Awakening is a very delicate concept to deal with

Question: What does it mean to be awakened to the light?

Answer from the Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels. This answer was given at a conference in Albuquerque (USA) in 2018.

There are so many ways to express the process of awakening with words. What does it mean to awaken to the light? You could say it means that you are realizing that there is a higher world, a higher realm, that is made up of a higher form of energy, which you can call light – spiritual light, celestial light, divine light, cosmic light, whatever you want to call it – and you realize that there is a world beyond the material and that it has an impact on the material world and on your life.

But “awakening” is a very delicate concept to deal with. Throughout the ages many, many people have imposed their mental images on what this means. You will recognize, for example, that the Buddha did not say, “I have been awakened.” He said, “I am awake.” There’s a subtle difference here. If you say you are awake, as opposed to being asleep, for example, is there any finality to the statement “I am awake”? However, if you say, “I am awakened. I have been awakened,” many people interpret this to mean that some final stage has been reached. Many people have had genuine experiences of making a dramatic change to a higher level of consciousness and they have used some image in their consciousness to reason that this experience felt so real, was so dramatic, that this must mean they have reached some final state: “I am awakened, I’m enlightened, I have a changed cosmic consciousness.” It is fine to say, “I have been awakened,” as long as you realize that this is still a process. You are not at a final stage; you realize there’s more to know, more to understand.

You can also say that being awakened to the light means that you recognize there is a contrast between darkness and light. Not a dualistic contrast but a state of spiritual light that is beyond the dualistic extremes on Earth – the good and the evil, the truth and the falsity. You have to be careful to not reason that there is some final stage of awakening that can be reached on earth. As we have said, as ascended masters we are not standing still. We do not see ourselves as being in a state of perfection. We realize that the expansion of consciousness can go on all the way to the Creator level and we clearly realize we are very far from that level. Many people have the desire and it is an ego-based desire, to reach the final state but it is very wise to keep in mind that you will never reach the final state as long as you are on earth. You can say that the only final state you can reach on earth is to ascend but the ascension is not a final state in the sense that there’s no more growth.