Thanks for your questions, Sue.

> 1. But who created the egoic mind?

Where did life come from?  Why did the universe explode into being?  Why does anything exist at all?  This primal question of First Cause is deep to ponder.  In a sense, it can never be answered, because a mystery lies at the core of existence.  God's name is 'I am', which tells you even God doesn't know.  God says, "just because."  Literally, be cause.  "I am because I am.  I am First Cause."

Yet we can say that this thing called life or existence is seen to be made of consciousness, of 'I am'.  It is <i>aware</i>.  Just as you (alive, a part of life) are aware of what you're reading right now, animals are aware of their environment, plants are aware of and respond to changes in their environment, etc.  Even so-called inanimate objects demonstrate awareness.  The subatomic particles and quantum properties of matter itself responds to consciousness (as physicists confirm).  Nothing observed is unaffected by the observer, because everything possesses or is made of rudimentary awareness.  Awareness is actually what life is, it is fundamental to its existence.

Life also grows.  Energy moves in frequencies and waves, in cycles.  Nothing is ever still or stopped.  Even a rock, if you zoom way in on its atoms, will be seen to be full of movement and action; in fact, it is these changing fields which actually create the seemingly solid thing we know of as a 'rock'.

These cycles of change in energy aren't just random, they demonstrate intelligence and evolution as well: they change and organize themselves into patterns which evolve, or become more sophisticated patterns, and this creates even more awareness, more than the sum of its parts.  The forms matter takes, which are ultimately energy, grow - into atoms, stars, molecules.  Eventually they grow into what we call living beings.  This is not just a random happenstance; will is involved, the will of consciousness.  There is a plan, a mind and great intelligence, which gives rise to these evolving forms.  Some call this God.

So we find three fundamental components of existence: awareness (feeling), change (moving), and intelligence (thinking).  This is the triune process called 'being'.  I am that I am.

As mammals evolve in this, emerge out of it as a product of it, they have nervous systems which have developed a blob of fat called a brain, which acts to process the sensory inputs.  This is manifest awareness, where a form in the matrix of life exhibits outer awareness by processing physical signals: experience.  Animals in the physical world mimic the consciousness which created them: they are feeling (physically aware), moving/changing, and thinking.  They are being(s).  Like all their behavior, it is an instinctual mind which does the thinking.

Eventually, a mammal becomes so aware that it develops not just sentience, but self-awareness.  It notices itself as an object!  It is an animal moving through an environment.  It calls this animal which it is, 'I', and it asks, "Who am I?"  As Lao Tzu said, "Naming is the origin of all particular things."

Until that point, the animal didn't think of itself as a separate entity.  Like a deer, it might collect food, enjoy the feeling of movement, respond to instincts.  But it hadn't thought about this.  It felt itself part of nature, which it is, and it didn't know where nature stopped and it began.  Yet then it notices this 'self'; it becomes an object of its own awareness!  In a sense the self is an invention, a name.  It doesn't really exist separate from nature, but it seems that way.  It is an imagining, a delusion of sorts.

In spiritual terms, this is called the First Pivotal Movement.  It is when a species moves from oneness into self-differentiation.  It becomes fascinated with 'me', and it comes to imagine it is separate from its surroundings, from life.  This causes the being to stop being a fully integrated part of nature.  It becomes its own creation, driven by its desires and fears, by its imagination.  This is the birth of the ego, or the egoic mind.

In a sense, the ego is a misperception.  It is a false belief because the animal is not really separate from nature or life, it merely imagines it is.  It is a misinterpretation of the data.  This creates all kinds of dysfunction, and species in the First Movement are the bane of the universe, yet also its children.  They are intelligent enough to understand and manipulate tools and eventually energy itself, but they do not act in harmony with the larger system of life.  They may actually act contrary to it, which wild animals never do.  Some call this 'evil', which is 'live' spelled backwards.

This non-harmony creates suffering, which eventually drives the animal into even larger awareness.  It then notices that 'I' is part of something larger: nature, life.  It also notices what we call psychic connections, unseen energies.  Spirit.  It develops spirituality and ritual, religion.  Eventually it begins to move in harmony with this larger system of life again, but now consciously (whereas before, its oneness with nature was unconscious - it didn't notice it was part of it, it just was).  This is the Second Pivotal Movement of a species.  This is the enlightened or awakened animal, the man made God, who is aware of both 'self' and larger self, of life.  It is said of such a being, he (or obviously she) is risen, or 'his is risen'.

The egoic mind is very, very old, dating back millions of years.  Much of it has become hidden, or subconscious: automatic habit in the species.  In its depths lies much trauma, because the egoic mind created hell, severe dysfunction and suffering for human beings.  Within the collective psyche of humans lies a sea of pain and torture.  We as a species are rising out of this, very slowly, approaching our Second Pivotal Movement.  Some human beings have risen, have demonstrated this process.  They were the early flowers.

