How false teachers trap people in duality - shared by Gabriel Phelps.

TOPICS: False teachers in and out of embodiment - seeking to keep people in duality - the need for a teacher - sabotaging Jesus’ mission - never follow a teacher blindly - the catch-22 created by false teachers - some people too wounded to be reachable - taking responsibility for yourself - stop rejecting the teacher - balance between Alpha and Omega -

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Question from Kim: Jesus, over the 30 years I have been aware of the spiritual path, and even before then, I have come across people who seem to be unreachable for others. I wonder if you can shed some light on what causes this.

What I see in some people is that they are saying they won’t follow anyone outside themselves. In a sense, I think there is some truth to that since you have stated that the kingdom of God is within us and that we need to become spiritually self-sufficient and find truth within ourselves. Yet I have actually met people who use yours and other spiritual teachings to reinforce a belief that they don’t need to listen to anyone, that they don’t need a teacher.
This makes me wonder, because I see how much I have learned by listening to a teacher and how often that teacher has appeared in a humble disguise. I love the saying, “If the teacher be an ant, heed him!”
I have heard people argue that they will only listen to the spirit inside themselves. I have always listened to that spirit, but I have also listened to an outer teacher and then referred what the outer teacher said to the spirit within. 
In many cases an outer teacher – including other people – has helped me see something that my outer mind could not grasp or would not accept. Once I was open to seeing it, I received inner confirmation that it was true, but if I had not been open to the outer teacher, I don’t think I would have received that inner confirmation. So I wonder if people who are refusing the outer teacher are slowing down their progress or even getting themselves into a blind alley?
Do you have any thoughts on this?

Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:

As Maitreya has explained, there are a number of people and disembodied beings who form a hierarchy that tries to present itself as the true teachers of humankind. These are the false prophets that I warned people about 2,000 years ago. These beings do not have spiritual wisdom, but they are highly intelligent in a dualistic way. So they know very well the situation that people are in after they have become blinded by the duality consciousness. Thus, they know how to prevent people from escaping duality.

These false teachers know two things that are relevant to this topic:

• Once you have become blinded by the duality consciousness, you cannot escape it based on your own state of consciousness. You need help from beyond duality.
• Ultimately, this help needs to come from inside yourself, but in the beginning you are not able to connect to truth inside yourself. You have no contact with the true spirit and you have no ability to discern between true and false spirits.

The conclusion is that you need a teacher, and that is the entire reason behind me coming to earth. I came, as have all other true teachers, to give people an outer guiding rod that they could grasp with their current state of consciousness. If you applied my true teachings, you would gradually increase your discernment and attain contact with the spirit within, in the form of your Christ self.

The false teachers know this, so they seek to sabotage my mission. They do this in many ways, but one of the more successful is that they set themselves up as "true" teachers on earth by taking over the Christian religion and stating that people either follow them blindly or will go to hell.

Now, many people who are blinded by duality do sense that they need outside help, and this makes them vulnerable to following these blind leaders, which of course does not lead them to a higher state of consciousness or salvation. How do people overcome this tendency?

Well, some people are willing to think for themselves and thus they begin to attain the wisdom that makes them see that they should not blindly follow any leader on earth or any spirit that claims it can lead them. In other words, a true teacher will never ask you to follow him blindly, but will seek to make you self-sufficient. Yet the problem is that in order for this to work, you must be willing to take progressively greater responsibility for yourself until you can take full and final responsibility.

Some people are not willing to do this, and this makes them vulnerable to following the blind leaders for many lifetimes. This can finally lead to these people becoming so hurt that they see the fallacy of following an outer teacher blindly. Yet instead of taking responsibility for themselves, some feel betrayed by the teacher, blame this on the outer teacher and vow never to be fooled again. Some reject all spiritual growth while others decide to follow their inner promptings and seek greater discernment.

The problem is that if people do not take full responsibility for themselves, they are very vulnerable to the next layer of deception, which says, “The only way to avoid being fooled by an outer teacher is to never again follow ANY teacher.” So, don’t trust anyone, don’t listen to anyone, only listen to yourself—meaning the ego or the false spirit that has managed to convince you that it is a true spirit.

