TOPICS: Balancing the basic forces of creation – ego seeks to pull you into mutually exclusive extremes – beyond black-and-white and gray – the eternal challenge is to discern – seeing beyond polarities – seek balanced action – witnessing to your truth is part of your divine plan – people do not reject you – people have a right to reject the Christ – they do not have the right to not encounter the Christ – get beyond your self-centeredness – depersonalize your life – do not speak from black-and-white perspective – presenting your message so it truly helps people – set other people free – you are not responsible for the salvation of others – give people an opportunity to choose; do not choose for them – give people time to grow gradually – compulsion comes from the ego – learning when to keep silent – speak from the heart – strive to be an open door – learn from your experiments – the delicate balance of Christhood – setting your priorities – do not let others take you from the path of Christhood – be undivided in yourself – when people will not change – you disturb people’s comfortability – your light disturbs people – Mother Mary’s comments –
Question: Dear Kim, My closest friend from school is an atheist and is currently living in a lesbian relationship. When we became friends she was neither of those things, although I don’t use that as any ‘justification’ of why I became friends with her, merely to illustrate that what I’m going to tell you isn’t an issue that has always existed. We were in the same class at school and lived close and have remained mentally (if not geographically) close for almost 30 years now.
Since finding the true, inner spiritual path with the help of the teachings for which you are the messenger, I have realised that being the Christ means quite a radical change in my world – particularly in what I take part in and how I act and think.
In years gone by, her becoming a lesbian (she wasn’t always) seemed irrelevant to me. I have always believed that homosexuality is unnatural, but not in a confrontational, accusatory way. I have simply respected people’s right to live as they choose and said nothing about it, while reserving the right to disagree with them on whether same sex unions should be viewed as normal. But I never felt the drive to explain these feelings to her, and would have considered it very rude to tell her when she’d not asked my opinion. As a result of this, I have been welcomed at my friend’s house and grown to know her partner. There are serious problems in the relationship that I have been consulted on many, many times by my friend, and I feel strongly that the relationship is a destructive one in which my friend has been mentally abused by her partner for years. My friend tells me she agrees with this assessment, yet she does not want to leave the partnership. On this point I can do very little, I feel, other than continue to be there for her, encourage her to be strong, and as someone much wiser than me would say, wait for her to make a better decision.
However, I am now in the position where I feel a drive to talk to her about the issue of homosexuality because I know that as a Christed being, I cannot let her continue blindly down this path with no idea of the consequences. It is a hard thing to do and I know it will risk the friendship – more than risk it I would imagine – yet I would rather have my friend dislike me and hear the truth, than not rock the boat and have her continue in ignorance. Of course I will always be open to friendship with her and will treat her with compassion and love, but while I maintain the vision that she will somehow accept what I say in the manner it is meant, I am not blind to the fact that this is realistically a vague hope, rather than a likelihood.
So I suppose my question is about how easy or difficult it is for someone trying to be like Christ to have normal friendships. When I assess the reaction of my mum to these teachings I can see that she simply does not want to know them. She does not want to be challenged. She would rather cling to what she believes than to hear Jesus through me, and as a consequence has dismissed the site and the books because she doesn’t like the way they’re written and doesn’t believe Jesus would use the Internet. This upset me at first but in fact ultimately served to highlight an area where I was emotionally dependent on a favourable reaction from her, in order to work on that block to my growth.
I now face the same thing with my friend and whilst I do not want to hurt her emotionally, I am more concerned about hurting her spiritually by not telling her. I am also aware that she has not confided in many people about the problems she has at home and I don’t want her to think she can’t come to me in the future because I don’t think the lifestyle she has chosen is her highest potential.
You see, while I love God in other people, I’m just not sure how much I have in common with people who deny God within themselves and other people, or see the world from a position of scientific materialism, any more. Is it possible to sustain friendship where there is little common ground? And as I write that I think ‘why would I want to?’ I get the impression that some of those people want to debate issues with me, but they don’t want to learn from me, and I won’t be caught up in dualistic arguments any more. I would much rather give them a truth and walk away. What they do with it doesn’t affect me.
