Eve and the Serpent

Have you ever noticed that some people are very aggressive in trying to convert you to their beliefs? Some are even willing to destroy your beliefs in the process, seeking to cast doubt upon the teaching or teacher you follow or the entire spiritual path. Learn how to recognize such people, what their agenda is and how to protect yourself from their aggressive mental suggestion.

Question from Kim: Jesus, please help me understand what happened between Eve and the Serpent. I know you have said that the story of the Garden of Eden is a symbol for what has happened to every soul. In other words, it does not truly mean that women are responsible for the Fall. Eve is a symbol for the feminine polarity of our beings, our conscious selves, whereas the I AM Presence is the masculine polarity. What I would like to understand is what it really means that Eve was tempted by the Serpent and what the Serpent represents.

 

Answer from the ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:

 

Eve before the fall represents the evolving lifestream who has not yet attained the Christ consciousness but is actively – and without any internal divisions – growing toward that state of God-awareness. The Serpent represents a lifestream who has embodied the consciousness of anti-christ and is therefore actively seeking to prove God wrong by trapping other lifestreams in the mindset of anti-christ. Eve after the fall represents the lifestream who has partaken of the mind of anti-christ – the fruit of the knowledge of relative good and evil – and is therefore a house divided against itself.

When you first descend into the material realm, you – meaning the conscious self – have limited experience and self-awareness. We might say that you are what Paul called a “babe in Christ.” God is well aware of this, and thus provides newly descended lifestreams with a protected environment and a spiritual teacher. The Garden of Eden represents such a spiritual schoolroom for evolving lifestreams and the “God” in the garden was a member of the ascended masters, serving in the capacity of a teacher, guide, guru or Master.

The age-old and time-tested method for helping evolving lifestreams attain the full Christ consciousness is the Master-disciple, or Guru-chela, relationship. What is the basis for this relationship? It is that the Master knows more about the universe and God’s laws than the disciple—meaning that he/she has a higher level of Christ consciousness. If the disciple had the same spiritual attainment as the Master, the disciple would not need a Master but would be a Master. Yet if the disciple was a Master, he or she would not be in embodiment on Earth, and thus it is safe to say that every person on Earth needs a Master (inner or outer) in order to reach Christ consciousness.

One of my Masters was John the Baptist who helped me recognize my true mission. Without him I would not have achieved the breakthrough that was necessary before I could begin my mission. He also helped me in other ways that are not recorded in the scriptures. My point being that no true spiritual seeker ever assumes that he or she does not need a Master or can make it to Christ consciousness without a Master. Doing so would be pride, which results in spiritual blindness.

So the very basis for the Master-disciple relationship is that the Master has a higher level of Christ consciousness than the disciple. Therefore, the Master instructs the disciple, and if the disciple follows the instructions, he or she grows toward the Christ consciousness. Yet for the disciple to follow the Master, the disciple must trust the master and the process of growth.

This means that the disciple must be willing to follow the Master’s instructions without fully knowing why they are given. The Master-disciple relationship is based on trust, a promise made by the Master and a covenant between the two, which says that if the disciple stays true to the Master, the disciple will attain the same level of consciousness as the Master. The obligation of the Master is to impart his/her own level of consciousness to the disciple, and the obligation of the disciple is to maintain faith in the process of growth, the process of self-transcendence.

It is essential to understand that the Master’s instructions are graded and carefully adapted to the student’s present level of awareness. As you see in the school system on Earth, you do not teach university level courses to students in kindergarten. In other words, the instructions you receive at any given point are always at a slightly higher level than your current awareness. You can grasp the instructions, but you have to stretch the mind to apply the instructions.

The important effect of this is that the disciple, especially a beginning disciple, does not have enough attainment to understand why the Master’s instructions are given or why they take a certain form. This is not because the Master necessarily hides anything from the disciple, but if the disciple had the attainment to understand why a lesson is given, the disciple would not need the lesson. So there is a built-in gap between the disciple’s attainment and the awareness required to pass the test hidden behind the instructions. It is by overcoming this gap that the disciple passes the test and grows in attainment. Yet for the disciple to overcome this gap, he/she must be willing to follow the Master’s instructions without full knowledge of why they are given.

