How to Make LIFE Decisions

Many people will read the discourse on making LIFE decisions and wonder how you can make such decisions. Many people find it difficult to change their behavior or their outlook on life and often feel as if the harder they try, the harder it gets. Some have already gone through the process of deciding to make certain changes to their lives, but they quickly slide back into the same old habits. 

Some decide to study spiritual teachings or practice spiritual techniques, but after a short or long while, they feel as if nothing has really changed. Here are some thoughts on how to make LIFE decisions.

The first thing you need to understand is that you cannot make a LIFE decision with the outer mind and will. It must be a decision that comes from within, from the conscious self itself. You cannot bring about a life decision with the outer will, you cannot force it, you cannot take heaven by force. However, neither can you bring about a LIFE decision by passively waiting for it, thinking it will one day happen by itself. We might say that you cannot force a LIFE decision no matter how hard you try, but neither will it happen if you are not trying.

A LIFE decision is a natural – even spontaneous – result of the right frame of mind, namely a frame of mind in which you have clarity. When you see how the selves have been hurting you, you will spontaneously make the LIFE decision to let go of a particular game of the selves. 

Imagine that you think you have been holding a rope in your hand, but you suddenly see that it is a snake. You don’t have to reason about what to do; you simply let go of the snake. The key is to put yourself in a state of mind where you are receptive to the insights that can bring about a spontaneous decision. However, you don’t have to simply wait passively for a clearer vision to happen. You can take active measures to bring it about, but it must be the right measures.

Knowing better

The ascended masters have a saying: “If people knew better, they would do better.” This is a true statement—when you recognize that “knowing better” does not refer to outer, intellectual knowledge but knowledge that has become internalized. 

The real problem is that you have accepted a lower sense of identity based on a lack of true knowledge. When you internalize knowledge, that knowledge becomes part of your sense of identity and then expands your identity. When you accept this new identity, you will begin to act accordingly, meaning that you will effortlessly do better than you could do with your old sense of identity. 

For example, virtually everyone has an outer knowledge that smoking is dangerous to their health. Those who still smoke have not internalized this knowledge. They do not truly know better because they have not fully understood how smoking affects them. They do not actually “see” that smoking is hurting themselves, and that is why they can keep smoking. 

Once you have an intuitive experience that shows you how smoking affects you, you will suddenly realize: “Why am I doing this?” At that point, it will be easy to stop because you realize that smoking is no longer compatible with the type of person you are.

Based on this, we can get a slightly different perspective on the master strategy of the selves. What the selves and the forces of duality are truly trying to do is to prevent you from knowing better. If you truly saw that you have selves, that this is not the real you and that everything the selves do leads to suffering, you would instantly commit yourself to rising above the selves—thus making the master LIFE decision that puts you on the path. If you truly saw the nature and consequences of a particular game of the selves, you would instantly refuse to play that game, making an individual LIFE decision that would take you one step up the spiral staircase. 

We can now see that the selves’ survival depends on them remaining unknown to the conscious self. The selves thrive in the shadows and in order to survive – or even expand their power – they must remain hidden. It now becomes clear that the selves will do anything in their power to prevent you from seeing the selves and seeing through their games. They want you to keep thinking you are the selves rather than realizing that the conscious self is separate from the selves. They want to prevent you from recognizing the game of the selves and their consequences.

The selves have several layers of defenses aimed at preventing you from fully seeing them and their effect on your life. To illustrate this, let us look at the example of an alcoholic. Few people consciously decide: “I’m gonna become an alcoholic.” They slide into it gradually, often by using alcohol to dull the pain caused by a problem they cannot or will not solve. Dulling the pain instead of dealing with the problem causes more pain, and in order to avoid that, they drink some more, quickly sliding into a pattern that takes over their lives.

What is the first step towards recovery? Many people drink too much, which is plain for all to see—except themselves. They will deny that their drinking is a problem and refuse to acknowledge themselves as alcoholics. As any therapist can tell you, the first step towards recovery is the recognition that there is a problem. 

