate it to the status of being absolute. It is not seeking to find absolute truth but to define it based on its own dualistic reasoning.

The ego is that it will look for statements in a spiritual teaching that can be interpreted as giving absolute authority. It will then seek to establish a culture in the organization that makes people believe they never have to question these absolute statements.

The ego creates a closed box if you believe the following:

• The teaching comes from and is one hundred percent backed by the highest possible authority.
• There can only be one truth, meaning all other teachings are false.
• If you follow a false teaching, you go to hell, but if you follow the only true teaching, your salvation is guaranteed. 
• The teaching is higher or better than any other teaching.
• Because the teaching is absolute, it could never be changed.
• There could never be a higher or more advanced teaching. 
• Because you have this perfect teaching, there is no need to seek for a direct experience of the Spirit of Truth. 
• Who are you to think you can ask questions or seek for a deeper understanding of the teaching?
• If you ask a question that the leaders cannot answer, there is something wrong with that question. If you are not satisfied with the official answers, there is something wrong with you. 

The Spirit of Truth cannot be confined to words. Once a spiritual teaching has been put into words, it is no longer the Living Truth.

Some people will turn any teaching into a closed box. They will seek to pull you into their box, because the ego literally believes that if everyone on earth agrees with it, then it must be right. 

The perversion of a teaching can be avoided only if it remains open to progressive revelation, meaning that there is a direct connection to the ascended masters.

Jesus did not create a closed box but attempted to establish a tradition for the delivery of the Living Word.

As humankind’s consciousness has grown, the ascended masters have attempted to establish a more direct connection by training messengers through whom they could speak in a more direct manner. Yet people can still become too focused on the outer teaching and the outer organization.

Many people will not accept any messenger unless he or she has some kind of otherworldly authority. Yet if the ascended masters establish such authority, the ego will take this too far and build an organizational culture that says this messenger is the only true messenger.

An organization can also become too focused on the particular form of the message given through its messenger. The way the Living Word is delivered through this messenger is the only way it could possibly be delivered.

An organization can fall prey to the dualistic game of defining itself as being superior in comparison to other teachings.

A spiritual organization must fulfill two requirements:

• The organization must maintain a connection to the ascended masters so that the delivery of the Living Word can continue.
• The members and the leaders must have a keen awareness of the ego and how it affects spiritual organizations. 

Will people use the outer teachings to always reach beyond the teaching for the direct experience of the Spirit of Truth? 

To be the open door or not to be the open door, that is the timeless question.

There is no way to create a spiritual organization that is automatically guaranteed to be free from the ego and its games. The only way to combat the ego is through constant alertness and a constant reaching for the Spirit of Truth.

This can happen only as a personal, inner experience, and although the experience can be shared it can never be institutionalized.

Never become attached to a particular expression of truth. Use it as a stepping stone for reaching for a direct, inner experience of the Spirit of Truth. 

The Sprit of Truth is the River of Life, and the all-important characteristic is that it is constantly flowing.

 

Copyright © 2013 Kim Michaels

At the lowest aspect of dualistic thinking people see the world as black and white. You are always right and anyone opposing you is always wrong.

People define a belief system as infallible. They think their belief system springs entirely from the truth of Christ and is not influenced by the illusions of the mind of anti-christ.

This springs from the ego’s desire to set itself up as an authority figure that cannot be questioned. Such people are unreachable for a spiritual teacher.

The conscious selves of such people have refused to make decisions. The Conscious You has retreated into a self-made fortress, and it has assigned the ego as a guard.

The role of the ego is to build fortress walls that are impenetrable to anything that would require the conscious self to wake up and start making decisions again.

The ego will act as a computer that mindlessly carries out its programming, taking the person further and further into the extreme of black-and-white thinking. This will cause the person to be in continuous conflict with other people.