As a human being grows from a child, it goes through its own miniature version of all this (as do human civilizations).  Just as an embryo is seen to go through earlier stages of evolution in the womb, literally looking more like a fish or amphibian at times, the child mind goes through its discovery that 'I am', and the egoic delusion redevelops in the child, with the help of the collective human psyche, collective memory.  The people who raise or teach the child also transfer their beliefs, their perspective.

The great opportunity of human life, and why souls come to it, is that there is the chance to become 'Buddha' in a single lifetime.  One may rise through ignorance to enlightenment.  If not, one may reenter again, but again start at the beginning.  Even after completing it one may reenter, usually to teach or guide others.

So to your original question, the mammalian brain created the egoic mind as a tool for processing a very curious object it noticed in its awareness: itself.  Yet it brings poor tools to this at first, 'stumbling'.  It's initial self-awareness is very limited: it imagines itself separate and becomes blind to the unity of life, physical and non-physical.  In a sense it pays a price for knowing too much (eg the Bible story of Eden and the forbidden knowledge of good and evil).  But rather than being original sin, it is original blessing, ultimately flowering into enlightened consciousness made flesh.

ETs go through this as well, by the way.  Some which interact with humans are 'enlightened', while others are not, they are merely technologically and energetically more advanced or different.  Elsewhere, some ETs are less spiritually advanced, less aware, than humans, just as some animal species on Earth are.  Yet we are all, all of us, one.

2. Are you saying childhood traumas are stumbles and to what end?

The spirit entering a human incarnation, a human mammal, enters with certain beliefs.  This spirit is ancient, it has lived in many forms, many lifetimes, and it carries some baggage.  It has progressed so far, but some of its beliefs may still be dysfunctional.  It will use the family and culture it chooses to enter as a canvas on which to paint its beliefs, to explore them.  For example, it may have a fear of abandonment.  This belief will create certain experiences in its life as a human being, giving it an opportunity to evolve, to release this fear.  Childhood (and even adult) traumas (which occur regularly even in 'happy' childhoods), are places where a being has become stuck in this process, where fear creates paralysis.  This fear causes the ego to withdraw into itself, to close itself off.  This literally fragments the mind, creating what is called a repression.  This is a fragment of consciousness which has become separated.  It is forgotten in order to isolate the trauma, a healing capacity of the mind, yet it continues to create outcomes for the person.  Often these mind fragments are very powerful (shamans call them rings of power, which become used and must be freed for power to return).  We are tricked into giving up these 'rings of power' at a young age.

So yes, the trauma can be seen as the stumble of a being 'learning' (actually remembering) to walk.  It's memory is not yet perfect, so it forgets some things, and this causes fear and other dysfunctional beliefs about 'how life is'.  These are the foundations of 'personality', and healing them creates profound growth, not merely a return to 'normal'.

> 3. Are you saying this world never ends. That everything continues into eternity?

Life never ends.  No aspect of life ends, it merely changes.  There is no such thing as 'death' as humans imagine it.  Nor is that change ever forced.  All change is an act of will, including an incarnation 'dying' (yes, you choose and arrange the timing and circumstances your own passing, just as you create your life).  As for "this world", that is a perception, a description which the ego uses.  You will carry 'this world' with you for as long as you like, on this planet and on others, until you change it.  Then it will be another world, yet not because anything ended, but because it changed, transformed.

If you think about it, even changing where you live or what work you do can have a profound change on who you are, how you feel.  So 'death', which is a big move, also changes you.  The only time you'll be the you you are now, is now, here, in this context and these conditions.  You are a unique moment in 'time'.  So enjoy.

> 4. Are you saying that this world as souls go up the spiral as you say and stop stumbling as much will be a place of pure joy only?

Yes, yet souls participate in many times and worlds, and as many species - your soul is very large, and it's all happening 'now'.  One human life is a tiny part of this.  It's not that hard to reach this place of pure joy.  Once identification with the mind, ego, is lessened, the 'peace of God' shines through.  This is an eternal light, an 'always' light.  There is a subtle joy to simply being.  A fair number of human beings are moving into this.  That's not to say your body never feels pain (although awareness helps you prevent much of it), but you don't translate pain into suffering.  It's something your body is with, but it doesn't hurt 'you' once fear is lessened.  You understand the life of the mammal as a process, and move in harmony with it.

Is this an advanced state of being, usually the product of several hundred incarnations as a human being?  Yes.  Is it unreachable and impossible?  No.  It's all a question of when you let go of your fear, your mind as 'self'.  Eckhart Tolle is an excellent teacher of this process in his books The Power Of Now, and also A New Earth (which explains more of what I wrote above).

