The selves’ dilemma is that while they want to remain unseen by the conscious self, they want to be seen by the world and by their self-created god. In their attempt to build status with their god, the selves must seek to build status in the world. 

The selves do not see that they can never achieve status with the real God and they believe that their self-created god will respect their self-defined criteria for what it means to have status on earth. Of course, when several people are all trying to build status by being more important than others, there will inevitably be a power play between them.

The survival games can be somewhat passive in nature in the sense that if the selves do not feel threatened, people can be non-aggressive. You do see examples of local communities, even nations, where people have become so homogenous that the selves of individuals feel quite secure. People can get along peacefully by playing the same game yet there is not much real spiritual growth in such a community. Everyone simply lives within the perception filters of their selves.

You even see that different groups or nations can attain a state peace and cooperation where they have come to an unspoken agreement. If one group does not threaten the selves of another group and vice versa, then both can feel secure and there is no need for a power play between them. Obviously, this is not the real peace that passes understanding, but a relative peace built on the logic of the selves. It will not last because the universe will inevitably precipitate circumstances that in the selves’ distorted perception will seem like a threat.

When it comes to the desire to be seen in the world and by its own god, then obviously these power games are not in any way passive in nature. The selves think they can attain status in the eyes of their god by attaining power on earth. Because of the dualistic logic, the selves will literally believe that if they attain some ultimate status or power on earth, then they will be able to force or buy their way into heaven. The selves actually believe that God and the representatives of the Christ mind can be forced or persuaded by earthly power. They think that if enough people on earth recognize their status, then God must do the same.

Given this belief – and the fact that the selves will never see its fallacy – it is obvious that once people have decided that they want ultimate power on earth, there is no limit to how far they will go and what means they will use in order to attain that power—and in order to secure it once attained. It is also obvious that there will at any given time be more than one person or group of people seeking ultimate power. If two or more people seek ultimate power, then there will inevitably be a struggle between them, for only one can have ultimate power.

What is real power?

What exactly is a powerful person? Many people will say it is a person who has great power in the physical world, such as dictators, leaders of nations or commanders of great armies. Did people such as the Roman emperors, Genghis Kahn, Attila the Hun, Hitler, Stalin or Mao Zedong truly have great power—meaning personal power?

If you look at these people’s state of mind, you will see that they were often willing to kill any number of other people, even their own people, in order to remain in power. Stalin and Mao both had millions of their own people executed, and this was not often a result of these people having actually threatened the leader. It was in most cases only a perceived threat, a threat in the mind of the leader himself.

What feels threatened? Only the selves. Why do the selves feel threatened? Because they have an existential fear, a fear they can never overcome. When you are willing to kill millions of people in order to destroy a perceived threat, you demonstrate that your mind is completely dominated by fear. The more people you are willing to kill, the more fear you have. A man who is eaten up by fear cannot be said to have personal power—regardless of the physical power he may command as leader of a system that has dehumanized those who seem to threaten the system.

A man who controls the world is still inferior to one who controls his own mind. True personal power means that in any situation you encounter on earth, you can choose your reaction freely. Instead of reacting through one of the games of the selves, you can react by being the open door for your higher self and the power of higher awareness. This power may override the laws of nature that human beings normally consider restrictions to their use of power—and which are indeed restrictions to force-based power.

What does it take to be the open door for this true power? It takes that you are free from the illusion of separation so you do not perceive the situation through the filter of duality and do not react as a separate individual. A separate individual will often feel threatened, and it can react only by seeking to destroy the threat—real or perceived. 

Destroying any part of life can only take down the whole. When you are not blinded by separation, you will be the open door for actions or words that are aimed at raising the whole. This might entail letting people kill your physical body in order to let them outplay their games and make them more visible. It never involves killing or forcing other people. When you are in oneness, you can never destroy or put down any part of life, for you know it is diminishing the whole—of which you are an individual expression.

Why dualistic power will destroy itself

Those trapped in duality will believe the selves’ illusion that they are separate beings and that they are threatened by other separate beings. They will believe that if these other beings kill them, it will be a loss for themselves. They believe it is “him or me” and thus it is acceptable to kill those other beings in order to preserve the separate self. They will even believe that they can kill others without affecting themselves, something only a separate being can believe.