That is why it is so valuable when society recognizes a problem, perhaps by labeling it as a disease, and then focuses more attention on the problem and its consequences for individuals and society. Organizations such as AA have done an immense service by focusing attention on the problem of alcoholism and the potential for getting help. Unfortunately, Western civilization has not yet recognized the problem of the selves, but this will change within a decade or two.

The selves’ first line of defense is to prevent you from even realizing that there is such a thing as selves or seeing that they are the cause of your suffering. Most people are completely unaware of the selves and think their suffering is either normal or unavoidable. They have not realized that the selves are a problem and cannot even begin to overcome it. 

For many people this is simply because they have never been told about the selves in a way they could understand. For others it is because they are not willing to even consider the possibility that their suffering could be caused by something inside themselves. They want to keep seeing themselves as victims of outside forces so they have an excuse for not taking command of their lives.

After you recognize that there is a problem, the next step is to recognize that you have that problem. This is where the selves are often most successful in terms of fooling people. It is so easy to see the splinter in your brother’s eye and so much harder to see the beam in your own eye. 

The selves are extremely skillful in making people think it is not their fault. Many spiritual people have attained an intellectual understanding of the selves (or rather the ego), but they have not fully “seen” that they have any selves and how they run their lives.

Once you recognize that there is a problem and that you are affected by that problem, you need to come to the recognition that if you are to overcome the problem, you are the one who must do something about it and you must begin now. The selves will do anything they can to make it seem like you can’t or don’t need to take action to overcome the selves. It is even possible for people to think that the selves are an external condition over which they have no control. This is much like an alcoholic who thinks he is the victim of a disease that cannot be cured but only held at bay.

Another area where the selves are often successful is in getting people to postpone – indefinitely – dealing with the selves. The selves are master procrastinators and will seek to get you so occupied with other things that you never quite get the time to deal with the selves. Or they will get you to think you don’t need to deal with the selves today—you can do it in the tomorrow that never comes.

After you recognize that the selves are a problem, that it affects you, that you have to deal with it and that you have to do so now, what could possibly go wrong? You have to understand what you are dealing with and how to best overcome it. 

This means understanding the nature and origin of the selves and seeing through the game of the selves. The latter is another area where the selves are often successful in fooling people. It is often quite difficult to identify a seemingly innocent habit as an game of the selves and actually see that you are trapped in that game. 

Human beings are very adaptable, which has the positive quality of allowing us to survive many different conditions. Adaptability can be used by the selves to make you tolerate the games of the selves. You have become so used to them that you think they are harmless or even normal. The good old argument that if everyone is doing it, it couldn’t be wrong is still very effective for most people. It is a simple fact that if everyone is blinded by the selves, then everyone will indeed be wrong.

What is the purpose for listing the ways the selves are trying to prevent you from getting to the point of taking action and making a LIFE decision? Simply to make you aware of the areas where the selves will seek to hide so that you can begin to understand the mechanics of how the selves seek to blind and pacify you. 

You can then begin to see that the selves were created because the conscious self refused to be aware. The key to overcoming the selves is to take back awareness and increase your understanding. The selves truly have no actual power over you, and they can only influence you as long as you do not see what is happening. As you become aware of the selves and their games, you are well on your way to rising above it all. You must seek the right kind of awareness.

What to look for

There is outer knowledge and there is inner knowledge. There is intellectual knowledge and there is true understanding. There is the dualistic, relative “truth” of duality and there is the undivided truth of higher awareness. 

As long as you look at life through the filter of the dualistic mind, the selves will always be able to hide from you. In order to expose the selves, you need to reach beyond the state of consciousness of the selves. You need to reach for vertical knowledge instead of intellectual knowledge. 