I look at myself from the outside and think ‘if I was so and so, would I want to be friends with someone as challenging as me?’ and I think the answer is probably no. I don’t mean I challenge in a confrontational way, I seem to challenge people just by knowing things that other people know I know and don’t want to hear. This past year, one of my very closest male friends has stopped talking to me entirely. He is not unfriendly, he simply cannot deal with me any more. I know him too well and he cannot handle it. There have been a couple of things that happened where I predicted (accurately) how things would turn out if he took a certain course and since then he won’t talk to me. I have offered a friendly hand several times but he has never returned my call or answered the email. I suppose the very existence of me is a threat to his view that his depression is other people’s fault, and that is the root of it. People have always called me ‘difficult’ but it’s not because I am hard to get along with, quite the opposite – I am open and friendly and a good laugh – but maybe something about me doesn’t allow people to be ambivalent. I am too forthright.
In addition I have always had few friends because I’ve never been the sort of person who needed people around me or who cultivated or worked hard to maintain friendships. And right now I have no circle of friends who are at the same place, or even close, to where I am on the spiritual path. This is not an area of concern, truly I have spiritual blessings in abundance and my little cat to keep my toes warm at night. I feel blessed beyond measure to be me, knowing who I am, knowing what I know and being alive to share it! But it is not easy preparing to say something to my oldest friend which will probably end a friendship which has been a constant for three decades. So I wondered if you have any words that could help me, particularly if you have ever been in a similar situation. I wonder if you too have lost friends because of this.
Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:
An excellent question that touches upon several issues that are important for all spiritual seekers. So let me comment on them in turn.
Thought 1
As Mother Mary explains, everything is created from an interplay of two forces, namely the expanding and the contracting force. In their pure forms, these forces are complementary and when they come together in harmony and balance, something new is created, and it is MORE than what was there before. This is the abundant life. If the two forces become unbalanced, they no longer complement but work against each other. Thus, they create an imbalance that tears down what exists, making it less than it was before. This is what most people on earth currently call “Life.”
The challenge for any spiritual seeker is to learn how to balance the two basic forces so they complement each other and make every situation MORE, whereby you have the abundant life that – as I said – it is the father’s good pleasure to give you. In attaining this, you are up against the ego – both the personal and collective ego – that always seeks to pull you into one of two dualistic extremes, as I explain in my ego discourses.
My point is that many people think that being a spiritual person means taking a very black-and-white stand and avoiding people or situations that don’t live up to the standards defined by their religion or belief system. There are actually many people who think that by doing this, they are being spiritual people, but they are simply trapped in black-and-white thinking.
There are other people who think being spiritual means that you should always be loving and kind, which they interpret to mean that you never challenge anyone and thus tolerate everything. Again, they think they are being very spiritual, but in reality they are simply caught in gray thinking.
Both these forms of thinking represent stages or phases on the spiritual path, and there isn’t anything wrong with people going through the phases. Yet many people get stuck in one or the other, and they use either form of thinking as an excuse for refusing to take up the eternal challenge of Christ. What is that challenge? It is to discern between what is of God and what is not of God, what is real and what is simply an illusion created from the duality consciousness, the mind of anti-christ in which everything is relative, is an illusion, is unreal.
My point is that many people think they are truly spiritual, but in reality they have become stuck and have refused to take up the challenge to discern and thereby step up to the level of Christhood that does make you a truly spiritual person. Thus, it is essential for mature spiritual seekers to realize that there is something beyond both phases. That “something” is a form of thinking that rises above the two dualistic extremes created by an imbalance of the two basic forces.
What I am saying is that many people have come to think that being the Christ means either judging everything according to a “spiritual” standard or never judging anything. In reality, being the Christ means rising above duality, rising above both judgment (after appearances) and non-judgment.
