Spiritual blindness – the main challenge presented by the ego

A discourse by Jesus

NOTE: This teaching was given on April 15, 2006.

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 human 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,” or whatever you prefer to call it. Thus, 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. Thus, 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. Thus, 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 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.

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?

Your only way out

If there was no way out of the illusions created by the ego, I obviously would not be giving this discourse. There is indeed a way out, and we might say that it is a safety mechanism that God built into the design of the universe. In order to discover this way out, you have to reach beyond the veil of illusions created by the ego. The only way to do that is to establish a contact between your conscious mind and a mind that is above and beyond the ego. That mind can be called by many names, but the term most commonly used by the Ascended Host is the “mind of Christ.” That is why I said:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. (John, 6:53)

While this is an expression adapted to the consciousness that most people had 2,000 years ago – and while I fully understand it sounds strange to today’s spiritual seekers – it carries a core of truth. You simply need to realize that the “flesh and blood of the son of man” refers to the Christ consciousness. The Christ mind is a state of consciousness that is completely beyond the human ego. Thus, only when you partake of this state of mind, only when you allow it to enter your consciousness, can you free yourself from the ego. The reason is that the Christ mind is the only mind that can see the reality 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)

Thus, only the Christ mind can give you a sense of co-measurement that will empower you to see through the illusions created by the ego. Only the Christ mind will allow you to experience the Spirit of Truth. That is why I said:

24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. (Matthew, Chapter 7)

The rock is the Christ consciousness, and the sand is the consciousness of the ego. If you base your sense of identity – your house – upon the illusions of the ego, you will not be able to withstand the trials – rains – of life.

How can you contact the Christ mind? You already have the ability to do so. This ability is your personal Comforter, your Christ self that can connect you to a higher part of your being, namely your I AM Presence. The very fact that you have found this website shows that you have already opened up some connection to your Christ self—otherwise you simply would not be open to the teachings I present. What you need to do next is a twofold action:

  • You need to strengthen your connection to your Christ self. For a practical exercise on how to do this, click here.
  • You need to become more conscious of the ego and the illusions that it uses to trap you in spiritual blindness. Only by consciously seeing through the illusions of the ego will your inner vision, your spiritual vision, be opened so that you can rise above the ego and put on the mind of Christ.

The discourses in this section are designed to help you get started on seeing through the illusions of the ego.

The basic illusion of the ego
The basic problem with the ego is that it distorts your spiritual vision so that you cannot perceive God’s reality, God’s truth. The essence of the Christ mind is that it is always one with God, and thus through the Christ mind you can experience – directly – the One Reality, the One Truth of God. That is why I said:

God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. (John 4:24)

The Christ mind perceives the Living Truth of God and it realizes that this truth is constantly growing, expanding and transcending itself. And because the Christ mind is experiencing this Living Truth, it has no need for a description of truth. Thus, you now realize that there is a difference between a description of truth and truth itself, namely the Spirit of Truth.

To help you understand this, let me give you an analogy. Imagine that you had never tasted an apple. You have heard people talk about apples, you have seen them on TV and you have read about them. Yet what you have received from these sources are only descriptions. Some of them may be very vivid descriptions of the delicious taste of an apple, and if they are really good they might make your mouth water. Yet no matter how good the descriptions are, they are not the same as the actual taste of an apple. In other words, not even the best description can make you taste an apple; no description is a substitute for the direct experience. Yet once you hold an apple in your hand and take a bite, the need for a description fades away. Why would you still read a book describing the taste of an apple, when you can just as easily take a bite of the real thing?

This is the central problem with the ego. As I will later describe in more detail, the ego was born when you separated yourself from God. The ego was born out of a division between yourself and God, and over time you became so blinded by the ego’s illusions that you no longer have the conscious experience of the “Spirit of Truth.” Thus, instead of experiencing God’s truth directly, you have come to rely on descriptions of God’s reality in the form of religious and spiritual teachings.

Do you see my point? The central problem you face as a spiritual seeker is that you need to get back to a sense of oneness with God—for unless you have this sense of oneness, how could you possibly enter God’s kingdom? To do this, you must get back to the state of innocence in which you can directly experience God’s reality, so that you no longer need any description.

After you lost the direct contact with God’s reality, the ego created an – almost – infinite number of substitutes. Because the ego cannot experience God’s reality directly, it has created descriptions of that reality. No matter how good these descriptions might be, they can never replace the direct experience, which is why I said you must worship God in spirit and in truth. Unfortunately, the ego cannot fathom this truth, and thus the ego believes that its description is as good as the real thing—in fact, it believes the description IS the real thing.

The central problem with the ego is that it has substituted the reality of God with a description, yet it believes that if you keep following its description, you will eventually enter the kingdom of God. Billions of people see themselves as being very religious and they are convinced that they will be saved. Yet they are following the broad way that leads to destruction because they believe in the illusion that the ego’s path will take them to Heaven.

The Bible, the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, the Tao Te Ching and the teachings of the ascended masters released over the past century – including my teachings on this website – are all descriptions of truth, but they are NOT the Living Spirit of Truth. If the ego manages to convince you that following one of these teachings will get you to Heaven without giving up the ego, then you have fallen prey to the central illusion of the ego, the very illusion that the Serpent used to trick Eve – as a symbol for your soul – in the Garden of Eden.

Yet it is a fact that as long as you remain trapped in the ego’s illusions, you will not have eternal life. You can NEVER enter the kingdom of God without letting the ego die and putting on the wedding garment of the Christ consciousness:

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)

In reality, all are called, but few choose to enter the straight and narrow path that leads them beyond the illusions of the ego. Thus, they remain in the mental darkness created by the ego in which life becomes a struggle. Therefore, “Choose life!”

Next: Why the ego wants you to think the world is black and white

 

Copyright © 2009 by Kim Michaels