Author: AMSlogin

TOPICS: The gap between the consciousness of the ascended masters and their students – having the teaching become alive in you – a living teaching – using the key of knowledge to integrate the teaching – making the outer teaching an end in itself – you cannot make an impact through the outer teaching – only by working directly with the masters will you have an impact – students must look at why they have not applied the law – using the teaching to reinforce the catch-22 – Christhood is not an ego trip of seeking to save the world – community of the Holy Spirit – paralyzed by the fear of making a mistake – desire for superiority – balance and detachment – self-absorption – seeking to raise the separate self versus seeking to raise all life – many people needed to save the world – promoting universal ideas rather than a particular organization – the savior complex – becoming a true student – truly holding a spiritual balance – understanding the true path – demonstrating the path – the goal is not to create outer changes – stepping down the teachings – becoming self-sufficient – your personal mission is to demonstrate your personal Christhood – individuality and community – golden age is process oriented, not result oriented – going beyond the dualistic struggle –

---

Question: My question is why students of the ascended masters have not had a greater impact on the world? Why haven’t people run with the teachings and expressed them in various contexts? Why haven’t they shown how the teachings of the masters can bring a unique perspective to just about any area of our lives? What are people waiting for?

Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:

I can tell you that the question you are raising is often discussed as we have meetings in the ascended realm. However, I can also tell you that we of the ascended masters have a different perspective on the issue than do most of the people who see themselves as ascended master students.

There is a gap between the perspective of unascended students and their ascended teachers. Obviously, the purpose we have for giving forth teachings that can be studied by unascended beings is to narrow that gap. Yet, as the question here demonstrates, this is no easy task—for if it was easy, then our students would indeed have had a more direct and more visible impact on the world. So we do indeed see that our students are not currently living up to their fullest potential, and we would like to reduce the gap between potentiality and reality, so people can fulfill their divine plans to the fullest.

So let me endeavor to give some teachings on this, and let me begin by rephrasing the question raised above. The real question is why some people can study a teaching that is given directly by the ascended masters – and thus is a living teaching, the Living Word – without having that teaching become alive within them and thus spontaneously seek expression in the world?

The full explanation is complex, and I address it more fully in the book on the path to Christhood. However, let us begin by looking at the mechanics of the situation. What we have done in terms of giving teachings over the past century is not really different from the way true spiritual and religious teachings have been brought forth for ages. It is taking the process of direct revelation to a new level, but it is still the same basic process. A person raises his or her consciousness to the level of the ascended masters and becomes the open door for giving forth a teaching that can be studied by people who are NOT (yet) able to raise their consciousness to our level.

In other words, the process is born from the fact that there is a gap between the consciousness of most people and the consciousness of the ascended masters. Someone bridges that gap, and we give forth what is a living teaching, whereby I mean that it comes from a higher level of consciousness than the level of the collective mind. This is opposed to teachings that originate from the same level of consciousness or one that is slightly higher but not at the level of the ascended realm.

Yet although a teaching is alive when it is given, as soon as the teaching is expressed in words that can be communicated to other people, it becomes just another outer teaching. There truly is no magic that can set the teachings of the ascended masters apart from any other teaching, such as the Bible (portions of which were also given through direct revelation). The “magic” comes in when people study the outer teaching but use what I called the “key of knowledge” to go beyond the teaching. They then integrate the teaching, whereby the teaching becomes alive within them. And when the teaching becomes alive in you, it will build a creative tension that will seek expression through you, so that the teaching will not only help you but will help others through you.

So the mechanics are simple. The reason we have to give a teaching is that there is a gap between our consciousness and the consciousness of most people, so they cannot receive our directions from within themselves. They have not yet entered the kingdom of God which is – as I might have mentioned – within you. Yet the very fact that there is a gap makes it difficult for people to use the teaching as intended. They often fall prey to the temptation that you see in most religions, namely to focus on the outer teaching and make the teaching an end in itself, rather than seeing the teaching as a means to an end—namely their direct communion with us.

