TOPICS: Raise up a chalice for the Living Christ – Did Jesus die on the cross? – Perpetual surrender – A new greeting for modern disciples  – Claim your right to be the Christ on earth –

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Ascended Master Jesus, May 28, 2006 through Kim Michaels.

I and my Father are One. I and my brother are One. The universal Christ Consciousness, as everything in this universe, has an Alpha aspect and an Omega aspect. Thus, the Alpha aspect of the universal Christ Consciousness is what the Bible calls the only begotten Son of God, which remains in heaven and is always One with the Father. Yet the Son of God that descends into the material world and is the Word made flesh is the Living Christ—which can manifest itself through any human being who decides to exercise his or her Christ potential and thus become the open door for that Living Christ to flow, that Living Word to flow into this world.

And thus, what you saw earlier today was an example of the Living Christ expressing itself as the flame of God Power. Yet there are seven rays my beloved. So the danger of giving you an example is that you think that the Living Christ always has to express itself that way. But I am telling you, that is not so. For God Power is the first ray, and there is God Wisdom, God Love, God Purity, God Truth, God Peace and God Freedom. You, personally, may currently be working on one of the other rays. And thus you have the potential to be the open door for the Living Christ to express itself through you as the quality of that ray. And when you attain mastery of all seven rays, you can be the open door for the Living Christ to express itself through you on all seven rays, as the situation requires—as what is required to give the person or the persons that you are speaking to a cup of cold water in Christ’s name. So that they receive exactly what they need to be awakened and take the next step on their personal path.

Raise up a chalice for the Living Christ

Thus, my beloved, I call your attention to the necessity of contemplating the concept of being Right on each of the seven rays. Being Right means being balanced. For, as has already been said, the eight-fold path of the Buddha is to be Right by being on the middle way. If you think back to the delivery earlier, you will see that there was an expression of God Power. But there was not the misuse of God Power that you indeed see in some Christian preachers who go on with their hellfire and brimstone preaching, and therefore become unbalanced and indeed qualify power as the power of the ego.

And I must tell you that it is unfortunately possible that some of these people can have a certain momentum of God Power from past lives. And thus, they may seem to give a very powerful speech, and indeed there may be some flow of the Holy Spirit through them, but it is perverted by their egos who are blinded by their pride or by their desire for control. So that they will not express the God Power that is in alignment with the Will of God, and therefore seeks to awaken people without in any way forcing or manipulating them against the Law of Free Will.

Each and every one of you – if you are willing – have the potential to become the open door. That means following the path, healing your psychology, overcoming the ego, but it also means raising up a chalice, so that the Living Christ can flow into a vessel, and not be the pearl that is cast before the swine of the human consciousness of the world. And thus, raising up a chalice means that you study a topic that is dear to your heart. You study it until you have the concepts in your mind, to the point where the Living Christ has something to work with and can therefore express itself through you.

So what you saw earlier was that when Kim got up to give that lecture, he had no idea what was going to be said, except that it was going to be about the three years of my mission. Yet, because he has studied and read and written about the topic of my life, and knows the scriptures to some degree, he had the vessel prepared that could be the chalice for the Living Christ to flow through him—even though his outer mind had no preparation. And the same can be true of each and every one of you, when you prepare yourself. So that, at any moment, when you encounter a situation where the Living Christ desires to express itself through you, you are not taken aback and you do not fall into the trap that all of you sometimes fall into—of saying, “Oh no, I couldn’t be the Living Christ in this situation. I am not ready. I am not worthy. I do not know enough. I am too tired. Perhaps tomorrow, but not now.”

And yet, did I not say, “You know not when the lord of the household cometh?” You know not when the Living Christ needs to use you, because you are the only person who can give that cup of cold water to a particular person who is trapped in some outer situation, or in the blindness of the ego. And thus they need that cold water to be splashed in their face, so that they can be awakened and realize there is a better way to live, there is more to life.

Contemplate the concept of the brides who made themselves ready by keeping their lamps trimmed, so that when the bridegroom came, they were ready. Whereas the foolish virgins, who had not trimmed their lamps, first had to go out and buy oil, and thus, the bridegroom had already entered the bridal chamber when they came back.

Did Jesus die on the cross?

My Beloved hearts, I will now give you a teaching about the fourth stage of my mission and life—namely my death on the cross and my resurrection. There are books in this world that claim that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross—that he had learned some kind of technique taught in the mystery schools of the ancient world of how to withdraw the breath from the body for a time, so that it seemed like the body was dead but it could be reawakened through specific methods. It is claimed that giving me the vinegar while I was hanging on the cross was a means to allow myself to put my body into a coma and withdraw the soul.

So my beloved, what is the reality? Well, the reality is that I had studied in the mystery schools of the ancient world. The reality is that I had indeed learned the technique of withdrawing the breath, thereby putting the body into a state where it would be declared dead in any hospital in the modern world. It was indeed my plan, along with a few of my supporters, to go through the crucifixion and use this technique to give the impression of dying on the cross and then being reawakened.

This was my intent. But it did not come to pass. For as I was hanging on the cross, I realized that this was not God’s will. It was indeed God’s will that I, Jesus Christ, went through the experience of physical death, having faith that whether I was resurrected or not would be according to God’s will. You see, my beloved, even the consciousness of wanting to cheat death was in a certain sense a lack of faith on my part, thinking that I somehow had to give God a little bit of help. And thus, I had created a ghost—a ghostly image of how my ascension, how my crucifixion, should take place. And it was indeed that ghostly image that I had to give up while I was hanging on the cross.

For I experienced that – as I started going through the process of withdrawing the breath – God’s Presence withdrew itself from me. And thus, I knew that it was not the will of God to continue. And thus I cried out in affliction, not knowing what was next. And then I surrendered myself, surrendered the ghost, and let my body die.

And it was indeed this act of total surrender – of being willing to die on the cross – that was the key to my resurrection. Thus, why would I build, why would I create, this ghost that it was necessary for me to remain physically alive instead of leaving it up to God? Well, it was partly because my entire mission in Palestine was adapted to the beliefs of the Jews. I did and said many things that were aimed at fulfilling the prophecies in the Old Testament, so that the Jews might accept me as their Messiah and therefore raise their religion out of the Old Testament law and prophets that was now obsolete.

Therefore, knowing how close-minded the leaders of the Jewish religion and many of its followers were, it was necessary to do and say many things that were specifically adapted to fulfilling the prophecies given forth about the coming of the Messiah. And while in that consciousness, I built that ghost of thinking I could go through this process of being crucified without having the physical body die. And thereby, my intent was to continue my mission elsewhere.

Perpetual surrender

So my beloved, I tell you this that you may have an understanding of how subtle the ego can be. And how to the very end of your spiritual path, and your spiritual mission on this earth, the ego can manage to trick you into creating a ghost about your mission on this earth. And I ask you to contemplate this and learn, once again, from my example, thus not being permanently trapped by such a ghostly image imposed by your ego or imposed by other people. For as has been discussed, the world might recognize the presence of the Christ, but the world will want to impose its dualistic images upon how the Christ expresses itself in this world.

And it is very easy for all of us, when we are in a physical body, to adapt in subtle ways to the ways of the world, rather than always being completely open—giving God a clean slate on which to write. Thus, I ask you to contemplate that for as long as you are in embodiment, you need to maintain some awareness of the need to give up the ghost continually. And therefore, I ask you to contemplate the concept of perpetual surrender, whereby you never allow your ego to trick you into thinking that you have now passed some turning point on the path, and now you are beyond the ego or the need to surrender. If you are always willing to surrender, and if you are always alert for what you need to surrender, you cannot be permanently trapped in the consciousness of death. For I tell you, the consciousness of life is indeed the state of perpetual surrender, and thus we who are ascended, and reside in the spiritual realm, are in that state of perpetual surrender.

And I know that many of you, through the Christian dispensation and through other organizations have come to see an ascended master as being somehow perfect. And therefore, how could that ascended master need to surrender anything? But you see, an ascended master does not need to surrender the ego. But an ascended master, at any given time, still has a sense of identity.

And yet in order to maintain its place in the River of Life, even an ascended master has to – at certain intervals – surrender its current sense of identity and accept a greater sense of identity, thus becoming more in the process. This process will not end until you have manifested the full God Consciousness exemplified by your Creator. And even then it will not end, as we will surely describe in the book by Maitreya that will be forthcoming in due time.

A new greeting for modern disciples

So my beloved, ponder these concepts, and ponder the concept of the community of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. For you truly have the greatest opportunity to manifest that community, given the teachings you have on overcoming the ego, and given the tools you have in the rosaries and invocations, and given the love you have in your hearts.

Thus, I ask you to contemplate that the first book I brought forth was, “The Mystical Teachings of Jesus.” Because that is what the world needs to overcome – the idolatry of Christianity – and have the concept that the Christ could possibly be born in every human being. But I tell you that many of you, who have followed the path for many years and who have diligently followed the teachings and used the tools, have gone beyond the point of the Christ being born in you. And now you have come to the point where you need to pass through the initiation that I passed through on the cross of letting that ghost, that final ghost, of the ego die. And therefore, allowing the Christ to rise. And thus, the Christ is not only born in you, the Christ is risen in you.