When you are blinded by this illusion, you will believe that power is the physical power you have in the material realm. You will believe that power is the same as force, a force that is stronger than any opposition and can force other people to no longer be a threat to you. Yet for every action, there is a reaction from the cosmic mirror. 

When you send a force-based impulse into the cosmic mirror, you are in effect saying to the mirror that you want to live in a world where you – a separate being – are opposed by other separate beings. If all people are using force to get what they want, life becomes a giant competition to see who can generate the most force.

Each force-based impulse you send out will form an impulse that cycles through the four levels of the material universe before it comes back to you at the physical level. This is not obvious because in most cases the impulse comes back lifetimes later when you have no conscious awareness of what you originally sent out. Nevertheless, when the impulse comes back to you, it will come back multiplied by the cosmic mirror. He who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind.

When the impulse comes back, you will encounter a situation where you feel physically threatened, and often you will indeed be physically threatened by other people. How can you avoid the threat? If you are still in the mindset of separation, you will think it can be done only by generating a force-based impulse that is powerful enough to repel the threat. What have you now done? You have sent a second force-based impulse into the mirror.

This impulse will also come back to you multiplied, and you now need to generate an even stronger impulse in order to repel it. As this goes on, there will come a point where you simply will not have the force to repel the return of your previous actions, and this will lead to your inevitable demise. 

A lifestream such as Hitler had sent out many force-based impulses in past lives. When such an old impulse comes back, it does not come back directly to the physical level. It first comes back at the identity level, then the mental, then the emotional and then finally the physical. 

This means that most people will become aware of the impulse at one of the higher levels, meaning they will start to feel threatened before the impulse actually reaches the physical realm. The person now has two options. It can change its consciousness and potentially avoid having the karmic impulse reach the physical level. Or it can seek to protect itself from the return by building a physical defense to repel the threat.

Hitler felt threatened from a young age and he attempted to turn the German nation into his personal bulwark against this threat. Even the armies of a large nation were not enough to generate a force-based impulse strong enough to turn back the physical consequences of what Hitler had personally sent out in past lives. 

By taking aggressive action on such a large scale, Hitler actually sent out an impulse that came back much sooner because of its force. At the moment he decided to start a war to conquer the world, his demise was a karmic certainty. He could have avoided this by not using his power in a destructive way, but that was not his choice and the result is proven for all to see. 

Of course, those who opposed Hitler had also generated force-based impulses in previous times. The second world war was a giant web of these karmic connections that gave everyone an opportunity to see that no one can truly win by using force. 

Escaping the arms race

The selves will never see that force-based power will eventually destroy itself. They will forever believe that if your opponent builds a stronger stone wall, you simply have to build a stronger cannon. The selves will continue in this “arms race” indefinitely. Why? Because they cannot see that as long as you are using force-based power, there will never be a final or absolute weapon or defense system. 

As an illustration, consider a seesaw that you see on many playgrounds around the world. It is a beam that is balanced in the middle and where each end can move up and down. If you put a child on each end and if they have the same weight, they will balance each other. If one child is heavier, the other child will be lifted into the air. Alternatively, you can also move one child further away from the balancing point so that a lighter child can balance a heavier one.

Now transfer this principle to the situation between two nations that have armies of equal strength. How can you change the “balance of power?” The obvious way is to add more weight on your side, such as building a stronger stone fortification. 

The other option is to move the weight on your side farther from the center of the seesaw, perhaps even by extending your side of the beam so it becomes longer. You will see that nations have historically attempted to both create bigger armies and take their weapons more and more towards the extreme. Whatever you can do on your side, can in principle be done by your opponent on the other side.

If you look at this race for power from a superficial viewpoint, it would seem that the nation that is willing to add the most weight and that is willing to go further towards the extreme should be able to win and take over the earth. You have indeed seen very powerful empires that have attempted to take over the earth, but why have none of them succeeded? It is because of three factors:

• In the material universe, everything has a cost. If you build a stronger stone wall, this takes resources and no individual and nation has unlimited resources. For example, a medieval city state may have forced its citizens to build a stronger stone wall around the city, but the people building the wall could not at the same time work the fields in order to feed themselves and the soldiers.
• Anything that can be done with matter and energy can be counteracted by a different use of matter and energy. Although Newton’s third law was developed to describe a specific scenario, the principle that for each action there is an equal and opposite reaction does explain that each action you could possibly take in the material realm can be counteracted by an opposing action. You may be able to take a decisive action on a temporary basis and win a victory. In the long run, someone will come up with a counter-move that will neutralize your advantage. You can gain a temporary advantage but never a permanent state of superiority.
• Each force-based impulse will eventually be returned multiplied by the cosmic mirror.