If the Conscious You is willing to take some responsibility, it can reverse the downward trend. Three factors that can impede this growth:

• The mental prison was built to “defend” the Conscious You from having to make decisions. The Conscious You might be emotionally attached to the security and comfortability of the prison.
• The ego wants the Conscious You to believe in the lie that if you don’t make any decisions, you can’t make mistakes. If you don’t make decisions, you are allowing the ego to make decisions for you. All of the ego’s decisions are mistakes.
• The ego’s survival instinct will seek to keep you inside the walls, where it feels like it has you and the world under some form of control.

Rising to a new level of the path means that you begin to see the fallacy of dualistic thinking.

The ego and the forces of this world will mount a major offensive against any person who begins to rise above duality.

Their weapon is the duality of the mind of anti-christ, which is very subtle.

Many spiritual people have started seeing the limitations of a black-and-white approach to religion. They realize there is more to know about the spiritual side of life than what can be found in black-and-white doctrines.

Too many spiritual seekers have become trapped in a form of dualistic thinking that is so different from black-and-white thinking that people believe it is above duality. Yet in reality, it is simply the opposite extreme of black-and-white thinking.

Earth is like a twilight zone. There is still so much darkness left that the light and the darkness can mix into shades of gray that make it very difficult to tell the difference between what is real and unreal.

There is no concept, truth or spiritual teaching on this planet that cannot be perverted by the human ego.

Whenever you take a major step forward on the spiritual path, your ego will repeat its never-ending game of seeking to create two extremes and polarize you towards either one.

The opposite extreme of black-and-white thinking is a form of thinking in which nothing is black and white because everything is gray. This gives rise to a number of problems:

• Spiritual seekers have distanced themselves from religious intolerance, but many have come to believe that religious tolerance means you must accept all religions as equally valid.
• Most spiritual seekers make it a virtue to be non-judgmental, but the extreme outcome is that they see almost any type of belief or behavior as acceptable.
• Most spiritual seekers see through hypocrisy and are sincerely striving to be loving towards everyone. However, they also believe that being loving means you should never challenge people’s illusions.

Many spiritual seekers have come to believe that in order to do God’s work and raise the consciousness of the planet it is enough to be tolerant and loving, but they do not see that this is simply another fortress built to prevent the Conscious You from making its own decisions.

They have allowed the chameleon of the ego to change color so that it blends in with their new world view, where being gray has become a virtue that is seen as being superior to being black-and-white.

The ego was born out of a relative definition of “truth,” and thus it cannot see any need to discern between what is God’s reality and a dualistic unreality. It only sees a need to discern what is right and wrong according to the dualistic belief system that it currently accepts as infallible.

The ego has replaced God’s reality with a belief system created by the mind of anti-christ.

It is not possible to make true spiritual progress unless you are willing to discern between what is real – meaning that it is Christ truth – and what is unreal—meaning that it springs from the mind of anti-christ.

Both black-and-white thinking and gray thinking give people a “perfect” excuse for not making an effort to discern between the non-dual reality and the dualistic illusions.

In the current conditions found on earth, discerning is not an easy task. Yet you are not required to be perfect; you are required to be willing to try.

The broad way is taken by many people because it is easy. It does not require their conscious selves to take responsibility and make decisions. It gives the impression that you can be saved without discerning.

When you step on to the path to Christhood you realize that there are ideas that are false because they spring from the mind of anti-christ.

As you begin to attain Christhood, you are no longer threatened by any ideas, so you have no need to judge or condemn other people. You never judge or condemn other people, but you freely challenge ideas and actions that are self-destructive and destructive towards other forms of life.

There is a phase where many people find it necessary to be non-judgmental. Yet too many people get stuck in it because they allow their egos to convince them that it should be permanent.

When you are trapped in duality, you define kindness a certain way, usually by saying that it is soft-spoken and never challenges people.

Both the Buddha and Jesus had come to set people free from the illusions of the ego. They often challenged the ego and its illusions. Jesus practiced Divine kindness, as do all other true spiritual leaders.

Divine kindness is based on Christ discernment and it clearly sees when people are trapped in a dualistic illusion. The ultimate form of kindness is to help people lift themselves out of their dualistic illusions so they are no longer trapped.