Most ascended master students have grown up in a culture that is heavily influenced by the mass consciousness – as outpictured in mainstream religion – of idolizing the outer teaching, organization and leader. So instead of idolizing me as the only son of God, they now idolize a particular messenger as the only one who can communicate directly with the ascended masters. Thus, they either believe there will never be another messenger or that they can never personally commune with us. This consciousness is extremely powerful on this planet, and many ascended master students still have not set themselves free from it, thus inevitably turning a living teaching into just another dead doctrine or organization.

What we see here is that our progressive revelation is guided by the exact law that I described in my parable about the servants who multiplied their talents. We of the ascended masters can give forth a teaching through direct revelation, but if there is not a critical mass of students who multiply that teaching, then the revelation cannot continue through that organization. And, of course, if the students do not multiply a teaching, then we have nothing to multiply, which explains why many of our students have great ideas but cannot seem to manifest them in the material realm. The reason being that with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

What I am saying here is that you cannot make an impact on the world by taking an outer teaching we have given and applying it with your own power. You can make an impact only by multiplying that teaching, whereby we can multiply your offering, which you then multiply again—and so on until our combined efforts break through the inertia of the mass consciousness and shift that consciousness. Our students cannot change the world on their own—it must be a combined effort. Yet that combined effort is contingent upon our students multiplying what we give—and continuing to do so.

Now, at this point I know many students will think that surely they have done such and such outer things, including supporting a sponsored organization, decreeing, studying the teachings and so on, and why haven’t this “paid off?” Well, my beloved, what I would like you to acknowledge is that the law is absolutely unfailing.

The universe is a mirror, and when you multiply your talents, we WILL pour out our multiplication of your efforts and the physical results will be manifest. There can be no failure on our part, so the only possible explanation is that our students – despite their good intentions and efforts – have not actually applied the law. They may think they have applied the law, but if they had done so, then the results would have been obvious and undeniable. Thus, when the results are not there, one must consider the saying of Albert Einstein, “If you keep doing the same thing and expect different results, you are insane.”

So the question now becomes whether those who call themselves students of the ascended masters are willing to consider that they might not have fully understood the law. This will require them to look for the beam in their own eyes, as I said 2,000 years ago. However, some of today’s students have reasoned that this cannot apply to them—since they are ascended master students and have the highest teaching on the planet, meaning that they surely are beyond that stage. Well, my beloved, if you are in embodiment on earth, you are NOT beyond having to look for the beam in your own eye.

This process of overcoming the spiritual blindness that prevents the law from working would accelerate greatly if people would make use of the new teachings on the ego,  as well as Mother Mary’s new rosaries and invocations.

The equation is simple. The law works unfailingly, as does an ordinary mirror. If you smile at the mirror, it smiles back. If you truly multiply the teachings of the ascended masters, the return current from our octave WILL come forth and this WILL have an obvious impact on the world. Thus, if the return current is not there, you have not truly multiplied the teachings. And the ONLY factor that can prevent you from multiplying the teachings is the ego. Yet the ego can prevent you from doing this only as long as you are not seeing it for what it is—because your fear or your pride (both of which spring from the illusion of separation) makes you think you don’t need to look.

So we come back to the age-old problem that the duality consciousness forms a closed loop, a spiritual catch-22. We give a teaching because there is a gap, but the very fact that there is a gap prevents people from using the teaching to bridge the gap. What is the ONLY thing that can break the stalemate? It is that the students wake up and honestly begin to look for the beam in their own eyes. When you consciously see an aspect of your ego and choose to surrender it, THEN you have taken a step forward on the path—and THEN you have multiplied the teaching.

Let me make it clear what we desire to see happen. We desire our students to develop their inner, personal communion, so they can receive direction from their higher selves and from us. This is the ONLY way you can fulfill your divine plan, for it cannot be given to you from without. If the motivation does not come from within, then it will not carry you through the opposition from the mass consciousness. You cannot complete your divine plan by doing, only by BEING.