I ask you to contemplate this, and even create a little custom amongst yourselves. For the first followers of the Way of Christ, when they greeted each other, affirmed what was for them the miracle of the Christian dispensation, namely that I had risen from the dead. Think again about orthodox Christianity that focuses so much attention on my crucifixion and my death on the cross and the spilling of my blood that supposedly washed away humankind’s sins, that they forget that there was nothing special about being crucified 2,000 years ago. In fact, any thief or criminal could be crucified. But how many of them were resurrected afterwards?

What was so special about my life was not that I died on the cross, but that I rose from the dead and became the risen Christ. So when my early followers met each other, one person would say with joy and elation, “Christ is risen!” and the other person would answer back with the Omega return, “He is risen.” And thus, I ask you to take this to a higher level so that one person says, “Christ is risen in you!” and the other person says, “He is risen!” affirming that the Christ is risen in you. And you can play with this greeting, add onto it in your own creativity, affirming the Christ is risen in both of you.

Claim your right to be the Christ on earth

And thus, I leave you to contemplate the need to claim your right to have Christ rise in your being while you are still in a physical body. To claim your God Power, to claim your right to manifest your individual Christhood and to manifest the community of the Holy Spirit. For I tell you, for many of you, the only thing that stands between your current step on the path and the victory of being the open door for the Living Christ is that you must claim your Christhood, claim your God Power, your God Wisdom, your God Love, your God Purity, your God Truth, your God Peace and your God Freedom—and claim your right to be the Christ on all seven rays.

So contemplate this in your heart of hearts when you are alone, and be willing to claim that Christhood. And thus I invite you to stand now with me here and claim your Christhood silently or aloud: “In the name of the I AM THAT I AM Jesus Christ I claim my right to be the Christ in embodiment and be the Christ on all seven rays.”

My Beloved hearts, thank you for your willingness to claim that Christhood—even if you did it tentatively. Practice makes perfect, and it might take some reaffirming before you feel that you can claim it with all of your beings. Yet if you never start, if you never dare to claim that Christhood, how can you build that momentum that leads to the full declaration and the full acceptance. Thus, I seal you in my heart’s unconditional love for each and every one of you. My Beloved, be at peace in the love of Christ. It is finished.

Copyright © 2006 by Kim Michaels

TOPICS: Blessed are the meek  – The ego as a substitute teacher – Christianity promotes a message that is anti-christ –

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Ascended Master Jesus, May 26, 2006 through Kim Michaels.

Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I AM in the midst of them. And rarely on this planet have I been in such a state of joy as to be in the midst of you who are here tonight. There is indeed excitement in heaven. There is indeed excitement in the etheric realm, among the ascended masters. For I must tell you that there has never been a gathering on this planet where so many people have been in such understanding of the essential concepts that we have given you – and that I incorporated into this invocation  – and have been willing to affirm their overcoming of the consciousness of death.

My Beloved, I am not saying this to cause any kind of pride, any sense that you are better than others. Because you know very well that that is just an ego game, and you need to let it die. So I give you a sense of realism that this is an advanced teaching. It is truly so profound that it could not have been given in past ages, except you go back to the Mother land on Lemuria, where similar teachings were indeed given but only to the higher initiates in the temples.

And thus, there is a power released in this invocation that is immense, when you give it from the Christ mind. And I have gladly added my momentum of my overcoming death and winning my ascension to your calls. But I did it while you were giving the invocation, because I was in your midst, as I AM in your midst in this very moment. Not through an outer messenger but through the inner messenger of each one’s Christ self.

Therefore, “in your midst” does not just mean in this room but outside yourself. For what is your midst? What is your center? Well, it is your heart, your heart chakra. And had you not been willing to purify that heart chakra by giving the invocation invocation for the purification of the heart, I could not have released this invocation [the Invocation for Victory over Death].

Blessed are the meek

Only when you have a certain purity of heart, can you see God. Only when you have a certain purity of heart, can you see God within yourself. And only when you see God – at least a glimpse of God – within yourself, can you let the ego die. For you know that if God is within you, how could you possibly die when the ego dies. And thus, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

And the meek are those who will no longer play the ego games but are willing to let them go—to be as a little child, who is willing to learn, to grow, to open your mind to ever new concepts in the infinite growth that is the mind of God. So many people on earth are so afraid of death, that they dare not look at it and see that they have been brought up with a false image of death—as they have been brought up with a false image of life. And thus, they cannot free themselves from the illusion that keeps them trapped in the consciousness of death. They think that if they give up that illusion, they will give up their very life. Yet did I not say, “He who seeks to save his life shall lose it, but he who is willing to lose his life shall find it.” He or she shall find the true life that is the God Flame, out of which you are an individualization.

And as I said 2,000 years ago, I came into this world to bear witness to the truth. And this is done partly through the spoken word, but it is done also by letting your light shine before men, that they may sense that God Flame that you are and know that there is something beyond the duality consciousness, the death consciousness. For is it not true that when you share teachings and concepts and ideas that are expressed in words, then the ego can always find a way to argue with what you are saying?

And thus, people can always, if they are trapped by their egos, feel justified in rejecting what you are saying or interpreting it in such a way that it seems like they really don’t have to change themselves. They don’t have to pull that beam – that ego – from their own eyes. And thus, they can remain on the false path to salvation – the broad way that leads to destruction. Because it is not the way of giving up the ego, but affirming the ego as your true identity and as the “real savior” of your soul.

The ego as a substitute teacher

When your conscious self first decided to turn its back to the spiritual teacher – the representative of God that you had in whatever higher realm you found yourself in when you decided to experiment with the duality consciousness – when that first happened, you made a decision, and it caused you to lose contact with the teacher. And thus, you felt alone. And you could not bear that sense of aloneness, and therefore you created the ego as a substitute teacher, as a replacement for the real teacher, whether it be Lord Maitreya in the Garden of Eden or other ascended beings in other realms and systems of worlds. For truly, many people on earth come from far-away places in this universe and beyond.

And thus, it is indeed true that many people believe that the ego and the prince of this world are their true teachers. There are even those who believe that the devil himself is the true liberator of humankind because as they say “Until we rebelled against the will of God, we did not truly have freedom and free will.” There are those who seriously believe that it was in the act of rebelling against God that human beings attained free will. But my beloved, if you did not already have free will, how could you have the option to rebel against God? And if God really was out to control you, why would he allow you to rebel against his law and separate yourself from him?

I know that the ego and the false teachers of this world have an array of sophisticated arguments against this simple logic. But when you look at it with the innocent mind of a child, you realize that all the sophistication is just camouflage, and it makes no sense. And thus, you can avoid following the subtle logic of the false teachers of this world who have only one goal in mind. And that is to keep the Conscious You thinking it is separated from your own higher being and from your God—and that you cannot come back to oneness with God on your own, that you need a savior from outside yourself.

Christianity promotes a message that is anti-christ

Which is why, indeed, the false teachers in this world – assisted by the egos of those who were in powerful positions in the early church – managed to turn Christianity upside down – to turn my true teachings upside down – and thus present an entirely false image of Christ. It is a sad truth that the mainstream Christian churches today are teaching a doctrine that is entirely anti-christ, and indeed springs from the mind of anti-christ that seeks to create the impression of salvation through control rather than salvation through surrender. Whereby you surrender the ego’s control and accept God control because, as Hercules said, you realize that the Will of God is not alien to your own because God is not outside yourself.

Thus, my beloved, this is indeed my book. This is a book that is released from my Being. It is released through the mind of a person here on earth who has been willing to walk the path of Christhood, the path of Oneness. Thus, this book is a figure-eight flow between me Above and the author below, who has been the instrument for bringing forth this book, not as a dictation but as a cooperative effort. As I said “My father worketh hitherto and I work.” Thus, I Jesus, have worked hitherto, and Kim has worked here below.

[Jesus wants to add here that the book contains all of the concepts that he wants us to bring into the debate about Christianity’s future. Thus, the book is written to give you a foundation for bearing witness to the truth of Christ in this age.]

But I want you to recognize that you all have the potential to step into that same position of being the lower half of a figure-eight flow between yourself – your lower being, your conscious self – and the higher Being out of which you came, including your I AM Presence, the ascended master that is out of that same Being. And you can even go to higher levels of the I AM and the I AM THAT I AM and re-establish that figure-eight flow that is the River of Life that makes you a co-creator with God.

This is a potential that all of you have. And not all of you are meant to write books, but all of you are meant to be part of the new movement that is directed and designed to give Christianity a rebirth in this age. And this can happen only when many people, eventually millions of people, are willing to bear witness to the truth. I came to bear witness to the truth, and I sent my disciples into the world to bear witness to the truth.