Some psychologists have great intellectual knowledge about the psyche, but they are no closer to seeing the selves in themselves. Some spiritual seekers have great intellectual knowledge about spiritual teachings, but they still have not understood the essential element of the path, namely that you must overcome the selves. Consider the following situation from the Bible:

3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,
4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?
6 This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with [his] finger wrote on the ground, [as though he heard them not].
7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
9 And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
(John, Chapter 8)

Here we have a group of people who were absolutely convinced that they were right, but in reality they were blinded by their selves. Jesus, as the representative of the Christ mind – as the Living Christ – served to jolt them out of their spiritual blindness and make them look at the situation without the filter of the selves. They gained a new clarity and walked away from an inhumane act. What you need in order to overcome your own selves is that kind of new perspective so you see what you could not see before.

Now consider the story of the Gordian Knot. An intricate knot was placed in an ancient temple and an oracle had prophesied: “He who can undo the Gordian knot will become ruler over all of Asia.” Many people tried to untie the knot, but finally a young man named Alexander drew his sword and cut the knot in two. Alexander did not try to untie the ropes. He looked at the problem in a different way and found the only practical solution. He “undid” the knot as the oracle had said.

The moral of the story is that you cannot solve a problem while you are trapped in the same state of consciousness that created the problem. Your current problems were all created because you made Death decisions, decisions based on the dualistic logic of the mind of separation presented by your selves. If you try to solve those problems with the same frame of mind, you will only dig an even deeper hole for yourself. Instead, you must do something different, bring a different element to replace the illusion. 

This is illustrated in the old analogy that you cannot remove darkness from a room because it has no substance. No matter how much you analyze the darkness, you will still be in the dark. The only way out is to realize that darkness is not a substance in itself, but an absence of something. Once you bring what is missing, the darkness disappears. Likewise, the mind of separation has no reality to it but is simply the absence of the reality of the Christ mind, the mind of oneness.

That is why Albert Einstein said: “If you keep doing the same thing and expect different results, you are insane.” Most human beings are engaged in the insanity of trying to solve the problems created by the selves while still using the consciousness of the selves. It simply cannot be done.

Zen Buddhism is known for using koans, which are short, often contradictory, statements designed to jolt the mind into looking at a situation in a different way. A koan is not meant to give you a specific piece of information or even understanding. It is actually meant to short-circuit the normal thinking patterns so that you suddenly step outside of your normal mental box. 

A koan is designed to help you realize that there is a state of consciousness above and beyond the dualistic state of mind that has become the normal state for most people. Jesus often used similar statements because it was his goal to help people connect to the Christ mind. As he said:

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

The selves think entirely in a horizontal way, meaning that they simply cannot reach beyond a certain level. It is as if the selves are trapped in the basement of a house and cannot see that there is anything above it. There is an entirely different way of thinking that is above the dualistic thinking of the selves. This is the kind of thinking that you need to be aware of, and you need to open your mind to receiving intuitive insights that will jolt your mind out of its own patterns. 

Most people are not willing to think outside the box, and that is why their minds are closed most of the time. They want every new idea to conform to their present beliefs, to fit inside their current mental box. You can make the decision that you will be aware of the mind’s tendency to close up and that you will counteract it. 

You can decide to put yourself in a receptive frame of mind where you are always open to a truth that your selves cannot see. You can decide that you are willing to look for the beam in your own eye and that you will be alert to your selves’ attempts to make you focus your attention elsewhere. This is a state of listening grace and Jesus talked about it when he said:

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. (Matthew 11:15)

But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. (Matthew 13:16)

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. (Mark 10:15)

By becoming more aware of the need to reach beyond the selves’ mental box, you will put your mind in a state of receptivity, and you will begin to receive the insights that will form the basis for LIFE decisions. 

Take note that this is not a passive state of mind. You are not simply waiting for the truth to find you. You are actively looking for the truth by studying anything that is available on the selves, on psychology and on spirituality. You are not studying to get intellectual, horizontal knowledge, you are studying to get intuitive breakthroughs, “Aha experiences,” that give you vertical insights.