Because the ego has the effect of making people blind, it is often necessary to shake people awake, so they can start thinking again instead of blindly following the ego or an outer leader.

Divine Love is above duality, and that is why there is no fear in love. Instead, this perfect love will cast out your fears. As long as you identify with the ego, you will be afraid to accept unconditional love because you think you are unworthy of it.

Torment springs from the division between the Conscious You and God. Until the Conscious You overcomes this division, you will be in torment. You cannot overcome the division until you decide to take up your ability to discern.

The ego and the dualistic mind cannot fathom its own illusions, so it can never turn divine kindness into a system. Divine love is above what the ego can fathom. It can be practiced only through the mind of Christ.

The central characteristic of dualistic thinking is that it sets up a system in this world and then judges ideas and people based on that system.

The ego cannot create a system that can contain and confine God—but the ego will never understand this because to the ego God is simply a concept. As long as you allow your ego to try to fit God into a box, you cut yourself off from having a direct experience of the Spirit of Truth.

The first person to be trapped in your mental box is you. God will never fit into any mental box. Once you create a graven image, you will be bound by the image, for you can never go beyond the image to experience God directly.

Black-and-white and gray thinking both spring from the ego and its need to create the appearance that as long as you stay within the confines of its infallible belief system, you are guaranteed to be saved. There are absolutely no conditions in this world that will guarantee your salvation.

The Christ consciousness cannot be fit into or confined to any belief system created in this world. The only way to attain the Christ consciousness is to reach beyond all of the outer belief systems.

Any belief system in this world will be influenced by the mind of anti-christ. As long as people are not free from their egos, they will subconsciously impose the mental images of their egos upon any belief system.

If people claim their belief system is the only true one or is better than others, they demonstrate they have not risen above duality.

 

Copyright © 2013 Kim Michaels

Black-and-white thinking defines two opposites, meaning that there is no overlap or potential for compromise. They cannot co-exist but must cancel out each other—or so it seems. 

One opposite is defined as being absolutely good and the other is defined as being absolutely evil, setting up an inevitable, to-the-death struggle between them.

The ego makes people believe that the only way for them to please God and be saved is to take the side of good and to fight against evil.

This is a very easy approach to life because it really does not require people to think for themselves. Once people have accepted that a particular belief system is absolutely good, they will never question it.

As long as people are trapped in black-and-white thinking, they are absolutely convinced that they are working for good and will be saved. Yet everything they do to fight the self-defined enemy only serves to trap them more firmly in the dualistic state of consciousness.

It is difficult for extremists to admit that they are wrong. They cannot admit that what they have seen as a work for God has only served to reinforce the dualistic struggle created by the forces of anti-christ. Such people tend to become very defensive and hostile towards anyone who questions the validity of their approach.

The ego creates a false path to salvation. By using black-and-white logic, the ego creates the impression that being saved is a matter of belonging to the only true religion and meeting its outer requirements. Instead of doing the hard work of pulling the beam from your own eye, you simply have to believe a predefined doctrine and follow a set of outer rules.

The extreme outcome of being blinded by black-and-white thinking is that people become entirely self-centered and selfish.

Extreme selfishness is the ultimate outcome of the relative logic of the ego. In the Christ mind you see that all life is one, and thus when you hurt another, you are hurting yourself.

When you are trapped in the mind of anti-christ, you think you can hurt others without hurting yourself. You justify your actions by using the relative logic of the ego, which can make it seem like anything is justified.

To begin the process of escaping total selfishness, you must realize that there is a higher standard for evaluating your behavior, so that you choose to limit certain types of selfish behavior. This is often done out of fear of consequences.

When people are still identified with their egos, they cannot yet see the limitations of the relative logic of the ego. So they need a very simplistic, black-and-white belief system.

There is a real danger that people will be fooled by their egos to enter the blind alley of fanaticism, where they think they serve God by fighting what their belief system defines as the enemies of God.

If people avoid going into fanaticism, it is possible to make genuine spiritual progress by following a black-and-white belief system. People can begin to see through the more selfish beliefs and free themselves from some of the illusions of the ego.

