Jesus said, “If one who knows the all still feels a personal deficiency, that person, he is completely deficient.”
If you know yourself connected to the Sacred Unity that God is, no longer do you suffer from the delusion of lack and separation, and therefore the sorrows of personal deficiency have vanished. Indeed, faith in the death and resurrection of Yeshua Messiah and knowledge of the indwelling Christ-Spirit enlightens the soul and liberates you from the cosmic forces of ignorance and death. Remember the promise of the Master at the very outset of this Gnostic Gospel of Christ, “Whoever discovers the meaning of these sayings will not experience death.” Do you believe with understanding— that is to say, have genuine faith? Through faith and the good works of faith do you labor for true Gnosis? Then of a certainty, gnosis will be granted unto you and you are already redeemed! Do you have faith that Christ indwells you and you are delivered from the bondage of ignorance and death? Then for you, the resurrection is now and the advent of Messianic consciousness is near! Praise the Lord!
Now, let it be said that having mystical experiences in and of itself is not enough. You must integrate into yourself the Truth and Light revealed in your experience, letting the spiritual experiences transform you, and so live according to the Truth and Light revealed in your experience. In order to have direct spiritual experience, you must create the conditions in which a shift into a higher state of awareness can occur and through which Divine Grace can move.
If I do not actively engage in prayer and meditation, and worship the Lord my God in Spirit and Truth, I cannot very well expect to enter into higher states of awareness or prophetic levels of consciousness—let alone, were I to enter them by some chance, that such experience would transform me. The Master is once again addressing the possibility and necessity of direct spiritual experience and of the practice and spiritual living that bring it about.
Yet, the Master is also speaking of something even more subtle and sublime. He is saying that it is Divine Grace that accomplishes everything—but only when the disciple suspends the egoistic self, silencing the mental being and calming the vital-emotional, thus allowing Divine Grace to act without obstruction. Entering into the Sacred Unity in this way, there is no one to be deficient. Rather, the Christ-self, in union with the heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit, is the doer of everything. In the egoistic condition, everything is personal, but in this state of self-transcendence nothing is personal at all. Having entered directly into the experience of such self-transcendence and embodying something of that higher consciousness, one can no longer conceive of oneself separate and apart from the Sacred Unity and therefore can in no way be personally deficient. The spiritual experience of which the Master is speaking is deeply healing and liberating!
Let me share with you the ideal that the initiates of our lineage hold in their spiritual practice and spiritual living. The view they hold is that it is the Christ-Spirit in them that prays, meditates, and worships God in Spirit and Truth and that it is the Christ-self who lives their life and labors to accomplish God’s plan through it. In everything that is done, it is the Holy Spirit that is the doer and the initiate is the conscious witness and vehicle of this action of Divine Grace. In this sense, the masters of our tradition would ardently agree with St. Paul, who argues salvation through faith by Divine Grace.
If you enter into a practice with this enlightened view, how could you believe a good session of practice is the result of your own doing or a poor session of practice the result of some personal fault? Likewise, if you practice this view in daily living, where shall there be any personal deficiency? All there will be is a divine labor to be done and you will let the Holy Spirit do what she must do, cooperating with her completely. Everything changes with this view, and the nature of the change is profound. When you know you walk with the Lord and that the Spirit of the Lord is with you, the negative self-consciousness that once plagued you is no longer present, or at least is no longer so strong as it once was.
Let it be said clearly that the path is about self-transcendence, service to others and service to the Lord our God. In the midst of service to others, and to the Lord, who has time to become self-conscious? If at any time I find myself too self-conscious, then perhaps I am too self-centered in that moment and serving myself rather than serving the Lord in that situation. I have always found this to be true.