Always looking beyond duality

The master key here is to realize that you must always strive to increase your vision and discernment so you can look beyond the games of the selves. There are several layers of the games of the selves. In the beginning you cannot see through all of the selves’ illusions so you will still be making dualistic decisions, but some of them will have less destructive consequences than others. This is not to say that dualistic decisions are necessarily bad. Some can be a step in the right direction, but you will not truly rise above a problem until you make a LIFE decision.

To use the previous example of alcoholism, there are many people who drink too much but who have not come to the recognition: “I’m an alcoholic and I need help!” Coming to this awareness is clearly a step in the right direction because it represents a higher level of awareness. Entering a treatment program or in other ways putting a stop to drinking will clearly be beneficial to the person. However, living the rest of your life with the sense of identity that “I’m an alcoholic” is not the highest possible outcome.

Coming to the awareness that “I’m an alcoholic” is not a LIFE decision. However, if you follow it up with expanding your spiritual understanding, you can come to the realization that you are a spiritual being. When you accept this new identity, you have made a LIFE decision. You have now allowed the old identity to die and a new identity has been born, according to which drinking is no longer an option. You are not even tempted to drink because it is incompatible with your new identity and world view.

Again, how can you come to the point where you can make such a LIFE decision? You must begin by expanding your awareness, which has two aspects:

  • The Alpha aspect is to expand your understanding of the spiritual side of life, including that you are a spiritual being who has a unique mission on this planet. You understand the selves and see that you are more than the selves.
  • The Omega aspect is that you understand why and how a certain pattern of behavior affects yourself and other people. You understand the games of the selves.

Many people come to realize that certain habits have negative consequences, but they do not understand that they are games of the selves. They have to fight hard to overcome a habit, yet if you work on both aspects of expanding your understanding, it will become much easier for you to let go of the old way of thinking. 

The reason being that you will not actually feel you are giving up anything. Many people who stop drinking feel they have given up something that was pleasurable and they feel a loss or vacuum inside. Once you attain a higher spiritual understanding, you can overcome this illusion of loss. 

You now have a new sense of identity instead of a vacuum, and you are not giving up anything. You are simply letting something old fall away as it is being replaced by something better. It is similar to what happened in your teen-age years when you one day realized: “I’m not a child anymore!” At that moment, you accepted a new identity, and it was now easy to give up playing with toys. You did not have to force yourself to stop playing with dolls or toy cars, you simply lost interest and focused your attention on a new type of toys that were suited to your new identity as a teenager.

Some will say they would have been better off if they had stuck to their childhood toys, but the teenage stage was a necessary step on the path to adulthood. Eventually you gave up seeing yourself as a teenager and accepted yourself as an adult. 

You have already made a number of LIFE decisions that took you to a higher sense of identity. Making LIFE decisions is not something mysterious or out of this world; it is a normal part of life. You simply need to become more aware of these kind of decisions and then focus your attention on taking the next step. 

You need to let the old identity as a “normal” adult fall away and accept a new identity as a spiritual being. When you do this, you will naturally stop doing what normal adults do and instead begin to do what spiritual beings do.

Opposition to progress

Many people feel like there is opposition to making a LIFE decision, like something is pulling them back into old patterns. Some people even experience making a LIFE decision but are still pulled back into old patterns. The reason is that there truly is a gravitational force that pulls you down the spiral staircase. This force has several components, and we will take a look at them next.

At the core of every game of the selves is an incorrect belief, meaning a belief that is based on the dualistic illusions of the mind of separation rather than the reality of the mind of oneness. As long as this belief remains in your consciousness, it will pull on your mind, and it will literally pull you into patterns of thoughts, feelings and actions. You will not be free until you have overcome the incorrect belief. 