Do you see the real dynamic here:

• The end goal is that a lifestream takes responsibility for itself and therefore works on developing inner discernment. 
• This requires a constant effort, and in the beginning, the student will make mistakes. Yet if the lifestream is willing to learn from those mistakes, it will make progress.
• If a lifestream is not willing to work on increasing its discernment – often because it is afraid to make a mistake – it is susceptible to following an outer leader who claims that if you follow him blindly, he will lead you to the kingdom.
• The less willing a lifestream is in terms of taking responsibility for itself, the longer it will follow the blind leaders. And the more severe will be the wound and the sense of betrayal when the illusion is finally shattered.
• The depth of the wound now makes the soul prone to responding as I described by vowing never again to follow any teacher.
• Yet precisely because the lifestream has not taken responsibility for itself (if it had, it would not have followed the false teachers for so long and would not feel betrayed by anyone—how can you feel betrayed by someone else if you take full responsibility for yourself) it is not yet ready to discern by itself. Thus, it will be very difficult – though not impossible – for such a lifestream to make progress without following a true teacher.
• If the lifestream holds on to the resentment against any teacher, it will either enter a blind alley or make very slow and very painful progress. It will take a long time to escape the school of hard knocks. 
  Do you see that the false teachers will win either way? As long as a lifestream is following them blindly, they can keep it out of the kingdom. And when the lifestream finally stops following the blind leaders, it has been wounded so deeply that it cannot follow a true teacher, thus cannot follow the true path to the kingdom. There are few things the false teachers love more than destroying someone’s belief in any teacher. The reason is that the God-ordained way for lifestreams to escape duality is the master-disciple, or student-teacher, relationship. Thus, the primary goal of the false teachers is to destroy people's trust in this most sacred of all relationships.

So you now see that the people who seem unreachable to you are that way because they have a very deep inner wound, a division or split in their souls. I understand that it can be frustrating for more mature students on the spiritual path to encounter such people, for they desire to help them but they will not respond. They are, as you said, unreachable for other people and also for a spiritual teacher such as myself.

Yet you need to see that they are not actually rejecting you. They are simply acting based on their interior wounds and thus you should feel compassion. Yet in some cases, you can legitimately leave them alone and focus on the people that do respond to you. However, this must be an individual evaluation.

It must be added here that there are some people who see through the false teachers and now fall prey to the ego’s illusion that this has made them smarter than other people, even made them enlightened. They then fall for the temptation of pride, which makes them believe they actually know better than others and thus do not need to listen to any teacher. These people may be harder to treat with compassion, but the underlying cause is still the split in the lifestream.

Is there a way out for such people? Of course there is, but quite frankly, few there be that find it! You see, the underlying issue is that the lifestream has not been willing to take responsibility for itself. It used to blindly follow a false, exterior teacher, but now it is blindly following an interior teacher. And if that teacher is the ego or a false spirit, well, then how can the soul escape this catch-22 as long as it is not willing to listen to a true teacher outside itself and cannot discern the true teacher inside?

The only way out is that the lifestream realizes two things:

• Once you have become blinded by the duality consciousness, you cannot escape it based on your own state of consciousness. You need help from beyond duality.
• Ultimately, this help needs to come from inside yourself, but in the beginning you are not able to connect to truth inside yourself. You have no contact with the true spirit and you have no ability to discern between true and false spirits.

Yes, these are the points I made earlier, where I said that the false teachers know two things and use them to keep lifestreams trapped in duality. Once the lifestream begins to realize and acknowledge this, it can begin to reach for a true teacher. The reality of spiritual law is that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. In fact, there is always a teacher with any student. The problem is that some people continually reject the teacher.

So the only way out is that a student begins to reach for the true teacher and decides to follow the teacher’s instructions until it begins to develop better inner discernment. Do you see what I am saying here? It is unbalanced to blindly follow an external teacher. Yet it is equally unbalanced to jump into the opposite extreme and blindly follow an inner voice without being willing to listen to anyone outside yourself. The balanced approach is to realize the truth behind the statement, “If the teacher be an ant, heed him.” 

A true teacher often appears in a humble disguise, whereas the false teacher – external or internal – often takes on the appearance of absolute authority. So as with everything else on the spiritual path, balance is the key. Balance can be achieved only by having discernment between what is real and what is unreal. Discernment can be achieved only by taking responsibility for oneself, being willing to experiment and being willing to learn from one’s mistakes—which means one must be willing to acknowledge one’s mistakes by seeing the beam in one’s own eye.

Another way to describe this is to refer to Mother Mary’s teaching of the two basic aspects of God. The Alpha aspect is that you listen to the true spirit within yourself. The Omega aspect is that you listen to a true teacher outside yourself. Maximum progress can be attained only when the two aspects are balanced. And this can happen only when you decide to take responsibility for yourself and are willing to become the Christ—as opposed to following anyone – interior or exterior – who claims to be the Christ or be able to take you where you need to go.

In the final stages of the spiritual path, you need to walk on your own. Yet you cannot get to the final stages on your own, only by following a true teacher. Thinking you can do it by yourself is pride and it does not lead to the kingdom of God.

The value of a true spiritual community is that you have people who communicate openly and lovingly, so they can help each other see the blind spots. In a sense all members of such a community will serve as true teachers – disguised as ants – for each other. All are teaching and all are learning, thus all are spiraling upwards together.

Copyright © 2007 by Kim Michaels