Question: What is the difference between willful ignorance and innocent ignorance and what are the karmic results between deliberate overriding of free will of others and innocents.
Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given at a conference in Holland in 2019.
Innocent ignorance is where you do not know something because the knowledge has not been available to you (to use the example we used earlier) there was a time where people did not know about bacteria and therefore they did not know how to cure certain diseases. This was innocent ignorance.
Willful ignorance is where there is knowledge that actually is available, perhaps even knowledge that you have been made aware of but you are choosing wilfully to ignore it, disregard it, invalidate it, put it down because you are not willing to change. Or you are not willing to lose whatever position you have. In a broader sense here, you could say that when science did not know about the existence of bacteria – well that was innocent ignorance but in today’s materialistic culture, it is not innocent ignorance that science does not “know” about energy and the effect of energy.
As Saint Germain pointed out decades ago, scientists could have started exploring the energetic aspect of consciousness and the psyche. The fact that they have not done that is not innocent ignorance, it is willful ignorance. They cannot claim that they are innocently ignorant, they cannot come and say: “Oh, we didn’t know, we didn’t realise this.” But you had the potential to realise it and you chose willfully to suppress it, the same of course on a personal level. It is clear, that if you are without really realising what you are doing, if you are violating another person’s free will, the karma is less severe than if you know what you are doing and you are doing this deliberately. There is no question about this.
In a sense you could also say that, we have given new teachings that go beyond the traditional view of karma – that you are sending out an impulse that is going to come back to hit you. It is also that if you are willfully suppressing knowledge or if you are willfully manipulating other people’s free will, you are reinforcing your own ignorance, your own willful ignorance. What is willful ignorance? Well, it’s fanaticism. You are reinforcing the fanatical mindset that is holding back your spiritual growth.
Copyright © 2019 Kim Michaels