However, this can be complicated by the fact that a belief can have several layers. We might say that there is one deeper belief that is held in place or hidden by smaller beliefs, almost like smaller rocks holding a big boulder in place. Until you move the smaller rocks, you simply cannot get the boulder rolling. As explained before, the material universe has four levels that correspond to the four levels of your mind:

  • The identity level is where you have beliefs about who you are and how the world is.
  • The mental level is the level of thought and this is where you have beliefs about what you can and cannot do.
  • The emotional level is the level of feeling, which gives you the impetus to act. However, feelings can also be triggered by outer circumstances and prevent you from acting or get you to do something you really did not want to do. This is where you have beliefs about what you should and should not do.
  • The physical level is the level of the body and outer mind, and this is where you decide what physical actions to take. This is where you have beliefs about how your actions affect yourself and other people.

In most cases, a game of the selves will have components or beliefs on all four levels, and in order to fully escape the game, you must resolve them at all four levels.

As an example, let us go back to the alcoholic. At the conscious level, the person has the belief: “I’m not an alcoholic. I’m not drinking too much. I can handle this. I could stop any time.” The physical level is where people usually experience consequences that can be difficult to deny. For example a person who is drinking might lose a job, destroy a relationship or be told by the doctor that if he doesn’t stop drinking, he will be dead in six months. This might cause the person to abandon the belief just described and cause him to stop drinking.

Obviously, this is a step in the right direction, but the person did not start drinking because of the belief that he is not an alcoholic and can stop any time. If he does not go beyond the level of the outer mind, the beliefs at the higher levels of the person’s mind will still affect him and that is why he will have a life-long struggle with alcoholism. 

At the emotional level there might be a belief which says: “I should not be feeling this pain but since I am the victim of it, it is okay to dull the pain. I deserve a relief.” Obviously, as long as that belief remains in the person’s emotional body and as long as he feels pain, it will give him an emotional craving to drink and he must fight it daily.

At the level of the mental body, there might be a belief which says: “I can’t solve this problem so I can’t avoid feeling the pain of it. Since there is nothing I can do about it, my only option is to get some relief so I can deal with today.” Again, this belief will continue to pull on the person’s thoughts until it is removed. 

Finally, in the person’s identity body might be the belief: “I’m just a human being and I’m worthless. Life has no purpose and there is really no point in me being here.” This belief is the boulder, and if you could get it to move, it would pull the lower beliefs down with it. 

It is quite possible that the conscious self can step outside of your current situation, uncover the incorrect belief at the identity level and resolve it. Thereby, the lower beliefs will simply fall like dominoes. The problem here is that in order to do this, the conscious self has to be able to pull back from your situation. You will have to look at the forest instead of the trees, and the selves will seek to lock your attention at one of the lower levels. 

As long as a person is drinking too much, all of his attention is focused on the physical level. It is a matter of getting the next drink and avoiding the consequences of his drinking. It may be necessary for a person to stop the physical habit before his attention can be free to look beyond the physical level. 

Likewise, some people are so focused on the emotional level that they can never step back and realize their feelings are caused by their thoughts. Of course, some people are so focused on the mental and intellectual level that they do not realize their thoughts are simply the slaves of their sense of identity. 

By seeking the kind of intuitive insights mentioned in the previous sections, you can ideally step back and uncover the incorrect belief at the identity level that is the cause of your problems. By pulling the plug in the bathtub, all the dirty water in the tub will run out. 

In many cases, it is too hard for people to free their minds from one of the lower levels. It may be necessary for you to first focus on overcoming an incorrect belief at the level of the conscious mind, at the emotional level or at the mental level. Only when you free your mind from its obsession with one of the lower levels, can you step back and look at the big picture.

The energy connection

As explained in another section, everything is energy. The four levels of your mind form an energy field, and you are alive and conscious because there is a stream of energy flowing from your higher self through the levels of your mind. This energy can be qualified with a fear-based vibration and then accumulate in your subconscious mind. This misqualified energy will make it much harder for you to see the selves.