And thus, if you are willing to accept that about yourself, then you can work with yourself, with your fears, with your hesitation, until you realize that as the disciple of Christ you are called to bear witness unto Christ truth in this age. And thus, when you are ready, when you are willing, I will indeed send you as I sent my disciples. But you must be willing to take that first step, without knowing where it leads. And in order to come to that point, you need to contemplate the profound teachings about the total surrender of your concepts, your expectations, of how your path should be, how your service should be, what your divine plan entails and how it should unfold. Surrender it all, let it drop from you.

For my beloved, only through that surrender will you attain the true non-attachment that allows God to work through you. And this is a concept that I will allow Mother Mary to expound upon, for she – as the representative of the Mother of God – has a unique perspective on this.

Copyright © 2006 by Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

As I have explained in previous discourses, the ego operates entirely in the realm of duality. When you go to the lowest aspect of dualistic thinking, you end up seeing the world as black and white, meaning that you are always right and anyone opposing you is always wrong. The reasoning is simple. People define a belief system as infallible and as the only true one, meaning that they think it is entirely true and not influenced by error at all. In the terminology I use in these discourses, people think their belief system springs entirely from the truth of Christ and is not influenced by the illusions of the mind of anti-christ.

In reality, this line of thinking springs from the ego’s desire to set itself up as an authority figure that cannot be questioned. It is an attempt to create the outer appearance that because you belong to the only true belief system, you are guaranteed to be saved. It also gives many people the sense that they are better than those who do not belong to their belief system. If you take an honest look at the world, you will see that even today many people are caught in this approach to life. They have a very obvious sense of righteousness, they judge others and they feel better than others. An obvious example is the fundamentalists of any religion.

If you have ever interacted with such people, you will know that it can be extremely difficult to carry on a normal conversation with them. It is virtually impossible to discuss anything that goes beyond or seems to contradict their beliefs. If you try to make them see that their beliefs are limited or even incorrect, you are usually met with a very hostile reaction. In extreme cases, such people are willing to kill anyone who threatens their belief system, as for example a Muslim fundamentalist who carries out a suicide bombing to defend Islam. Or a Christian crusader defending a piece of real estate in the Holy Land—as if God (a spiritual being) ever wanted people to kill each other over anything in the material world. When people are less extreme, they will label you as being of the devil (or any number of other negative labels) and refuse to talk with you. This, of course, makes such people unreachable for a spiritual teacher.

Escape from extremism

What can bring people out of this state of having closed their minds completely? The reality of the situation is that 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 You to wake up and start making decisions again. Of course, as the medieval castles proved, any fortress built to keep the world out, will also keep its inhabitants in, thus becoming a prison.

The inevitable result is that 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, and when the conflict becomes extreme enough, the Conscious You might finally wake up and realize: “I can’t do this anymore. There must be a better way!”

If the Conscious You is willing to take at least some responsibility for its situation, it can now reverse the downward trend, and it can then start the upward path that gradually leads it out of the prison built by the ego. There are three main factors that can impede this growth:

The mental prison was built as a fortress designed 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. This might manifest as an unwillingness to run the risk of making decisions or as an attachment to the beliefs out of which the fortress is built. It might cling to this security in order to avoid feeling vulnerable.

The ego wants the Conscious You to believe in the lie that if you don’t make any decisions, you can’t make mistakes. The reality is that because you have free will, not making decisions is still making a decision. If you don’t make decisions, you are allowing the ego to make decisions for you. All of the ego’s decisions are mistakes, in the sense that they will not bring you closer to oneness with God.

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. The ego will actively and aggressively seek to prevent you from rising to a new level of the spiritual path.

What do I mean when I talk about rising to a new level of the path? There are many valid ways to divide the spiritual path into levels or stages. In this context, what I am talking about is that you come to the point where you begin to see the fallacy of dualistic thinking. You begin to see the forest itself rather than being blinded by the individual trees. This is when you can begin to consciously reach for the non-dual truth of Christ.

The ego and the forces of this world will mount a major offensive against any person who begins to rise above duality. They will do anything they can think of to keep you trapped in dualistic thinking. Their only way of doing this is to use the duality of the mind of anti-christ. However, this is a formidable weapon because it is much more subtle than most spiritual seekers realize.

From one extreme to the other

As I explained in the previous discourse, many people have started rising out of extreme selfishness by being converted to a religion that talks about heaven and hell. These are what we normally call religious people, and they are still very much trapped in black-and-white thinking. They are largely unreachable to me, and most of them would reject this book outright.

In today’s world, many people have started seeing the limitations of a black-and-white approach to religion. Some are still members of traditional religions while others seek a more universal spirituality or belong to a New Age organization. Common for all these people is that they have started to rise above the black-and-white, fear-based, judgmental approach to religion. They are what I call spiritual seekers. They realize there is more to know about the spiritual side of life than what can be found in black-and-white doctrines, and they are actively looking for a higher understanding. These are the kind of people who are open to the teachings that the ascended masters are bringing forth in this age, whether through this book, our websites or other means.

Spiritual seekers represent the greatest potential for turning around planet earth and bringing humankind to a higher level. The problem is that at the present time this is only a potential. What keeps it from becoming a manifest reality is that too many spiritual seekers have become trapped in a form of dualistic thinking that is so different from black-and-white thinking that some people believe it is above duality. In reality, it is simply the opposite extreme of black-and-white thinking.

Here is one concept that I would like all sincere spiritual seekers to understand. You live on a planet that is like a twilight zone. Some spiritual light has started to penetrate the density of humankind’s consciousness. 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. The human ego and the prince of this world can still use the subtlety of the duality consciousness to blur the difference between what is real and unreal.

The result is that there is currently no concept, truth or spiritual teaching on this planet that cannot be perverted by the human ego. The ego will try to turn any idea into a dualistic idea by putting it on a scale with other dualistic ideas—usually by setting up the idea in opposition to another idea. The consequence is that 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. When you come to the realization that you have had enough of one extreme, your ego will instantly try to make you jump into the opposite extreme. The purpose is to prevent you from leaving behind the dualistic way of thinking and rising to a higher plateau.

As I have said, most spiritual seekers have had enough of the black-and-white approach to religion. They are done with the fanaticism and they see the fallacy of the value judgment: “Our religion is the only true one and thus we are always right and those who disagree with us are bad people and will go to hell.” Most of them have distanced themselves from this approach, which is a step in the right direction. The problem is that the ego will try to make such people go into the opposite extreme, and in too many cases it is successful.

What is the opposite extreme of black-and-white thinking? It is a form of thinking in which nothing is black or white because everything is gray. This gives rise to a number of problems, but let me briefly outline the main ones:

Religious people tend to think there is only one true religion (their own), which inevitably leads to religious intolerance. 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, meaning that you don’t need to evaluate whether an idea is true or false. Just believe and let believe.

Many religious people are judgmental and intolerant towards members of other religions. 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. Or at least they think you should never speak out against other people’s beliefs or behavior.

Many religious people feel threatened by those who disagree with them and often respond with hostility and anger. Obviously, this prevents them from following my command to love one-another as I love them—which leads to hypocrisy. They claim to be Christians, but they don’t act lovingly. Most spiritual seekers see through such hypocrisy and are sincerely striving to be loving towards everyone. However, they also believe that being loving means you should be gentle and never challenge people’s illusions.

The net outcome of this approach is that many spiritual seekers have come to believe that in order to do God’s work and raise the consciousness of the planet, they simply have to avoid the obvious extremism of black-and-white thinking. They think 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 do not realize that the ego that used to be judgmental when – in past lives – they were trapped in black-and-white thinking, has now morphed into an ego that is loving and kind towards everyone. Instead of truly overcoming their egos, 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. Let us take a closer look at the points raised above.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book Freedom from Ego Illusions.

Copyright © 2006 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

The most obvious example of the ego’s relativistic, dualistic way of thinking is what I prefer to call black-and-white thinking. This plot by the ego makes blatant use of the basic duality built into the mind of anti-christ. It defines two opposites that are opposites in every way, meaning that there is no overlap or potential for compromise. There is no gray zone because the opposites 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, thus 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. An extreme outcome of this scenario is the definition of two religions or ideologies that both claim to be the only true one, making their respective followers believe it is their duty to fight the other. The ultimate triumph of the prince of this world is to get two groups of religious people to kill each other in the name of the same God, as for example in the Crusades.

The result of this ego-manipulation is that people adopt a very simplistic view of the world. Their religion is completely true and all others are completely false. There is no room for any nuances in between, which means that people almost inevitably become extremists and fanatics. This is a very easy approach to life because it really does not require people to think for themselves. They simply accept the definitions created by the leaders of their society without making any personal attempts to discern whether their leaders are right according to the Christ standard. They believe these leaders are absolutely right and that God himself would agree with them.