Now consider what has happened on a world scale over the past century. During many previous centuries, people had attempted to build more powerful weapons and more powerful defenses. For example, during Medieval times, the main weapon was to build impenetrable stone walls. 

This lasted for thousands of years until gunpowder was invented. Suddenly a cannon set up at a safe distance could shatter even the strongest stone wall, and stone fortifications became obsolete almost overnight. This, of course, only led to a new race, namely to build more and more powerful cannons.

In the linear arms race, people have attempted to add more weight on their side of the seesaw by building quantitatively larger armed forces, and they have attempted to extend the beam by adding new and more powerful weapons. This arms race has been going on for thousands of years, and although it is still continuing, there is one thing that has changed the equation, namely the invention of nuclear weapons. Human beings now have weapons of such force that if used on a sufficient scale, the consequences would be such that instead of tipping the seesaw to the favor of one side, it would actually break the beam—meaning it would destroy the planet.

As a result, at least some nations have started to see the futility of the arms race and have seen the necessity of finding different ways to settle disagreements than through force. Take note that it took the threat of an ultimate force to get people to make this leap. Had nuclear weapons not been invented, there would not have been this shift in consciousness. 

What does this have to do with you overcoming the selves? Even on a personal level, there is a limit to how much power you can exert. You have only a limited amount of physical power and you have only a limited ability to get others to fight for you. 

Many lifestreams will have to spend some lifetimes having to pursue the dream of gaining some form of ultimate personal power. Many people are still trapped in this race, and when they leave embodiment and look at their lifetimes, they see how they did something that failed to give them power and they immediately think up something they could have done differently. Meaning they now have to take embodiment again to see if their latest theory will work. 

For the more aware people it should be easy to see that the selves’ dream of having ultimate personal power simply can never be fulfilled. It is not a matter of a lifestream gradually (over many lifetimes) acquiring the knowledge, skills and power to make its vision come through. It is only a matter of how many lifetimes it takes before the conscious self will have had enough of pursuing the selves’ impossible dream and decides to simply walk away from the entire race for power.

Winning and losing

One factor that can become a detour for many people, keeping them trapped in the race for power longer than necessary, is that the selves can add the perspective that gaining power is not simply for its own sake but in order to win some kind of decisive victory. We will talk more about this when we talk about competition and also in the teaching about dramas. 

If you think having personal power would allow you to win some kind of important victory, then you will think that the reason you have not yet won is that you have not attained enough power. It then follows logically that you cannot quit the race for power until you have won the victory.

Getting out of this game of the selves requires two things. One is that the conscious self comes to understand what was said above, namely that a final or decisive outcome can never be achieved through earthly power. The other is that the conscious self begins to see that everything you do on earth has a price, namely that it eats up your energy and your attention.

Look at some of the powerful leaders seen throughout history. They first spend an enormous amount of energy and attention on getting into a position of power. In some cases they did manage to do something that was a decisive step on a temporary basis. For example, some of the Roman emperors won decisive battles that gave them a great sense of victory and power, but who cares about these victories today? 

Even if you do win some victory, it is inevitable that you will come to a point where all of your energy and attention is consumed by keeping up your power. Just look at how many leaders spend the better part of their lives defending their position against all kinds of threats, often only perceived threats. There simply comes a point in a lifestream’s evolution where the conscious self looks at this, sees the vanity and futility of it and decides that it wants something more than earthly power can give it. 

Spiritual people and power games

Obviously, most spiritually minded people have overcome the desire for having the physical power to destroy their enemies. However, some are still caught up in the desire to destroy an enemy and are willing to join an army and fight for their country or a cause they think is desirable from a spiritual viewpoint. 

Can there ever be a true spiritual cause that necessitates the killing or forcing of human beings? In the eyes of the selves there can, as witnessed by the Crusades, the Inquisition, modern terrorism and many other examples of people feeling that the use of force was justified by God himself. Again, how many lifetimes will it take before the conscious self realizes that this is an illusion and simply walks away from it? 