Being the Christ means realizing that in every situation there will be two polarities. If you take an unbalanced approach to the situation, you will go into one of the two extremes that are created by the ego. Only by staying on what I called the strait and narrow way (Matthew 7:14) and what the Buddha called the Middle Way can you avoid this. The key is to always strive for balance – which is NOT a compromise between the two dualistic extremes – and to look at any situation in a way that is beyond duality. As I said:
The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. (Luke 11:34)
The meaning is that if you look at the situation through the unified vision of the Christ mind, you will take balanced action and you will make the situation MORE. If you look at the situation through the dualistic filter of the ego, you will take unbalanced action and the result will be to make the situation less. This is truly what was expressed in Hamlet’s eternal question, “To be or not to be.”
I know this can sound abstract, so let me relate it to the actual question.
Thought 2
One of the tests of Christhood is, “To speak out or not to speak out?”
Most spiritual seekers did not grow up in an environment where spiritual – as compared to religious – topics were discussed freely. So after finding the spiritual path, most seekers face the realization that what they now believe is far beyond what the people in their circle of influence believe. The question now becomes whether to share and how to share your new understanding of life.
So the first test you face is, “Do I speak out or keep quiet?” In a way, the answer is simple. If you have found the spiritual path, it is because you came into embodiment at this crucial transition phase in the earth’s history for the specific purpose of helping to awaken humankind. Thus, you came into embodiment because you share in what I declared as my purpose:
To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. (John 18:37)
In other words, sharing your truth is an essential part of your Divine plan and if you do not speak out, you will not fulfill your Divine plan. So the first test you face is that you must overcome your inner resistance toward speaking out. Often, people fear being rejected or ridiculed, and while this is understandable, the reality behind this reaction is that you are too focused on yourself. You feel vulnerable and take things too seriously, which means you take the reactions of other people personally. You feel that if they reject what you tell them, they are rejecting YOU.
The reality is quite different. Basically, 98 percent of humanity is so wrapped up in themselves that everything they do is an effect of their own unresolved psychology. So when they reject what you say, they are not rejecting you. Their response to you has nothing to do with you or what you say; it is a product of their own unresolved psychology. As is eloquently described in the question above, many people simply do not want to change their lives and thus they do not want to hear anything they feel would require them to change. They claim to be unhappy with their lives, but they reject anything that could empower them to rise above that unhappiness—the reason being that they are not done with the experience of being unhappy victims. They are actually happy in their unhappiness and don’t want to let go of their sense that they can’t or don’t have to take responsibility for their lives.
This raises two questions for you. The first one is that you need to understand the reality of free will. All people have been given free will. This means they have a right to reject a spiritual approach to life. Yet it does NOT mean that people have a right to avoid being presented with a spiritual approach to life. People have a right to create their own little mental box, but they do NOT have a right to remain in it indefinitely without being disturbed. The consequence is that you have a right to disturb them. You have a right do do what you came here to do. You have a right to fulfill your Divine plan and bear witness to your truth.
However, in order to fulfill your Divine plan, you have to rise above the condition I just described. You have to not be like the 98 percent of humanity who are all wrapped up in themselves. You have to get beyond your self-centeredness, which truly is what the spiritual path is all about—getting beyond the ego-based self to find your spiritual self. In terms of speaking out, that means you need to examine why you have a resistance and why you feel a need for the acceptance or approval of other people. By honestly examining yourself and healing your own wounds (as Mother Mary describes in her book), LINK you can get to the point where you speak out only to help others and NOT out of a self-centered need for their approval. Thereby, you will always feel the joy of speaking out without any form of disappointment or rejection.
Thought 3.
In order to help you get to that stage, let me describe what typically happens to people as they find the spiritual path. Most people become very excited as they find the path, and they naturally want to share it with everyone. Yet because they still have a need for approval, they speak out in an unbalanced manner, and when other people reject them, they become very disappointed.