The consequence of this approach to life is that once people have accepted that a particular belief system is absolutely good, they will never question it. They will blindly follow what the leaders of their religion have defined as absolutely right, and this has led to some of the worst atrocities in history. I described this scenario as follows:

Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. (Matthew 15:14)

Instead of leaving the blind leaders alone, people follow them uncritically. They never question that the black-and-white definition of life might not be in alignment with God’s truth. As a result, many people have spent one or more lifetimes engaging all of their energy and attention in this dualistic struggle between two relative opposites. Such people have defined an enemy or scapegoat, and they believe they must do God’s work by destroying the enemy.

As long as people are trapped in this extreme form of black-and-white thinking, they are absolutely convinced that they are working for good and will be saved. The stark reality is that everything they do to fight the self-defined enemy only serves to trap them more firmly in the dualistic state of consciousness. This obviously prevents them from putting on the wedding garment of the Christ consciousness, which is the only way to enter Heaven.

It can be extremely difficult for extremists to admit that they are wrong. They cannot admit that what they have seen as a work for God has not promoted God’s cause but 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. This is why the scribes and the Pharisees wanted me dead and why some people in today’s world become fanatical in defending their “truth.”

The fact is that such people are unapproachable for a spiritual teacher. You see this illustrated in how the scribes and Pharisees rejected my attempts to show them the higher way of Christ. They literally used their black-and-white viewpoints to justify rejecting the Living Christ, meaning that they had put their own graven image before the Living God. They used a relative image to justify not reaching for the direct experience of God’s absolute reality—the experience I came to offer to all who were willing to lose their mortal sense of identity for my sake.

Overcoming extreme selfishness

You will remember that I earlier said that 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. The more people identify with their egos, the more prone they are to believe this illusion. It seems so easy that 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.

At the beginning level of the spiritual path, people are prone to accept the black-and-white approach to salvation. They become very zealous – even fanatical – in following their particular belief system – be it religious, political or scientific in nature – and they absolutely refuse to question it. That is why some people can believe that by killing the enemies of God, they will instantly be saved.

Now comes one of the subtleties that the more mature spiritual seekers need to understand. The extreme outcome of being blinded by black-and-white thinking is that people become entirely self-centered and selfish. They often believe they have a supreme right to do what they want and that anyone who opposes them – including the rest of the human race – is wrong. They start acting like predatory animals who take whatever they want and are unwilling to consider how their actions affect other people, affect themselves in the long run or compare to higher principles. In the past, humankind was at a much lower level of consciousness than today, as illustrated by the cave man society in which the law of the jungle ruled. In today’s world, you see this level of consciousness in many criminals, from leaders of organized crime to pedophiles or serial killers.

How do you take people who are completely selfish and raise them to a more spiritual level? 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 completely trapped in the mind of anti-christ, you think you can hurt others without hurting yourself, you even think you have the right to do whatever you want regardless of how it affects others. You justify this by using the relative logic of the ego, which can truly make it seem like anything – including total selfishness – is justified.

How do people start rising above this level of consciousness? They do so by realizing that there is something beyond the ego’s relative logic, that there is something that is right or wrong according to a higher standard. When you are completely selfish, you see nothing beyond the relative logic of your ego—and thus you think you have the right to do anything you want. 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.

For most people who are trapped in selfishness, this realization comes only when someone “puts the fear of God in them.” These people begin to realize that there is such a thing as long-term consequences. Their souls can be affected in an afterlife by what they do in this life, and they will either be rewarded in heaven or burn forever in hell. From a purely selfish motive, these people begin to modify their short-term egotistical behavior according to a higher standard.

Because these people are still identified with their egos, they cannot yet see the limitations of the relative logic of the ego. They need a very simplistic, black-and-white belief system with clearly defined rules for how to avoid hell and get into heaven. Here comes the subtle point. When people start modifying selfish behavior, they have reached a turning point from which genuine progress is possible. There is a real danger that these 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. This will, of course, abort such people’s progress. However, if people avoid going into fanaticism, it is possible to make genuine spiritual progress by following a black-and-white belief system. The reason being that when you believe certain types of behavior will send you to hell, you gain a very strong motivation for modifying selfish behavior. This will cause a person to make less karma, and thus the lifestream can gradually free itself from at least some of the downward pull of the dualistic struggle. When you are completely selfish, everything you do creates negative karma that only reinforces the sense that you are in a struggle against everyone else. When you relieve some of this pressure, you can begin to see through the more selfish beliefs, and thus you can free yourself from some of the illusions of the ego.

Judge not

Even though most fundamentalist Christians will reject my teachings as the work of the devil, there are actually people who have made progress by following a fundamentalist belief system. The problem is that this progress will only last for a time. A black-and-white approach simply cannot take you above a certain level of the spiritual path. Because this approach is still so heavily 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, which is only marginally better than the downward spiral of selfishness.

The problem is that a black-and-white belief system automatically implies a value judgment. “The members of our church are automatically good and everyone else is bad.” This inevitably causes people to judge others based on a relative standard defined by their egos. As I said:

1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. (Matthew, Chapter 7)

Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. (John 7:24)

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 reality based on the vision of the Christ mind. When you judge based on the ego, you inevitably feel that you are better than other people, and this leads to spiritual pride, which binds you to the duality consciousness.

The ego wants a relative standard because it allows it to build the appearance that it is better than others. It can then create the illusion that because you are better than certain other people, you are guaranteed to be saved. As I explained in a previous discourse, there is no such value judgment in the Christ mind. That which is in alignment with God’s law is real, and that which is out of alignment with God is unreal. The Christ does not use the relative terms good and bad—it 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.

One might say that the deepest level of ego-identification is to be completely selfish. You are completely identified with the dualistic struggle, thinking that life is a battle between you and the world. As you rise above this, you stop indulging in the most extreme selfish behaviors, but this makes you feel you are better than those who are still acting in “evil” ways. At the lower level, you might engage in religion in order to destroy all threats to your religion, thinking God will reward you for doing so. At the next stage, your motivation for being involved with religion is to prove the superiority of your religion and thus create the appearance that you are so good that God simply has to save you.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book Freedom from Ego Illusions.

Copyright © 2006 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

The ego has a very specific mission, namely to prevent the Conscious You from rediscovering and then abandoning the original choice to turn away from God—the decision that gave birth to the ego. This decision was made by the Conscious You, but it was not made in the full clarity of the Christ consciousness. It was made because the Conscious You had started experimenting with 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 ego will do anything in its power to prevent you from overcoming this blindness; it will do anything to prevent the Conscious You from projecting itself outside the ego’s illusions.

The Conscious You made its fateful decision because it did not see the absolute reality of Christ and had become blinded by the veil created by the duality consciousness. The Conscious You believed its reasoning was sound, and it felt that the decision to turn away from the teacher was either justifiable, necessary, beneficial or its only option. Because the Conscious You had already been partially blinded – meaning divided – by the dualistic logic – as Eve was divided in her mind by the serpent’s statement that she would not surely die – it did not see that its reasoning was relative. It did not understand that the serpentine logic seems reasonable only when viewed through the filter of duality, a state of mind in which everything is relative—meaning that anything can be justified.

The Conscious You is made in the image and likeness of God, meaning your I AM Presence. You are not a bad or evil person and you are not stupid. If the Conscious You knew better, it would do better. The problem is that as long as the Conscious You looks at the world through the filter of dualistic logic, it cannot fully know better. It cannot see beyond the relative logic of anti-christ to see the absolute reality of Christ.

Why the universe seems to confirm the ego’s illusions

The essence of the duality consciousness is that the Conscious You – guided by the false teachers of this world and the ego – creates its own “reality,” a world view that is centered around the illusion that created the ego. Everything in this world view is born from the central illusion that created the ego, and thus everything seems to support that illusion. As long as you look at the world through this filter, everything you see will confirm that the ego’s illusion is right. If you wear yellow glasses, the world will appear to have a yellow tint, and it will do so until you take off the glasses and see the world without a filter.

There is an even deeper reality in the sense that the world not only appears to be colored. The reality you experience in the material universe is shaped by the ego’s beliefs. As I explain throughout our books and websites, the material universe acts like a mirror that reflects back to you whatever you send out. That is why I told people to do onto others what you want them to do to you. The reality being that the universe will do to you what you do to others. This is a safety mechanism that aims as serving as a substitute teacher for those co-creators who have turned away from the spiritual teachers assigned to humankind. When you have no contact with the teacher, your only way to learn is to see the consequences of your actions, and thus the universe mirrors back to you what you send out.

The Law of Free Will mandates that if you turn away from God and 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 teacher is not trapped in your personal illusions, your ego’s house of mirrors, so he clearly sees through the veil that blinds you. He cannot explain this to you until you rise to the level of the path where you are open to this explanation. The teacher must wait until the Conscious You begins to question the illusions created by the ego.

