Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

As I explained in previous discourses, most people start walking the spiritual path in a conscious way when they find some kind of spiritual or religious teaching. People have an awakening or conversion experience, and they now join a religious or spiritual – or perhaps a political or charitable – organization. Such an awakening experience is always the result of the longing for something more, the desire to understand, the sense that there must be answers to life’s questions. As I explained earlier, this longing – although it can lead to pain or a sense of aloneness or emptiness – is the safety mechanism that prevents you from becoming totally lost in the duality consciousness. This is what we might call the “quest for truth,” and it is the driving force behind all spiritual growth.

Your ego’s main goal is to prevent you from awakening to a higher sense of identity as a spiritual being. It will do anything within its power to get you to ignore or deny the quest for truth. As I have explained, this can be achieved only on a temporary basis, and eventually the quest for truth will resurface. Even then, your ego will not give up. The ego will take the spiritual or religious teaching that served as the outer tool for your awakening, and it will seek to use it to neutralize your quest for truth. This discourse will expose some of the methods that the ego uses to achieve its perpetual goal of trying to make sure that the latest step you have taken on the spiritual path becomes the last step you will ever take.

The vain dream of a guaranteed salvation

As explained in previous discourses, the one truth of the Christ mind is above and beyond the many dualistic “truths” created by the mind of anti-christ. The essence of your quest for truth is a longing for a direct experience of the source of truth, the Spirit of Truth. It is this experience which is the truth that will set you free from the ego. No man-made, dualistic belief system can do this for you.

The ego, of course, will never understand this truth. It is seeking to misdirect your search for truth and make you believe you can find some ultimate or absolute truth in this world and that this dualistic truth can guarantee your salvation.

A common result of an awakening experience is that people begin to believe that by joining an outer organization, they have somehow “made it,” have been saved or have arrived at the ultimate destination. This belief is always promoted by the ego because it wants you to believe that by the mere act of stepping into this “ultimate” teaching or organization, you have automatically qualified for salvation. Perhaps the organization defines a process for you to go through, but nevertheless, the ego wants you to believe that as long as you stay in the organization and keep following its outer requirements, your salvation is guaranteed.

The reality of the situation is, however, that the ego has managed to herd you into a fold that it will now attempt to turn into a closed box, a mental prison that traps you indefinitely on the false path to salvation. By making you believe that your salvation is now guaranteed, the ego has neutralized your quest for truth. The ego can often silence your inner longing for an indefinite period of time, certainly for the rest of one lifetime. The ego has managed to make you think that because you have now found some ultimate teaching, you no longer need to think—you no longer need to exercise Christ discernment.

There are millions of people who believe they are religious or spiritual people and that they are saved or are making great progress. In reality, they have stopped their spiritual progress and have allowed their egos to trap them in a “holier-than-thou” attitude. This is the false sense of righteousness that I denounced so forcefully in the scribes and Pharisees. The true righteousness is the Christ consciousness in which you never stop transcending yourself and thus flow with the River of Life that is the Spirit of Truth—the Living God rather than an ego-made idol.

The driving force behind your quest for truth is that you ask questions. When the ego makes you believe in a guaranteed salvation, it has made you accept that there are certain questions you either are not allowed to ask or do not need to ask. You no longer need to stretch your mind and reach for a progressively deeper understanding of the spiritual side of life. Simply accept the doctrines of your organization and stop thinking about the more subtle or difficult questions. You will then prevent or abort the direct inner contact with the Spirit of Truth, which is the only factor that can take you beyond the dualistic beliefs of the ego.

For example, you see many Christians who believe I ascended to heaven 2,000 years ago and that I have “all power in Heaven and on earth.” They cannot accept that I could be speaking to humankind today, giving teachings that go beyond what is said in the Christian Bible. They have turned the Bible into a closed box. You also see many New Age people who are open to my website—until they come across teachings that contradict their belief that all is well. Many New Age people reject my teachings on evil, dark forces or the need to take a firm stand for truth. They have turned the concept of being kind into a closed box and will not let me take them out of it. Their egos have become their teachers.

The ego has now created the perfect mental prison in which you feel relatively content. You think that as long as you stay in the prison, you will be saved. You think you should never look outside the prison. As long as you accept this approach to spirituality and salvation, your ego can feel safe because it knows that the Conscious You will never discover the ego’s existence.

Should you begin to see through the illusion of an automatic salvation through an outer organization or guru, the ego can still win. Many people have realized that a particular organization or guru was not what they first thought it to be. Instead of searching for something better, they give up on the spiritual path, which means they now have nothing to lead them beyond the logic of the ego. The ego has won either way.

