Jesus, December 25, 2005.

I desire to give you a teaching that you can contemplate, so you begin to realize that I was not different from you in the sense that I did not have to walk a gradual path in order to attain my Christhood. I did indeed walk a gradual path, and a careful reading of the scriptures and a little bit of reading between the lines will demonstrate that I was not born perfect, that I was not born in the fullness of my Christhood but that I went through many initiations in order to manifest my Christhood.

This is as is has been for many of you, for many students on the spiritual path, whether they have been in this teaching or that organization. There are even many people on earth who do not belong to any spiritual or religious organization or teaching but who are nevertheless walking the path of individual Christhood, leading them back to a sense of oneness with all life, a sense of oneness with God.

So I come to give you a discourse this day for those of you who have been consciously walking the spiritual path for many years, whether it be in this or that teaching or organization. What I am talking about is those who have realized that there is a spiritual side to life and that it is possible for them to raise their consciousness. I see millions of people who have discovered the path in one form or another and who have diligently followed that path, some for several decades. They have put great effort into it, they have studied the path, they have been willing to inconvenience themselves and give rituals of various kinds.

Yet I also see that many of them have reached a plateau, have reached a certain point from where they find it difficult to progress. I even see some who have started a downward spiral without realizing what is happening to them. My Beloved hearts, when you follow the spiritual path, you will come to an essential turning point. And let me explain the two phases of the ideal growth for a spiritual seeker.

When you first discover the path, it is natural that you are motivated by a somewhat self-centered drive to raise your own consciousness, to improve your own outer situation, to find the truth, to find the highest spiritual teaching you can find and to solve various problems, from overcoming disease or addictions to finding the ideal partner. These are natural desires, yet they are not the motivation that can get you to the very top of the spiritual path, because they are geared towards raising up yourself as an individual being that you see as being separated from all life.

For some time – and for some people this might be years or even decades, and for some it will be only months – it is acceptable to walk the spiritual path based on this self-centered motivation. But there will come the essential cut-off point, where, if you continue to walk the path based on a self-centered motivation, you will no longer be walking the true spiritual path that leads you closer to God. You will actually be taking what the Bible calls “The way that seemeth right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:12). You will be taking what we might call the left-handed path, the path of the black magicians and those who embody the consciousness of anti-Christ.

Raising yourself or raising all life

For what is the consciousness of anti-Christ? It is the consciousness that sees the individual being as separated from God and thereby separated from all life. And suddenly, the individual being begins to think that it can elevate itself above other aspects of life, that it can elevate itself to make itself look more important, more spiritual, more powerful, more wise, even more loving than other parts of life. But this is not done in order to raise up all life but in order to raise up only that individual.

Do you see the essential teaching I am giving you here? There is a point where it is necessary and acceptable that you seek to raise up your individual being, because you must do what is necessary to heal your psychological wounds, to pull yourself away from the mass consciousness and any downward pull created by you in past lifetimes. This can be a task that requires all of your concentration, and therefore it is natural that you are focused on yourself and raising up your individual being and your individual consciousness.

But if you continue seeking to raise up only yourself, it is inevitable that you will switch from the true path to the false path. And I must tell you in all honesty that there are many people in the world who call themselves true spiritual seekers, true Christians, true Buddhists, true Muslims, true Hindus or even true students of the ascended masters, yet they are still following the path based on the desire to raise up their individual beings. And they have not even begun to understand the need to broaden their sense of identity, so they see themselves as one with all life.

Therefore, when you look at any spiritual organization on this planet, you can see those who have been in the organization, sometimes for decades, who have faithfully met all of the outer requirements stated by that organization. Yet they have done it for one reason only: to raise up themselves in comparison to other people, so that they can create and maintain and reinforce the illusion that they are more advanced, more spiritual, more wise, more loving, more giving than other people in that organization or other people in the world.

Some of these people may actually appear to be humble because they have learned to play the game. Some of them, in fact all of them, believe that they are humble, that they are spiritual, that they are loving. Yet my beloved, they are the lawyers that I denounced 2,000 years ago.

The lawyers seek to prevent others from growing

You might recall that I talked about the key of knowledge (Luke 11:52) and that the lawyers had not been willing to enter in, and that they were seeking to stop others from entering in. Well, the key of knowledge is the realization that the true goal of the spiritual path – and the only key to salvation – is to come into oneness with God and oneness with all life. Oneness with God as the God Above and oneness with all life as the God in manifestation here below.

The lawyers have not understood or have not been willing to recognize the key of knowledge, so they have not been willing to enter into oneness. And therefore, they are using their spiritual teaching to raise up themselves in comparison to others. And in so doing they are, in subtle and often unrecognized ways, seeking to prevent other people from entering into oneness. Because they do not want other people to exceed their own level of spiritual growth, for if that were to happen, then they could no longer maintain their illusion that they were more spiritual, more advanced than others.

So you see, my beloved, when you walk the spiritual path from a self-centered perspective, there will come a point where you cannot grow further. Your growth will come to a halt. Most people do not recognize this with their outer minds, but at deeper levels of their being they know they are stuck, they are not growing. Yet they do not realize that the reason they are not growing is that they have not let go of the illusion of separateness, of trying to raise themselves up above others.

So because they are not willing to let go of this illusion, they are attached to the feeling that they are more advanced than others. So you see, the mechanism that comes into play here when the person subconsciously knows that it cannot grow beyond its present level, and when that person is attached to feeling better than others, then the only way to maintain the illusion of being better than others is to prevent others from growing!

Because if others were to continue on the true path of growth, they would quickly exceed the lawyers who have stopped their own growth. Do you see this mechanism? You need to learn to recognize this mechanism. It is good if you can see it in others because truly there are some who have taken this to the extreme, and you will see them in every spiritual organization, where they go around with an aura of superiority, even if it be subtle. So it is good if you can recognize it in those who are so extreme that it is obvious.

But I tell you, you must also learn to recognize it in yourself because this very tendency, that I am talking about, is the essence of the ego. And the ego of every human being is caught in this trap of not wanting to grow, not wanting to elevate all life and therefore wanting to hold back others. And my beloved, when you seek to hold back others, you truly hold back yourself as well. It is inevitable.

As I have stated before, the real message behind my saying to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is that whatever you do to others, you are inevitably doing to yourself at a deeper level of your being. So if you seek to hold back others from growing and coming into oneness with God, it is because you have allowed your ego to stop your own growth at a certain level. It is most important that you uncover the subtle ways in which the ego is trying to stop your growth or trying to stop the growth of others. For if you do not, you will become stuck on the left-handed path.

This is an excerpt from a longer teaching. You can read the full dictation HERE.