The teacher is fully aware of the essential problem, yet only a student with a certain amount of maturity can even begin to grasp this problem. What is the essence of the problem? Your ego has used the duality consciousness to create a mental image of what it thinks the world is like—or rather what it wants the world to be like so that it can uphold the basic illusion that created your specific ego. The Conscious You has partially identified itself with this world view and is therefore seeing the world through the colored glasses represented by the ego’s illusion. At the same time, the Conscious You – as the director of your attention, which is your creative force – is projecting this world view into the cosmic mirror. Guess what the mirror is reflecting back.

Do you now begin to see the problem? The Conscious You is using its creative faculties to project a dualistic image into the material universe, and the cosmic mirror is reflecting it back, meaning that what comes back to you seems to affirm the ego’s world view. If your ego has created the image that God is an angry and unjust being in the sky who has abandoned you, then the material universe will reflect back to you conditions that seem to affirm this image. You simply will not be able to experience God directly as long as you identify with the illusion of separation, and thus the material universe will hide the reality that God’s Being is in everything. Everything you experience in this world will seem to confirm the belief that God is not here, and thus you have been abandoned by God. Likewise, if you believe life is a struggle, the cosmic mirror will reflect back to you physical conditions that make your life a struggle.

You are a co-creator with God, and you can never stop co-creating. As I have said before, 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. The Conscious You has the ability to identify itself as anything it conceives and accepts as real. 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. Because you have identified with this world view, your soul will gravitate towards a planet where these conditions are physically manifest—because they have been created by the collective consciousness of the lifestreams living on that planet.

Starting to question the ego’s identity

As long as you identify fully with the world view created by the ego, everything you see must be forced into the framework of that world view. 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. You cannot bear to lose your sense of identity so if you think the ego’s mortal identity is all there is, you will be unwilling to question it, and thus you are unreachable to a spiritual teacher. Instead, you will try to interpret everything that happens to you in a way that reaffirms the ego’s world view. Because the mind of anti-christ uses relative logic, you can twist almost anything in such a way that it proves what you want to believe. This is what is commonly called circular logic.

How can you ever escape the illusions created by the ego? Because God has built a safety mechanism into the material universe, as Mother Mary explains in her teachings about abundance. That mechanism is the Mother light’s tendency to return to its ground state, to equilibrium. If you use your co-creative abilities to create something that is out of alignment with the laws and the creative intent of God, your creation will not be sustainable. It will exist only in time and space, meaning that the Mother light will inevitably break it down.

The consequence is that 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. Your life truly does become a struggle because you are fighting against the basic force of the material universe. The Mother light is designed to 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.

A group of co-creators can force a localized part of the universe to conform to their world view for a time. That is why humans beings have managed to force the Mother light that makes up planet earth to conform to their collective world view. No matter how strongly the co-creators believe in their illusions, they cannot force the Mother light to maintain them forever. They will inevitably create a counter-force that will break down the world they have created. You clearly see this in human society today in the form of diseases, lack, poverty, short life-span, lack of food, pollution and natural disasters and imbalances.

The consequence is simple. 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—until you finally break down and start to wonder whether there might be a better way. It is always a challenge for a spiritual teacher to watch people who refuse to question the illusions of their egos and thus create increasingly severe crises in their lives, until they finally break under the strain and cry out for help. We are bound by the Law of Free Will to let people run their course until they ask for our help. We can only watch as people box themselves in until they can no longer move.

Once the Conscious You has identified itself with the ego’s dualistic world view, it is very difficult to break the spell of that illusion. The universe itself will actually seem to confirm the ego’s world view by complying with it for a time. This is why you see so many people who are absolutely convinced that their world view is correct. You also see that the basic world view shared by most people progresses over time. Centuries ago, many people believed the earth and the universe were very small. They believed the earth was flat and that the sky was a dome covering the planet.

This world view has changed because in every generation a few people dared to question the world view of their society and their egos. In this age, there is a crop of people who are ready for the harvest of once again reconnecting to their spiritual teachers and being lifted – fully and finally – out of the dualistic illusions of their personal egos and the collective ego of this planet. There are forces that will do anything they can to prevent your personal awakening, and they have a very powerful weapon to use against you, namely the subtlety of the duality consciousness. Let us take a closer look at exactly how subtle things can be in the world where everything is relative.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book Freedom from Ego Illusions.

Copyright © 2006 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

You have heard the expression that someone is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, and it describes what the ego will continue to do until you allow it to die. The round hole is a symbol for the letter “O,” which stands for Oneness. The square peg is a symbol for the four levels of the material universe, which the ego sees as the only road to eternal life.

In reality, the only road to salvation, the ascension or the eternal life is the Path of Oneness whereby you come back to the correct sense of identity as a co-creator with your God. You will enter God’s kingdom only by attaining a sense of oneness with God whereby you can say, as I did: “I and my father are one!” The ego was born when you decided to turn away from the Path of Oneness and instead join the path of separation. The ego can never come into oneness with God. You created the ego because you separated yourself from God, and thus when you come back to oneness, the ego will no longer be needed and should be allowed to die.

Obviously, the ego will never recognize this fact, and it is constantly trying to build the false image that you can be saved without overcoming the ego, without letting it die. The ego is trying to create the appearance that you can be saved by living up to certain requirements in this world. The ego is trying to use something from the four planes of matter in an attempt to force its way into the kingdom of oneness. That is why anything created by the ego will be a square peg that will never fit into the round hole of the kingdom of oneness. That is why I gave the following parable:

1 And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said,
2 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son,
3 And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.

8 Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy.
9 Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.

11 And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment:
12 And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.
13 Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
14 For many are called, but few are chosen. (Matthew, Chapter 22)

The reality is that the wedding garment symbolizes the Christ consciousness, which is the only way to establish oneness with God. As I explained in the previous discourse, the ego is born of separation from God, and thus everything the ego believes, every mental image it creates, springs from the mind of anti-christ—the mind of separation. These images can never form the wedding garment that gives access to the kingdom, and the ego will always remain in the outer darkness of its own making. As long as you identify with the ego, you too will remain in the state of consciousness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

What is the you that can escape the ego?

Obviously, you do not have to remain trapped by the ego. The inner message of every true spiritual teaching – often disguised in metaphors or mythical stories – is that you can slay the dragon of the ego, be rescued by the knight on the white horse of the Christ self and inherit the kingdom of God. But what is the “you” that can do this? We have called it the “Conscious You.” You might also call it the “Conscious I” or the “conscious self.”

This Conscious You is the core of your lower being. It is an extension of your spiritual self, your I AM Presence. It was designed to descend into the material universe to both experience this realm and bring the light of your I AM Presence – your God Flame – into this world, helping to turn it into the kingdom of God. 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 is meant to be the master of your lower being, which we can call your container of self. You are meant to make most of your decisions at the level of the Conscious You, under the direction of your I AM Presence and spiritual teacher. When you turned away from your spiritual teacher, you lost that divine direction, and thus you had to make decisions alone. This became painful for many co-creators, which is why they gradually allowed their egos to make more and more decisions for them.

We might say that the problem faced by most people is that they have put the Conscious You to sleep and have allowed the ego to run their lives. That is why many of their decisions are not made at the level of the conscious mind but are made through a subconscious process ruled by the ego. We can compare the ego to a computer that is not actually able to think but that has a sufficiently sophisticated programming to give the appearance that it can think.

This analogy is fruitful when compared to my previous analogy of the forest and the trees. The ego has created a large number of relativistic, dualistic illusions that are like individual computer programs. You might compare them to the trees in the forest, and each program is designed to handle specific situations in life. When you encounter a particular type of situation, one of these programs kicks in and takes over your reactions to the situation. You are no longer making conscious choices as to how to best handle the situation; it is all run by the computer of the ego.

You probably know that a computer has a number of specific programs that all function within the framework of what is called the operating system. This is what gives the computer its identity as a Windows, Macintosh or UNIX computer. The operating system is the ego itself, and it compares to the forest in the previous discourse. This operating system is the very core of the ego, and it 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 very core of your ego. This is important because when you realize that your ego was born out of this decision, you see why 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 forever continue to function according to its programming.

The ego literally lives and dies by the original decision to turn away from God. If the Conscious You ever looked at that decision, realized that is was not a constructive choice and replaced it with a better decision – by choosing life over death – the ego would die. The Conscious You can now begin to understand that the ego will do anything in its power to prevent you from ever uncovering and reevaluating the original decision that created the ego. Returning to the computer analogy, you know that an individual program cannot alter the operating system—it must function within the framework defined by the system. The ego seeks to make the Conscious You so focused on its individual beliefs – the trees – that you will never see the underlying belief – the forest – that created the ego.

Even many sincere spiritual seekers have been fooled by this trick. They have realized that there is an entity – whether they call it the ego or something else – that is blocking their spiritual growth. They have realized that it is necessary to cut down some of the trees in the forest in order to remove the veil of illusions that separates them from God. They have not yet seen that there is something hiding behind the trees. Although many seekers are sincerely questioning aspects of their egos, they have not yet seen behind the veil to start questioning the ego itself. Obviously, a beginning seeker is not yet ready to do this, but many of the people who have been on the spiritual path for decades – or even lifetimes – could benefit immensely from considering the teachings I am giving. They are ready to begin to question the basic illusions of their egos.

