The discourses on illusions presented the overall view, the big picture, and they form a foundation for knowing that you are more than the selves. It was an attempt to show you the forest without focusing on the individual trees. Why did we start out this way? Because you are not only a person who is lost in the forest, you are a person who has grown up in the forest. Your upbringing has not given you a clear understanding of the real cause that makes your life an ongoing struggle.

We had to start out by showing you that you are lost but that there is something outside the forest. It is not until you recognize yourself as lost that you can start looking for a way out instead of feeling hopeless – or even content – in the shadow of the trees. You now understand that the core of your identity is the conscious self and that you are MORE than the earthly identity built by your selves. 

You should also recognize that you already know you are more than the selves because it is the conscious self who has studied the previous discourses on the selves. You have done so only because you want to be more than what you are right now. You don’t really think it was your selves that compelled you to read these long and somewhat complex discourses on the selves, do you? You should allow yourself to recognize that you already know there is something outside the forest of the selves.

However, having a mental image of the forest is not the same as being outside that forest. You still have to follow the trail that leads you out, and for a time your vision of what is outside will be blocked by a number of individual trees. In this series we will look at the individual trees, namely the games that the selves have constructed in order to keep you trapped in the forest. The strategy of the selves is to get you so entangled in the branches of one or more individual trees that you forget about the trail. 

Having made it this far, especially if you have recognized that you are in a state of magnificent confusion, is an accomplishment. Virtually every human being on this planet is somewhat blinded by the selves. Most people are not ready to even acknowledge the existence of the selves, let alone take a long look in the mirror and recognize: “I have subconscious selves, and I need to rise above them!” 

If you have studied the previous discourses, you are ready to begin looking at the specific games that your own selves are playing. You have already overcome some of these games or you would still be so identified with the selves that you would not be open to this teaching. As you read the games, you will begin to recognize that as a spiritual seeker, you have risen above some of the most destructive games of the selves. 

This might give you some encouragement in realizing that you might be further along on the path than you thought. Even if you have only overcome the very lowest game of the selves, you are still in a much better place than those who are trapped in that game. If you have overcome one game of the selves, you can overcome them all, for they are truly all cut from the same cloth. The selves have only one game that comes in numerous disguises, some more subtle than others. Once you see the basic strategy of the selves, you can more easily expose the rest of their games.

You can use these discourses to honestly look at yourself, recognize which games you have left behind and build a positive momentum. As you build this momentum, you should be able to acknowledge when you come to the first game that you have not yet – completely – overcome. Then you can use your momentum to avoid a negative reaction – such as guilt or denial – and simply acknowledge that since you have already risen above one or more games, you can surely rise above this next one as well. 

As you continue to build on your accomplishments, you will reinforce the momentum until it becomes an unstoppable force that pulls you through the forest and simply cuts down the trees that are in your way. Before you know it, you will see the light filtering through the trees, and one day you will break through the last brush and enter the open field where your eyes can finally see the horizon of Being.

Think about what it is like to be lost in a forest. The biggest problem is that you have no absolute point of reference, you have no horizon but only a very limited field of view. You only see trees and have no way of knowing which direction to follow in order to get out of the forest. As you cut down the individual trees, you will eventually catch a glimpse of the horizon, and now you will have a firm direction to follow. 

In the beginning it might seem like overcoming the selves is hopeless, but if you keep overcoming the individual games of the selves, you will one day break through and catch a glimpse of your own higher self. From then on, you will never again be completely lost in the forest.

The master game of the selves

Although we will discuss the individual games used by the selves, we will start out by describing the master game. You may not be able to clearly see this game at this point, but this will plant a seed in your mind so that it can germinate and eventually break through to your conscious awareness. 

As I explained in the first discourses, the conscious self created the selves by deciding that it would no longer make decisions. This is illustrated in the old fairy tale about the sleeping beauty. The princess is the conscious self and one day she falls victim to a plot hatched by the evil Godmother, namely the prince of this world. The princess falls asleep and an impenetrable forest grows up around her castle. 

The forest, of course, is the selves and the individual trees are the illusions of the selves, the games of the selves. One day a prince comes by, penetrates the forest and kisses the princess, who awakens. The prince symbolizes the Living Christ who can take on many forms, both as an outer teacher and as the inner teacher of your higher self. Regardless of the form, the Living Christ always serves to awaken the conscious self to the need to come up higher.

