Do you exist?...

This is a very challenging and often threatening concept for people, strangely
enough, often more so for those in the Christian church. One of the things which
religious people seek is the preservation of their individual identity for all
of eternity.

Sometimes this can lead to more ego, instead of less. First, we must define the
term What is meant by the word "ego?" Ego is: selfishness, I, me, mine; the
individual as apart from and separate from the group; serving the individual's
needs, wants, and desires, at the cost and sacrifice of the needs, wants, and
desires of the group.

Ego is the primal sin. For those of you who have read "In The Garden," this is
hopefully quite clear. Ego is the separating point between us and the world,
between us and our fellow human beings, between us and God.

Often, what happens in the church is an expansion and enhancement of ego. We
believe that, sometimes, God has saved us, whatever that might mean, and that
this means that we, with our individual personality, will exist forever and ever
and ever. We believe that the "I, me, my" will be blessed by God and made
immortal. This is not entirely true. You ultimately do not exist. Now how in the
world do I attempt to gain this from the death and resurrection of Jesus?

The first thing you must understand, is that when Jesus talks about His
disciples, He says that if anyone wants to follow me, he or she must take up his
or her cross and follow me into life everlasting. "Taking up the Cross" has been
misunderstood for centuries and taken, the majority of the time, to be some kind
of affliction, whether it's a pain in the back, or a mother-in-law that we do
not particularly like, or a car that does not run right. These silly examples
are considered to be the cross we must bare. That has absolutely nothing to do
with the reality of the situation. The cross, which we must bare, is the vehicle
upon which our ego will be killed. This, too, is quite clear in "In The Garden."

Jesus had His own will in the Garden of Gethsemane, which was separate from
God's will. But, the crucial point was that He said, "Not my will but thy will
be done."

You can put it in the following phrase, not my way but YHWH. This works. You see
Jesus died to Himself. He laid aside His own personal needs, wants, and desires,
out of love and obedience for the sake of His disciples, for the sake of the
proclamation, for the sake of obeying God's will.

When He did that, He was like the seed which fell into the ground and died. That
is His death. The death that He died was not so much a death of the body,
although that is absolutely a crucial aspect of the revelation, but the death
that He truly died was even more so a death of the self will, a death of ego.

You are called to unite with Jesus. It is not enough to simply believe that He
did this or that, or to sing songs, or even write lengthy pamphlets. No, it is
essential that you become one with Jesus. As the book of Romans makes so clear,
we must be baptized into His death and united with Him in His crucifixion, that
our old sin nature might be done away with, so that we might be resurrected to
walk with Him in the new perfected light.

That is an essential aspect of the Gospel. No one need follow Napoleon
Bonaparte's steps in order to be a disciple of Napoleon. No one has to actually
perform the experiments which Alexander Graham Bell performed in order to learn
from him. But, if we truly wish to learn anything from Jesus,, then merely
studying or thinking or listening or believing is absolutely insufficient.

We must merge with Him entirely. We must become one with Him, so that the life
He lived, we live; so that the campaign against sin and ego which He waged, we
wage; and, that the death He died and the resurrection which He experienced both
become our present experiential reality. This is a merging of self into the
higher order. You and your ego and your own self will must become sublimated to
the point where you are willing to let God live through you, you are willing to
let Jesus live through you.

This is life beyond ego. You must be able to say with Jesus, not my will but thy
will be done. I look at this much like a loudspeaker in a stereo system. The
world's most perfect loudspeaker has never been invented. The absolutely perfect
loudspeaker would reproduce the music absolutely perfectly as it was recorded.
But, speakers will add their own coloration. They will maybe make the highs a
little bit too shrill. Maybe they're too dim. The bass becomes thicker or lacks
bottom end. Spatial separation becomes lost because the two speakers do not work
in phase, and so we cannot visually pinpoint within the stereo field exact
individual instruments.

I could, of course, go on and on. Every speaker adds its own tiny little
personal interpretation of the music. This personal interpretation is undesired.
It is a darkening. It is a pollution. It is a decreasing of the original purity
of the music. Each human being is the same way. The ideal perfect human being,
Christ incarnate, is simply a channel of God's mind, God's presence, God's will.
God is, if you will, the music. We are the speakers. We are here not to add in
our own coloration, not to distort the sound, not to amplify things that God did
not mean to be amplified, but rather to communicate and express exactly what the
music intended. This is life beyond ego.

The ego is a funny thing. Just like the Bible says, "Thinking themselves to be
wise, they became as fools." As we attempt to hold onto our individual ego, we
actually limit ourselves. We think that if we give up, that we will become
nothing, that we have to add in our proverbial two cents' worth in order to be a
real human being.