It is also essential to understand that the form of learning provided in a spiritual schoolroom is not passive learning. It is active, hands-on learning that requires the disciple to integrate the lesson through his or her own efforts, ingenuity and creativity. A part of the learning process is that the disciple, especially the more advanced disciple, is tested, which means that the disciple is given a set of instructions, and although the instructions are not wrong, the disciple cannot pass the test by taking them literally. It is up to the disciple to figure out exactly what the instructions mean. That is why a spiritual schoolroom is often referred to as a “Mystery School.”

In other words, the disciple grows by figuring out the deeper understanding behind the Master’s instructions. This is an essential concept because it explains why you cannot blindly or mechanically follow the Master’s instructions. You have to follow them creatively by reaching for a higher degree of Christ awareness—which is multiplying your talents. This is the process seen in Zen Buddhism of having the student contemplate a koan, which is a contradictory riddle that cannot be solved literally.

Nevertheless, the disciple does have to follow the spirit of the instructions and cannot redefine the instructions to his or her liking or convenience. In other words, the disciple must reach for the higher state of consciousness required to pass the test instead of reinterpreting the Master’s instructions to fit the disciple’s current level of consciousness. If the disciple is not willing to rise to a higher level of awareness, he/she will pull the Master’s instructions down and will not grow. My point is that in order to grow, the disciple needs faith in the Master and in the process of growth. However, it cannot be blind faith; it must be a faith based on the desire for a higher understanding. That is why the Bible says, “With all thy getting, get understanding” (Proverbs 4:7), and why I said, “Seek and ye shall find” (Matthew 7:7).

Let us now take another look at the Garden of Eden. Eve, representing the evolving disciple, had been given a very specific instruction by the Master, namely to avoid the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. The forbidden fruit is a representation of the consciousness of anti-christ, the consciousness of separation from God and the mindset of duality and relative truth. Eve did not have the full awareness of the reason the instruction was given, because in that case there would have been no test.

Eve could have passed the test by following the instructions while seeking a higher understanding of why they were given. Yet instead of following the instructions of her Master, Eve listened to the temptations of the Serpent. In the Biblical story, this was a specific being who had embodied the consciousness of anti-christ and was fully identified with it. This being was allowed in the Garden because the real test behind the Master’s instructions concerning the forbidden fruit was that the disciple needed to deal with the temptation to disobey God’s laws.

When God gave lifestreams free will, it became inevitable that they received the potential to go against God’s laws and the creative intent. There is no guarantee or necessity that a lifestream will use its free will to go against God’s laws, but is does remain a potential, and for the evolving disciple it remains a constant temptation. That temptation is not fully overcome until the disciple manifests full Christ consciousness and thus leaves the consciousness of anti-christ behind for good. For that to happen, the Master must allow the disciple to be tested by the consciousness of anti-christ, as I was tempted by the devil after my stay in the wilderness.

How was Eve tempted by the consciousness of anti-christ? The disciple was tempted because the Serpent performed a deliberate and calculated attack at the very heart of the Master-disciple relationship. As I said, the essence of this relationship is the disciple’s faith in the Master, and thus the Serpent attacked this faith by sowing the seed of doubt in the disciple’s mind. This was done with the words, “Thou shalt not surely die.” That one word, “surely,” was the arrow of doubt that caused the disciple to doubt the Master’s instructions.

By allowing the mind to dwell upon and take in this doubt, the disciple became a “house divided against itself,” and thus the disciple could no longer stand in the Master’s presence. The disciple sought to hide from the Master, and in so doing the sense of separation from the Master was further solidified. The disciple finally descended so far into the consciousness of separation/duality/relativity – the consciousness of anti-christ – that the disciple lost the connection to the Master and even the memory of the Master. All that was left was this subtle inner longing for something beyond this world, a longing that can never be fully eradicated but can be covered over.

Kim: So can you help me understand the consciousness of anti-christ. I mean where did it come from and what is the essence of it?

Jesus: It came into being as a companion to free will. As I explain throughout this website, God defined certain creative principles, or laws, to make sure the universe can grow in a sustainable manner and will not self-destruct. You are designed to be a co-creator with God and to help bring God’s kingdom to Earth by using your creative abilities within the framework of God’s laws. The laws are meant to maintain the perfect harmony between individual co-creators and the whole, so that one co-creator cannot use his/her creative abilities to destroy other lifestreams or the whole.