You are more than the ego

The first step towards overcoming the ego is to realize that there is more to “you” than the ego and its individual illusions. You need to realize that you are more than a highly evolved animal, that you are more than the computer programs of the ego. When you look at the world, you will see many people who have not yet come to that realization. These are what the Bible calls the “multitudes” and you will note that I spoke to them in parables and then gave my disciples a more sophisticated teaching.

My disciples had realized that they were more than their egos, but they had not begun to truly see their egos. This is comparable to the situation of many spiritual seekers today. In today’s world millions of people are at the same or a higher level of spiritual maturity as were my disciples 2,000 years ago. If you are consciously aware of the spiritual path, you already know there is more to “you” than the ego, that there is more to reality than the material world. In order to take the next step, you need to come to a more sophisticated understanding of the “you” that is more than the ego.

The crucial understanding that most spiritual seekers are missing is the realization that the Conscious You is designed to make decisions and that 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, who it sees itself as being. The Conscious You has the ability to identify itself as absolutely anything it can conceive and accept as real. The Conscious You can identify itself as a highly evolved animal, and it will then make decisions as an animal. If the Conscious You identifies itself as a mortal sinner, it will make decisions as a sinner—and it will consider it blasphemy to see itself as a son or daughter of God.

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 you have come to accept, based on your upbringing in this life and your experiences from past lives. The Conscious You is never confined to or permanently trapped in its current sense of identity. The Conscious You has the ability to mentally project itself anywhere it wants, meaning that it can also project its sense of self outside its current identity—the identity built in this world.

It is this very ability to separate yourself from your current sense of identity – and realize there is more to life – that is the key to all human progress, be it material or spiritual progress. If you could see yourself only through the filter of your current sense of identity, you could never rise above that identity. Human beings could never come back to oneness after they had descended into the consciousness of separation.

The essential key is that the Conscious You can step outside your current sense of identity at any moment. 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 your current sense of identity. The catch is that most people have come to identify themselves with their egos to the point where they cannot conceive and believe that they can escape the ego at any moment. In a sense, this belief is true because you cannot simply walk away from the forest of the ego. You must systematically cut down the trees – illusions – of the ego before you can see your true identity. Even though these illusions must be removed, the Conscious You can – at any moment – choose to stop identifying itself with the ego, and this will make it far easier for you to let go of the ego. This process is what I described in the following quote:

3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?
5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. (John, Chapter 3)

Being born of the Spirit means – among other valid interpretations – that you realize that the Conscious You can walk away from the mental prison of the ego and reclaim its true identity as a co-creator with God. You can realize that your current sense of identity is deeply affected by the illusions of your ego and the illusions of the collective consciousness of humankind. It is based on the sense of separation from God, and thus it is mortal because anything that is outside the kingdom of oneness cannot have eternal life. Your mortal sense of identity is unreal and can never inherit the eternal life. That is why I said:

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. (Matthew 16:25)

If you seek to hold on to the sense of identity – life – built by the ego, you will not find eternal life. If you are willing to lose that sense of life in order to win the Christ consciousness and come back to oneness, you will indeed find eternal life.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book Freedom from Ego Illusions.

Copyright © 2006 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

In this discourse I will give you the overall view – the big picture – of how the ego manages to make and keep people spiritually blind and what you can do to start getting yourself out of the trap set by the ego. I know that for people who are still identifying with their egos, this teaching will be impossible to grasp. As I said in the first discourse, most people who find this book have made some contact with their Christ selves, and thus they can benefit from having the big picture.

If there was one thing that I wish all spiritual seekers would understand, it is the fact that the spiritual path is a process whereby you gradually free your mind from all of the illusions created by the ego. As I explained in the previous discourse, the ego can never experience the Spirit of Truth. The ego creates a description – a mental image – of God’s truth (and collectively human beings have created an almost infinite number of such graven images). The ego is absolutely convinced that its description of truth is the real thing. In reality, the ego’s description is an idol that obscures your direct experience of the Spirit of Truth itself. The ego is in violation of the first two commandments given by God to Moses:

3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image… (Exodus, Chapter 20)

The first command is that you have no other gods before the real God, which means that you do not accept any description in this world as a substitute for the direct experience of the Spirit of Truth. The second one is that you do not take onto yourself any graven image, which does not mean a statue carved in stone but a mental image. The ego creates these mental images and then it seeks to make you believe that you should accept an image as the absolute, unchanging truth. You should be satisfied with the idol so that you do not attempt to go beyond it and experience the Spirit of Truth.

The ego cannot experience the Spirit of Truth, but you can. When you do experience the Spirit of truth directly, you will no longer believe the ego’s illusion, namely that its description is the real thing or is all you need in order to be saved. The ego will lose its power over you, and as you stop feeding the ego energy, it will gradually wither away and it will eventually die. Because the ego has a strong survival instinct, it does not want to die, and thus it will do anything to keep you from seeing through its illusions. It will do anything to prevent you from experiencing the Spirit of truth directly so that you can gradually expand your vision and can eventually rebuke all of the lies created by the ego and the prince of this world.

We might say that the essence of the spiritual path is to gradually clear your mind from the illusions of the ego so that you gain a progressively purer experience of the Spirit of Truth. As Paul said it:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1Corinthians 13:12)

The basic choice of life

In traditional religions you find the concept of the laws of God. We might also call them the design principles that God used to create the universe in which you live. The origin of all other design principles is the principle of oneness, the Law of Oneness. It is described in the Bible as follows:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John, Chapter 1)

God created everything out of its own Being, and thus God’s Being is embedded in everything that was created—without him was not anything made that was made. The Word is what is also called the only begotten son of God:

No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (John 1:18)

Many Christians think this refers to me, the historical person of Jesus. However, as I explain in the previous books in this series, I came to earth as a representative of something far greater than any one person. That is why I said:

Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God. (Mark 10:18)

The concept of the word or the only begotten son refers to what I today call the universal Christ mind. This is the mind, the state of consciousness, that is created by God as the very foundation for the principle of oneness. The fundamental function of the Christ mind is to be one with God, one with God’s overall vision for the universe and one with the specific design principles that God created in order to make sure the universe reaches its intended goal.

You now need to realize that you – meaning your lifestream, which is more than your physical body and your outer mind and personality – were created to be a co-creator with God. That is why the Bible says:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion… (Genesis 1:26)

God has given human beings dominion over the earth, which means that God (or rather a group of ascended masters called the Elohim) created this planet as a foundation upon which human beings could build a “house” as a way to express and develop their creative abilities. Human beings have been given free will so they must – individually and collectively – decide what they do upon the earth. The only catch is, of course, that they will inevitably experience the conditions they create. God did not create the current state of limitations, lack of resources and other forms of suffering. Humankind has collectively created current conditions, and everyone is experiencing them.

When God gave co-creators free will, a fundamental duality came into being. As I said, the universal Christ mind is an expression of the principle of oneness which is designed to make sure everything follows God’s purpose and vision. When co-creators gain free will, it becomes possible that they can choose to go against the principle of oneness. The mind of Christ logically has an opposite. The basic reality of free will is that a co-creator can create in one of two ways:

You can co-create by using the mind of Christ, which means that everything you do is in alignment with God’s purpose and the design principles used by God. The Elohim used the mind of Christ to build the original earth and you use the same mind to build onto it.

You can de-create by using the mind of anti-christ, which is in opposition to the mind of Christ. Everything you create through the mind of anti-christ 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. This ensures that you are in harmony with God’s purpose and that your efforts enhance your own life and the lives of everyone else. Everything you do raises up all life.

You can de-create outside the framework of God’s law. Thereby, you set yourself apart from God’s purpose and you are, so to speak, fighting against the current of the River of Life, you are fighting against the entire universe. The result of co-creating outside of God’s law is that you limit your creative freedom and power, and everything you do only pulls down yourself and all life. That is why humankind has created so much suffering on this planet.

To better understand the difference between following or going against God’s laws, consider the law of gravity. This law is what makes it possible for you to live on the surface of the earth instead of floating into empty space. Is the law of gravity a restriction of your creative freedom on this planet or is it the foundation for it? Would it make sense to rebel against the law of gravity and spend your entire life fighting it? (Take note that flying is not a rebellion against the law of gravity but a result of learning how to make more advanced use of all of God’s laws.)

As a co-creator, you have the option of co-creating through the mind of Christ – the mind of oneness with God and all life – or the mind of anti-christ—the mind that sees itself as separated from God and all life. You now see that the mind of anti-christ is based on a fundamental division, a division between itself and God, God’s law and all other co-creators. The mind of Christ is the mind of oneness whereas the mind of anti-christ is the mind of division, the mind of duality, the mind of separation. We now need to take a closer look at the fundamental duality of the mind of anti-christ.