In the fairy tale, the prince and the princess live happily ever after, and here is where the fairy tale departs from reality. In the real world, the conscious self is not home free by being awakened. It – you – must personally cut down all of the trees that surround the castle, and only then will you live happily ever after. 

The master strategy of the selves involves two elements. The first one is that the selves will do anything they can to prevent the conscious self from awakening to the realization that there must be more to your identity. For the majority of human beings, this strategy is still working, and they still identify themselves completely with the identity that the selves have built in the material world. The fact that you are reading this means that you are a spiritual seeker, and thus your selves’ first strategy has failed. You know there is more to your identity and you are actively looking for it.

You are now the target for the selves’ second strategy, which is to prevent you from clearing the thorny trees around the castle. Each tree represents a decision, a decision based on the mind of duality and separation. This is where we will leave the fairy-tale analogy behind and instead refer to the image of a spiral staircase. Each decision that was based on the mind of duality took you further down the spiral staircase, the staircase that leads into the darkness of separation from your higher self. This is what the Bible refers to as “the valley of the shadow of death” (Proverbs 23:4).

The separation from your higher self and your true sense of identity truly is the consciousness of spiritual death. The decisions based on the illusions of the mind of duality brought you further into the consciousness of death. We might say that each of these decisions was a Death decision. 

One kiss from the prince is not enough to raise you out of the shadow of death. You must consciously walk the staircase and undo each of the decisions that brought you down the staircase. This is precisely what the selves will do everything in their power to prevent you from doing.

In order to take a step up the spiral staircase, you must come to see through the dualistic illusion that brought you down to that step. You can do this only by seeing the higher truth that counteracts the illusion, the truth that makes you free. You must then choose the truth of oneness over the “truth” of duality. You must choose life over death. We will call each of these decisions a “LIFE decision.” 

The selves will do anything to prevent you from making these LIFE decisions. In order to accomplish this overall goal, the selves – and the forces of duality – have invented a number of subtle games. The goal is to keep you entangled with a particular illusion so that you cannot let go of it and rise to the next step on the path.

What is a LIFE decision?

When we talk about LIFE decisions, we are not talking about minor decisions, such as whether to bring an umbrella or what to have for lunch. Nor are we talking about big decisions in your material life, such as what career to pursue or what person to marry. We are talking about the kind of decisions that affect how you see yourself, God, the world and the relationship between these three factors in your life. We are talking about decisions that affect your sense of identity. 

As explained in the previous discourses, when you descend one step on the spiral staircase, your old identity dies and a new one is born. In order to ascend one step, the old – human – identity must die and a new more spiritual one must be born. That is why Jesus said:

5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John, Chapter 3)

This spiritual rebirth requires you to voluntarily and consciously – if it is not conscious, it cannot be voluntary – let the old human identity die and accept that you are reborn into a higher sense of identity. To make this less abstract, let us look at an example. 

Many people struggle with alcoholism and use various programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, to combat this condition. Some manage to stop drinking by using the force of conscious will to suppress the urge to drink. This is commendable, but it comes at a price, namely that you must struggle to uphold the decision, often for the rest of your life. 

An organization such as AA maintains that you are an alcoholic for life and that you must continue to suppress the urge to drink. This is not denouncing this approach for people at a certain level, but there is a higher approach.

There is only one reason why you could become susceptible to alcoholism in the first place, namely that you have accepted a sense of identity as a human being who has no real purpose to life and who is powerless to overcome certain problems. If you can’t overcome a problem (to stop the pain) and if you really are not worth anything, it is okay to dull the pain through alcohol. 

You then gradually slide into a physical and emotional addiction, but one day the conscious self wakes up and realizes this cannot go on or you will die. You go into a treatment program and use the force of will to suppress what is seen as the cause of the problem, namely the urge to drink. However, the real cause is your sense of identity as a basically worthless human being whose life has no higher purpose and who can never overcome past mistakes. 

The real solution is to transcend that state of consciousness, which you can do by internalizing the higher truth that you are a unique, spiritual being who is infinitely loved by higher awareness and who came to earth for a specific purpose. Once you accept this new sense of identity – once you let the old identity die and are spiritually reborn – you will see that you are worthy and that your life has a mission that is far too important to you to let alcohol stand in the way of its fulfillment. 

