You Don’t Have to Die to Discover the Christ

“The indwelling Christ sings a beautiful song that is the Sound of God, the audible Light stream, the current of energy that is flowing upward to God. It’s the invisible route to God…” – John-Roger

This article by John-Roger was first published in the Movement Newspaper, December 1977.

Each year at this particular time, we find ourselves looking once again at the life and teachings of a man who lived two thousand years ago, a man named Jesus. And we look again at the consciousness that he expressed while he lived on earth, the Consciousness we call the Christ. We listen once again to the message of Jesus, which was that the Christ, the spark of the Supreme God that dwells within each man, makes each one the son of God, and needs only to be awakened to itself to know itself. Jesus manifested the Christ Consciousness in perfect love and glory. He fulfilled the promise of the Christ more completely than anyone had before. And in bringing the dynamic energy of the Holy Spirit to Earth, he used the power of the Christ in a way greater than it had been used before and opened the door for our awakening today.

The message of Christmas is the oneness of God and man and the tremendous love that God demonstrated to all men when he sent His only-begotten Son, the Christ, to awaken us to his beingness. When you catch the vision of the Christ within, your attitude becomes one of joy and love and peace and upliftment. You feel those qualities come alive within you, and then, as you express them more in every action, situations, and relationships, you awaken to the Christ within you. It is YOUR attitude that brings you the magic of Christmas.

The only restrictions you have, truly, are the ones you place upon yourself or the ones you allow others to place on you. Keep that in mind. If you upset me, it’s usually because I allow it or promote it. If I upset you, it’s because you allow it or promote it. So often it’s really tempting to shuck off your misery or your lack or your existence on someone else — your parents, your spouse your friends, your teachers — somebody. But you are not a robot. You are not controlled by others. You are responsible for yourself and for your actions. You can’t blame the way you are only on the way you were brought up or the way you were treated. Because right now, you have the ability to change it. You have dominion over your own life; you have control. You can shape it however you want to. You are a creator. It’s important to acknowledge responsibility to yourself and your life. It is a key to your awakening. It is a key to your joy.

Your life is NOW. It is not last year, two years ago, or ten years ago. It’s right now. Let go of those past patterns that block you and bring you despair, and move yourself into NOW. Sure, maybe when you grew up, you were expected to go to church every Sunday. And now maybe you don’t do that. But did your parents teach you to be negative and bitter about church? I doubt it. I’m sure they trained you to do the best you could at all times. I’m sure they hoped you’d grow up and do all the things they dreamed about that would make them proud and happy that you were their child. Maybe they made mistakes. But for your own health and well-being, forgive them, let it go, and get on with living your own life.

Move your consciousness into greater expansion. In this new year that is coming up, move your consciousness into a greater awareness. Do away with the little “I.” Get rid of that part that says, “What about me? When do I get mine?” What about you? You are responsible for you. You determine when you get yours. If you do good things, you get good things. If you work, you are going to grow. If you make it a habit to continue on, then you will continue on, no matter what. The Bible says that the one who wins is the one who endures to the end. Take care of yourself. Be smart. Learn to win. You are not a loser. You may not always know when you’re in the race, but you are not a loser. Maybe you lose one round, but there is another coming up instantly. The opportunities are infinite. God never deserts you. And he never gives you anything you can’t handle. The game is designed to win.

Take a look at where you are in your life. Take a look at the things that are working for you. Christmas time is a good time of year to take stock of your life. It’s a good time of year to complete old actions that have been left “hanging.” It’s a good time to share your love with those you care for. It’s a good time of year to pay off your debts, and, through the process of tithing, to make financial contributions to the work of Spirit through your church or other religious organizations. It’s a good time to attune yourself more closely with the Spirit within you and within others. The Christ awakens according to your focus, your direction, your attitude. You can lift yourself out of darkness by stopping your complaining, your tears, your bemoaning and feeling sorry for yourself. Why not say instead, “I get along really well. God is with me. All my needs are being supplied. I’m loved and I’m taken care of.” What if that’s wrong? Does it matter? It’s a nice approach, and you will create that for yourself if you put that out. You are a creator. These things are within your control.

One way you can tell rather readily if you are awakening to the consciousness of the Christ is to see if you complete things in this world. If you do, you are awakening. If you don’t, you still sleep. If you have too many jobs to do, too many things to do, cut out some of them. Be wise. Don’t take on more than you can handle. Take on just the things you can complete. Those things that are not completed are thrown right back at you, and you must take the responsibility for them.

Christ is the perfect completer. If you strive towards perfection, the work you have started will be finished by the Christ. Your responsibility is to get on with the state of being perfect. Work towards it. Focus towards it. And when you leave this earth, the work will be completed. And you will perfectly arise into the heart of God. Jesus, our elder brother, promised this. And we can complete it and fulfill his promise.