But, it's only to the extent that stereo does not add in its coloration, that it
becomes truly worthwhile. If we could ever find that perfect stereo that had no
distortion or coloration of any kind, people would worship that sound. The
speakers which add in their own interpretation, so to speak, our worthless. The
more they put in their own interpretation, the less value they are. So, too,
with the ego. The more ego centered we are, the more we seek our own will and
pathway, the less value we have.

If you look at Jesus, there is something remarkable about Him. This man is
worshipped by many, yet He said He was nothing. "Why do you call me good?" "God
alone is good."

"Father, I thank you that you have worked through me." He saw Himself merely as
a conduit of God's healing power, of God's resurrection glory. He claimed no
personal authority, but only that which God had given Him. "The words I speak,"
He said "were given to me by God." And this man, who in His egolessness sought
only to declare the glory of God, winds up being worshipped by millions.

That speaker system, if we ever find it, that perfectly delivers the music will
be worshipped by audiophiles around the world, simply because it does not do its
own thing. It is purely egoless; therefore, it expresses only the music. It is a
perfect conduit for the higher message, for the source, for the music of the
Son, for God.

That is why I say that the ego is a fool, pretending to be wise and haughty and
puffed up, and is truly nothing. Now, life beyond ego, to most people, seems to
be impossible. But, there is a verse in the Bible which I keep coming back to
constantly. Galatians 2 starting in verse 20, where Paul says, "It is no longer
I who live, but Christ who lives in me."

Paul said that he didn't exist. Paul started out as a murderer. He was out to
kill Christians and do whatever he could to block their lives. If a confessed,
repentant murderer can, through his life of faith and devotion to Christ, come
to the point that he recognizes that he does not exist, then so too you can come
to the point where your ego is likewise slain.

I think the Bible is very clear on this because the temptation would be too easy
to say that, well this or that was easy for Jesus, because He was the Son of
God. But, I'm not the Son of God; therefore, I cannot be expected to do these
things.

Ah, but the Bible says this is not the case. Jesus was the son of God, but St.
Paul was just a murderous sinner, who through devotion, concentration, and
faith, came to an awareness of the power and glory of the perfectly egoless
state.

St. Paul's name is emblazoned in every one of the hundreds of millions of Bibles
on this earth, simply because he attempted to bypass his own thinking and
declare simply the truth of God--to be the best mouthpiece that he could. Life
beyond ego is possible.

I wish to give you another indication that you ultimately exist, not in the way
you think you do. The Bible tells us in 1st Corinthians, that eventually we will
know everything about God that He knows about us. That's in 1st Corinthians 12.

But, 1st Corinthians chapter 5 also tells us that nothing and no one can
understand God except the mind of God, the mind of Christ. Just as no one can
understand you and your thoughts except you and your mind, so too, no one can
understand God and His thoughts except for God. And if I could transplant my
brain into you, then you would know everything about me that I knew. That is the
only way that you could gain that information.

In exactly the same way, the Bible says, since in the promised day we are going
to know as much about God as He knows about us, and He knows everything about
us, how is this going to happen? Well, the only thing that can know anything
about God is the mind of God. Therefore, in the glorious day of perfection,
God's mind will understand God perfectly. That is a startling statement, but it
is quite clear from the Biblical record.

We are promised that we will understand everything about God, but we are told
that the only thing that can understand God is God's mind Himself. That's why
St. Paul says we have the mind of Christ. Eventually, that mind of Christ will
grow and blossom inside of us, so that we will be able to say, it is no longer I
who live, but Christ who lives in me, and eventually will blossom to the point
that we see and know, with all of the angels, the height and the depth of God.
We will know everything about God that there is to know. In so doing, the only
mechanism that will be able to do that is the mind of God itself. Where then is
ego? Where do you fit into the picture?

Obviously, this is a very high mystical type of a revelation which the Bible is
giving to us, but the Bible is clear in other places, to say that we live in
God, we move in God, we exist inside of God. Everything comes from Him, moves
through Him, and returns to Him. Therefore, you as a little ego, are a temporary
blip on the screen of infinite Godliness. And, once you, because it is you and
your ego which controls your ego, allow yourself to become open to the grace of
God, once you take up your cross and follow Jesus, once you become united with
Him in His death, then you will be raised with Him to a glorious resurrection.
That resurrection is one of absolute egolessness, wherein you flow in perfect
harmony with the God of the Universe.

This is possible. There is life beyond ego, and it is the glorious fulfillment
of the ages

courtesy Http://Godswebsite.com