God wants the whole to grow, not just one lifestream. When you stay within God’s law, there is harmony between your individual creativity and the whole, meaning that your creative efforts magnify both yourself and the whole. If you go outside God’s law, you act as if the rest of the universe doesn’t matter or is subordinate to you. Thus, everything you do serves to limit both yourself and the whole.

Obviously, this isn’t God’s intent, so as a safeguard, God designed the material universe as a mirror. Whatever you do to others is magnified by the universe and mirrored back to you, which has the effect of limiting your creative powers. This prevents you from destroying the entire universe because you will reduce your creative powers to zero before you can destroy too much of your environment.

However, this is only a safeguard for co-creators who do misuse their free will. There is no necessity for you to do so. It is perfectly possible to use your unlimited creativity in ways that magnify both yourself and the whole. To teach you how to balance individuality with the whole, God created the spiritual schools, the mystery schools, and provided inexperienced co-creators with more experienced teachers.

If you do separate yourself from a true spiritual teacher, the law of karma, or action-reaction, becomes your teacher. Obviously, the Master-disciple relationship is designed to help you stay within the safe haven of God’s law. Yet that only works as long as you have faith in the Master, and the ultimate Master is your Creator who designed the universe for your growth and his laws for your protection. If you separate yourself from the Master who is assigned as your teacher, the law of action and reaction will teach you by returning to your doorstep everything you send out. Hopefully, you will one day realize that if you keep throwing hatred into the universe, the cosmic mirror keeps throwing it back at you, so if you don’t want hatred coming back, you need to start sending out love instead.

The role of the true Master is to help you learn this lesson without suffering the consequences of your actions. Yet that only works when you believe the Master’s instructions, for example if the Master tells you not to eat a certain fruit because you will surely die by doing so.

It is essential to understand that because of the law of action and reaction, God is not overly concerned about you violating his laws. You are allowed to experiment and you are allowed to make mistakes. In other words, you can learn both from following and from going against God’s laws. The problem comes in when you go against God’s laws and then refuse to admit that you made a mistake that limits yourself (and all other parts of life).

My point is that the purpose of life is growth, and because of free will, no one can force you to grow. You can grow in only one way, namely through self-correction, self-transcendence. So what happens when a disciple makes a mistake and refuses to understand or admit that it was a mistake—refuses to face the teacher? Obviously, such a lifestream cannot/will not self-correct, and consequently it cannot grow. This is against the very creative intent itself, and if the lifestream keeps it up, it will eventually self-destruct. Needless to say, God much prefers that his sons and daughters do not fall into this trap.

To prevent this, God has created the consciousness of Christ, which serves as a safeguard. The universal Christ mind is the only begotten Son of God, and as I said, only the Son knows the Father (Matthew 11:27) and no one comes to the Father except through the Son (John 14:6). The meaning is that the Christ mind is one with God and God’s law. A co-creator who has attained Christ consciousness sees itself as one with God and with the Body of God. Therefore, such a being understands that following God’s law is best for itself and for the whole—which is part of its larger sense of Self. Thus, a Christed being would never violate God’s law, and such a being has an absolute standard for knowing what is in harmony with God’s law and what is not.

Yet a co-creator is not created with the full Christ consciousness. It is created as a babe in Christ with the potential to attain full God-awareness. This must be attained through choices, whereby the truth of Christ becomes fully integrated into your being. You are not blindly following God’s laws, you know why they are enlightened self-interest. A co-creator grows by choosing the absolute truth of Christ over the relative truth of anti-christ.

The mind of anti-christ is born out of separation from God and God’s law, which is a potential because of free will. This separation leads to a fundamental duality, meaning that you see yourself as being here and God is somewhere else. You separate yourself out from God and thus you no longer see yourself as one with the Body of God. You have now lost the ability to balance your individuality with the larger whole, and you seek to glorify the individual self instead of the larger Self. That is why people in this state of mind become increasingly egotistical, until they become unreachable for both other people and a spiritual teacher.

Duality gives rise to an entirely new state of consciousness in which there is no appreciation for the absolute truth found in the Christ mind, the truth based on God’s law. “Truth” has now become a relative concept that is defined by the being trapped in the mind of anti-christ. This is the fruit of the knowledge of relative good and evil, where you have no absolute way of defining truth, so it all becomes relative to how you want to define it. You can always justify glorifying the individual self while ignoring the whole.

