The God Seed: Probing the Mystery of Spiritual Development

by M. Catherine Thomas

the ego, with its own agenda and urge to control, begins to enlarge itself and veil the openness and freedom of our original spiritual mind. Instead of seeing things as they really are, we see by the dim light of our ego-concerns and fears. Perhaps the main characteristic of the ego is that it behaves like a frightened child.

We became addicted to thinking instead of directly experiencing the world around us through this more still mind. This untrue thought-world, or the ego, became heavier as we grew.

one purely reacts to one’s projections rather than just seeing what is….

vain, greedy, hateful, prideful, resentful, envious, angry, fearful, and more; it can be grandiose, intolerant, arrogant, and over-bearing. It is self-absorbed and thereby insensitive to the needs or feelings of others. It can be brutal and remorseless. When the ego’s self-esteem trips fail to produce what it wants, a person can fall prey to apathy, hopelessness, and victimization—all ego states. It must continually have an opinion, or be approving or disapproving of events, people or things—creating a narrow mental world.

an untrained person may try to keep the mind occupied with entertainment, mental chatter, projects, work, schemes for accomplishment or for pleasure; with novels and magazines, television, websites; with eating, going to parties; with drugs, and so on—anything to avoid examining the superficial and unsatisfactory quality, the self-accusing emptiness, of his

the way we use these activities as a form of avoidance to keep us from discovering the roots of our dissatisfaction

ego is not an enemy to be attacked or defeated, nor is it an evil to be vanquished. We learn that guilt at recognizing it at work does not promote spiritual progress; in fact, the ego feeds off the negativity of pain, suffering, hate, guilt, and self-denunciation. It is actually reinforced by self-criticism, condemnation, fear, and shame.8 Self-pity and refusing to forgive oneself are also ego trips. The ego is weakened, rather, by the nonjudgmental acceptance that arises out of understanding how it came to take up residence within us. By simply expecting the ego to be as it is, its nature can be accepted and then transcended.

it is the pleasure of the ego-payoff that has to be identified and willingly surrendered: There is an inner satisfaction that is the payoff of self-pity, anger, rage, hate, pride, guilt, fear, and so on. This inner pleasure, as morbid as it may sound, energizes and propagates all these emotions. To undo their influence, it is merely necessary to be willing to forgo and surrender these questionable, inner secret pleasures to God and look only to God for joy, pleasure and happiness.9

Flourishing Divinity is its own reward: Come, my brethren, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and he that hath no money, come buy and eat; yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. (2 Nephi 9:50)

practice trains us to be centered and nourished in His presence, a state of peace, rest, and self-acceptance, rather than in the quests for love, approval, appreciation, power, or self-esteem that run the world

The ego’s forms of self-fulfillment can become comple...

CHAPTER 13 THE DESCENT

Dante’s Inferno begins in the Easter season, the setting for an allegory of spiritual awakening. The poet realizes with a start that he has strayed from the True Way into the Dark Wood of Error. He’s lost. He lifts his eyes and sees the first light of the sunrise glowing on a little hill ahead, the Mount of Joy. Strengthened by the vision, he sets out at once to climb directly up the Mount, but almost immediately finds his way blocked by the Three Beasts of Worldliness. These beasts drive him back despairing into the darkness of error. But just as all seems lost, a figure appears to him, who has been sent to lead Dante from error. One cannot, his Guide says, ascend directly past the beasts: the man who would escape them must go a longer and harder way. In fact, he must first make a descent into Hell, that is, to the recognition of sin; and then he must pass through renunciation of sin. And only after these may he reach the pinnacle of joy and come to the Light of God.2

The First Descent

fall away from a consciousness of their union with the Divine, and thus imagine themselves to be separate, …alienated and alienating.