This is understandable, but as long as you have any attachment to the reactions of other people, it shows that there is something you have not resolved in yourself. I am not saying this to make you feel bad, but to simply point out that as a sincere spiritual seeker, you need to make a conscious decision to depersonalize your life. You need to make it clear that your goal is to rise to a higher state of consciousness, and in order to do that, you are willing to leave behind anything that holds you back.
So when you discover that in some situations you respond in a way that takes away your inner peace, you take that as an opportunity to look for what robs you of your peace and then rise above it. In other words, as a sincere seeker you need to decide that you are always willing to look for the beam in your own eye. Once you have made that decision consciously, your ego will have far less hold on you and it cannot as easily make you believe in its excuses for why you should NOT look in the mirror.
You can then admit that most people who are new to the spiritual path tend to speak out from a black-and-white perspective. They find a spiritual teaching and think it is the only true one or the highest possible one. They then think that everyone else should believe everything the teaching says and follow all of its outer rules. So when they speak out, they are seeking to force the teaching upon others. And regardless of the fact that many people are unwilling to change, all people have a legitimate resistance toward being forced. So when you speak out in a black-and-white manner, you have very little chance of actually convincing people to accept your viewpoints.
Take note that I am not saying you should not speak out. You have a right to speak out with your present level of awareness. You do not have to be perfect in order to speak out, but you should be willing to look at it as an experiment that can teach you a lesson. So when you get a negative response from others, you look for the beam in your own eye and make an effort to go beyond black-and-white thinking. In other words, the first test is that you must be willing to speak out. The second test is that you must be willing to learn from the response and refine your ability to speak out.
Many spiritual people have gone through the black-and-white phase I just described and have reasoned that there is no point in confronting people all the time or that speaking out in a black-and-white manner is non-constructive. And this leads them to a crucial point. Some reason that they should never speak out in a way that provokes or disturbs people, so they think being a spiritual person means beings soft-spoken and gentle. This is the gray thinking, which often becomes the next phase, during which people either say very little or only say what they think people want to hear.
It is understandable that people go into this phase, but it truly is going from one extreme to the other, namely from speaking out in order to force people to not wanting to disturb them at all. As I said, you have a right to disturb other people – and they have a right to be disturbed – and you cannot fulfill your Divine plan by remaining silent.
Thought 4
Not all people go into gray thinking. They move beyond being concerned about being rejected, so they dare to speak out without being concerned about other people’s reactions. And at this point, people will face the second test. The first test is to speak out and the second test is to NOT speak out. Or one might say the first test is about overcoming your self-centered focus on other people’s rejection of you. The second test is to learn how to present your message in such a way that it has the maximum potential for helping the other person.
In other words, you no longer speak from a self-centered need to be right or to convince others. You speak from a pure desire to help others, so the attention is not on you but on them. It is not a matter of what you feel you have to say but a matter of what has the best chance of helping a specific person rise to the next level of his or her individual path.
In order to learn this, you must deal with the temptation to become attached to “saving” or “converting” other people. Instead of being concerned about people rejecting them, many people become concerned about people rejecting the message, feeling that various calamities will happen to people if they don’t accept the message. This causes people to present the message in a way that is called “over-selling,” where you give people so much information or present it in such a dire manner that they simply shut down and shut out both you and your message.
And although it is understandable that people become concerned about helping others, it is non-constructive in that it rarely convinces other people and usually ruins your relationship with them, preventing you from ever saying anything again. We might say that there is somewhat of a catch-22. If you were not concerned about helping other people, you wouldn’t say anything at all. So you need something that drives you to speak out, but if your concern is unbalanced, it will prevent you from actually helping others, so you have to find the Middle Way. In order to do this, you need to understand that being overly concerned is a remnant of black-and-white thinking, and it can be overcome by understanding free will.
Let me make this as clear as possible: You are NOT responsible for the salvation of other people! God has made YOU responsible ONLY for your own salvation. So when you approach other people, you should never do so with the attitude that you have to save them. Instead, you must make it very clear in your mind that your ONLY job is to present them with the best possible opportunity to make a better choice. You do NOT choose for people, you give them the best possible opportunity to choose for themselves.