You don’t have to die to discover the Christ. You can move into that which is your own spiritual inner awareness and move upward through the levels of your own consciousness until you find that which is the Christ within you. When you do, you will protect it as a pearl of great price. You may find many things changing in your life as you awaken inwardly. You may find that you stop doing those things that make you sick physically, mentally, or emotionally. You may change your diet, stop smoking, get a job that makes you happy and fulfilled, find relationships that support you and people with whom you can share love. These things are healthy. If you don’t want to change, that’s okay, too. You can sleep a little longer. It’s all your choice, but if you know what to do, why not do that? If you know what makes you ill or upset or in turmoil, why not turn from that? Why not create those things that will bring you health, wealth, and happiness? Why not shift your focus to your own beingness, to that which brings you joy and fulfillment? As you awaken to the Christ, you will do those things that are good for you. As you awaken to the meaning of Christmas, you will give yourself good gifts, gifts of love and of joy.

Your experience is uniquely your own, just as your attitude is your own. You decide what that is, then you complete it. You can go through life crying or you can go through life laughing, but you are going to go through life. Your attitude is your choice. If you go through life crying, if you go through life lying to yourself, you are choosing a poor attitude towards yourself. You’re not searching to find out who you truly are. You are placing up a false front and trying to defend it. And the truth of it is that you are a part of the lie, because you are its creator.

If you put out the truth, you are demonstrating your acceptance of yourself and your positive attitude towards the experiences of your life. Truth is the only existence, the only reality. Anything less than truth is separation from reality, and that is your grief and agony. The one who lies is a coward. He is afraid he’s going to find out something that will be unbearably hard to handle. When I was a kid, we used to get corn silk and roll it in bark from a tree, then run behind the barn and light it and try to smoke foul stuff. Then we lied about it because no one was supposed to be doing that. Later I found out that everybody did that, even the ones I thought were perfect. And in some rural communities, the kids are still doing that. It isn’t worth lying about. That’s denying the reality of that experience, which was (and is) no better and no worse than any other experience. Only my attitude was wrong.

It is your attitude towards your experiences that is the key. Many years ago, in another time and place, my teacher taught me from a consciousness of “dumbness” to see if I was smart enough to find out what he was doing. It took me a long time to drop my attitude of “smart” and realize that he was doing the routine of “dumb” to see if my attitude could change from one of “false” superiority to one of honest observation. As soon as it did, it was amazing how fast my teacher jumped from local idiot to genius. But he couldn’t teach me from his intellect because I wouldn’t have been able to follow him there. I had to first discover that he was being “dumb” in order to teach me. Then I could realize that he could also be the genius in order to teach me. The two can be hard to separate. Once you realize the reality of one, it’s easy to polarize and know the opposite.

When you truly experience grief, it is easy to know joy. When someone tells you a lie, it’s easy to observe the truth. In knowing one, you find the other. So there is sometimes suffering in order to find God. We are here to experience all aspects of God Consciousness. You cannot be responsible to your creations and become a co-creator with God unless you know both despair and joy, depression and upliftment, oneness and separation, poverty and wealth. When you know all levels of experience, you demonstrate your oneness with all. Then as you walk the upward path, you still know your oneness with those coming behind you; and you can assist them in their evolvement. Not interfering, just extending love and understanding and support.

As you lift up higher in your expression, focus your attention on the positive. Look to the good things that you do. Focus on your accomplishments. Focus on your love, and the lesser expressions will lose their energy and drop away from you. Keep uplifting into Light, keep lifting into love, and negative energy will disperse and dissolve in the positive energy of the Light. Think of love, think of joy, think just now of the Spirit of Christmas.

The indwelling Christ sings a beautiful song that is the Sound of God, the audible Light stream, the current of energy that is flowing upward to God. It’s the invisible route to God, and the only way to God is by the invisible route. The outward trappings of any religion or spiritual group are not necessary for the Christ within, but for the body, mind, and emotions — to hold them still and keep them cleared long enough for the Christ to awaken to itself.

This Christmas, give yourself a gift of yourself. Take the time to go within your own inner consciousness where your emotions, mind, and body will leave you alone for a little while. Find the peace and comfort that is within your own inner kingdom. Your inner journey will be protected by the Spirit that dwells within. You can reach into your inner kingdom through meditation, contemplation, prayer, spiritual exercises, by reading enlightened books, being with enlightened people, continually moving forward and awakening the love within you. But even in your wildest dreams, you’ll fall short of the glory that is within you.

Awaken into God’s heart. Become the Christ in your imagination first, then in your love for all men, then in your mind, and finally in your Soul, which is pure. Then you ride up into God’s heart, forsaking all things to come into the kingdom. And you will know the significance of Jesus’ life, the meaning of Christmas, the love of the Father, and the presence of the Beloved.

Baruch Bashan