A black-and-white approach cannot take you above a certain level of the spiritual path. Because this approach is influenced by the relative logic of the ego, it can very easily become a blind alley that begins to take you into a downward spiral of judgment and pride.

A black-and-white belief system automatically implies a value judgment.

Judging according to appearance means that you judge based on a relative, dualistic standard created by the ego. Judging righteous judgment means that you discern absolute truth based on the vision of the Christ mind.

The ego uses a relative standard to build the appearance that because you are better than certain other people, you are guaranteed to be saved.

The Christ does not compare things on a relative scale that leads gradually from one extreme (good) to the opposite extreme (evil). The Christ mind does not judge based on appearance but is only concerned about whether something is real or not real.

Black-and-white thinking sets up a scale with two extremes and then makes people think they have to choose one of the two polarities.

This line of thinking leads to a fear-based approach to salvation. You cannot enter the kingdom of God while there is any fear left in your being.

You overcome fear partly by using the rational mind to reason that your fear is based on a lack of knowledge and partly by reaching for a direct experience of the perfect love that casts out all fear. As long as you are trapped in a black-and-white belief system, you will be afraid of doing either.

Any black-and-white belief system on this planet states that you cannot experience God directly; you need the outer church and its priesthood as a mediator between you and God.

Fear creates a prison for your mind, and once the Conscious You is inside, your ego throws away the key. The Conscious You can step outside at any moment, but it must be willing to confront its fear and the fact that a black-and-white belief system is based on an illusion.

The psychological effect of a black-and-white belief system is that it focuses your attention on a scale with two polarities, and then it makes it seem like truth has to be found somewhere on that scale. There is nothing beyond the relative scale. 

Any time you have a belief system with two opposites, you have a dualistic belief system. And in such a belief system both opposites will be defined by the mind of anti-christ. 

The reality of God cannot be put on a relative scale and it has no opposite polarity. God’s reality has no opposite because that which is outside of God’s reality has no reality. 

That which has no reality cannot be in opposition to that which has reality. Unreality can exist only in the minds of co-creators who are trapped in duality. 

It is only when you step into the mind of anti-christ that opposites become possible. These opposites seem to have the same reality. This is what gives rise to fear of evil because people think evil is real and has real power over them.

When you attain the Christ mind and see that evil is not real and that its appearance has no power over you, you lose all fear.

Evil does have the same “reality” as relative good. Thus, you need to use the Christ mind to see the absolute good of God.

A black-and-white belief system makes you think that you have to move towards relative good and avoid its opposite, namely evil. In reality you have to move beyond the duality consciousness in order to attain oneness with God.

Black-and-white thinking becomes a trap for your mind. Once you accept any black-and-white belief system, the ego can always come up with a seemingly watertight argument for why you should not look beyond it.

Many spiritual people have started seeing through the black-and-white illusions of the ego. It is important for spiritual seekers to realize that they are still not above the relative logic of the ego. 

The ego has a built-in contradiction and seeks to create two opposite viewpoints in every situation. Black-and-white has its own opposite, and when people start rising above black-and-white thinking, it is quite common that they jump into the opposite extreme.

 

Copyright © 2013 Kim Michaels

The ego’s mission is to prevent the Conscious You from rediscovering and then abandoning the original choice to turn away from your spiritual teacher—the decision that gave birth to the ego. 

This decision was not made in the full clarity of the Christ consciousness. You were blinded by the duality consciousness, the consciousness of anti-christ. 

The Conscious You did not clearly see what the decision entailed, and it did not fully understand that its reasoning was based on dualistic thinking. 

The Conscious You believed its reasoning was sound and that the decision to turn away from the teacher was either justifiable, necessary, beneficial or its only option.

The ego will do anything in its power to prevent the Conscious You from projecting itself outside the ego’s illusions.

You are not a bad or evil person and you are not stupid. If the Conscious You knew better, it would do better. As long as the Conscious You looks at the world through the filter of dualistic logic, it cannot know better. It cannot see beyond the relative logic of anti-christ to see the absolute reality of Christ.