By setting people free – in your own mind – you can avoid overselling, and you can generally avoid the reaction that people subconsciously shut down and shut out your message. Thus, you have a far better chance at reaching them, but you still need to be aware of their situation. In other words, feeling compelled to save other people is truly a self-centered drive. And when you rise above it – when you set both yourself and others free – you can approach people without feeling compelled. Thus, you are free to look at their situation in a neutral manner and consider how you can best help them. You can also overcome the temptation to think you have to take them to some ultimate point of being saved. Instead, you can see that you need to look at each person as an individual and help them follow a gradual path. It is not a matter of taking a person to some ultimate state of being saved but a matter of helping that person take the very next step on his or her path. Let me give a few examples.
Many spiritual people have taken years or decades to reach their current level of understanding, meaning that they have gone through a gradual process. Yet in talking to other people, they often want these people to go through the process in five minutes and step up to their own level of understanding in one giant leap. This simply isn’t realistic, and you must give people time to gradually expand their understanding as they are able. Otherwise they simply shut down and you can no longer reach them.
You should also make it clear in your mind that your goal should be to help other people—not to convert them to a particular belief system. For example, it is NOT my goal to get everyone to accept this website. Not everyone is ready to accept that the real Jesus could direct a person to create a website. So you do not need to seek to make people accept this website in order to give them an idea from the site that might benefit them. If you sense people are not ready, simply give them the ideas they need without mentioning the site. In other words, your primary goal should be to help people, NOT to promote this website—or any other specific teaching, guru or organization.
In too many cases, people push a spiritual teaching on others in order to give their words an aura of authority. Yet this is a self-centered need that springs from fear of rejection or a compulsive desire to save others.
Let us look at the situation described in the question above. It is NOT your role to save your friend from her homosexuality. As I explain in my teachings on homosexuality, she has made her choices in past lives and she is the only one who can undo them. In her specific situation, her immediate problem is that she is in an abusive relationship, so I recommend focusing on helping her overcome that. That means to not talk about homosexuality if that would end your friendship and your opportunity to help her.
Obviously, you need to be aware that you can sometimes enable people to stay in a bad situation, so you need to seek to help your friend move forward. This entails helping her see that she has a codependent personality which makes it difficult for her to break free of the abusive relationship. This comes from an inner emptiness that makes her prefer an abusive relationship over no relationship. If you can help her heal this psychological wound, she will become more self-sufficient and perhaps this will eventually take her to a point where she is ready to reconsider her homosexuality. At that point, you might be able to present her with the teachings on it, but you will know when the time comes.
Thought 5
The bottom line is this. The essence of the ego is that it resists the flow of life, but this can manifest in various ways. As mentioned above, some people are afraid to speak out, and the reason is resistance from the ego. In the opposite extreme, some people feel compelled to speak out, but this is also resistance from the ego, only reversed as a compulsion. My point is that the compulsion to speak out and the compulsion NOT to speak out both come from the ego’s resistance.
To overcome the compulsion NOT to speak out, you need to make a decision to speak out despite the resistance. To overcome the compulsion to speak out, you need to make a decision to remain silent when you feel the compulsion. In other words, you need to strive for a state of innocence where you simply speak out spontaneously and speak from the heart. When you still face the fear of speaking out, you often speak from fear, which is in the solar plexus. When you face the compulsion to save others, you often speak from the head and go over in your head what you should say and how.
As long as you feel a compulsion and an intellectual “obsession” with the issue – going over it again and again in your mind – simply remain silent. Work on setting yourself free from the compulsion until you become neutral and have no attachments to either speaking out or not speaking out. Strive to become the open door that no man can shut, meaning that neither the fear of other people’s reactions or the compulsion to save others will make it impossible for your higher self to speak through you. When you become a clear pane of glass, your higher self will indeed start to speak through you and it will happen spontaneously. You can then “speak from the heart” and this has the maximum chance of reaching beyond the other person’s defenses and actually helping him or her see beyond the dualistic illusions that keep the person trapped.