Thus, the true goal of any teaching is to serve as a stepping stone for the students developing spiritual independence—meaning personal Christhood. Yet this does NOT mean that people go on an ego-trip and single-handedly try to save the world. What it does mean is that when – and ONLY when – students attain independence from their egos, they can come together and form the true community of the Holy Spirit. This community is based on its members having the (horizontal or Omega) oneness with each other below and (the vertical, Alpha) oneness with the ascended masters above. In other words, the success of the students and their community on earth depends on the multiplication from the ascended realm, but this multiplication will not come forth until a critical mass of students have overcome their egos and formed a true community of oneness.

There will still be some people who serve in a more official or public role to bring forth new teachings and ideas, but each member of the community is able to receive inner direction about his or her personal divine plan. The people use the outer teachings as a guiding rod for aligning themselves with their higher selves and seeing through the illusions of the ego. Thus, the people can come together in a true spirit of oneness, whereby you will multiply each others efforts and achieve infinitely more than any of you could achieve alone. The Aquarian age is not the age for the individual hero but for the community effort. Yet before there can be community, the members must come into unity by separating themselves from their egos and from the mass consciousness.

What does this mean in practical terms? Well, the pattern we observe is that many of our students find it very difficult to find a balanced approach to applying and living the teachings. They generally tend to go into one of the following extremes:

• One is that people become so afraid to make a mistake that they dare not do anything. They become passive and refuse to connect to their inner creativity, instead wanting us or the messenger to tell them what to do. Yet we cannot tell you what to do unless you are willing to multiply what we have already given by experimenting. These are the people who become followers of the teachings but who never want to stand out from the crowd or take any personal initiative. They might be very willing to do what they are told, but they are highly reluctant to accept personal responsibility. They are often prone to what I call gray thinking. Since they don’t take any initiative, they cannot truly multiply the talents.
• The other extreme is people who are very willing to take charge and do something, but they do it out of a desire to show how superior they are. They want to stand out from the crowd and receive recognition from us and the world. This leads to a fundamental imbalance, and even though such people might be doing a lot, they are not actually multiplying the talents. These people are often very active and seek leadership positions. If they don’t get such positions, they become highly critical of leadership, always talking about how things should have been done. If they do get a position, they act as if they know better than everyone else how things should be done. They are often prone to what I call black-and-white thinking, being convinced that they are right and that anyone who disagrees is wrong. In fact, they thrive on defining themselves in opposition to other people, be they in the organization or in the broader society. Thus, they often make imbalanced decisions that have disastrous results or no result.

The first reaction causes people to think they cannot have direct communion with us or doubt that their direction is accurate. The second reaction causes people to think they do have communion, and they often use it to beat other people into submission. They are generally very convinced that their communion is accurate, but because of their unbalanced approach, this is rarely true. Which means that the communion such people claim to have is either from their subconscious minds or lower forces. It tells them what they want to hear—as opposed to the ascended masters who tell you what you need to hear.

So the real issue here is the need for balance, which leads to detachment. And only when you are non-attached can you have accurate inner communication with the real ascended masters. For if you are unbalanced towards either of the extremes I have described, your self-centered world view will color your inner direction. Thus, those who do not have balance cannot have accurate discernment, and without discernment, you cannot walk the straight and narrow way of having and maintaining communication with us.

If you look behind both of these reactions, you will see the same basic psychology, namely a focus on oneself, a form of self-absorption. The problem here is that such people are focused on the separate self and are not seeking to raise the All, the One Self. This is a fundamental imbalance that will polarize them toward one of the two extremes. Self-absorption leads to self-consciousness. For some this is expressed in a fear to make mistakes, so they would rather do nothing than make a mistake. For others it is expressed in a desire for self-elevation that causes them to be very active without seeing that their actions are unbalanced and thus cannot lead to the desired result. If you take an honest look at ascended master students you have known, you will see this pattern. If you take a look at yourself, well …

It is ONLY when people rise above this that they can come into unity both with each other and with us. And it is ONLY through this unity that they can multiply their talents. Why is this so?