The essential point here is that in the mind of anti-christ there is no truth whatsoever. So the more a being is trapped in, identifies with, this consciousness, the harder it becomes to see and admit that it has made a mistake. After all, if there is no absolute truth, how can one say that a given act was a mistake? When truth is relative, it is always possible to define a “truth” that makes it seem like you didn’t make a mistake and thus you don’t need to self-correct. When you define “truth” you can always make it seem like you are right and everyone else – including God – is wrong.

Obviously, you can only maintain this illusion by ignoring what is said by true spiritual teachers and by ignoring what is reflected back to you from the universe. In other words, you must ignore the consequences of your own actions, and this becomes an uphill battle. If you send out hatred, the universe mirrors it back, and the more hatred you send out, the more comes back, making it more difficult to ignore or explain away. In order to continue to ignore that you are responsible for what comes back from the universe, you must enter into a state of total pride and arrogance that makes it seem like what comes back is not caused by you. It is the fault of other people or an unjust God. Therefore, you are right and everyone else, even God, is wrong. You essentially engage in a fight to control the universe, thinking that when everything lives up to your self-defined world view, you will have the ultimate proof that you – and your relative definition of truth – are right.

When your definition of truth is relative and your pride is absolute, you can maintain this illusion until you face the trial by fire that goes before the second death (Revelation 20:14 and 21:8). At that moment, a soul can no longer ignore truth, but it can still maintain the pride that makes it refuse to self-correct, even in the face of absolute truth. So one might say that the basic element of the serpentine mind is the relative definition of “truth,” but the real problem with it is the refusal to self-correct.

This refusal springs from doubt in God’s promise, as I expressed in my parable about the talents, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord” (Matthew 25:21). The disciple either doubts the validity of this promise or is unwilling to “be faithful over a few things,” meaning multiplying your talents and making the best of what you have right now, in order to prove the promise.

Kim: That is very interesting to me because it might explain why certain people are so aggressive in denouncing any idea that doesn’t fit into their world view. I could never understand why such people cannot just let other people have different beliefs. I mean, why feel so threatened by the fact that other people follow a different religion, why be so aggressive in converting them to your beliefs? Is that because such people are trapped in the serpentine mind?

Jesus: That is correct. Their life, in fact their existence as the beings they are today, is based on an illusion that they have created from their own relative definition of truth. If that illusion was challenged or proven wrong, they would have to admit that it was a Tower of Babel—and thus they would have to change. The absolute law for such people is that they can never be proven wrong, and thus they will go to great length to prevent their relative “truth” from being challenged or proven wrong. This automatically puts them at odds with people who are sincerely striving to embody the truth of Christ. They feel threatened by such people and especially by anyone demonstrating his or her Christhood.

People who are completely trapped in this combination of fear and pride are willing to kill those who follow what they must define as a false religion. This is the basis for every religious war seen on this planet. Some people are not ready to kill to maintain their illusion, but this is often because they think they cannot get away with it. Yet they have no compunctions about killing your beliefs, which can be said to be a form of psychic murder. Here is how I addressed these people: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44). The devil’s primary concern is to kill your faith in God and separate you from a true teacher.

One might say that such people are the false teachers or the false prophets that I warned people about. You might notice that I said they come in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves (Matthew 7:15). The meaning is that such people often appear to be religious or spiritual. In fact, a certain type of them are attracted to spiritual organizations, and as a true spiritual seeker you should expect to meet some of them.

Kim: Okay, that is a statement I think will surprise many people. In fact, I think many people will refuse to believe it. I see so many people who want to believe that their church is better than anyone else’s or is the only true one. Therefore, it could not possibly be influenced by the mindset of anti-christ.

Jesus: Well, you just need to look at history and see that virtually every religion or church has gradually become rigid or dogmatic, thereby losing or perverting the original teachings. Christianity is the perfect example, as I explain throughout this website. I think anyone open to this website will be open to this fact.

The real point here is that as you grow in spiritual maturity, you will put away your former beliefs, including the naive belief that a given organization cannot be influenced by the mindset of anti-christ. As Paul said, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (1Corinthians 13:11).