As described, there are specific tools that can help you overcome this accumulated energy. There are very few people who could not benefit from using these tools as a preparation for making LIFE decisions. There are many people who have so much misqualified energy that they simply will not be able to make LIFE decisions until they have cleared out so much of it that they free their attention from the magnetic pull. Only then will they have enough self-awareness to see beyond the mental box created by their selves.

Another consequence of having misqualified energy in your personal field is that it creates a connection between your mind and the mass mind. Consider that you walk by a building that contains a huge electromagnet. Your body is not magnetic so you feel nothing. Now consider that your pockets are full of iron weights. You will now feel the pull of the magnet. 

If you have a lot of misqualified energy in your personal field, you will feel a pull from the mass consciousness, and this will make it much harder for you to make LIFE decisions. Again, the only way out is to transform the misqualified energy by using a suitable technique. Then the prince of this world will come and have nothing in you whereby he can pull you into self-destructive patterns.

Before we leave the topic of something pulling you into old patterns, let us briefly consider habits. The subconscious mind functions much like a computer. Once a program has been created, it will keep running until you remove it from the computer’s hard drive. You can make a LIFE decision that removes the false belief that created the program, but you still have certain grooves that exist in the subconscious mind. 

Once a trail is formed in a jungle, the animals will follow it. That makes the trail wider, meaning more animals will follow it. Likewise, a trail in your subconscious mind will cause your thoughts and feelings to follow certain patterns. The trail was established through repetition and it will require repetition to erase it.

Even after you make a LIFE decision, you will still have to erase the habit established after you accepted the old belief. This will take some time and that is why you should be prepared to affirm a LIFE decision a number of times after you have made it. 

Some people have volunteered to help resolve patterns in the mass consciousness, and they might have to reaffirm certain LIFE decisions for a long time, even a lifetime. You should not be discouraged by this but simply keep affirming the decision whenever something pulls you back towards the old pattern.

The relationship between you and your beliefs

When you look at the world, you will see that some people are willing to die for their beliefs or they are willing to kill others in order to destroy what they see as a threat to their beliefs. Some of these people are even seen as heroes who take a stand, and some people even think Jesus was willing to die for his beliefs. This is an incorrect understanding. 

A belief is something that is expressed in words, and anything that is expressed in words has entered the realm of duality where it is subject to different interpretations. Here is an example of a belief: “My religion is the only true one and God wants all other religions destroyed, so it is acceptable that I kill non-believers.” In short, you should never be willing to die or kill for a belief. 

You might indeed take a stand for a higher principle, and that is what Jesus did by letting himself be crucified. However, he did not do this out of any self-centered motivation or attachment. He did it in an attempt to awaken others by showing them that their beliefs were contradictory. They claimed to believe in a religion that said: “Thou shalt not kill” yet they were ready to kill Jesus in order to preserve their religion. How can you preserve a non-violent religion through violence?

What is the basic principle behind making LIFE decisions? The simple fact is that you have become blinded by the dualistic illusions of the selves, and you no longer see a non-dual truth. Your vision of truth is being blocked by your current beliefs. In order to attain the vision of higher awareness – which makes it natural and effortless to make a LIFE decision – you must be willing to look beyond your current beliefs. You cannot do this as long as you are attached to those beliefs. Being willing to kill or die for your beliefs is simply the extreme form of such attachment.

There are many people who will notice that as they read these discourses, they have a certain uneasiness somewhere in their minds. If you look closer, you will see that there is a reluctance to have your current beliefs exposed as being erroneous. There can even be a fear that if your beliefs are exposed as errors, something bad will happen or you will suffer a loss. What will be left if you lose your beliefs?