The essence of the duality consciousness is that the Conscious You creates its own “reality,” a world view that is centered around the illusion that created the ego.

The reality you experience in the material universe is shaped by the ego’s beliefs. The material universe acts like a mirror that reflects back to you whatever you send out.

This is a safety mechanism. When you have no contact with the teacher, your only way to learn is to see the consequences of your actions.

The Law of Free Will mandates that if you turn away from your spiritual teacher, you must be allowed to learn from your own actions. A spiritual teacher cannot interfere with your learning process until you decide to seek the teacher’s help.

The central human problem: 

• Your ego has used the duality consciousness to create a mental image of what it thinks the world is like. 
• The Conscious You is seeing the world through the colored glasses represented by the ego’s illusion. 
• The Conscious You is projecting this world view into the cosmic mirror. 
• The mirror can only reflect back what you send out.
• Everything that comes back seems to affirm the ego’s world view.
• Nothing in your life can change until you change what you are sending out by changing your consciousness.

You will inevitably create your own circumstances, and the choice is whether you create through the dualistic sense of identity defined by the ego or through your divine identity that is anchored in your I AM Presence.

If the Conscious You identifies with the mortal identity defined by the ego, you will believe you are a mortal, human being living in a limited world that makes your life a struggle.

Until the Conscious You begins to suspect that it is more than the ego, you will be unable to question the world view of the ego. Instead, you will try to interpret everything that happens to you in a way that reaffirms the ego’s world view. 

The mind of anti-christ uses relative logic, so you can twist almost anything in such a way that it proves what you want to believe.

God has built a safety mechanism into the material universe. If you use your co-creative abilities to create something that is out of alignment with  the creative intent of God, your creation will not be sustainable. 

Your life becomes a constant struggle to uphold the ego’s illusions. The more you seek to hold on to the illusions, the more you create a counter-force that seeks to break them down.

The Mother light is designed to in the short term reflect back what you are sending out and in the long term break down every structure that is not in alignment with God’s law. In order to uphold your ego’s illusions, you must seek to force the entire universe to conform to the ego’s world view.

One way or the other, you must learn that the ego’s world view is false. If you will not listen to a spiritual teacher, you must learn by hitting your head against the concrete wall of the universe.

There are forces that will do anything they can to prevent your personal awakening,. They have a very powerful weapon against you, namely the subtlety of the duality consciousness.

For the ego, God and God’s reality remain mental concepts that can be conceptualized but never experienced directly. The Conscious You can experience God directly, but only through the Christ consciousness.

As long as you look through the filter of the ego, you cannot experience God directly, meaning that you must settle for a description over the direct experience. 

If you cannot know reality through direct experience, you must “know” reality through a description and that description will inevitably be affected by the consciousness of separation. Otherwise, you would not need the description.

To the ego there is no such thing as an absolute truth, a truth that cannot be debated or has no opposite. 

The ego creates a mental image that portrays God as an incomplete being and God’s goodness is defined only in relation to its opposite. Goodness is no longer absolute; it is defined as the opposite of evil.

Many religious people assume that what they define as good is in alignment with God’s absolute goodness. This is the great illusion of the ages. 

When you see life through the consciousness of separation, you can never see God’s absolute reality and goodness. You see only a relative goodness,. You can define goodness in a way that seems to affirm the basic illusion that created your ego!

The essence of the relative logic is that when everything is relative, nothing can be proved or disproved in an absolute sense. It is not a matter of what is right and wrong; it is only a matter of who is “right and wrong.”

This gives a clear advantage to the beings who are most skilled in using the relative logic of the mind of anti-christ and who are the most willing to manipulate, lie and coerce in order to control others.

There is only one way out. You cannot use the mind of anti-christ to escape the consciousness of separation. 

You must realize that the ego has created a giant illusion in which everything appears to be relative—to the ego’s definition of reality. As long as you stay within the framework of this illusion, you can never escape the grips of the ego.

