TOPICS: Illness to balance karma more quickly – seeking to help other people learn compassion – some outpicture their own karma as illness – seeking to hide the unpleasantness of life – when people will not learn – be at peace when with people who suffer from illness – inspire people to re-evaluate their lives – hold a spiritual balance for them – avoid shutting down your emotions – avoid paralysis – avoid anger – Jesus feels people’s suffering – you are more than the self that suffers – without true understanding of life, impossible to avoid negative emotions – you are not pacified; there is something you can do – possibility for learning important lesson – learning the lesson can make the illness disappear – beyond paralysis – what the mind has created, it can uncreate –
Question: I will ask about the meaning of long and painful death. My friend died yesterday of a brain tumor. He found out about it seven weeks ago and during that period he had a lot of pain. He lost his humanity and became like a vegetable. What is the meaning for us in such a death and how can we people around them help others in that situation?
Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:
This is a question that touches upon many different topics. One big part of the answer is always karma. There are people who are courageous lifestreams who want to make quick progress. And they volunteer at inner levels, or before coming into embodiment, to take on a serious illness in order to balance as much karma as they can for the remainder of their present embodiment, therefore attaining a better situation in their next lifetime. There are even those who can take on such an illness in order to finally balance their karma that will qualify them for their ascension.
Yet there can also be many psychological considerations that come into play, where there are people who volunteer to take on a difficult condition in order to somehow help other people by stirring compassion or a desire to help. The greatest enemy of spiritual growth is truly self-centeredness. For the ego is completely focused on itself and thus it becomes a black hole. It becomes the closed system that Saint Germain LINK spoke about when he gave his beautiful teachings on the second law of thermodynamics.
And therefore, there are many ways that have been devised by the spiritual teachers of humankind to help people overcome their self-centeredness by finally feeling some sense of compassion for others—so they are stirred to help others rather than being so focused on themselves. And so, there are indeed those who have volunteered to take on various forms of conditions – such as this – in order to stir compassion in others.
There are, of course, also people who have not volunteered to take on anything but whose karma has simply become so severe that it manifests as a crippling illness. These people have not been willing to listen to any spiritual teachings – often for many lifetimes – and thus their karma must descend upon them in order to give them another opportunity to change course in life. We who are the spiritual teachers of humankind serve the earth in large part to give people an alternative to learning from their karma. Alas, there is little we can do when people insist on enrolling themselves in the school of hard knocks.
There is also a psychological element of showing that life is more than the physical. And this is something that has come into play in modern society. For what do you see in modern medicine? Well, you see an attempt to create a state where disease and suffering is taken away from the view of the people. You almost see it at both ends of life, where you have had societies where talking about the reproductive act is a taboo—so that, literally, people believed that babies were delivered by the stork. And even in modern times, there are many children who have no idea how babies come forth. In other words, you suddenly spring into being and then one day you die and disappear.
And yet, the reality is, of course, that what you create in your consciousness, you must experience in the physical. For the universe is a mirror. And so what modern medicine has done, is to try to create a condition where they can cure any ailment or dull the pain so that people do not experience the consequences of their state of consciousness. Any disease is a manifestation of some condition in consciousness. And in many cases, a disease can indeed lead people to the point of realizing that they need to change, that they need to reevaluate their lives. And this can cause a growth that otherwise had not happened when they were healthy and focused on living the good material life as they saw it.
So this ties in with a question of suffering. For there are people who will not learn in any other way. They will not learn through a spiritual teaching or the inner prompting of their Christ self. And in that case, the physical realm, the Mother energy, becomes their teacher. And that is why their physical bodies start to outpicture the imperfect psychological conditions.
There can be a psychological value in some people seeing that others experience the suffering of an extreme illness. Obviously, we would prefer that people would learn through spiritual teachings, instead of seeing their own consciousness outpictured in these extreme ways. But when people are not willing to learn, we must allow the law of free will to outplay itself so that they see that life is not always easy and that you cannot truly escape the consequences of your choices. You cannot always numb yourself with painkillers and experience nothing.