This is in no way finding fault with people who feel this way, it is simply pointing out that as long as you have these feelings, you will make the spiritual path much more difficult for yourself than it needs to be. Higher awareness has a desire to see all sincere seekers walk the path as quickly and as painlessly as possible. In order to do that, you only have to shift your perspective on life a little bit. You have to turn the dial of consciousness slightly so that you look at beliefs in a different way.

What is the new perspective? As long as you have any kind of attachment to your current beliefs, it will cause you pain to let go of those beliefs. For each step you take on the spiritual path, you must let go of an erroneous belief, meaning that each step will cause you pain. When you are reluctant to let go of an erroneous belief, it is because there is a part of you that is identifying itself with that belief. That part is, of course, the selves. A particular self does not want you to grow and is using your present beliefs to hold back your growth. 

What is the hidden message that the selves are giving you? It is that you should not let go of a particular belief because there is nothing beyond it—it is infallible. If you allow your selves to make you attached to your beliefs, you are essentially refusing to expand your understanding and acquire the broader perspective that will bring about a LIFE decision. 

Does this mean you need to let go of all your beliefs? Not necessarily, but you need to be willing to let go of all your beliefs. If there is a belief that you are not willing to question, then that unwillingness comes from an attachment and an attachment can only come from the selves.

How do you escape this trap? There literally is only one way. The conscious self must come to the realization that you are more than your beliefs! The conscious self is an individualization of higher awareness and higher awareness is clearly beyond any belief in this world. God is the Spirit of Truth and that is why you must worship him in Spirit and in truth—instead of worshiping him through dualistic beliefs and earthly doctrines. God’s Spirit is beyond any belief that can be put into words. The trick is, of course, that only the conscious self can experience the Spirit of Truth whereas the selves can never do so.

If you can make that shift in consciousness, you can realize that the real you can never lose anything by letting go of an erroneous belief. How could you lose by letting go of a belief that limits and imprisons you in a false sense of identity that causes constant suffering? Only the selves can lose when you let go of a false belief so the selves can no longer control you.

When you know you are more than your beliefs, you can quickly overcome all fear of taking a look at your beliefs and all fear of what will happen if a dearly held belief is exposed as erroneous. Instead of resisting the process of having your erroneous beliefs exposed, you actively seek out such exposure. 

Not all at once so you lose your bearings, but you commit yourself to an ongoing process of gradually exposing every limited belief that has ever entered your mind. Once you see such a belief, you can simply let it go as effortlessly as you let go of a snake. You will then begin to make spontaneous LIFE decisions and that is when your progress on the path will accelerate beyond your present expectations.

Being teachable

As one last thought on how to get yourself in a state of mind where LIFE decisions begin to happen spontaneously, ask yourself the following questions: “Am I teachable? Am I willing to follow a true spiritual teacher who exposes my false beliefs? Or would I rather follow a false teacher who tells me what I (in reality, the selves) want to hear?” 

These are the quintessential questions that separate the true spiritual seekers from those who might claim to be very spiritual or religious but who have not yet understood what the path is about or have not made a commitment to their own growth. The situation is undeniable. In order to make progress on the spiritual path – in order to take the next step up the spiral staircase – you must overcome the false belief that caused you to descend to your current step. 

If you could see the fallacy of that illusion, you would not have descended that step or you would already have gone back up. What is blocking your progress is that there is something you cannot see, and as long as you cannot see it, you will remain trapped.

The key to breaking the gridlock is that you must receive the crucial insight that allows you to expose your current belief as false and replace it with the truth that makes you free. Where is that insight going to come from? It cannot come from inside your own mind, inside your current mental box. If the insight you need was inside the box, you would already have found it. Take another look at Jesus statement:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye? (Luke 6:41)

Why is it so easy for people to see what is going on in other people’s lives and so hard to see the same problem in their own lives? Because when you are inside the mental box created by the selves, you cannot see your situation as clearly as when you look at it from the outside. The insight you need must come from a source that is outside your mind and above the level of duality. That source is a spiritual teacher.

