Immortal Diamond

think they are doing a holy duty for God” (John 16:2). The ego has found its cover, so be quite careful about being religious. If your religion does not transform your consciousness to one of compassion, it is more a part of the problem than any solution.

The religious False Self can even justify racism, slavery, war, and total denial or deception and feel no guilt whatsoever, because “they

The True Self does not really “go to heaven” as much as live there already. It is indeed part of a “vast horde rumbling toward heaven.” It lives in the big Body now, puts little trust in its private virtue, and feels no undue surprise at its personal weakness. Ruby is just opening up to heaven for the first time, and she is a little shocked and surely disappointed that so many “others” are there.

You can forgive the outer world only if and when you have first forgiven your own inner world.

God surely knows that most people are not malicious as much as mistaken, not deceitful as much as deceived, not ill willed but just terribly ignorant of their True Selves.

As C. S. Lewis said, the devil will not appear with a pitchfork and horns, but will show up dressed in a three-piece suit. Changing our drinking habits and addiction to pornography makes us feel stronger and more moral—and it should. But changing our career status, compassion for the “little people,” or lowering our prices makes us feel slow, naive, and foolish—and it shouldn’t. Goodness and evil are both well disguised as long as you live in your False Self. That is the core of the problem and why Jesus is about a foundational change of the self rather than any cosmetic “moral

mistrusts moral achievement contests. The False Self will create minor moral victories (like people who are scrupulous about church attendance or doctrinal minutiae) to avoid the major and necessary ones (like underpaying their employees or demeaning their wife). As Jesus put it, “You will strain out gnats and swallow camels” (Matthew

Seeking any kind of higher moral ground, as we are almost all trained to do, is often a way of avoiding the death of the False Self, which is why Jesus so often

Too many true believers have attacked the devil in a quite devilish way. But the world is tired of hateful religion, as it well should be.

live in a church that rewards people at the highest levels for obvious sins of the “spirit” and punishes people at the communion table for possible mistakes of the flesh. Jesus was almost exactly the opposite because he knew that sins of the flesh are usually not sins of malice but of weakness, whereas sins of the spirit proceed from a cold heart, a superior and separate False Self, and thus a denied soul. “Circumcise your heart and not your flesh” is the insightful and honest Jewish teaching (Deuteronomy 10:16; Jeremiah 9:26) from a religion that mandated physical male circumci