You have not simply suppressed the urge to drink – which is only the effect and not the cause – but you have accepted a higher sense of identity. For the new person that you now are, drinking is simply unthinkable. It is not even an option, and the selves and the prince of this world have no way to tempt you into drinking. 

You are so focused on your mission that you do not even notice their temptations. This leads them to stop and attempt to come up with another kind of temptation that works at your new level of consciousness. Nevertheless, you have still made significant progress and it has become harder for them to tempt you.

This is the overall strategy of the selves. You have descended the staircase by accepting a lower sense of identity than your true identity, which is that you are a unique spiritual being. You have accepted that you are a human being with certain limitations. 

The selves are trying to prevent you from letting go of a limited sense of identity and accepting a higher one. They do this by either keeping you in spiritual blindness (so you don’t see your limitations or the alternative) or making you so attached to your current sense of identity that you are not willing to let go of it. 

Your current sense of identity is based on something in this world, it is a worldly or material sense of identity. The selves are trying to keep you so entangled with or attached to the “things of this world” that you either cannot see or cannot accept your true spiritual identity. The selves seek to accomplish this through the individual games of the selves, each of which is designed to keep you so focused on something in the material world that you cannot or will not look beyond it. 

You are not willing to give up your limited sense of identity in order to rise to a broader sense of identity. You are not able or willing to let go of your belief that you are the lower identity and that there is nothing more to you than what that identity specifies.

How did you descend the staircase of life?

Let us now consider how you descended the staircase that led you to your present level of consciousness. Here is where the fairy tale – and even the Bible – gives an incorrect description of the process. The Bible describes the Fall of Man as one momentous event. In a sense it is true that losing contact with your spiritual teacher was a momentous event, but it happened as the result of a gradual process.

Many religions and many spiritual teachings present the Fall of Man as one event and they present the solution – salvation, enlightenment or whatever it is called – the same way. This is one of the illusions created by the prince of this world. He wants you to believe that if only you belong to the right Christian church and believe all its doctrines, Jesus – or rather the church’s idolatrous image of Christ – will one day appear in the sky and save you. Or he wants you to believe that if only you are loving and kind to everyone, you will one day spontaneously wake up and be enlightened. 

Both philosophies – and the many others that spring from the same consciousness – have the same goal, namely to pacify you so that you do not realize the true key to salvation, spiritual growth, enlightenment or whatever you want to call it. That key is to understand the mechanics of how you descend and ascend the spiral staircase and the role of LIFE decisions. 

The consciousness of anti-christ is subtle, which means that the Fall, the descent into lower levels of consciousness, did not happen as the result of one decision on your part. You gradually started experimenting with the dualistic mind, and you gradually descended the spiral staircase. 

At some point the conscious self did make the momentous decision that it would no longer be in command of your life, but most people did this without fully realizing what was at stake. They had already become so partially blinded by the duality of the mind of anti-christ that they did not fully understand what had happened. They did not understand that they had just made the quintessential Death decision.

Compare this to descending a staircase. If you walk down the steps, each step will send a jolt up your legs, and you know you have descended one step. You experience each step as a discrete and distinct event and you know you have gone one step down. 

Now imagine that you lie down on the staircase and allow gravity to pull your body down. You simply slide down the steps and because your body spans several steps, it becomes harder to realize that you have descended a step and that this is a discrete event. After all, which step did you just descend, the one under your head or the one under your feet? When you do not clearly see that you have taken a step down, you can slide quite far down the spiral staircase before you even realize what has happened.

When you descended the staircase of consciousness, you did not clearly see what was happening. You did not realize that each step was a discrete event that caused your old sense of identity to die and a new – more limited one – to be born. The reason you did not see this was that you were blinded by the dualistic logic of the mind of anti-christ, as Eve was blinded by the serpent in the Garden of Eden when he said: “Thou shalt not surely die!” 

This is the very same lie that is behind each of the steps you have taken down the staircase. You think that you will not surely die by making a death decision. After all, you have already gone part of the way suggested by the selves and you are still alive so why not follow the selves a bit further? 

This is the logic that allowed you to slide down the spiral staircase until you could no longer see the exit door at the top and even forgot there is something at the top of the staircase. This is when the conscious self accepted a sense of identity as a human being instead of a spiritual being.

Here is where we must once again correct the fairy tale. It is true that the conscious self is asleep, but only metaphorically speaking. You are asleep in the sense that you do not see the reality of life, namely that you are more than a material, human being and that the world is more than the material universe. You are not asleep in the sense that you are unconscious. 