Black-and-white, gray and beyond

Let us look at how the black-and-white and the gray approaches (as described in the previous two discourses) relate to this:

When you take the black-and-white approach, you think there is truth in only one belief system. You never need to look at any ideas outside your belief system. You think you should reject all such ideas as dangerous. This explains why many Christians believe that anything which is not in accordance with the Bible is of the devil and why some New Age people think they should listen only to their guru. You become stuck in one belief system and can never move beyond it. This approach is based on fear, the fear that opening your mind makes you vulnerable to false ideas. This is the ego saying that unless you allow it to control you, you will go to hell.

When you take the gray approach, you think there are no false ideas. You are willing to look for ideas in many different belief systems, which can seem to be more open-minded. If you do not have the willingness to discern (as explained in the previous discourse), people often end up doing what I call guru-hopping. They go from teacher to teacher until they find one that confirms their belief that they can be saved without discerning and confronting their egos. Or they continue to go from guru to guru, constantly thinking that the next one will do it all for them, all the while refusing to see that no serious spiritual growth is possible until they take responsibility for their path and exercise their built-in ability to know truth from an inner source. This approach is based on pride, the belief that you could not possibly be wrong. This is the ego saying that it is always right.

Although the two approaches can seem very different, the reality is that they are based on the same basic psychology, namely an unwillingness to reach beyond the duality of the ego and attain the discernment that can come only from the Christ mind. It is only through the Christ mind – which is the open door that no human can shut – that you can experience God’s Living Truth. It is only this forever self-transcending truth that will make you free from the dualistic “truth” – the graven images – defined by the ego and the prince of this world.

The mechanism that can bring you beyond the prison of the ego is the quest for truth. The ego is constantly seeking to stop this quest. If it cannot stop you from asking questions, it will seek to divert your attention. The central aspect of the ego’s efforts it that it is trying to make you believe that ultimate, absolute truth can be found in this world—in one of the belief systems of this world.

As I have tried to explain in previous discourses, truth cannot be confined to the words and images used in the material world. Truth is a Living Spirit, and thus you can know truth only by having a direct, inner experience of the Spirit of Truth. In order to have this experience – to know the one true God – you must be willing to look beyond the graven images – the idols – created in this world.

The ego is trying to make you believe in its own mistaken belief, namely that the Spirit of Truth can be captured in – confined to – a belief system in this world. If you believe this lie, you will limit your quest for truth to a particular mental box, and thus you will not encounter the Spirit of Truth—except possibly in rare glimpses. Your ego will never see that the Spirit of Truth bloweth where it listeth and thus cannot be confined. The Conscious You is able to see this truth and then decide to reach for the direct experience.

Let me be clear. As long as you are searching for truth outside yourself, you will never find the Living Truth. There simply is no belief system on this planet that will guarantee your salvation. No outer system can ever take you – automatically – to enlightenment. The reason being that enlightenment is an inner condition that can be reached only by continuing to look beyond all outer beliefs systems, until you attain a permanent state of oneness with the Spirit of Truth.

Take note of the subtle distinction here. I am not saying that all belief systems are false or that it is wrong to follow a belief system or teacher. In order to make ultimate spiritual progress, you must become aware of the mechanism whereby your ego turns the outer belief system into a closed box. If you are not aware of this, you will inevitably be trapped by the ego, and your progress will come to a halt—even if you have been following a teaching and diligently performing its practices for many years.

Take note that the ego can use even a true and valid spiritual teaching – even a teaching released directly by the ascended masters – to create a closed box. Once a teaching is expressed in words, it enters the realm of duality, and it can now be used by the ego. There is no guarantee against this—except your personal alertness and discernment!

Also take note that there is only one way to have true discernment. In order to expose a dualistic truth created by the ego, you must have a frame of reference, you must know a truth that is not dualistic. This can be attained only through a direct, inner experience of the Spirit of Truth whereby you have a direct experience of the Living Truth and can thus instantly expose all dead doctrines coming from the mind of anti-christ. Can you see that no outer teaching can do this for you? There simply is no substitute for a direct experience of the Spirit of Truth.

Many people will read these statements and think they do not apply to them. They will think that they really have found the ultimate teacher or belief system, and thus their egos cannot possibly trap them. There are also those who will think they have such a sophisticated intellectual understanding of the path – perhaps even of the ego – that they could not possibly be fooled. The ego is subtle, and it is precisely the people who think they are above the ego who are trapped in the most subtle weapon of the ego, namely intellectual and spiritual pride. This is a topic I will talk more about later.

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