The consciousness of anti-christ is one of seeking to elevate the separate self to such a superior status on earth that God simply has to allow that separate self into his kingdom—or so the ego reasons. In reality, this can never work, and the goal of the ascended masters is to awaken people from the futility of this false path and the dualistic struggle it generates.

We are seeking to raise all life, for we see the underlying oneness behind all appearances. The students of the false hierarchy are seeking to raise up themselves – or their group – to a superior status compared to other people. It is a stark reality that it is perfectly possible for people to be members of an ascended master organization and still use our teachings in an attempt to elevate the separate self. Such people might – out of the fear-pride duality that is the shadow of the ego – put forth a great effort, but they are NOT multiplying the talents.

What we clearly see in many of our students is an impure motivation. They will claim to be doing something for us, but their real motive is that they think we will then have to do something for them. This is an expression of the basic illusion of the ego, which throughout the ages has caused many religious people to think they can buy or force their way into heaven by doing what their religion prescribes on earth. Yet as I said between the lines 2,000 years ago and as we have said between the lines in our modern teachings, this will never work.

You will NEVER enter the marriage feast without putting on the garment of the Christ consciousness. What is the Christ consciousness? It is that you see yourself as one with God Above and one with all people below. Thus, your efforts are no longer focused on raising your separate self. Instead, you are focused on raising all life. You now love your neighbor as yourself because you see your neighbor as yourself—as part of the One Self. Only when you seek to raise the All will you multiply the talents, and only then will you have the return current from us. We have seen students who for decades have been making great outer efforts based on this false motivation, but because they have not actually multiplied the talents, we can send them nothing in return. The law is unfailing.

Many students have used our teachings to develop a mentality of being separated from the world, being persecuted or being better than other people. This can ONLY spring from the separate self, which can pervert anything, even an ascended master teaching. Those who truly internalize our teachings will overcome the separate self and thus begin to feel an increasing oneness with all life that will stop them from setting themselves or their organization apart.

The ego will forever think it can fool God, because the ego will never see through its own deception. Yet the ascended masters are not fooled by any of the games played by the ego. You will NOT multiply the talents until you begin to selflessly work for raising all life. And you will NOT receive a return current – a multiplication – from us until you align yourself with our purpose of raising up the All.

Take a look at how the fundamentalists of every religion are absolutely convinced that they are the only one who will be saved, thus essentially believing that God will send 99 percent of humanity to hell. It would be extremely wise if ascended master students did not fall into this trap by thinking we are interested in saving only those who recognize us directly. God is no respecter of persons, and neither are we. As I said, let those who would be greatest among you be the servants of all.

So if I were to name one factor that is the primary reason why ascended master students have not had a greater impact on the world, it is self-absorption, the tendency to use our teachings to elevate the separate self. Obviously, this is a complex topic, and there is much more to say about it. The full explanation is or will be given, but let me comment on a few points.

What we see among many of our students is that they do have a genuine desire to help save the world, but they also have a desire to take credit for doing so. In other words, they would love to see the world recognize the importance of the ascended masters and a particular organization—thus also recognizing its members. If you are honest, you will see that this is a self-serving motivation that is NOT aimed at raising the All.

In contrast, we of the ascended masters have only one desire and that is to see the world saved. We have absolutely no preference or value judgment as to who should do so or receive credit for doing so. In fact, we see very clearly that for the world to be saved, a very large part of humanity must be willing to take part. Thus, we have NEVER subscribed to the belief – so common among religious people – that one particular group (large or small) can save the world or deserves credit for doing so. This does not mean that we are ungrateful for the many sincere people (religious or not) who have made contributions to the progress of humanity. It simply means that we are no respecter of persons.