Many spiritual people have a desire to acquire not physical power but psychic power, the power of the mind. Many spiritual people go through an awakening and realize that this world has a lot of problems that are caused by a lack of awareness. They correctly see that the only real solution is to raise the spiritual awareness of the population, but then they are deceived by their selves into thinking this means everyone should be converted into following a specific spiritual teaching or guru. 

As they try to convert other people and are disappointed by their lack of response, they can be deceived into thinking that if only they could produce some kind of visible phenomenon, people would be convinced that they are right and everyone would see the value of the spiritual path as defined by their teachings. This now sends them into another power race, namely the quest for psychic power.

Everything in the material world comes with a price tag. Whatever you focus your mind upon will eat up your attention and psychic energy. The more you focus your attention upon something, the more psychic energy you feed into it. 

This energy will eventually begin to form a vortex that spins, and once a vortex has formed in your energy field, it will act as a magnet that pulls more energy into itself. As long as you focus your attention on the topic, you will feed energy into the vortex.

Now comes the subtle distinction. You can actually build such a strong vortex of psychic energy that it can eventually have effects even on physical matter. As you might have seen with some people, they can move objects, bend spoons or produce other such phenomena. There are even some who have used black magic to acquire the power to kill others or overpower their minds with thought alone. The simple fact is that this is entirely driven by selves and never comes from the Christ mind.

The Christ mind does want people to awaken but not through force. The Christ mind is ready to help every human being raise its consciousness to the next level, but the Christ does not seek to force people. It waits until people are ready, and then it offers its assistance. What will it take for people to be ready? It takes that they have a certain amount of experiences in the material world and now want more than matter has to offer.

Even if you had great psychic powers and could produce visible phenomena, it would not have a positive effect. First of all, if you understand what was said about perception filters, you will see that people can deny anything. A skeptic or materialist will always be able to find an explanation for explaining away any phenomena you might produce. 

Secondly, even if people are converted by such phenomena, it will not mean they are ready for the true spiritual path. They may follow a certain outer teaching or guru, but that is not the same as being ready to truly raise their consciousness and overcome the selves.

Back to the subtle distinction. It is indeed possible to produce certain phenomena through the Christ mind. Jesus did perform many miracles, even many more than recorded in the scriptures. You might notice several things by reading the scriptures carefully. Jesus would ask a person before healing him or her. It was the person’s belief that was the open door for performing a healing, never Jesus imposing himself upon others as an external force. There were many people who were not healed because they were not ready or willing. 

You will also notice that Jesus often asked the people who were healed not to tell anyone. A true master does not produce phenomena to convince people who are not ready. Take note that Jesus often confronted the scribes and Pharisees, but only did so with words, not with miracles.

When the Christ mind performs a phenomenon that is beyond the laws of nature, it is not you – as a separate self – doing this. You have – at least temporarily – overcome separation and attained a degree of oneness with the Christ mind. You are not the doer, you are the open door for the Christ mind to act through you. 

In order to attain this, you must overcome all of the desires of the selves. You are completely neutral and you are letting the Christ mind decide what to do—if anything. If nothing happens, you are completely at peace with this because you know that with your outer mind, you cannot produce any phenomenon that is worthy.

Take note that you can actually have two people who both perform a phenomenon, such as healing someone. One person is driven by an ego-based desire while the other is in the Christ mind. By only looking at their outer actions, you will not be able to tell the difference. As you acquire Christ discernment, you will be able to read the vibration and thereby the intent behind it. 

If you look at yourself honestly and discover that in your being is still remnants of this desire to convert or impress other people with psychic abilities, then it would be wise to take a closer look at this. Regardless of the clever disguise and the elaborate justifications, this can only come from the selves. 

Why? Because when you are in the Christ mind, you have no forethought, you have no plans. Why do you need to plan ahead when you know you are not the doer? If you are letting God be the doer, you are literally witnessing what God is doing as it is happening. If something is not produced by your mind, how can there be forethought?

There can be a general thought about what it takes to be the open door for the power of higher awareness, and this is valid as far as it helps you follow the path towards overcoming the selves. Even this can be taken by the selves and turned into a new force-based impulse of changing the minds of other people. 

Free will means allowing people to walk their own path. In order to be the Living Christ in embodiment, you must overcome all desires to force the minds of other people. As long as you have a subtle desire to change the minds of others, you cannot be the fully open door for higher awareness.