Man only seeks to deify himself in the temporal sphere because he is ignorant of his real divine essence. Man is born the son of God, participating totally in the nature of the Supreme Principle of the Universe; but he is born with a bad memory, forgetful of his origin, illusorily convinced that he is only this limited and mortal body which his senses perceive. Amnesic, he suffers from illusorily feeling himself abandoned by God… and he fusses about in the temporal sphere in search of affirmations to support his divinity which he cannot find there.4

As he grows into adulthood, he may spend his entire life seeking unproductive consolations that numb his painful feelings—not knowing that there are options.

we are seeking for Spirit in ways that prevent its realization, and force us to settle for substitute gratifications, which propel us through, and lock us into, the wretched world of time and terror,

Spirit unfolds in a great spectrum of consciousness…on the way to its own shocking self-recognition…. And in each of those stages—from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit—evolution becomes more and more conscious, more and more aware, more and more realized, more and more awake—

we were once consciously one with the very Divine itself. It is there, this memory trace, in the back of our awareness, pulling and pushing us to realize, to awaken, to remember who and what we always already are.6

Reconciled to whatever improvements and adjustments we can make in ourselves, we wonder if maybe with just a little more discipline and effort we could overcome our spiritual and emotional problems. But we may not know what efforts would really help.

The Second Descent: Taking Moral Inventory

With courageous honesty, they have become aware of the unhappy effects of their selfish, self-defeating, and self-absorbed behavior on their lives, on the happiness of those around them, on their sense of distance from God,

they have been creating their own Hell.

acknowledge what we are doing that isn’t working.

We invoke the Lord’s promise that He will show us (D&C 66:3; Jacob 4:7; Ether 12:27.)

My depression deepened unbearably and finally it seemed to me as though I were at the bottom of the pit. I still gagged badly on the notion of a Power greater than myself, but finally, just for a moment, the last vestige of my proud obstinacy was crushed. All at once I found myself crying out, “If there is a God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything, anything!” Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. I was caught up into an ecstasy which there are no words to describe. It seemed to me, in the mind’s eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit was blowing. And then it burst upon me that I was a free man. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I lay on the bed, but now for a time I was in another world, a new world of consciousness. All about me and through me there was a wonderful feeling of Presence, and I thought to myself, “So this is the God of the preachers!” A great peace stole over me and I thought, “No matter how wrong things seem to be, they are all right. Things are all right with God and His world.”7

The preface to the Twelve Steps reads, “Each of these Steps is essential to progress…. The principles they embody are universal, applicable to everyone, whatever his personal creed.… We strive for an ever-deeper understanding of these Steps, and pray for the wisdom to apply them to our lives.”

Bill W. and many others discovered was that the core concept of the alcoholic was— Selfishness—self-centeredness! That…is the root of our troubles…. The alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot…. The need to escape the private prison of the narrow self is one of the themes that undergirds and finds expression in all the great religions of mankind. That human life has meaning, ultimate meaning, only as lived for others—or for an-Other—seems one way of understanding the deep unity as well as the profound variety of the human experience termed “religious.” Fundamental to all human existence seems the quest for self-transcendence.9

What he learned, he says, is that he was “not-God,” because for so long the alcoholic acts like God, able to control everything, he thinks. After his vision, he knew he was not God. And he found that accepting himself as essentially limited, he was able to find “a healing wholeness in the acceptance of this limitation.”10 The recovering addict would understand Ammon’s liberated position: “Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things” (Alma 26:12).

relief ultimately comes with awareness, disclosure, surrender, and adopting more skillful ways—all of this designed to go forth in the gentle support of the Lord.

As long as we believe that we hate no one, that we are merciful, that we are kind by our very nature, we deceive ourselves; our hatred is merely smoldering under the gray ashes of complacent optimism.… Hatred tries to cure disunion by annihilating those who are not united with us. It seeks peace by the elimination of everybody else but ourselves.

setting aside the ever-present temptation to justify our behavior and blame others for what we do, we get to confront the ego demands percolating inside us, the hidden motivations for self-promotion, and our persisting emotional needs—all of which block the true experience of love.

Earlier in development, these ego demands did help the growing child to provide for his needs, establish his identity, protect him, and set boundaries. But as we mature, we may find that we have been seduced into identifying with them and acting on them long after they serve our wellbeing.