You are painfully aware of the consequences of the decisions based on the selves and you cannot escape experiencing those consequences. Here is where we need to take a closer look at what exactly it means that the conscious self stopped making decisions.

Making decisions without making decisions

In the previous discourses, it was explained that at some point the conscious self decided that it would no longer make decisions, and it allowed the selves to make decisions for you. This is true, but there is a deeper understanding that we now need to uncover. 

The fact is that there are some decisions that can be made by the selves and there are some decisions that can only be made by the conscious self. The conscious self is an extension of your higher self and a spark of God’s Being. It is sent into the material world with the command to multiply and have dominion. 

This means that you must multiply your sense of identity as a co-creator, and only the conscious self can make decisions about your sense of identity. Only the conscious self can make a Death decision – a decision that leads you to a lower sense of identity – or a LIFE decision—a decision that leads you to a higher sense of identity. The selves cannot make such decisions, but they can influence how the conscious self makes such decisions.

To illustrate this, consider a company that is owned by one person. The owner does not want to make all the day-to-day decisions and has hired a CEO to run the business while he spends time in his private office or in his country club. The CEO can make most of the decisions related to running the business, but some decisions must still be made by the owner. 

One year the CEO makes some bad decisions and the company loses money, yet he does not admit this to the owner. Instead, he comes up with a plan that makes it seem like it was market conditions that led to the loss, and if only the owner will approve a loan from the bank, the company will regroup and be much stronger next year.

Because the owner really does not want to run the company himself, he believes the CEO and approves the loan. This obviously takes the company one step down the ladder of debt, but the owner thinks it will only be a temporary setback and he again retreats into his private world. The next year the company is still not showing a profit, but again the CEO comes up with a convincing plan and the owner – who really doesn’t want to leave his private world – approves another loan. 

Obviously, this process can continue for as long as the owner believes the CEO. As long as the CEO can avoid something that shakes the owner’s trust, he can get away with quite a lot, and the company can slide into hopeless debt before the owner realizes what is going on. 

Once the situation gets so bad that the owner can no longer ignore it, he will have to wake up and run the company himself. However, what will it take to get to that point? That depends on the balance between the owner’s desire to stay in his private world and his desire to avoid having the company go down. As long as there is no distinct event that shatters the owner’s illusion, the slide can continue indefinitely.

What is the real problem here? Although the owner has retreated from running the company, he is not completely isolated. He still feels the consequences of the company not making a profit and he still has to make the most important decisions. Although he might feel as if he is no longer making decisions, this is only an illusion. 

He is still making the Death decisions that take the company to a distinctly lower level, yet what he is not doing is taking charge of gathering the information upon which these decisions are based. He allows the CEO to present to him a selective picture of the situation, and then he bases his decisions on the image presented by the CEO.

This is the exact dynamic between the conscious self and the subconscious selves. The conscious self decides that it no longer wants to be in command of your life so it allows the selves to make the day-to-day decisions. The selves cannot decide on your sense of identity so the selves can only make decisions within the framework of how the conscious self sees itself. The selves’ decisions are based on the duality consciousness, which means they will inevitably lead to undesirable consequences. 

The conscious self will experience these consequences, but the selves will present you with a “company report” that makes it seem like this is just a temporary setback. You are the victim of circumstances beyond your control, but if only you will make the decision recommended by the selves, you will see that things will get better. 

The selves will present you with a view of the situation that is based on dualistic thinking. The selves really believe their solution will work, but in reality a solution based on the duality consciousness cannot solve problems created by the duality consciousness.

If you still do not want to take back the responsibility for running the company, you might believe the selves. You will then make a Death decision that takes you down to a distinctly lower sense of identity. 

You might not realize what is happening, but the selves will now begin to make decisions based on this lower sense of identity. By accepting a lower sense of identity, you have given the selves more freedom to act, and this will lead to even more unpleasant consequences. You have already set the stage for the next crisis.

The mechanics are simple. You make a Death decision that takes you to a lower level of identity. The selves now take over and makes the minor decisions based on this new sense of identity. Each of these decisions leads to unpleasant consequences, and in order to escape those consequences, you will – as long as you refuse to take command of your life – make another Death decision that takes you further down the staircase.