The non-power game

As you see many people playing the game of seeking to acquire personal power, you also see many more people playing the game that forms the opposite dualistic polarity, namely the game of denying their power. These are people who are playing the game of defining themselves as essentially powerless beings who are the helpless victims of circumstances beyond their control. You even find many such people in spiritual movements where they are the passive followers of a guru that they have elevated to a superior status and now worship as an idol who is fundamentally beyond themselves and holds the key to their salvation.

Here is another subtle distinction. There is a small group of people on earth who are what we call manipulators or fallen beings, meaning beings who have not only fallen into the duality consciousness but who did so in the distant past.  When you look at history and also at the world today, it is clear that the worst examples of abuses of power are perpetrated by these beings. This has set up a certain dynamic that spiritual seekers need to recognize.

A new lifestream will take some time before it is able to exercise power. Many of the people you see on earth are relatively new lifestreams and they see themselves as powerless beings because they have not yet learned how to use their power. They are in a sense powerless beings. This is, of course, a condition that is greatly encouraged by the manipulators who want to control the population and make them tools in their personal quest for power.

Most spiritual seekers are older lifestreams who have learned something about power but who have also seen and experienced the abuses of power precipitated by the manipulators. Many spiritual seekers have started to see the fallacy of such abuses of power, and that is actually one reason they are attracted to spiritual teachings as a tool to raise the earth beyond the abuses of power. Even spiritual – and especially religious – teachings have been influenced by the manipulators and used as tools for pacifying people by getting them to deny their power.

There are many false gurus in the world, and “false” means people who have learned how to use their power to get other people to deny their own power. These spiritual leaders want to have followers, and in order to keep you as a follower, they must get you to deny your inner power, making you think you are dependent upon their power. In contrast, a true teacher is seeking to help you discover and liberate the power of higher awareness within you so you come to the point of no longer needing the teacher.

Many spiritual seekers are ready to consciously exercise the power of higher awareness within them. About 10,000 people are ready to claim their Christhood and millions more can claim it in this lifetime. Many spiritual people have looked at the abuses of power precipitated by the manipulators and decided that they never want to be guilty of such abuse of power. This realization comes from the Christ mind, but these people have then been deceived by their selves into jumping to the opposite extreme and deciding that in order to avoid abusing power they simply will refuse to have any kind of power in society.

The entire point of spiritual growth is to work toward the Christ consciousness where you become an open door for your higher self to express itself through you. This does not necessarily mean that you have to have a powerful position in society but then again, it might mean that you do something publicly. Regardless of what is in your personal Life plan, the only way to fulfill that plan is to become an open door, which means that you do not – with the outer mind – put any limitations on what your higher self and the Christ mind can do through you. 

In order to become the open door, you need to build Christ discernment so you realize that you have more than two options. It is not so that you must either exercise power as the manipulators do or you must refuse to have power. You can find the Middle Way of exercising power by being the open door for the power of higher awareness whereby you are not the doer.

There is a fine, but very real, distinction between the dualistic polarities of the selves and being the Christ in action. When you see life through the perception filter of the selves, it seems as if you are either the doer or you must do nothing. You either exercise power as a separate individual or you refuse to have power. 

When you grow towards Christhood, you can go beyond the dualistic scale and begin to exercise power through the Christ mind instead of through the separate mind. This is very much needed if the earth is to be raised out of the grip of the manipulators who today define almost every aspect of how people look at life.

The trick is that you will not acquire perfect discernment instantaneously. You will acquire is through practice, which means you will sometimes make mistakes. It doesn’t matter that you make mistakes if you recognize this because then you turn it into a victory. 

Having believed in a dualistic lie does not matter once you have come to see through it and used it to build Christ discernment. This is the most supreme responsibility of any true spiritual seeker: the responsibility to discern based on the Christ mind. All who have ascended from earth have been fooled by the subtlety of the duality consciousness but they have also learned how to turn this into stepping stones for progress.

The Christ mind is neither in one, nor in the other dualistic polarity. The Christ mind can in every situation show people that there is something beyond the dualistic mind. That is real power because it is the power to give people a real choice instead of the false choice of thinking they have to choose between two dualistic polarities. If you want to help raise the earth into the Age of Higher Awareness, become an open door for that power and then dare to exercise it in all situations you encounter.