Remember, judging good from evil is the Divine prerogative. Playing the role of God, you are cut off from under­standing. Now the things that you as god decide are good are those things that build up your ego and show you in a godly light.

Before the age of awareness, someone was in charge of your life; you did precious little deciding; you were generally compulsive about everything you did. Not having developed sufficient ego consciousness to assert that will of yours, you had little guilt or fear as you experience it today.

We have come a long way on the broad road of destruction. From just feeling odd about eating, we have added other complications in an attempt to bolster our morale in this fallen state—but the truth is never far behind, making us feel naked and ashamed.

Underlying all excesses is a more subtle wrong, that of animal emotion such as hate, resentment, and fear. As you look at these “only too human” emotions—which also have never been questioned—you will see that you enjoy them with a childish need for security through them.

When you resolve these emotions, a natural balance will be restored: you will begin to eat more if you have been rebelling against food, and to eat less if you were using food as an escape. The same thing happens with your sexual desires.

You will slowly return from the abyss of guilt, from the quandary of being too shy or too bold, to the stage of just noticing something odd about your natural feelings.

You will never again feel guilty as long as you never again try to escape objectivity through food and sex. You will just learn a lot about yourself!

Don’t worry—the mortal shall not give way to the immortal for a long time to come. For a season (before translation) you must live graciously in the flesh and bear much persecution for your belief.

"You must see the truth that you are a fallen being...so you can come to recognize the need for salvation."

The main thing is to see that you do not identify with the lower animal self. You must see the truth that you are a fallen being by the evidence provided through your own experience and observation, so you can come to recognize the need for salvation.

Can you see why it is so dangerous to believe that you evolved from animals? How could you be guilty if you did? Why would you need salvation? No question could arise—and yet it does and you have evaded that question.

Never escape the truth; always be aware and slightly self-conscious and inadequate about every emotion, feeling and thought, so that you are not carried away from the place of salvation by the false adequacies provided by pleasure.

We must learn the lessons of the past and, with the key of true enlightenment (not just intellectual knowledge), unscramble the dense, dark mass of our corrupt identity. Every impulse that is not spiritual in origin can be scanned for what it is, and by that light your nature will be purged, purified and refined, giving way to a new and disciplined self.

True self-discipline arises from knowing how to resist the need to respond to excitement and temptations emanating from the world. Our ego uses every opportunity to distract, entertain and amuse itself, and “grows,” using these impulses.

The body, which grows from one emotion to another like rings on a tree, is answerable to and dependent upon the source of stimulation.