In relation to the actual question, the very fact that you feel compelled to speak out but don’t feel at peace about it shows that you have not yet attained balance and non-attachment. So don’t speak out now but work on yourself. When you overcome the compulsion, concern and doubt and feel completely at peace about the situation, an opportunity to speak out will effortlessly present itself. In your patience possess ye your soul.
This is what I expressed in these sayings:
I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. (John 5:30)
Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. (John 14:10)
But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. (John 5:17)
The point is that you need to strive for reaching the state of Christhood where you are above the dualistic compulsions to speak or not speak. You are open and non-attached enough to be an instrument for your higher self, and when you reach that stage, your higher self WILL indeed speak through you.
Yet how do you get to that point? Only by experimenting and learning from your experiments. In other words, do not take my teachings to mean that you should remain silent until you are perfect or that you should take everything so seriously that you hardly dare say anything. Simply strive to become free of any compilation to speak or not to speak. Speak out with the innocence of a child, speak from the heart. It is not so much the actual words you say that will help other people but the fact that you radiate a vibration of love. Seek inspiration in the words I inspired Paul to write (partly because he truly needed them):
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become [as] sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
2 And though I have [the gift of] prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed [the poor], and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
4 Charity suffereth long, [and] is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Charity never faileth: but whether [there be] prophecies, they shall fail; whether [there be] tongues, they shall cease; whether [there be] knowledge, it shall vanish away.
9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12 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.
13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these [is] charity. (1Corinthians, Chapter 13)
Thought 6
When I walked the earth, I gave some seemingly radical teachings on family and friendship. For example:
32Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.
33But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.
34Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
35For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
36And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.
37He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
38And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. (Matthew, Chapter 10)
Based on a literal interpretation of these statements one could easily conclude that friendship is not an option for spiritual people and that family relations are likely to fall by the wayside. Yet the picture is not that black-and-white.
One might say that the above statements could only have been made by a complete ego-maniac who wants his followers to set him above anything else. In reality, the vast majority of statements in which I used the word “I’ were not made by or about me as a historical person appearing on earth. There were made from a state of oneness with the universal Christ mind, and thus the Christ mind was speaking through me. You can only understand these statements by looking beyond the outer words, and this is one of the basic tests of Christhood—to not judge after appearances (John 7:24).
For example, take the statement, “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father.” Now rewrite it as follows, “Whosoever therefore shall confess the Christ consciousness before men, him will the Christ consciousness confess also before the Father.” Now compare this latter statement to the following: No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. (Matthew 11:27). Then replace Son with Christ consciousness, “No man knoweth the Christ consciousness, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Christ consciousness, and he to whomsoever the Christ consciousness will reveal him”
The Christ consciousness is the ONLY factor that can reconcile you with God. It is the open door that no man can shut and you WILL NOT be saved in any other way than by uniting with the Christ consciousness by following the Path of Oneness that I demonstrated. So if you are a spiritual seeker, you can play around for a long time with spiritual teachings and techniques, but there will come a point where you need to get serious and realize that your true goal must be to not simply appear spiritual but to BE spiritual. Thus, your primary – even your only – goal must be to rise above duality and become one with the Christ mind.
When you understand this, you see that the passages above are truly about establishing your priorities. “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword” truly means that the Christ consciousness is all about making a choice. If you want the Christ consciousness, you must set it above anything on earth. For if you do not, you are a house divided against itself and thus you will always have an inner conflict that prevents you from reaching your goal because, “A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” Your own inner divisions will be your worst enemy—in a sense your ONLY enemy.
To set your priorities straight, you must overcome the tendency to follow the crowd, to follow the mass consciousness in both your family and your society, even the mass consciousness of humankind. This mass consciousness is not currently open to the path of Christhood but is focused on the opposite, namely a definition of life and salvation that springs from the mind of duality. It is what I called the broad way that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13).