The knowledge of good and evil

When you stay within the framework of God’s law, you have an absolute standard for evaluating everything. There is that which is one with God’s truth, God’s reality, and there is that which is apart from God’s reality. When you move into the consciousness of anti-christ, you lose this absolute guiding rod. Only the consciousness of Christ can see God’s reality, and when you step outside the consciousness of Christ, you can no longer see God’s absolute truth. You now enter a state of mind in which truth becomes a relative concept, a concept that is dominated by two opposites that can only exist in relation to each other.

The Bible describes these concepts in the story of how Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden. The literal, orthodox interpretation of this story is out of touch with reality. Adam and Eve were not the only human beings in the Garden. The story is meant to illustrate what has happened to every co-creator on earth. You are not being punished for the original sin of Adam and Eve. Your present situation is the consequence of the fact that you – for most people, many lifetimes ago – made the same choice made by Adam and Eve.

What was that choice? In the beginning, all God’s co-creators lived in a protected environment in which they had direct guidance from a spiritual teacher—what Genesis calls “God.” This teacher [In reality, the teacher was named Maitreya] was teaching co-creators how to exercise their creative powers while staying within the framework of God’s law. Because they had free will, they also had the potential to go outside of God’s law. This is what Genesis describes as follows:

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Genesis, Chapter 2)

What is the deeper spiritual meaning behind the metaphor of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil?” It is a description of the consciousness of anti-christ, the consciousness that sees itself as separated from God. Perhaps you have wondered why God planted the tree in the Garden if he did not want Adam to eat of it? The reason is now clear. The “tree” was an inevitable consequence of giving God’s co-creators free will. God could not give you free will without giving you the potential to go outside of God’s law.

Having this potential does not mean that you have to exercise it. Being able to hurt yourself does not mean that you have to hurt yourself. However, having the potential does mean that you are exposed to the temptation to go outside God’s law. The Serpent can be seen (among other things) as a symbol for the fact that free will does come with a price, namely the temptation to make choices that harm yourself and all life.

The real meaning behind the expression “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” is that it represents a state of consciousness, namely the consciousness of anti-christ. In this state of consciousness you have stepped outside of oneness with God, and thus you no longer see God’s reality. You now see everything as defined on a scale with two opposites. On one side of the scale is good and on the opposite side is evil. 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 and one is defined as the opposite of the other.

The consequence is that 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. You have heard the expression: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and in the consciousness of anti-christ “truth” is in the eye of the beholder. 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 of the consciousness of anti-christ is the belief that evil is the opposite of God, meaning that the devil (or however you picture personified evil) is the opposite polarity of God and is a necessary (even beneficial) part of the basic polarity of life. In reality, 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 Christ—the consciousness of oneness. Relativity is a product of the consciousness of anti-christ, and it is only in the sphere of anti-christ that good and evil exist as relative concepts, as opposing polarities where one cannot exist without the other.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book Freedom from Ego Illusions.

Copyright © 2006 Kim Michaels

TOPICS: Thinking your ego is the savior – The false path of keeping the ego alive – Overcome value judgments and find true self-esteem –

Listen to the recording of this dictation (Subscribers only)

Ascended Master Jesus, April 23, 2006 through Kim Michaels.

It is an eternal truth that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. This is a truth that all spiritual seekers need to contemplate. And then they need to realize that there are levels of understanding of this truth. At the beginning stages you might think that the teacher is outside of yourself – and that it is a matter of meeting outer requirements before the teacher can appear – and that the teacher will do the work for you and take you to heaven, as many Christians indeed believe that I will appear in the sky and take all of the good Christians to heaven while sending all others to hell.

My Beloved, this is indeed a primitive concept of what the spiritual teacher is and what he will do for you. But it is the highest that people can grasp at a certain level of consciousness, where they are still too identified with their egos and therefore are not capable of taking ultimate responsibility for their own lives, their own path—indeed their own salvation.

Thus, they have allowed their egos to create the idol of Jesus Christ as the only son of God who is the savior who will come and wash away their sins with his blood and raise them to heaven or bring God’s kingdom to earth. This is the sense of spiritual paralysis, where you think that you cannot do anything on your own. And thus, you need an external savior to bring you into the kingdom of the external God.

Thinking your ego is the savior

Now my beloved, while this is a primitive concept, it is indeed not the most primitive concept about salvation found on this planet. For it is indeed better to believe in an external savior than to believe that your ego is the savior. For at least – when you believe in the external savior – you recognize that there is an authority that is higher than your own ego. But when you are trapped in the illusion that your ego is your savior, that your ego knows everything and that the path outlined by your ego – whatever form that path takes – will take you to heaven, then you are so trapped that it is virtually impossible for a spiritual teacher to reach you.

And thus, as has been explained to you, you cannot pull yourself up by the bootstraps of the ego. My Beloved, it cannot be done!

There are any number of religious, spiritual and New Age teachings and gurus, who will tell you that it can be done and that they can help you do it, or that they can do it for you, whereby you can be saved without letting go of the ego. I must tell you, they are lying to you!

They know – in most cases – that they are lying. But they lie anyway because they truly realize the old saying that there is a sucker born every minute. There are people who are so trapped by the ego that they are not willing to look at the beam in their own eye. And thus, these false gurus create a system, a philosophy, that says you can be saved, you can enter the kingdom of God, without pulling the beam from your own eye, without even seeing that beam. Thus, you can live your own life feeling that you are now saved, that you are now better than others because you belong to this spiritual philosophy or organization or you are following this ultimate guru.

And thus, you can look at the beam in the eyes of all other people, looking down upon them with spiritual pride and feeling that you do not have to recognize that you have the same beam – because you too have an ego – and that you need to pull it if you want to be saved. Instead, you can continue to believe that you can walk your path toward salvation without confronting your ego, without taking responsibility for your path, without making the absolute, the completely firm, one-pointed choice that you are willing to abandon the ego and walk into the greater light of your Christ Self and your I AM Presence.

The false path of keeping the ego alive

My Beloved, there is indeed a very large segment of spiritual seekers today who are on the right track in the sense that they have opened their minds and hearts to something beyond traditional doctrines. Yet they have fallen into the trap that you can grow spiritually, that you can reach a higher state of consciousness, that you can make your ascension, without letting go of the ego, without making an absolute, firm, one-pointed choice that overcomes the division in your being and says, “I am willing to let my ego die! I am willing to overcome it. I am willing to leave it behind. I am willing to choose the life of the Christ consciousness over the death of the duality consciousness.”

This is a firm choice. This is not a choice that you can waiver about. I am not saying that everyone on this planet is ready at this moment to make that choice. Which is why, when I walked the earth 2,000 years ago, I did not call everyone to be my personal disciples. But I must tell you that those I did call to be my personal disciples, they had one chance and they had one second to make their choice.

I literally walked up to them, during whatever they were doing, and I said, “Leave your nets. I will make you fishers of men.” And I turned around and walked away. And if they did not leave their nets and walk with me and made that absolute choice to commit themselves to being disciples of Christ, then I had to leave them behind. There was no two ways about it. There was no thinking about it for two weeks and then coming back later. It simply is not the way the spiritual path works.

You can take a long time to think about it. But there will come a point, where you are ready to make a firm commitment to step up to a higher level of the path. And if you are not willing to make that firm choice and never look back, then you cannot rise.

Your ego might manage to trick you into thinking that you can rise or that you have risen, because after all you now follow this outer guru, you belong to this organization, you do all these outer things, you understand all these teachings with the intellect. And therefore you must be an advanced student, you must be better off than you were a year or ten years ago, you must be better off than all these other people you compare yourself to. But I tell you, it is all an illusion created by the ego.

Because as long as you compare yourself to anyone in this world, you are not truly on the path to Christhood, which is the path to discovering your unique individuality that is anchored in your I AM Presence, and it is different from the individuality of any other person on this planet.

Overcome value judgments and find true self-esteem

Thus, one of the sure signs that you are still trapped by the ego is when you have these value judgments and comparisons, comparing one teaching to another, comparing yourself to others and thinking that there is only one truth or there is one higher truth. This is nothing but the comparisons of the ego, the spirit of vain competition. Because there is no competition on the path to Christhood. You are a uniquely beautiful, wonderful individual, created by God. Your job on earth is to unite with the higher Being that you are, the true individuality in your I AM Presence, and then express that uniqueness. And when you realize that you are unique and that God loves you with the same unconditional love he has for everything, the spirit of vain competition melts away and is as nothing.

Thus, you realize that you can find an entirely new approach to self-esteem. For I understand that many of the people who follow various gurus follow them because they have been put down for many lifetimes. Many of the most spiritual people, the most kind and loving people on earth, do indeed have low self-esteem because they have been put down by the forces of this world, by the prince of this world, who have told them that they are wrong for being spiritual, that they are no good, that they shouldn’t act this way, that they should live like everyone else.