It is a basic fact that, after the Fall, every aspect of life on this planet has been somewhat influenced by the mindset of anti-christ. As you grow toward Christhood, you will gradually attain the discernment to separate the absolute truth of Christ from the relative truth of anti-christ, yet you have to be willing to consciously use this ability. If you think you can make spiritual progress without discerning between truth and relative truth, you are still trapped in the consciousness of relative truth.

Therefore, as a more mature seeker, you should expect and anticipate that you will be tempted by or otherwise exposed to people who are trapped in the mindset of anti-christ. As I said, this is an inevitable result of the current state of affairs on Earth, but it is also allowed by God as a necessary step to you redeeming yourself and separating yourself from the mindset that caused you to leave the Master-disciple relationship. You have to separate yourself from the false teacher before you can reunite with your true teacher.

My point is that you need to be aware that false teachers exist, and you need to be on the lookout for them. The better you become at identifying them and their methods, the less likely you are to be led astray by them, thereby taking a detour. As part of this, it is necessary to be aware that the ascended masters form a hierarchy of spiritual teachers who serve to help you grow toward personal Christhood. Our role is to set people free from the consciousness of anti-christ, and any true teacher works under the lineage of our hierarchy of light.

Yet there is also a hierarchy of darkness, we might call it a false hierarchy, and they are very aggressive and very organized. Their ultimate goal is to prove that God was wrong by giving co-creators free will, and their aim is to make everyone on Earth misuse their free will through the consciousness of anti-christ. Many of these beings exist as disembodied beings on lower realms, including the mental and emotional realms, as explained elsewhere. Yet there are many people in embodiment who serve as either knowing or unknowing representatives of the false hierarchy.

As I said, they will do everything possible to destroy your faith in a true teacher or in the entire process of redemption. The essence of the problem on Earth is that people have become trapped in the consciousness of duality. From the very beginning God designed a process that allows any being – no matter how far it has descended into the consciousness of anti-christ – to redeem itself. This process is the spiritual path, whereby you follow a true teacher until you attain Christ consciousness and know God’s truth from within yourself. The false hierarchy will do anything possible to prevent you from knowing about this path or following it.

Their first goal is to prevent people from knowing anything about the true path and its goal, whereby people remain trapped in ignorance. When you rise above this ignorance, they seek to destroy your faith in the process of redemption or in a specific teacher or teaching that represents the ascended masters. Or they seek to destroy your faith that you are able or worthy to be a disciple. If that doesn’t work, they seek to tempt you into following one of the many false paths, the way that seemeth right unto a man because it is defined by the duality consciousness.

You need to be aware that there is an entire group of people who serve as the spoilers, and they are actively seeking to accomplish the above goals by destroying any spiritual teacher, teaching or organization. When a new spiritual initiative springs up, the false hierarchy will send their representatives (be they knowing or unknowing representatives) to the leader in order to destroy, or at least control, him/her. This first of all means destroying the leader’s faith in his mission or ability to fulfill it, but it can also involve killing the person as my experience clearly demonstrates. If that doesn’t work, they will move on and seek to destroy anyone following that teacher, and from there they seek to discredit the teaching.

If a movement survives these first attacks, plan B comes into effect, and it is essentially based on the philosophy that, “If you can’t beat’em—join ‘em.” The representatives of the false hierarchy will now join the organization (some might actually have been there from the beginning) and they will seek to take it away from its original purpose. In Christianity, you can see this very clearly. The Roman empire first attempted to kill all Christians, and then Christianity was turned into the official state religion. Thereby, I was turned into an idol to worship instead of an example to follow, and as a result my original mission has been subverted—or so it seems to the false hierarchy.

Kim: How can you defend yourself from these attacks, which I assume can be very subtle?

Jesus: The first line of defense is always to expand your awareness. You need the basic understanding that the spoilers exist and that they always use the same strategy. They seek to “divide and conquer,” meaning that they seek to plant doubt in your mind, so that you become a house divided against itself. In an organization, they will seek to divide the leaders and or followers, again by planting doubt.

Yet the true defense is a firm understanding of what the spiritual path is about. The purpose of the path is to give you the opportunity to redeem yourself and reunite with your true teacher (so that you are no longer divided in your own being). You can then come back to the oneness with God and with the Body of God on Earth and in Heaven that is the true abundant life.

How can you do this? By being willing to self-correct, being willing to self-transcend. Do you see the point? No matter what mistakes you have made, you can always come back to the teacher. Yet to do so, you must be willing to admit that you made a mistake and then rise above the state of consciousness that caused you to make the mistake—you must be willing to self-correct.