Eventually the soul feels complete, and actually chooses to forget again, to reenter lower consciousness, yet on the next highest spiral.  It begins the process again, for the sheer joy of being and growing.  (That explanation is time-based, so is more a parable than literal.  One can't really perceive all of this literally from human perspective, but you can get the general idea, a glimpse.  And that is enough; we don't need to unravel all the mysteries to enjoy being.)

> What of those who abuse animals and children. Are these stumbles too? How does one soul have no problem physically hurting another?

No soul hurts another.  A soul cannot be damaged or hurt in any way.  It is 'the plan', God, the part of you which always remembers who you really are.  Thus we can play in the illusion of experience, 'the game', and do all kinds of terrible things, without really hurting anything.  That's the good news.

Yes, these are stumbles, in that such behavior doesn't really take a being where it wants to go.  Eventually it figures this out.  This may take lifetimes.

A person may not have a problem abusing others because that is the nature of the egoic mind: it imagines itself separate.  This imagining can go very deep and become very complete, to the point where compassion is simply not felt.  The feelings have become so numb as to not be there at all.  The person has become fully trapped in their egoic mind, and will usually require another being to 'save' them, to remind them of who they are.  Such blindness creates stumbling, which in turn creates suffering.  No being wants to live in suffering, and will instinctually grow out of it, stop creating it.

Children are loving souls who may join an adult or family which is lost in the darkness of this abuse.  This is an act of will, an act of love, not a victimhood, despite appearances.  This joining is a soul gift to those adults, giving them an opportunity to experience themselves as abusive (which is the only way they see it - it is a reflection).  It is also part of the child's journey in life, an opportunity to pass through suffering to the Buddha themselves.  We all do this in some ways, we all absorb pain as we pass through childhood and life.  We are literally made of love.

Often the child doesn't make it all the way through this.  Its capacity for love spent, its beliefs create fears, trauma, repression.  This is an angel stumbling.  These repressions act subconsciously, turning the child that was love into yet another blind and abusive adult.  Thus does abuse reproduce itself: the victim of abuse often becomes an abuser.

While this may look 'evil', it actually isn't at its core.  The abusive being is subconsciously trying to heal itself by recreating the conditions where it 'fell'.  It will become an abuser to live out that abuse again and again, either as victim or perpetrator.  Other children or older victims will become part of that dream out of love for the being, to 'save' it.  (This is the symbol of Jesus suffering on the cross.)  At any given moment that abusive person can have a breakthrough.  They may suddenly realize this is not who they really are, and take another path.

So there are no victims in life, ultimately.  There are creators, and there is love, which is very giving, very allowing.  It never gives up on you, no matter who you are or what you have done.

If you are an abusive person, you can help this process by recreating your trauma in other, less real, ways.  You can write in a journal and express yourself to a therapist, for example.  You can work the problem in simulations.  Many abusive people fear this because they fear what they have become.  They deny it until it builds up and overwhelms them, manifesting in 'real life' yet again, perpetuating the cycle.  If you want to help abusive people (or yourself), help them to explore their pain rather than judging them for it, which only pushes it underground.  Don't fear it, bring it all into a loving light.  At the heart of any evil, you will always find a wounded child clinging to an untruth, a false belief about himself or herself.  Rather than reinforcing this belief through judgment, gently challenge and release it.  Think a new thought.  Begin again.

> If it is not a game as the author says then why are there so many twisted people here on earth? What exactly are they doing? That has always been the one thing I cannot wrap my head around.

I explained this by explaining the origin of the egoic mind.  Between the First Pivotal Movement and the Second, the being imagines itself separate, wandering off into its own delusions.  This creates 'twisted' unnatural behavior, dysfunction, because the being is no longer moving in harmony with the grain of life, the larger system of which it is a part.  It imagines itself apart, rather than a part.  The author is correct that this is done within an illusion: physical experience, which is basically a dream.  Yet it is not merely a game, it is outer life growing to reflect inner truth.  We are merely in the birth canal.  This is just the beginning.  It gets FAR more grand.  What we have done is inconsequential compared to what we are about to do.

These are great questions you're asking, Sue, and I will once again recommend the book Conversations With God: Book 1 by Neale Donald Walsch.  That series of books explains much of the above in greater depth.  Some of the language and analogies may vary, but it explains spirituality in easy, everyday language.  I'm not merely repeating those books, I'm speaking from direct experience and knowledge.  Yet I found those books to be very clear articulations and good reminders.  That's not to say take it as a bible, but I do suggest taking its message deeply to heart.  Overall these books provide a valuable framework for consciousness raising, a bird's eye view of the cosmology of life.  They are worthy of your questions.