How the ego can use a spiritual teaching to stop your progress

TOPICS: Many think they are open-minded, but they are closed to a higher understanding – the path has stages – at one level you need certainty – you must deal with contradictions in order to go beyond that level – fear or intellectual reasoning – discerning between truth and dualistic doctrines – feeling threatened by a higher understanding – at level of words, contradictions can always be found – if it agrees with the ego, it is true; if not, it is false – recognizing Christ and then wanting him to fit into the mental box of the ego – too rigid or too scattered – giving your ego a spiritual education – some contradictions can be resolved only through a mystical experience – words cannot bring resolution – learning to read vibrations – masters use Zen koans to confuse the ego –


Question: Can you please comment on why so many spiritual seekers find a certain teaching or guru and then use this new teaching to close their minds to anything else? I mean, I found my first spiritual teaching because I was searching. I left that teaching when I suddenly realized “but now I am not searching anymore.” So I decided to open my mind to something new and soon found a teaching that could answer many questions that the old teaching could not answer. So why do so many seekers stay in a certain mental box for years or decades, when they clearly are not growing from it but only feeling they are “holier than thou” because they have such a high teaching or advanced guru. 

I have especially noticed that some people are very focused on contradictions. If they see something that contradicts their present beliefs, they will immediately reject an entire teaching, using it as an excuse to cling to what they have. Or if they see a contradiction in their existing teaching, they will refuse to consider it instead of seeking for a higher understanding. Can you suggest a better way to deal with contradictions?

Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:

One of the greatest problems we face as spiritual teachers is that so many people are deceive by their egos into closing their minds to a higher understanding of some aspect of the spiritual path. And I am not hereby talking about people who openly reject religion. You will see people who have been on the spiritual path for decades and who think they are very open-minded. Yet they have certain viewpoints, certain beliefs, that they think are beyond questioning, so it becomes impossible for us to give these people a higher understanding of those particular issues. Such people are simply not willing to let us “disturb” them with a higher understanding. This is explained in greater detail in another answer.

As I explain throughout this website, the spiritual path is a gradual process. Many people start out in a traditional religion, which claims that an outer doctrine presents an absolute, infallible or unquestionable truth. They gradually open their minds to something beyond the doctrines of their (former) church, but many retain the belief that in order to evaluate the validity of a spiritual teaching, it is necessary to compare it to a particular doctrine or philosophy. Even many New Age people accept one particular teaching as the authoritative source, and they compare any new teaching to it. At the beginning stages of the path, this is necessary because the lifestream needs a foundation. However, there will come a point when, in order to make further progress, the student needs to transcend this approach.

The reason is that when you evaluate a new teaching by comparing it to an old teaching, it is very easy to base your evaluation on the words or a particular interpretation of those words. This can block your acceptance of higher concepts that go beyond the old teaching—and the entire idea behind progressive revelation is that we continually release higher concepts.

As I explain in the answer mentioned above and in the book Beyond Religious Conflict, words are inherently relative, and no absolute truth can be expressed in words. The consequence is that if your understanding of a spiritual teaching does not go beyond the level of the words, you will inevitably find contradictions between different teachings, which is one of the major causes of religious conflict. It was precisely the mindset of basing all beliefs on the outer word that caused the scribes and the Pharisees to reject me and my new teaching.

When you look only at the words, you will often find contradictions within a single spiritual teaching. Take for example the following statements made by me:

  • He that is not against us is for us. (Luke 9:50)
  • He that is not with me is against me. (Matthew 12:30)

To the analytical mind, these statements are contradictory, and the conflict can be resolved only by going beyond the words and considering the context in which each statement was made. The problem is that many people are not open to such a higher understanding:

  • Some people approach the spiritual path based on feelings, often fear. They reason that if two statements are contradictory, one must be true and the other false.
  • Some people approach the path intellectually, and they often reason for or against an issue without finding an absolute answer.

Both groups of people close their minds to the fact that there is an absolute truth but that this truth cannot be confined to words. If people are trapped in fear, they tend to become very judgmental toward any teaching beyond their chosen one. A perfect example is how the scribes and Pharisees deliberately sought to find contradictions in my teachings or between my teachings and the old law.

If people are stuck in the intellect, they often reason that there is no absolute truth or that they cannot know such a truth (and they cannot know truth through the intellect). Thus, they tend to see any teaching as being as valid as any other teaching, meaning that they can pick the one that appeals to them. They can become judgmental toward anyone who states that there is a truth beyond what the intellect can detect.

The problem with both approaches is that they are based on a refusal to discern between God’s truth and man-made – dualistic – doctrines. This often makes people feel threatened by a higher understanding than what they currently accept. In order to avoid being disturbed, they often go into a defensive frame of mind that makes them judgmental toward new ideas. As a way to justify staying in their present belief system, some people deliberately look for ways to reject new ideas, including looking for contradictions in the teaching or between the new teaching and the person’s preferred teaching.

