TOPICS: Self-observation – on the middle way or going into extremes – at higher levels of the path, the tests become more subtle – when you do not resist looking at anything – cannot go beyond certain point without helping others – when focusing without becomes a trap – always seek to transcend –
Question: As Mother Mary was saying, and as Buddha has said in the past, that the path to our Christhood is one of working on self-change and working on changing ourselves, transforming ourselves, can you please discuss on the fine balance the self-centered path and the way of becoming the Christ, and focusing on yourself because you want to become more of your God potential and focusing on yourself in the way that sometimes it can easily morph into a sort of negative self-centeredness.
Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:
An excellent question, which demonstrates the impossibility of giving a spiritual teaching that cannot be misinterpreted by the dualistic state of consciousness. And that is why, again and again, we stress the middle way, we stress balance, we stress going beyond duality.
Truly, the key to resolving this is to realize that the path is a state of constant self-observation, where you are constantly observing yourself and watching whether you are staying on the middle way or whether you have gone into one of the dualistic extremes.
And certainly, this is not something that you can give a hard and fast rule and say, “This is what you should always be looking for.” For one of the things you must understand as mature spiritual seekers is that the path is subtle—and that the further you go along the path, the more subtle it becomes.
When you look at someone who is a mass murderer, you can easily see that that person is not on the spiritual path and is doing something clearly unspiritual. But as you go beyond that level of the blatant outer abuse, it becomes more difficult to discern the delicate difference between going into one of the dualistic extremes. And so, this is where, as you mature, you realize that you need to go beyond what I have called black-and-white thinking and gray thinking. You need to be constantly alert to whether you are being pulled into one extreme or another.
And this requires constant alertness, constant self-observation. But I must tell you that there can come a point, where you become non-attached to protecting your ego, protecting whatever sense you have individually that gives you a sense of being in control or feeling that you are on the right track. You can come to a point, where you are willing to look at anything in your own psychology, and you do not resist seeing the truth. Because you know, as we have said many times, that the Conscious You is more than the outer personality, than the dualistic self. And so, once you see something as dualistic, you can let it go and you will be freer than you were before.
It is indeed true that there is a stage on the spiritual path where you need to focus first of all on yourself, discovering that beam in your own eye, removing that so that you can attain some sense of inner peace and clarity. For until you have truly helped yourself, how can you possibly help others? Yet, once you have attained some sense of peace, then you face the delicate question that you come to a point on the path where you cannot progress further until you help other people or help the planet as a whole.
Even this can become a blind alley that can be used by the ego. And we have indeed seen some of our more mature disciples and students who have fallen into the trap of now focusing on saving the world, or helping other people, or spreading the teachings, or working in a certain spiritual organization, to the point where they have said, “I no longer need to look at my own psychology. For surely, I have gone beyond that need. I have realized what I need to realize on the spiritual path.”
And so, again, there is no one way to always do the right thing. There is no outer rule that can be given. The way to do the right thing is to realize that as long as you are in physical embodiment, you need to reach for a higher understanding of yourself and the spiritual path, you need to be willing to self-transcend.
So in a sense the short answer is: No matter what state of consciousness you are in right now, always look for the next level. Always seek to transcend. Observe yourself, and then follow the inner direction when you suddenly encounter an outer situation where you get the inner prompting that here is something you need to look at, here is something to let go of.
This, my beloved, is what all true messengers are doing constantly. And I can assure you that if you have an idolatrous sense that messengers are beyond being tested, or that they are above needing to learn something and overcome something in their own consciousness, then you have not fully understood what they are about. For true messengers are constantly willing to observe themselves. And when they see something, they go after it and they let go of it. And this is the same that you must adopt—that willingness to always look for whatever comes up. Sometimes it may your own consciousness, sometimes it may be something you have taken on from the mass consciousness.
But as long as you are in physical embodiment, you need to self-transcend. For it is only those who continue to self-transcend, who will eventually reach that level of self-transcendence, where they permanently transcend the material realm.
Copyright © 2007 by Kim Michaels