As for the answer to what you can do to help such people, you can be at peace. So that when you are with them, you do not fall into any of the dualistic traps. One of which is human sympathy, the other being to numb yourself so you feel nothing.
You can allow yourself to feel an inner peace that gives you true compassion. And you can then seek to help and inspire these people to reevaluate their lives as long as they are clear enough to do so. When they go beyond the point of not thinking clearly, then you can again be at peace and hold the spiritual balance for them.
And of course, you can certainly give invocations and decrees that the lifestream at inner levels will be awakened to learn its lesson—even though the outer mind cannot learn it because the clarity is gone. You can also work with the people around those who are ill and try to help them reevaluate their lives and gain a more spiritual perspective on life.
When experiencing a severe illness or witnessing people who go through a severe illness and extreme suffering – even to the point that one’s loved ones deteriorate into something that is barely recognizable as a human being and certainly not as the person one used to know – it is natural that one is emotionally affected. Many people can be so traumatized by such experiences that they have no other option but to shut down their emotions and numb themselves to the emotional pain of either going through the illness or witnessing other people suffer. This will inevitably cloud people’s ability to think clearly about the situation.
Another common reaction is that one has very strong feelings, but the overall feeling is that of being paralyzed, of being powerless to affect a positive change and feeling this is unjust. This paralysis about the outer situation is then often channeled into an inner anger or rage that can eventually become so intense that it has to be let out and consequently is directed at someone. Some ill people become angry at relatives or even their caretakers. Others take their anger out on God, often asking with great indignation why God has let this happen to them.
My point is that while both reactions are understandable, the real question is whether they will ease people’s suffering and improve the physical condition or whether they will only make matters worse?
We of the ascended masters are by no means insensitive to human suffering. In fact, as the representative of the Cosmic Christ for the earth, I Jesus do indeed feel – at a particular level of my being – the suffering of every human being on earth. As I said 2,000 years ago:
Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25:40)
Yet I am also fully aware that I am more than the suffering and that the people on earth are more than the suffering. Thus, I clearly see that for people on earth to escape the suffering, they need to connect to the reality that they are more, a reality I described as follows:
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. (Luke 17:21)
Thus, while we do feel a Divine compassion for people who suffer, we never get lost in that compassion and always hold the vision that people will grow in consciousness, thus overcoming the outer limitations.
It is only by going within that you can connect to the fact that there is more to your total being than the limited self that is stuck in the physical body, the body that is going through an illness or witnessing another go through an illness. Coming to this realization is very much a matter of raising your consciousness, of increasing your understanding of life. And this does involve a certain amount of rational reasoning about the situation—which will be impossible when you shut down mentally/emotionally or when you allow your emotions to run wild with anger or blame. I fully realize that this teaching will not be able to help everyone, but let me suggest how people who are not beyond rational thinking might proceed.
As I have explained elsewhere, your emotions are at a lower level than your mental body. So whether you shut down your emotions or let them run wild, the real cause is found in your mental body. And that cause is the fact that you cannot make sense out of the situation, that you cannot understand – and thus cannot accept – why it is happening. You feel that the situation is unjustly put upon you by some external force, be it life, or fate or God.
Let me suggest that the reason why so many people in modern society cannot understand and accept suffering is that neither of the dominant belief systems of that society – whereby I mean both mainstream Christianity and materialistic science – can give them sufficient answers. Because people do not have answers, their mental bodies are paralyzed and thus they cannot control their emotional bodies.
So even though people can be very emotional and even though it can be very difficult to reign in the emotions once they have gone out of control, the only realistic answer is to start by changing your view of suffering and disease, which requires you to go beyond the view of life presented by both religion and science.
Where to start? Well, there is currently no better place to start than Mother Mary’s book, in which she explains the basic reality of life:
- Your mind has the ability to form mental images.
- You have been given free will to form any image you like.
- The universe is made from one substance, called the Ma-ter light. This substance can take on any form.
- The Ma-ter light forms a kind of cosmic mirror. Any image you hold in your mind – even below the threshold of conscious awareness – will be superimposed upon the Ma-ter light, which will take on the material form that corresponds to your image.