If you try to use the mind of anti-christ to outsmart the forces of anti-christ, how can you avoid becoming more involved with the mind of anti-christ?

You cannot out-reason the consciousness of anti-christ, for when everything is relative, there can be no final argument. 

The devil loves to have you engage him in an attempt to outsmart him, and he will even allow you to feel that you have won the argument. Yet the devil is not trying to prove himself right; he is only trying to keep you engaged in the consciousness of anti-christ.

You simply cannot win by engaging in the dualistic arguments of the ego. You can never make the ego see absolute truth, and instead you get pulled into a senseless argument of trying to prove the superiority of one dualistic description over another dualistic description.

“You have to quit to win.” You have to quit the dualistic struggle in order to win your Christhood. You can only be right with God when you stop trying to be right among men.

 

Copyright © 2013 Kim Michaels

The only path to an ongoing existence is the path of oneness whereby you come into oneness with your spiritual self, oneness with God.

The ego was born when you decided to leave the Path of Oneness.

The ego tries to create an eternal existence by using the energies of the material world. This is an impossible quest but the ego will never see this.

The ego is trying to build the false image that you can be saved without overcoming the ego. You can be saved by living up to certain requirements in this world.

The only way to oneness with God is to attain the Christ consciousness.

As long as you follow the path defined by the ego, you can never enter the kingdom of oneness.

Which part of “you” can escape the illusions of the ego and enter into oneness? It is the pure self, the Conscious You.

The Conscious You is what makes you aware that you exist, and it is also the part of you that makes conscious decisions.

The Conscious You came into the material world partly to experience this world and partly to help co-create it from the inside.

The Conscious You is meant to be the master of your lower being.

You are meant to make most decisions at the level of the Conscious You, under the direction of your I AM Presence and spiritual teacher.

When you lost your connection to your teacher, making decisions became painful. Thus, you started allowing the ego to make decisions for you.

 Many decisions are not made at the level of the conscious mind but are made through a subconscious process ruled by the ego. 

The ego is like a computer that is not able to think but has a sufficiently sophisticated programming to give the appearance that it can think.

The ego has created illusions that are like individual computer programs. Each program is designed to handle specific situations in life. When you encounter a particular situation, a program kicks in and takes over your reactions. You are no longer making conscious choices; it is all run by the computer of the ego.

The ego itself is like the operating system on a computer. The ego was born out of the decision to turn away from your teacher. The specific reasoning that the Conscious You used in order to justify turning away from the teacher became the core of your ego.

The ego will never question the validity of that decision. The ego is like a computer that can never question its operating system but will function according to its programming.

If the Conscious You replaced the decision to turn away from the teacher with a better decision, the ego would die.

The ego will do anything in its power to prevent you from ever uncovering and reevaluating the original decision that created the ego.

Many seekers are sincerely questioning aspects of their egos, but they have not yet seen behind the veil to start questioning the ego itself.

The first step towards overcoming the ego is to realize that there is more to “you” than the ego and its individual illusions.

The Conscious You is designed to make decisions and it makes those decisions based on its sense of identity.

The Conscious You is an individualization of God, but in time and space, the Conscious You is who it thinks it is.

The Conscious You has the ability to identify itself as absolutely anything it can conceive of and accept as real.

The Conscious You is designed to be a co-creator in the material universe, and it expresses its creative abilities through the filter of its sense of identity. 

Every decision the Conscious You makes is colored by the sense of identity. The Conscious You is never trapped in its sense of identity. 

The Conscious You has the ability to project itself anywhere it wants, meaning that it can also project its sense of self outside the identity built in this world. 

The ability to separate yourself from your current sense of identity is the key to all human progress.

Nothing binds the Conscious You to your current sense or identity—except your belief that there is nothing outside of it or that you cannot escape it.

The Conscious You can – at any moment – stop identifying itself with the ego, and this will make it easier to let go of the ego. This is spiritual rebirth.

The process of overcoming the ego is twofold. You must first establish a conscious connection to your I AM Presence so you know that you will not die when the ego dies.