What will save the world is that the collective consciousness is raised. This will happen by the top ten percent catching the key ideas that we are releasing from the ascended realm, internalizing them and then expressing them in various ways in their lives. My central point here is that many ascended master students have a backward view of this process. They think they first have to attempt to convert the world to be members of their organization, and THEN the world will be saved. The reality is that the world will be saved by universal ideas. Thus, the true way to save the world is to promote such ideas in any context possible WITHOUT seeking to make them exclusive to a particular organization.

This is precisely why ascended master students have NOT had success in writing books. They have gone forth with a self-centered desire to promote their organization, which is really a camouflaged attempt to take credit for saving the world. Those who have tuned in to the need to promote universal ideas have had success, even though they do not have the deeper understanding available to our direct students. Nevertheless, they are seeking to help all people in a universal manner, and this multiplies the talents.

Our release of new ideas is not exclusive to any individual or group. Anyone who is sensitive can tune in to these ideas, and if they are willing to multiply them, they will make a real contribution to progress. There is NO guarantee that being a member of an ascended master organization will attune you to our ideas, for if your mind is closed, you will not be an open door (as is proven by the fact that our direct students have not had a greater impact on the world). Likewise, there is nothing that prevents people from internalizing an idea even though they have never heard of the ascended masters or a particular organization.

For example, we always like to see when a person who has internalized some of our key ideas becomes the leader of a nation (which has indeed happened many times). But whether that person is consciously aware of the ascended masters or is a member of a particular organization is completely immaterial to us. In other words, our students need to take a careful look in the mirror and se whether they have an unrecognized savior complex. The desire to save the world and take credit or get the world’s recognition for it is the hallmark of the students of the false hierarchy—and what is to prevent them from seeking membership of an outer organization, thus affecting the culture of that organization?

It is also wise to consider that the last thing we want to do is to start another dogmatic religion that promotes the outer path. So, we truly have no desire to see our teachings become “elevated” to being the state religion of any nation or even the whole world. We need our teachings to remain pure, which can only happen when they are not directly locked to a particular nation, society or institution. The separation of church and state is not only to protect a nation from being dominated by one church, such a the Catholic church during the middle ages. It is also to protect a true spiritual teaching from becoming a tool for promoting any secular agenda.

Do you see what I am saying here? Some students seem to think that we want particular teachings elevated to the status of being the only true religion or the foundation for running the whole world. Some think we want our students – specifically themselves – to be the leaders of the world. Some think we want all people converted to our teachings, but that simply is not a realistic goal.

One can also consider what it means to be a student of the ascended masters? It should be obvious that we once again have a gap. Many people think that by being a member of an organization that is – or was in the past – sponsored by us, you automatically become our student. From our perspective that is NOT the case. ONLY those who internalize our teachings and express them in a selfless desire to help others are our students. And they are found all over the world, many of them never having heard about us or a specific organization with their outer minds.

So from this perspective we could say that our true students – those who are the inner students – have indeed had an impact on the world. Which, however, does not change the fact that we would like to see them have an even greater impact on the world. Thus, we would like all who have attunement with us to become consciously aware of this and make use of some of our outer teachings. And we would like those who are already aware of us to internalize and express the teachings.

Let me make it clear that some ascended master students have a tendency to believe that even though they have not seen outer results of their efforts, they have nevertheless done invaluable work on inner levels, including “holding the balance for the planet” (however that vague term is perceived). Yet it should be clear that the inner work you can accomplish is also dependent upon the degree to which you have internalized the teachings. Some people seem to think that our return current is a mechanical process, and every time they open their mouth to say a decree, our multiplication is instantaneous and independent of their own level of internalization. This obviously is NOT the case.

