Ascended Master Jesus, December 25, 2005 through Kim Michaels.

So what is the key to overcoming this problem? Well, it is to realize that if you want to grow beyond a certain point, you must raise your motivation for following the path. You must learn to recognize that your ego is self-centered and that your ego is very good at using a spiritual teaching in order to make it seem like it is such an advanced student. You must learn to unmask this in yourself and then, instead of feeling guilty, instead of coming down on yourself, you simply realize, “Oh but this is just the ego playing its games, and I am more than the ego, and I want to come up higher. I want to really take my spiritual growth to the higher level that Jesus demonstrated.”

And in order to take your growth to that higher level, you must enter into the sense of oneness with all life here below and realize that you need to use what you have internalized in order to help others. Only when you give out what you have received in the time you have followed the spiritual path, will you take your growth to the next level. Because it is only then that you multiply your talents.

Do you see, my beloved, that my parable about the talents is so fruitful and vast and has so many meanings and interpretations. And one of them is that when you are following the spiritual path based on the self-centered motivation, seeking to raise up yourself only, there will come a point where your growth stops and you have now buried your talents in the ground. Only when you raise yourself above that point, will you multiply your talents. And only then can God multiply your own light, your own growth, and take you to that higher level.

Simplicity is not so simple

This is the most essential teaching that you could possibly internalize about the spiritual path. My Beloved hearts, I see so many people who find the teachings I have given. They find the website, they find a book, they start reading here and there. And the people I am talking about whose growth has come to a halt, almost all of them have the same reaction, “Oh but I already know all of this. And I have found even more advanced teachings, that give me a far more advanced intellectual understanding of the path and the spiritual reality. This is too simple for me.” And so they move on.

Yet I must tell you that no other teaching has exposed the very core of the spiritual path with such directness and such simplicity. And what is the effect of the simplicity? Ah my beloved, simplicity is not nearly as simple as you might think. For truly, that which appears simple, appears simple only to the ego, to the intellect, to the outer mind. And it appears simple because the ego and the intellect cannot do what they always seek to do, which is to interpret a teaching in such a way that it makes them seem so advanced because they can understand this teaching.

There is a danger for those who have followed the spiritual path for a long time but have not truly entered into the inner path of oneness. They seek, inevitably, a higher and higher teaching just as an addict seeks a greater and greater fix. And they think that in order to find the higher teaching, it has to be something that is difficult to understand, because the ego and the intellect reason that the more difficult it is to understand, the more advanced it must be. They become almost addicted to seeking spiritual teachings, and they overlook the very pearls that are so simple that the ego cannot manipulate and misinterpret it because there is no room for misinterpretation—if you are willing to look at the teaching and truly listen to what it says.

My Beloved hearts, be not as the lawyers. And if you have been caught in the pattern of being a lawyer, then be willing to look in the mirror and say, “This is not why I have striven for these many years. I have not put forth so much effort on the spiritual path in order to end up as the lawyers who rejected the Living Christ. I must change my motivation, I must raise my motivation, I must come up higher. I must look beyond the ego itself, the self-centeredness, for I will have no part of it anymore. I am disgusted with that selfishness, that self-centeredness, I am disgusted with the ego’s incessant attempts to elevate itself above others. I want to find the true path that Jesus and the Buddha and all other teachers have demonstrated. I want to look at Mother Teresa who lived an entire life of selflessness, I want to look at Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, the Buddha and other great examples of people who lived a life of selfless service. This is what I want and I am willing to be reborn and to rethink every aspect of my approach to the spiritual path in order to really come up to that level of selflessness and service to all life.”

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