Our unconscious emotional programs for happiness tear us apart by ever-increasing demands that cannot possibly be fulfilled. A person dominated by an emotional investment in the instinctual needs for control, esteem, or security will absorb into these magnetic energy centers every new experience and interpret it from their perspective. The net result of our efforts to repress emotional pain or to compensate for it is the formation of the false self.

built into this false self the continual problem of self-deception. Father Keating observes that we can blissfully imagine that we do good to our families, friends, and business associates, for the best of reasons, but when the light of the Holy Ghost begins to shine brighter in our hearts, “our so-called good intentions look like a pile of dirty dishrags.… Divine love, by its very nature, accuses us of our innate selfishness.”

Russian pilgrim whose name is not known, writes his own inventory in a little work called The Way of a Pilgrim,14 from which I will quote an extensive part. In the beginning of his spiritual journey he finds himself filled with negative self-recognition. He writes of “a confession which leads the inward person to humility.” Turning my eyes carefully upon myself and watching the course of my inward state, I have verified by experience that I do not love God, that I have no love for my neighbors, that I have no religious belief, and that I am filled with pride and sensuality. All this I actually find in myself as a result of detailed examination of my feelings and conduct, thus: 1)I do not love God. For if I loved God I should be continually thinking about God with heartfelt joy. Every thought of God would give me gladness and delight. On the contrary, I much more often and much more eagerly think about earthly things, and thinking about God is labor and dryness. If I loved God, then talking with God in prayer would be my nourishment and delight and would draw me to unbroken communion with God. But, on the contrary, I not only find no delight in prayer, but even find it an effort. I struggle with reluctance, I am enfeebled by sloth, and am ready to occupy myself eagerly with any unimportant trifle, if only it shortens prayer and keeps me from it. My time slips away unnoticed in futile occupations, but when I am occupied with God, when I put myself into God’s presence, every ...

‘the truth will set you free’… but first it tends to make you miserable.”

When He shows us our weaknesses so that we can overcome them in this life, most of us either run away from Him or rationalize. He says, “We have to learn to stand this piercing voice. It is only our lack of desire to hear our weaknesses that stops our communication with Heavenly Father.

‘Father, I admit my shortcomings, and I feel so bad about them. I’m so grateful that thou hast so much patience with me, and I ask Thee to help me overcome my weaknesses.’”

easy it is to offer mock prayers, which are prayers offered without expectation of communication.

be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.’ Christ is literally cutting a knife into our soul, making it clear to us that there is no middle way, and that we have always to ask ourselves where, exactly, do we stand. When we can, in an honest reflection, say, yes, I am a disciple of Christ, I’m willing to sacrifice my own will, my habits, attitudes, and selfish desires, and endure the hurt and the pain that such reflections cause, and bring to Him as a sacrifice, a broken heart and a meek spirit, ‘[He] will baptize [us] with fire and with the Holy Ghost [3 Ne 9:20],’ and we will not be deceived.

But before we can do this with focus, we have to become aware of a multitude of defined or undefined, conscious or subconscious desires. We have to learn to bring them to our awareness, to analyze them…. When we do not do this, we will be condemned to remain, in our prayers, on a superficial level, or even on the level of formality, where there are no answers, or only imagined answers. But there are always hundreds of different desires fighting for supremacy within us. The act of [analyzing] them is a very painful, but needful, act to become, in the eyes of God, a mature person, and to be taken seriously.18

I recommend AA literature in general and especially the little book for loved ones of the alcoholic, “One Day at a Time in Al-Anon, (Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., New York, 1983), to those who want some brief daily readings for restoring basic sanity.

“The pilgrim's inner journey begins when he hears the words of the apostle Paul to "pray without ceasing“ (1 Thess. 5:17). He visits churches and monasteries to learn how to pray without ceasing. Finally a spiritual father teaches him the Jesus Prayer—"Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me” which he learns to repeat continually.

CHAPTER 14 THE HIDING PLACE: OUR SHADOW SELF

C.G. Jung was the first to use the “shadow” as a clinical term to identify those aspects of ourselves which we are unwilling to look at and to own.

hiding place for one’s darkest impulses and deepest humiliations. Interestingly, it also holds the good things about ourself that we’re not ready to look at, even latent goodness and talents.

It would destroy our public and personal self-image…. The more you are attached to any persona whatsoever, bad or good, any chosen and preferred self-image, the more shadow self you will have.”1

The goal of psychotherapy or spiritual development is to identify, face, and re-own the shadow.