Many spiritual people have low self-esteem and they fall for the trap of the ego to compensate for that low self-esteem by seeking to follow an outer path that gives them the impression, that because they have now learned all these things and understand them intellectually – they have taken all these classes, they have done all these prayers or decrees or invoked all of this light and done all this meditation – now they must suddenly be somebody from an outer perspective and thus they should have self-esteem. But you see, you will never have true self esteem until you allow it to come to you directly from your I AM Presence, which is God in your Being and therefore is the internal God and the internal savior and the only source of true self-esteem. Because it is the only way to connect to the unique individuality that is your cause for self-esteem.

Ponder the teachings that you have received today, for they indeed contain the key that very few other spiritual teachings on this earth contain at this point. Some of them have elements, but very, very few, can give you the teachings in one complete package about the ego and the false path. And if you will contemplate these teachings and be willing to look beyond the subtle pride of the ego – the temptation to set yourself up – and you will reach for the true self-esteem that is the nurturance of the Mother through the divine matrix, the divine blueprint of the Father, then you will be able to overcome all of these needs to follow this false path of the ego and to seek to compensate by outer knowledge or outer accomplishments for the lack of wholeness that you feel deep within your being. You will be able to accept your true identity as a son or daughter of God who is complete and whole in your divine individuality and thus has no need to feel un-whole, has no need to feel that you are in competition with others. And thus has no need to compare yourself to others.

As I said to more than one of my disciples when they were squabbling about these outer things – even debating who was going to be the leader among them after I left – I said, “What is that to thee, follow thou me.” Follow the inner Christ and let all of these outer concerns fade away from you. Let the sun of your I AM Presence shine in your being and let the sun melt these ego desires, ego concerns, the entire false path and its dualistic beliefs, whereby you compare because you think you are not good enough the way you are, the way God created you. And the reason you think this is because you have not connected to who you are, to the beautiful being that God created.

Therefore, use the tools that we have given to reconnect. As I said, seek first the kingdom of God – which is the direct inner contact to your I AM Presence – and then everything else you desire – including self-esteem and inner and outer wholeness, including communication with your higher Being and the ascended masters, including the abundant life – all these things will be added onto you when you reach for your I AM Presence instead of reaching for the false path and the false gurus set up by the ego.

But realize that you will – at some point on your personal path – have to make a choice. Do you want to continue in the consciousness of the ego, the consciousness of death, or will you abandon that consciousness and let the dead, meaning the ego, bury their dead – all the attachments and all the unfulfilled things and all the competition in this world – and you walk with me, the Living Christ, into the Light of the sun of your Being. Therefore, the challenge is always, “Choose life or continue to choose death?”

You must choose one or the other, for if you have not chosen life, you have subconsciously chosen death. And you are not spiritually alive, you have no life in you until you allow the Christ consciousness to enter your container of self, your lower being. There is no two ways about it. You cannot cheat. God is not mocked. You cannot cheat God’s law even though the ego will continue forever to believe that it can and come up with shortcuts and various schemes, and it tries to make you think that you can avoid confronting and overcoming the ego.

Let go of this impossible dream, I say, and you will experience a spiritual growth beyond what you have even imagined up until this point on your path. And I say this to anyone who might hear or read this statement, because I tell you that there is not one human being on this earth who cannot come to a higher level of his or her spiritual path. It does not matter how long you have been on the path – how many times you have meditated, how many decrees or prayers you have given – it does not matter. You can always come up higher!

And indeed, up until the moment you ascend, you can go into a blind alley of becoming comfortable, where you are falling prey to the ego’s subtle temptation that you do not need to go higher. This, my beloved, is the illusion of the ego. And I tell you, there are many of you who have long ago come to the point, where the only thing you need to do in order to come up to a higher level is to make that decision to let the ego die, to choose life. And then make the firm commitment that you are willing to rise above the ego, to see through any of its limitations and then accept who you really are in Christ.

I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me. The “me” is not the outer person of Jesus Christ, the “me” is the Christ consciousness. You will not enter the kingdom of God through the ego. You will enter the kingdom of God through the Christ. Therefore, choose the life of the Christ over the death of the ego and let the ego die!

Copyright © 2006 by Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

It is my intent with this series of discourses to give you a brief overview of the challenges that the human ego presents to all spiritual seekers, no matter which outer teaching or religion they follow. This is, so to speak, “the very least you should know about the ego.”

Why do I give these discourses? Because overcoming the ego is the central aspect of the spiritual path. No matter which outer teaching or tradition you follow, you must overcome the ego in order to attain the higher state of consciousness that is the only key to rising above the need to re-embody on earth. The basic reality is that the human ego simply cannot enter Heaven, the kingdom of God, Nirvana, enlightenment or whatever you prefer to call it. Even if a spiritual teaching does not talk directly about the ego, any true teaching is designed to help you separate yourself from the ego and build a new sense of identity that is not based on the ego.

One might think that I should start out by defining the human ego, but when you understand the ego, you see why this is not the most fruitful approach. The reason is that the main challenge presented by the ego is that it distorts the way you “see” everything. The ego forms a filter that “colors” the way your mind perceives everything, and this filter would distort my attempts to define the ego. I choose to first address the issue of spiritual blindness—for until you start seeing through this blindness, there truly is no point in saying anything else about the ego.

What is spiritual blindness?

When you normally think of a person who is blind, you think of a person who cannot see anything. You might think that spiritual blindness means that a person cannot see the spiritual aspects of life. Perhaps such a person would be an atheist or a scientific materialist, either denying the existence of God or denying that people have a spiritual nature. However, that is not the true definition of spiritual blindness.

In reality, most of the people who are spiritually blind are completely convinced that they are religious or spiritual people. A substantial portion of them can be found in Christian churches every Sunday. Others belong to the orthodox branches of other world religions and some of them belong to various spiritual or New Age movements. Common for all of these people is that they are completely convinced that they belong to the only true religion or that they are following the highest possible guru or spiritual teaching.

These people are completely convinced that they will be saved, ascend, enter Nirvana, attain eternal life or however they define the final outcome of their religious efforts. In reality, this belief is based on an illusion created by the human ego. The ego has, so to speak, put a veil over these people’s eyes, causing them to see a distorted vision. The simplest possible illustration of this is that you put on a pair of colored glasses. Everything you see through the glasses is tinted by the color of the lenses.

Now imagine that a baby had a pair of yellow contact lenses put on shortly after birth. The child would grow up seeing everything through the yellow lenses, thus thinking the sky is green. The child would have no reason to question whether its view of “reality” is accurate, thus being completely convinced that the sky really is green. This is essentially how the ego has distorted the spiritual vision of every human being on this planet. Every person has grown up with a distorted view of “reality,” but most people have never seen an alternative and thus have no reason to question their world view. They have no frame of reference for questioning the reality of what they see.

The essential problem with the ego

This explains why so many people consider themselves very religious or spiritual, being completely convinced that they will be saved, yet in reality they are following a path that can never lead to salvation. The reason being that this false path is created by the ego, and thus it is exactly what the Bible describes as follows:

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. (Proverbs 14:12)

Does that mean I am saying that most religious/spiritual people on this planet are following a false path? That is exactly what I am saying, and I am simply repeating what I already said 2,000 years ago:

13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew, Chapter 7)

The wide gate and the broad way is the path created by the human ego. The ego has created an illusion, namely that you can be saved without overcoming the ego, without doing the hard and unpleasant task that I described as follows:

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
(Matthew, Chapter 7)

The essence of hypocrisy is an unwillingness to change. However, no hypocrite ever realizes that he or she is unwilling to change. The reason being that hypocrites always accept the illusions of their egos, meaning that they firmly believe they do not have to change. They base this belief on the fact that they belong to the only true spiritual/religious movement and – because they fulfill certain outer requirements – they are guaranteed to be saved. When you believe your salvation is guaranteed, why would you have to change? This is the wide gate and the broad way that leads to destruction. How can you avoid following this false path?

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book Freedom from Ego Illusions.

Copyright © 2006 Kim Michaels

Ascended Master Jesus, December 31, 2005 through Kim Michaels. The dictation was delivered at midnight.

I, Jesus, come to fulfill the judgment that I started on Easter Sunday, 2005, the judgment of those who are the forces of anti-will, those who have raised up the idol that Jesus Christ is the only son of God, thereby programming into the minds of all those who call themselves Christians – and many others who have been affected by this consciousness – that they cannot become the Christ, that they have no right to embody the Christ consciousness on earth because only Jesus Christ could be the Son of God. And anyone who claims to be a son or daughter of God is guilty of blasphemy.

This consciousness has received its judgment, its final judgment, and as you call it forth and anchor it in the physical, surely you will see that this consciousness – that has hung as a heavy cloud over this planet for so many centuries – will begin to dissolve in the coming years, until people will one day look back and wonder how anyone could believe such an obvious lie.

Thus, I lower my right hand in the fulfillment of the judgment of the forces of the anti-will and the lie of only one Christ. It is done! And thus I bid you be sealed in the joy of Christ.

Copyright © 2005 by Kim Michaels