When a person is deliberately looking for contradictions and is only looking at the words, contradictions can always be found. The reason being, as I also explain in the previously mentioned answer, that words belong in the realm of duality. When a mind is stuck in duality, it decides what should be true and then judges every new idea based on that decision. Thus, such people are no longer looking for a higher understanding; they are only looking for confirmation of what they have decided must be true. They are no longer approaching the path with the innocent and inquisitive mind of a little child, and thus they cannot enter the kingdom of true knowledge.

Instead, the person has now formed a belief system in the outer mind, a belief system influenced by, perhaps completely based on, dualistic thinking. Because such a belief system is relative, the person can always interpret a teaching or situation in such a way that it seems like the person or his/her belief system is right. The ego can always control people in this state of mind because it can so easily make them believe in ideas that block their growth.

For example, the ego will reason that if I say something through a given messenger that agrees with the person’s belief system, then it is the real Jesus speaking. Yet if I say something that is not in agreement, then the ego says I cannot possibly be the real Jesus. You see this in many fundamentalist Christians who reject my website because I say things that contradict their literal interpretation of the Bible. Sadly, even many New Age people reason the same way—they simply have a different dualistic belief system as their reference point.

Many people keep looking for a teaching or messenger until they find one that says what their egos want to hear, rather than saying what their lifestreams need to hear in order to transcend the ego. They somehow reason that they know better than the ascended masters what we should or should not say. An extreme example of this mindset is found in the following passage,

21 From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.
22 Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.
23 But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. (Matthew, Chapter 16)

Although Peter recognized the Christ, he was not willing to let go of his dualistic ideas about how a Christed being should live or die. Thus, I could merely lead him to the well; I could not get him to drink my Living Waters.

It remains a fact that if you are not willing to be disturbed by a spiritual teacher, you are not truly on the spiritual path. You are following the way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death (Proverbs 14:12). That is why I called the scribes and Pharisees for hypocrites; they thought they were the most pious and religious people, yet their minds were closed to the Living Truth.

At an even deeper level, it is a fact that when most people find the spiritual path, they are still partly in the duality consciousness. Thus, they will inevitably be in a state of consciousness that attracts the dualistic opposites. With that I mean that many people are open to progressive revelation, but they fall into one of the two extremes of either accepting only one teaching as valid or accepting all teachings as equally valid. Either way, they will be targets for false teachers, who will seek to manipulate them to either close their minds to new ideas or open their minds to any new idea, including false ideas. People then tend to become either too rigid or too scattered and confused.

Even if you find a teaching that is truly from the ascended masters, your ego will still use your dualistic beliefs to distort your view of that teaching. As you become more familiar with the teaching, your ego is also educated in the concepts and lingo used by the teaching. Thus, your ego and any external false teachers can actually use a true teaching to slow down your growth by causing you to close your mind. The only way to avoid this is to constantly be open to being disturbed by your Christ self and the ascended masters, which means that you are willing to let a new idea take you beyond your comfortable beliefs. If you are not willing to be disturbed, you will turn even a true teaching into a mental prison.

When you come up higher on the path, you can completely transcend the level of duality, and thus false teachers and false teachings will no longer be a threat to you. The prince of this world will come and have nothing in you. How can a person rise above duality? It is captured in my statement,

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

In the spiritual realm, there are no contradictions. Thus, when a person reaches beyond duality, reaches for the Spirit of Truth (which is the person’s Christ self), all seeming contradictions will be resolved. Yet in some cases, the contradictions between two outer teachings cannot be resolved in a way that can be expressed in words. The resolution can be experienced in a nonverbal, nonlinear way that cannot be translated into words.

In the end, the validity of a spiritual teaching can be determined only by reading the vibration of the message—not by reading the words. You can learn to read vibrations by developing a conscious relationship with your Christ self. When you have contact with your Christ self – with the Spirit of Truth – you can compare the vibration of an outer teaching to the vibration of your Christ self, and this is the ultimate measure of truth. In some cases you might even sense the validity of a teaching even though your outer mind does not agree with the words used.

When you have contact with your Christ self, you will not fall into the trap of comparing new ideas to a fixed doctrine and you will not judge the people bringing forth such ideas. Your approach to new ideas will be love-based, instead of being based on fear, judgment or a sense of being threatened—which leads to anger. Thus, when a person points out a seeming contradiction, it is always valid to read the person’s vibration and see whether it is based on love or other emotions. If the person is not coming from love, there is often little hope of helping the person reach resolution, and thus further discussion is best avoided. I often said, “Let those who have ears hear,” because some people simply do not have ears to hear a higher expression of truth.

Finally, let me say that it is not uncommon for the ascended masters to deliberately make certain statements that will seem contradictory for people who are trapped in the consciousness of duality. This is the principle used in Zen koans of confounding the analytical mind, and you will see that I often employed it 2,000 years ago. I use it occasionally on this website, although I generally seek to give a very straightforward explanation.

The bottom line is that all contradictions spring from the consciousness of duality. Contradictions are like beauty; they exist only in the eye of the beholder. They can be resolved only by transcending duality through oneness with the Spirit of Truth. Likewise, spiritual safety can be found only by transcending duality. The least spiritually safe are those who in their pride think they know it all and who are not willing to be disturbed by a spiritual teacher. Woe unto ye lawyers . . .

 

Copyright © 2005 by Kim Michael