This does not mean that you have to make a direct or conscious contact with a being in the spiritual realm. There is a saying: “If the teacher be an ant, heed him.” The meaning is that the teacher often appears in an unexpected or humble disguise. 

The teacher might be a book or it might be another person who tells you what you cannot see on your own. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. There is always a teacher with you who can give you exactly what you need in order to take the next step on your path. The big question is whether you can recognize the teacher and whether you are willing to heed the message? 

What you can do right now is to make a commitment that you will always look for the teacher. You will allow the teacher to tell you what you cannot see and what your selves do not want you to see. You will look for a true teacher who challenges your illusions, instead of a false teacher who makes you comfortable in your illusions. You can decide that you will strive to be teachable for the rest of your life, always looking for the teacher who can take you to a higher level. You can decide that you will have ears to hear and eyes to see.

The path is an ongoing process

There are many people who fall prey to the selves’ tendency to look for an automatic or guaranteed salvation, as explained in earlier discourses. They think there is some kind of ultimate teaching, information or insight and once they have found it, they will be home free. They think one magical decision will whisk them to the top of the spiral staircase.

As long as you are in embodiment, you will be dealing with the mind of separation. You can free yourself from most of your own selves, but you will still be exposed to the mass consciousness from without. It is essential for you to go into a frame of mind in which you see the path as an ongoing process. Instead of looking for some final solution, you look forward to receiving progressively higher insights for the rest of your lifetime.

When you do this, you are no longer looking for some ultimate teaching, which means the selves cannot make you believe you have now found an infallible truth and you can stop looking. The selves cannot make you stop at a certain step, causing you to think you do not have to take the next step. 

You must not allow the selves to supply the information upon which you base your decisions. The reason is that if you do so, the selves will make you think you do not have to go further because you are saved where you are. They will make you think your current step is the last step you need to take.

The web of illusions spun by the selves is very subtle, and you should consider that the path has several levels. Instead of allowing the selves to make you feel comfortable at your current level, you should always be looking beyond it. There are levels of the games of the selves, and you need to keep going until you reach the highest level and overcome your false sense of identity. Understanding this will serve to encourage you because you will realize that you have risen above the lowest level of the dualistic games.

There is a subtle difference that you need to ponder. The selves will try to make you feel comfortable with your current beliefs so you do not move on. Fighting this tendency does not mean you have to live the rest of your life in a state of dissatisfaction or lack. Once you realize you are more than your beliefs, letting go of an old belief does not cause you pain. It causes you to feel freer, and that gives rise to joy. You can enjoy the journey without falling into the trap of becoming so comfortable that you stop the progress. When you reach that childlike innocence, you can approach the spiritual path with the same excitement as a child who has discovered a wonderful new playground to explore. At that point, you have entered the kingdom of Heaven even though you have not yet reached the top of the spiral staircase. 

As said, you cannot bring about a LIFE decision no matter how hard you try but it will not happen if you are not trying. We now see that as long as you try by using the mind of separation, you cannot attain the higher vision that is the foundation for a LIFE decision. If you just passively wait for a decision to happen, you will get nowhere. The key is that there is a middle way between trying with the human mind and doing nothing. 

That narrow way is to put yourself in a frame of mind where you are seeking first the kingdom of God – higher awareness – and then letting all other things – including LIFE decisions – be added onto you spontaneously. It is a state of graceful expectancy where you make yourself – your mind – a chalice and allow higher awareness to flow into it and replace the darkness. 

Upholding the selves’ illusions is what requires a constant struggle. Attaining higher awareness only requires you to stop struggling. That is the true meaning of having the innocent mind of a child. You separate yourself from the selves’ attempt to control everything and instead you TRY by letting Theos Rule You. You allow higher awareness within you to be the doer instead of letting the selves be the doer.

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)

Try to read those two statements with the feeling that you are the Christ speaking them. Then pay attention to how your selves will resist the message.