When it comes time for the next company report, the selves will present a rosy picture that makes it seem like it is not the selves’ fault, and certainly not your fault. Sure, things are tough right now, but they are sure to get better. In the meantime, why don’t you – the new human being – simply make yourself comfortable by taking advantage of the pleasures the material world has to offer. Stop worrying about the purpose of life and simply have a little fun. Live a little—until you have to die some more.

Take note of a subtle mechanism. By accepting the identity as a human being, the conscious self actually gets a sense of reprieve because this identity implies that you are a powerless being who is the victim of circumstances – the material world – beyond your control. It is inevitable that bad things happen, and this only reinforces the conscious self’s decision not to take charge—for how can you take command when you are just a powerless human being?

The only way out

Once you have forgotten your higher identity, you cannot see any way out of your dilemma. You do not understand that the unpleasant consequences are the inevitable result of decisions based on the duality consciousness. You have forgotten that there is an alternative to this state of consciousness so you think the only way to escape the unpleasant consequences is to make better dualistic decisions. 

You think you can solve your problems without transcending your current sense of identity—which is the source of your problems. This is precisely what your selves and the prince of this world want you to keep believing. They want you to believe in the illusion that you can solve a problem with the same state of consciousness that created the problem (which is what they believe).

At some point, the conscious self will experience such severe consequences that it will wake up and say: “I can’t keep doing this anymore; I have to change something.” Even after this awakening, the selves will do anything to prevent you from realizing the reality just described. That reality has the following components:

• Only the conscious self can make LIFE and Death decisions, decisions that take you up or down the staircase of identity.
• You have descended that staircase because you made Death decisions. 
• You made those decisions because you allowed the selves to gather the information upon which you based the decisions.
• Because the selves can see only the mind of separation, all of their information was dualistic in nature and could only create more problems. 
• The only way out is to start making LIFE decisions.
• Such decisions must be based on the reality of higher awareness rather than on the illusions of the mind of separation.
• Only the conscious self can access higher awareness. The selves can never do so.
• The conscious self always has the option to reach for higher awareness. No matter how far you have descended on the staircase, you can still ask for guidance and you will receive it. When the student is ready, the teacher will always appear, and the teacher will give the student exactly what is needed to take the very next step up the spiral staircase. The challenge for you is to recognize the teacher and be willing to follow directions.

The problem is that before you can make use of this “open door that no man can shut,” you – meaning the conscious self – must decide to take back responsibility for your life. You must take back responsibility for making LIFE decisions and you must take back responsibility for gathering the information upon which you base those decisions. 

You must refuse to allow the selves to back you into a corner where it seems like you have to make decisions based on two extremes that are both defined by the mind of duality. You must refuse to be manipulated into a situation where it seems like your only option is to choose the lesser evil. You must take back your responsibility to discern between the truth of higher awareness and the illusions of separation.

Once you have made the decision not to take command, you allow the selves to provide the information upon which you make the big decisions, and you slide down the staircase without realizing what is happening. You experience it as a blur rather than as a string of discrete events, each one causing the death of the old you and the birth of a new you. 

However, you cannot ascend the staircase the same way. You cannot simply slide up the staircase—you must walk by your own efforts. You cannot expect a spiritual teacher to pull you up the staircase as the selves pulled you down. You must stand up and decide to walk by your own effort. 

The real key is to realize that walking up the staircase requires you to take a number of discrete and distinct steps. In order to climb to the next step, you must remove both feet from the previous step, meaning that you must decide to leave that step behind forever. This requires you to willingly let the old sense of identity die and allow yourself to be reborn into a new sense of identity. This is what Paul described:

22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;
23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;
24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. (Ephesians, Chapter 4)

For each step you take up the spiral staircase, you must make a decision. This decision must be based on the following:

• You see that what brought you to your current step on the staircase was a decision that you made. 
• You see that the decision was based on the illusions of the mind of duality presented by the selves.
• You see why this illusion is out of touch with reality and why it could only lead to unpleasant consequences.
• You see this because you have recognized the truth of higher awareness that makes you free from the illusion.
• You now consciously and with no regrets or attachments choose to let go of the illusion and accept and internalize the non-dual truth.

By making this LIFE decision, you have allowed the old “you” to die and you have been spiritually reborn into a new sense of identity. This does not mean you are now saved and will live happily ever after. It means you have ascended one step on the spiral staircase, and you are now ready to face the next challenge. Only when you have faced every decision that brought you down the staircase, will you reach the top and live happily ever after.