This is the essential truth that the false teachers do not want you to know about, understand or accept. They want you to think that you have made such a mistake that you cannot come back to the teacher, cannot come back to God’s kingdom. And they will use every conceivable plot to destroy your belief in the possibility of redemption or prevent you from walking the path to redemption. The aim of their effort is to stop you at a certain step of the spiritual path and prevent you from taking the next step.

How can you overcome this plot? By always – and I mean ALWAYS – being willing to take the next step. NEVER allow any force – be it a false teacher outside yourself or the false teacher of your own ego – to prevent you from taking the next step on the path. NEVER allow anything to prevent you from transcending your current level of consciousness and taking the next step toward Christ consciousness. As long as you are transcending yourself, you are moving toward Christ consciousness, and no false teacher can stop your progress unless you allow them to convince you not to take the next step. The motto must be, “From here forward, ALWAYS forward!”

Kim: So are you saying that there are people in the world today – some of them in spiritual/religious organizations – who are false teachers and are – whether or not they know this consciously – acting as the representatives of the false hierarchy of anti-christ?

Jesus: Certainly. Anyone who is aggressively promoting a teaching based on the consciousness of anti-christ or is promoting the false path is actively helping the cause of the false hierarchy. Basically, anyone seeking to destroy other people’s faith in the spiritual path is serving the cause of the false hierarchy—which is to separate the disciple from the teacher. There are also some people in embodiment today who in past lives served as leaders and led many lifestreams astray, causing them to fall into the consciousness of duality or preventing them from following a true teacher.

As I said, the characteristic of the serpentine consciousness is an unwillingness to admit an error, an unwillingness to self-correct. There are people in today’s world who have been in this state of consciousness for a very long time. They have therefore become extremely skilled at using a dualistic “truth” to convince others that they are right. They can often seem very sincere, very knowledgeable and very persuasive. That is why they continue to lead many people astray even today.

Kim: Could one say that such people share in the responsibility for leading people on Earth astray? I mean, I once heard someone use the expression that a person can “carry the karma of Eve.” Does that apply to what we are talking about here?

Jesus: It does in the sense that “Eve” represents what has happened to more than one lifestream. The karma of Eve has two aspects. The karma made by the disciple is the karma of disobeying the Master, and that karma is individual. Most people on Earth carry an individual karma of Eve. You are always responsible for the choices you make, even if you allow a false teacher to influence your choices.

Yet Eve was tempted, and thus the other aspect is the karma made by the false teacher who led Eve astray. One might say that the real karma of Eve is that of aggressively and maliciously separating a disciple from the Master. This is a collective karma, meaning that a false teacher carries a certain karma for each person he/she led astray. The Serpent is the primary being that carries the karma of Eve. Yet anyone who has come to embody the consciousness of the Serpent will also have been instrumental in leading people astray. There are a number of people on Earth today who in past lives led many people astray, and therefore one can say that they carry the karma of Eve.

Kim: How can such people redeem themselves from that karma?

Jesus: By meeting one inescapable condition, namely that they must abandon the consciousness of the Serpent, which means that they must be willing to admit their past mistakes and self-correct. They must rise above the relative truth they have defined and confess the absolute truth of Christ, whereby their former errors become obvious and are no longer shrouded in the veils of duality. In order to balance the karma for taking people off the true path, a person must be willing to demonstrate the true path. And this can be done only by completely abandoning the consciousness of anti-christ.

This can be very difficult for a lifestream who has been stuck in duality for many lifetimes. How can such a person admit that he or she has created a world view that is entirely based on duality—that is a house built on sand? Such people often believe they know better than others, and therefore they cannot/ will not see that they need to abandon their “perfect” world view and humble themselves before a true teacher until they attain true Christ discernment.

Such people are often very reluctant to acknowledge the truth of Christ, seeking to explain it away and turn it into a relative truth. They often seek to undermine a true teacher because they think they know better than such a teacher. And because their world view is based on relative “truth,” they can always argue their case in a way that is convincing to people who cannot see through duality.

It is therefore extremely important that spiritual seekers learn to recognize the mindset of the serpent, so they can avoid following people who are stuck in this frame of mind.

 

 

 Copyright © 2009 by Kim Michaels