Therefore, “He that loveth father or mother more than the Christ consciousness is not capable of becoming one with the Christ consciousness.” You simply cannot become one with the Christ consciousness as long as you see anything on earth as being more important than your spiritual goal.
Take note that this does NOT mean that you cannot love your family. It means you must not allow them to take you away from the path to Christhood, for if you let anything on earth take you away from that path, you obviously cannot complete the path and put on your Christhood. You will be stopped before you reach your goal. That is why “he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after the Christ consciousness, is not worthy of oneness with the Christ consciousness.” The cross symbolizes the blocks in your four lower bodies that prevent you from rising above duality. And currently the mass consciousness is not on this path but denies the need to follow in my footsteps, even denying that anyone can do the works that I did (John 14:12).
As long as you have not set your priorities straight, your family and friends will pull you away from the path to Christhood and this will create a conflict in your mind. Once you do set your priorities straight, you will no longer be vulnerable to this pull. And this will set both you and your family and friends free to establish a new relationship that is based on the fact that you will not be deterred from the path. Some of them will not be willing to acknowledge that you have changed, so you will lose them. Yet others will sense that you have changed, will accept it and will actually be happy to relate to you in a new way. Yet for this to happen, you must be undivided in yourself, whereby you become non-attached to their reactions.
In terms of family, I recommend striving to maintain a relationship with them so that you can at least communicate. Some people say you don’t choose your family, but it is not true. Most people do choose their family before coming into embodiment because interacting with them is part of your Divine plan. You often have karma to balance, and you often have something you can teach them. Both tasks require communication, so you should go out of your way to maintain communication and strive to make it as open as possible. Sometimes you need only give a person one key insight in a lifetime, but if you have lost communication, how can you do so?
In terms of friends, you will have friendships that are on a superficial level, and some of them will fall by the wayside as you climb the path. You cannot make serious progress if you are into the party lifestyle and go to bars or discotheques. So the kind of friends that only want to do that will simply have to do so without you. Yet there are some friends that you have a deeper connection with – such as the person described in the letter above – and those you need to maintain communication with as with family.
As you climb the spiritual path, you will find new friends that are at your spiritual level. Sometimes you have to make an effort to find them, and in many cases such people are found only within spiritual organizations. Many of them might be in organizations that you are not attracted to or that you think are not the highest possible, but that should not keep you from making friends with people. By getting to know them, you can eventually impart to them a more universal understanding of the spiritual path.
My point here is that I have no desire to see people who study this website adopt and exclusivist approach and think they can only associate with people who accept this website. I do not want this website to divide people but to unite them in a non-dualistic approach to spirituality. That is why I am open to letting people from many spiritual backgrounds or organizations use the teachings I give here without conditions. I do not want you to use this website to set yourself apart from other people. I desire to see you become better at relating to other people and helping them see through the veil of duality.
Thought 7
Let me comment on the following remarks from the question:
I look at myself from the outside and think ‘if I was so and so, would I want to be friends with someone as challenging as me?’ and I think the answer is probably no. I don’t mean I challenge in a confrontational way, I seem to challenge people just by knowing things that other people know I know and don’t want to hear. … I suppose the very existence of me is a threat to his view that his depression is other people’s fault, and that is the root of it. People have always called me ‘difficult’ but it’s not because I am hard to get along with, quite the opposite – I am open and friendly and a good laugh – but maybe something about me doesn’t allow people to be ambivalent. I am too forthright.
These remarks are quite typical for what many mature spiritual seekers experience in their relationships. Part of the reason is, as I have explained above, that people can be a bit unbalanced toward black-and-white thinking. So there is good reason to heed my remarks and become more balanced. Yet you must also acknowledge that this phenomenon is not only created by your own imbalance but very much by other people’s unwillingness to change.
You see, as a sincere spiritual seeker, you have moved toward the point of depersonalizing your life and being willing to change your life when you see what needs to change. In other words, you are willing to look for the beam in your own eye and pull it when you see it. Yet the majority of human beings are not willing to look for the beam, let alone pull it. Instead, they have enveloped themselves in a veil of dualistic excuses for why they don’t have to look in the mirror. So when they are around you, they sense that because you do not make up excuses for yourself, you can either see through theirs or you don’t accept them.