The ultimate LIFE decision

Let us summarize what we have discussed in this discourse: You can sleepwalk your way down the spiral staircase of life, but you cannot sleepwalk your way back up! You can get down by making unconscious decisions, but you can get back up only by making conscious decisions. 

Let us return to the analogy of the owner of a company. After several years of bad financial results, the owner finally wakes up and realizes his CEO has fed him a distorted view of the company’s situation. He now faces the crucial decision of whether to take back charge of the company or whether to simply fire the bad CEO and hire another one so he can continue to retreat into his private world. He decides to do the latter and hires a new CEO. He is unaware that it is actually the old CEO who has taken on a disguise and has presented himself as a different person.

As a spiritual seeker, you have already made some LIFE decisions, and for each decision, you fired a pair of selves, which caused you to rise to a higher sense of identity. The problem is that another pair of selves will now present themselves as a capable CEO who can run your new company for you. Many spiritual seekers have made significant progress, yet they have not yet come to the point of making the ultimate LIFE decision. 

This decision is the firm commitment that you will take charge of your life and that you will remain in charge. You will make the important decisions and you will take responsibility for attaining the vision of higher awareness before you make such decisions. 

You will keep making one LIFE decision after another, and you will keep doing so until you reach the top of the spiral staircase. You will never again allow your selves to talk you into abandoning your responsibility to discern between the reality of higher awareness and the unreality of separation. 

Before you become discouraged and start feeling like it is an insurmountable task to overcome all of the selves’ illusions, let us make it clear what you are up against. You might take an honest look at yourself and see that you still have a ways to go before you are free of the selves. In your current state of confusion it might seem very difficult to see through the selves’ illusions. Who ever said you have to see through the selves’ illusions all at once or that you have to do so with your current level of consciousness? 

Consider the image of a spiral staircase. The key to climbing a staircase is to take one step at a time, and all you need to do is focus on two steps at a time—the step you are on right now and the one right above it. 

You don’t need to look at the top step, and you certainly don’t need to climb the staircase by taking one giant leap. You simply keep putting one foot above the other, and as long as you keep taking one doable step at a time, you will make it to the top. The selves can stop you only by preventing you from rising above a certain step.

Let us say that the spiral staircase has 33 steps. You take stock of your life and realize you are on Step 10. At this stage you do not have the discernment and insight to see through the illusion that prevents you from rising from Step 32 to Step 33. Yet you don’t have to see through that illusion right now. 

You only have to see through the illusion that prevents you from rising from Step 10 to Step 11. You do have what it takes to dismiss that illusion. You simply need to ask for higher awareness, and if you ask with an open mind, you will receive an answer.

It is a spiritual law that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. The teacher may appear as the inner teacher of your higher self or as an outer teacher that might have a variety of disguises. The teacher will always find a way to present you with the insight you need in order to rise to the next step. 

If your mind is open, you will recognize the direction and use it to rise to a higher level of identity. Once you have that higher sense of identity, you will have what it takes to dismiss the next illusion of the selves and take another step.

What is the selves’ master strategy? It is to prevent you from making the ultimate LIFE decision, but also to prevent you from making the next LIFE decision. It is precisely in order to accomplish this goal that the selves and the prince of this world have come up with a number of games that are designed to keep you stuck at a particular step. 

As you begin to study these games, you will see that you have already overcome some of them. This should give you the inner knowing that you can overcome all of them by simply taking one step at a time. 

It can still seem like climbing the staircase is an overwhelming task. The fact that you are reading this teaching proves that you are not at the lowest step—the level of a cave man or psychotic criminal. How did you rise to your current step? You did so because higher awareness in some form reached out to you and you heeded the call. You accepted the teacher’s directions and used them to make a LIFE decision that brought you one step higher. You continued to do this until you reached your current step. 

So far, the teacher has been there for you every step of the way—and you have followed the teacher’s instructions. Based on this fact, is it rational to doubt that the teacher will be there for each of the following steps as well? Is it rational to doubt that you can and will follow the teacher as you have already done? 

Why not simply realize that you have already stepped on to the true path, and as long as you keep following it by reaching for the vision of higher awareness, you will make it all the way home. You can therefore accept the message in the full quote given in part earlier:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. (Proverbs 23:4)

Trust that the teacher will be with you each step of the way, and as long as you keep moving, you will make it to the goal. As the old saying goes: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” However, the journey is completed only by those who keep taking the next step.