Darkness is unreality. Even though it has a temporary substance on a planet like earth, from the perspective of higher awareness it has no reality whatsoever. Darkness is burdensome to many people, but higher awareness looks upon it as a temporary manifestation that is necessary because that which you have manifested on earth is necessary for you to experience, for it is your choice to create your path of self-transcendence. The people who have embodied on this planet for a very long time have created this darkness because they needed the experience of overcoming this before they were ready to unite with higher awareness, in which there can be no darkness and therefore no contrast between darkness and light. This is one of the most difficult lessons for people to get when they begin to approach the higher levels of awareness.

You have gone through a long process where you first may have been below the 48th level and been identified with the darkness, immersed in the darkness, maybe even thinking the darkness was real, maybe even thinking it was beneficial in some way. Then you have gradually climbed out of that state of consciousness. You have come to the point where you have begun to recognize the darkness, to discern between darkness and light. Then comes that critical phase that truly is the phase of discernment (at least at the higher stages) where you not only see darkness in contrast to light on earth, but you see that even the light on earth is lower than the light of the higher realm.

The subtleties of elitism

You begin to see that as human beings have created the darkness, they have created what they see as light, and thus you need to transcend both in order to be free of duality. This can be difficult for so many people to grasp, and it can especially be difficult for those who have been deceived by the elitist mindset. The aware people know that there is a power elite, who has been behind many of the events in history that you identify as being not right, dark, evil, whatever label you put upon it. This is fairly easy for aware people to identify. You know that Nazism was an elitist mindset that raised one race, one nation, above all others. You know that Communism was an elitist mindset that – while claiming to free the people from the oppression of a capitalist elite – simply created a party elite, and the people were even more subject to that elite than they ever were in any so-called capitalist country.

These things are fairly easy for the aware people to grasp. You begin to get that discernment, but then comes the challenge of seeing that there are many, many elitist groups that are not what you would call dark or evil but that have very good intentions. Some of them are religious groups that believe they are doing God’s work on earth. Some of them are New Age organizations that also believe that they are working for the light.

Here is the critical discernment. It is not that they are not working for the light, but it is that, in working for the light from a lower level of discernment, they create an image, an illusion that all they need to do is work for the light according to their definition. Therefore they begin – to use a familiar expression – to drink their own Kool-Aid and think that their organization and its members form an elite and that they are more advanced, more mature, more sophisticated than others.

Now it is necessary at a certain stage of the spiritual path to separate yourself from the mass consciousness. You do this by recognizing that you are not like most of the people out there, who just want to live a materialistic lifestyle and engage in various pleasures. You are willing to do the spiritual work to set yourself apart, to pull yourself beyond that downward pull of the mass consciousness. You need to go through a stage where you are, in a sense, joining an elite and forming an elite and raising yourself above the people.

All people are of equal stature in higher awareness

It is necessary to raise yourself above the consciousness of the general population. The top ten percent of the most aware people in embodiment need to raise their consciousness beyond the level of the mass consciousness. There comes that point where you need to realize that even this can be perverted by the manipulators into making you think that you are set apart from the people that you are more valuable, more important in the eyes of God and that you are doing more work for God or Spirit.

You higher self is as much of an expression of the infinite as that of anyone else. It is the same for every human being embodying on earth. You may go to any city and look at a homeless person sitting on the street. You may go to some other country and see people living in poverty. You may say these people cannot have the same level of spiritual attainment as I have, or they would have manifested a higher outer situation. You are right in saying this, but the higher self of that homeless person or that starving child in Africa is as much an expression of the infinite as is yours.

This is what you see from the perspective of higher awareness. This is what you can come to see, and what you need to come to see, as you approach the higher levels of consciousness. You need to come to the point where, after having set yourself apart from the mass consciousness for a time, you have now become so anchored in your higher self that you can go out into ordinary life, interact with people at all levels of society, and treat them all with the same love and respect that you would give to anyone else. This is the measure of true spirituality.

Good people reinforcing elitism

Be willing to look at religious, political, scientific, educational, spiritual, New Age organizations. Be willing to see how the people there have taken on a certain aura of self-importance. See how they go around feeling holier than thou, feeling more important, feeling that they have the highest truth that they are the only ones who are sure to go to heaven, or that they are the ones who have defined heaven out of existence and know that the scientific truth is superior to any religious truth.

Look at this and realize that here are people who are not doing anything dark or evil. They are believing they are doing good, and in some ways they are doing good. Anyone who, for example, runs an organization that helps starving children in Africa is certainly doing better than those who are creating the conditions that cause the children to starve. Look beyond this, and see that even those who are doing good are reinforcing the elitist mindset.

There are so many Christians who believe that they are ministering to the poor and the disadvantaged and that they are doing what Jesus told them to do. They are ministering in Christ’s name, but when you set yourself apart, set yourself above, look down upon other people, you are not truly ministering from the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit of Christ sees beyond the outer manifestation.

Why do you think Jesus, while in embodiment, approached all of those who were outcasts in the very elitist Jewish society of his time? He challenged elitism, the elitist mindset where you can put people on a scale with high and low. He saw the universal Christ consciousness in all people. He approached them only with the desire to free that crucified Christ in all so that the Christ could jump down from the cross and offer a cup of cold water to all in need.

Higher awareness sees the Christ in you, but also that in so many of the aware people the Christ is still hanging on the cross. Sometimes there is only one nail left, but there is that one nail that is keeping you tied to your personal cross. Higher awareness wants to cut that nail, but cannot, for you must pull it out. You must pull that nail, that beam from your own eye, by looking at your psychology and looking at the control game that you are seeking to play with the universe, with your spiritual teacher, with God, or with each other. The control game is, in a sense, a consequence of the elitist mindset or at least linked to it.

Elitism behind control games

What is the elitist mindset seeking to accomplish? Well, it is seeking to maintain a position of superiority because, once you have attained that position of superiority on earth, you want to maintain it over time. You go into trying to control outer circumstances because it is, after all, the outer circumstances that allow you to feel you are superior to other people.

You have defined your superiority based on outer circumstances, and so you go into seeking to defend. When you seek to defend a particular form and to maintain it over time, you are losing the flow of the River of Life. You are setting yourself apart from the River of Life, and therefore you are nailed to a cross. You may look back at, for example, the feudal societies of Europe and you may see that all of the peasants were virtually the property of their landlords. You may think that the landlord who lived in luxury was the only one who was free, but he was even more trapped in his mind than the peasants. They knew they were oppressed, but he knew it not.

Many of the good people, many of the spiritual people, think they are free in their goodness, but they see not that they are still crucified in their minds. Those who think they are the spiritual elite on earth, need to recognize that they are entombed by this very mindset. Come forth out of this tomb of elitism and recognize that you are naked before Christ. The Christ sees all and sees through this do-goodness attitude that you have surrounded yourself with and that you refuse to question. Come forth out of it and recognize that all human beings on earth are equal in the eyes of God, in the eyes of Christ, in the eyes of higher awareness.