The second step is to expand your awareness of the ego so you can see through its illusions.

The ego would prefer to keep you either denying or being indifferent to spiritual growth. But if it cannot achieve that, it will create a false path to salvation and make you absolutely convinced that by following this path, you will be saved.

The prince of this world and the ego have created an almost infinite variety of false paths where meeting outer requirements guarantees your salvation without having to let the ego die.

The true path is an inner path of changing your consciousness so you come into oneness with God.

The Conscious You is what it thinks it is, and you can at any moment change who you think you are. The ego and the prince of this world will try to make you believe you cannot change your mind.

God wants you to come home, and thus God wants you to change your mind so you can overcome the ego’s illusions. The ego wants to keep you trapped in a limited sense of identity—forever.

In the material universe, nothing is forever. Everything is created through a choice, and it will continue to exist only as long as you continue to affirm that choice.

 

Copyright © 2013 Kim Michaels

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

Overcoming the ego is the central aspect of the spiritual path, no matter which outer teaching or tradition you follow.

The main challenge of the ego is that it distorts the way you “see” everything. The ego forms a filter that “colors” your perception. The ego is like wearing yellow glasses—without knowing you are wearing glasses.

Spiritual blindness is when people are convinced that because they belong to the only true religion or spiritual teaching they are guaranteed to be saved.

Most religious and spiritual people are following a path that cannot lead to salvation or higher consciousness.

Hypocrisy is when people are unwilling to change because they accept the illusions of their egos as reality.

To escape the spiritual blindness of the ego, you need to make contact with a mind that is beyond your own, namely the Christ mind. “Christ” being a universal term before it was distorted by the ego.

The Christ mind gives you a frame of reference. There is a reality outside the distorted perception of the ego. Use appropriate tools for strengthening your connection to your Christ self. Such tools are found on www.transcendencetoolbox.com.

You have a personal Christ self that is your contact point with the universal Christ mind. The Christ mind is always one with God’s reality.

The ego sees only a description or mental image. The Christ mind experiences the reality of God and thus has no need for a mental image.

The ego has taken away your direct experience of the Spirit of Truth. You can regain that experience only through your Christ self.

The ego was born when you lost your sense of connection to your source. The central problem you face is to get back to oneness with God.

The ego has created substitutes for the experience of oneness. The ego believes they are the same as oneness. You already know they are not the same or you would not be longing for something more than what the ego offers.

Any spiritual teaching is not the Spirit of Truth but only a description. The ego will seek to make you believe that following an outer teaching will get you to your goal. This is an illusion.

The central illusion of the ego is that you can enter a higher realm without letting the ego die. The ego can never make it to a higher realm, it can never make it to oneness.

 

Copyright © 2013 Kim Michaels

The ego is a very important topic for all who are following the path to personal Christhood. The function of the ego is to uphold the illusion that you are separated from your Source and from other people. As has been explained, the function of the Christ mind is to help you transcend this illusion.

Thus, the ego is the main obstacle you face on the path to Christhood. The ego is an “entity” in your subconscious mind that has a form of survival instinct. As a result, the ego will seek to manipulate or scare you into holding on to the illusions that spring from sepration. Unless you know about the ego and learn to see through its manipulation, you will find it very difficult to make progress on the path. This is equallyt true whether you come from a Christian, aBuddhist, a Hindu, a New SAge or any other background.

This section contains a series of articles that expose the main illusions created by the ego. The articles consist of short paragraphs and form a summary of longer teachings given in the book Freedom from Ego Illusions.

 

1.  Spiritual Blindness – the Main Ego Challenge

2. Not Seeing the Forest for the Trees

3. Fitting a Square Peg Into a Round Hole

4. Becoming a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

5. When the Ego’s World Is Black and White

6. When the Ego’s World Is Gray

7. A Spiritual Teaching Can Abort Your Growth

8. Diverting Your Attention From the Inner Path

9. The ego is a House Divided Against Itself

10. Virtues of Magnificent Confusion