This makes them uncomfortable, for if you can change, then they can too. As the old saying goes, “Misery wants company,” and the reason is that people reinforce each other’s beliefs that they can’t or don’t have to change, that they don’t need to take full responsibility for their lives. When they see that you have taken responsibility for your growth, they realize – often without being consciously aware of it or able to verbalize it – that their own excuses are hollow. If everyone around them was in the same state of consciousness, they could feel comfortable, but you disturb their comfortability by challenging status quo.
Another aspect of this is that many spiritual seekers have more spiritual light than most non-spiritual people. Because you have purified your energy field, you radiate this light, and it can make other people uncomfortable. Some are simply disturbed by it while others are so provoked that they become angry. Others are jealous and want light, but they are not willing to make the life changes necessary, so they either want to steal it from you or they want you to go away so they can forget about the need to change.
Again, it is an integral part of your divine plan to let other people feel that you have light so they can see that it is possible for everyone to rise higher in consciousness. That is indeed why I said:
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 5:16)
As I said, your job is to present people with a choice, and one way to do this is to show them that you have spiritual light that comes from God. By experiencing your light they can at least see that it is possible for a person like them to rise higher and this gives them a choice they did not have before.
Once you are aware of the fact that your light can disturb other people, you can avoid being disturbed by it yourself. If some people do not want to change – like the person described above – simply let them go. Yet if you are completely balanced, you will begin to find that your light often will have the effect of inspiring people – at least some people – instead of disturbing them. They will sense that you have light and they will be curious. You can then help them understand their own potential so they can find it in themselves. As I say throughout my website, I did not come to earth to be put on a pedestal as being above all other people. I came to demonstrate the age-old truth that what one has done, all can do—if they are willing to transcend their current level of consciousness.
Comment from Mother Mary:
My beloved, consider my teachings in my books about holding the immaculate concept for other people. We so often see people who awaken to the spiritual path become judgmental and think that if other people do not accept your new beliefs, they are not spiritual and you should not waste your time on them. Yet consider that each person has a conscious self that is simply trapped in a mortal, dualistic, limited sense of identity. Thus, instead of putting a permanent label on people, you see that the conscious self has the potential to awaken and find the spiritual path.
Your outer mind simply cannot know how close or far away a particular person is to the awakening point. And if you attempt to force another person to awaken before he or she is ready for it, you will not help the person but will likely ruin the relationship. So you do not want to set up an all-or-nothing situation in which you force people to either accept what you say or lose your friendship. You want to maintain a relationship with them so that in the future you might be used as an instrument for imparting to them the insight they need when they are ready for it.
Obviously, I recognize that you only have so much time and attention, so you need to be realistic and not spend time just maintaining a superficial relationship. What I am saying is to not cut off your relationship with other people. If they cut off the relationship, then accept their choice but remain open to them if their attitude changes.
I realize you can look at Jesus and see that he was sometimes very confrontational and did demand that people make a choice to accept or reject him and his teachings. There are indeed times when the best way you can help another person is to help them face a choice and come up higher on the path. Yet what I am saying here is that Jesus had overcome all self-centeredness and did not demand that other people accept or reject him personally. Therefore, I encourage you to not seek out such situations and to not decide with the mind to confront others.
Strive for the non-attachment that Jesus describes and then let it come spontaneously. When you neither resist confronting others nor feel compelled to do you, things will unfold by what seems to human beings like magic, but which is truly Divine direction that knows when a person is ready to be awakened.
Your task is to always be ready to serve as an instrument for the awakening of others. To do that, let go of all resistance by holding the immaculate concept for yourself, thereby becoming one of the pure in heart who shall see God. When you see God in yourself, you will be able to see God in others, and that is when you can serve to awaken them to see God in themselves—which is our desire for all.
Copyright © 2007 by Kim Michaels