- Whatever image you hold in your mind, you will eventually experience in the form of material circumstances.
- The key to changing your material circumstances is to change the images in your mind, meaning all four levels of the mind.
I realize this is a world view that is in stark contrast to the world view given to people by both religion and science. The world view with which you have been brought up is designed to pacify you so you think you have no control over your own destiny and physical circumstances. This is explained in greater detail elsewhere, so I will not go into the deeper aspects here.
If you get ill and go to a priest, he will tell you to pray and if prayer doesn’t work, there is supposedly nothing you can do. If you go to a doctor, he will tell you to use modern medicine and if that doesn’t work, there is nothing you can do. Both belief systems pacify you by denying that you are responsible for your illness, that it is an outpicturing of conditions in your mind and that you can change the physical condition by sufficiently changing your inner condition.
The problem is that both philosophies have taught people that they are not ultimately responsible for their lives, and this is a message that the human ego loves to hear. So I understand that it can be difficult for people to make the switch and acknowledge the fact that ANY material circumstance is self-created by the mind and can thus be uncreated by changing the mind.
Do you see what I am saying here? Religion tells you that illness is caused by external circumstances and if prayer doesn’t work, you are out of options. Science tells you that illness is caused by external circumstances and if medicine doesn’t work, you are out of options. Both lead to paralysis, and as I explained above, suffering is caused by such paralysis.
The world view I am suggesting removes this paralysis by stating that any form of suffering carries the possibility of learning an important lesson in life, a lesson that will benefit you far beyond this lifetime and your current state of suffering. Of course, the price you have to pay is that you have to accept ultimate responsibility for your life. Yet once you do that, you will never feel paralyzed again. Thus, your suffering will either be diminished or will be replaced by a joyful focus on growth.
Furthermore, as you apply yourself to discovering and learning the hidden lesson behind the outer situation, it is entirely possible that you will overcome the cause that created the material illness. And this can literally make the illness – no matter how severe – disappear as if by a miracle. Yet there are truly no miracles, just an application of natural laws that are beyond what is currently known by both science and religion.
The reality is that if a person is ill and accepts either of the belief systems dominating modern society, the inevitable result will be paralysis. This will block a resolution of the condition in the mind that caused the illness and thus effectively prevent a cure. Consider how many people believe their doctors when they are told that they have an incurable disease. And by accepting this, you block the possibility of a resolution of the cause.
Be aware that I am not here talking about the false hope promoted by so many Christian ministers. Giving prayers – even having an entire church pray for you – simply is not enough. Can you see that this is simply an expression of a pacifying belief system that says God, Mother Mary or myself must cure the illness for you through a miracle? In reality, you are the one who must bring about the “miracle,” the miracle of a resolution in your mind that changes material conditions.
Do you see that both science and religion are telling you that the material world is real and that material conditions have ultimate reality? What I am saying here is that the material world has only a temporary appearance and truly has no more reality than what you give it in your mind. All suffering on earth was created in the human mind. What has been created by the human mind can be uncreated by the mind—but only when the human mind is transformed into the mind of Christ. This will happen only when you discover and fully accept that the kingdom of God is within you and that the kingdom of God is at hand, meaning that you can raise your consciousness right now and thus change your outer conditions right now.
You will then be able to hold the immaculate concept – as Mother mary explains in her book – either for yourself or others. This is the most powerful thing you can do for anyone, and it involves never accepting any physical limitation as real but always focusing on the positive vision and the absolute knowledge – beyond normal faith – that the Ma-ter light will eventually outpicture the perfect image you are superimposing upon it. Yet to fully hold the immaculate concept, you cannot be a house divided against itself, and that is why you must seek to resolve the psychological conditions that created the illness in the first place.
When you come to the realization I describe here – a realization that is beyond faith because it is based on an application of the key of knowledge – you will know the truth in my statement that with men this is impossible but with God all things are possible. This entire website is dedicated to helping you discover and accept this reality, so study and apply!
Copyright © 2007 by Kim Michaels