EVERYTHING depends on your state of consciousness and – despite what some students seem to think – you cannot hide anything from the ascended masters. If there is no internalization, you can decree forever without accomplishing significant inner work. Thus, for some people this is simply a “head in the sand” mechanism that their egos use as an excuse to prevent them from looking in the mirror and acknowledging that they have not internalized the teachings. They think they do not have time to work on their psychology because they are so busy saving the world for Saint Germain. Thus, the lack of outer results is also an indication of a lack of inner results.

That being said, it is true that we work by releasing ideas and energy. And our students have indeed played a significant role in grasping such ideas and energies, thus creating cracks in the rigid walls of the mass consciousness. This has indeed shifted the collective consciousness in a positive direction over the past century. Our students deserve credit for this—although one must define students in broad terms and not simply as members of particular organizations.

It must also be acknowledged that there are four levels of the material realm, so it does take time for ideas and energies to cycle through to the physical octave and manifest visible results. Thus, much of the inner work done over the past century simply has not yet reached the physical world. Yet a large part of the reason for this is that there are not enough people who are able or willing to be the instruments for anchoring the changes in the physical. It takes persons with a certain amount of Christhood for changes to break through to the physical realm without causing cataclysm in society or the planetary body. And this, of course, is where our students have an enormous potential for impacting the world in coming years—if they can overcome the separate self and start working on raising the All.

Also, consider how you measure success. As I have tried to make clear, we do not measure success through outer results but by the individual internalization and the shift in the collective consciousness. So what I have said about ascended master students also applies to the public. There is indeed a growing openness to spiritual topics. Yet this in itself will have little impact on the world unless there is a growing awareness of the true path. In other words, it is quite possible that people can become open to spiritual topics without actually understanding the true path. Thus, their openness is simply misdirected into a more clever disguise of the false path than what is seen in traditional religion.

If you look at ascended master teachings, you will see that one of our main goals has been to describe the difference between the false (outer) path and the true (inner) path. If humankind is awakened to the true path, you will see major changes in the world. Yet if the false teachers manage to divert them into simply a more sophisticated version of the outer path, then little will be accomplished.

Thus, our teachings have been given with the hope that they would spread an awareness of the true path. Yet how can this be accomplished? Not by simply giving the teachings in books or on the internet. The true path cannot be understood intellectually. It must be demonstrated by our students, who internalize the teachings and then outpicture the path in their own lives. This is what has so far been lacking, and this is where there is the greatest potential for our students to very quickly bring themselves into alignment with us and thereby impact the world.

I am not hereby saying that the people who write popular books are necessarily false teachers. What I am saying is that there are levels to the effort to awaken humankind. The more popular teachers write about the path in a more general form that is easier for the public to accept. This is a necessary part of the process, but it can never be ultimately successful in itself. There will be success ONLY if those who are awakened through popular books eventually discover the true path and engage it. And this will ONLY happen if a critical mass of our students embody that path.

The most important factor for those who are aware of the ascended masters and our teachings is to demonstrate the path to Christhood. If your personal path involves being involved in politics or in other ways working on improving the world, then by all means pursue this. But always seek to do so in a way that demonstrates the true path – of going beyond ego and working for raising the All – in whatever endeavor you engage. In other words, don’t make it your goal to change the world. Make it your goal to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness – the Christ consciousness – and then all things shall be added unto you.

As I have said many times, balance is the key, which actually means that you cannot serve two masters. There are students who have attempted to have an impact on politics, but you cannot be effective if you are trying to serve two masters. Whereby I mean that you cannot be an ascended master student and at the same time attempt to change the physical world through physical means.

As I have attempted to explain, the foremost goal of the ascended masters is to awaken people to the true path and the fallacy of the outer path. Which means we want our students to engage in all areas of society. Yet we do not want them to engage society the same way non-students do. We do not want you to engage with the goal of creating outer changes by doing what everyone else is doing.

For example, some of our students in the United States have become convinced that the ascended masters have a very conservative political agenda. They reason that they should engage in politics to advance the goals defined by various conservative movements or philosophies. Yet in doing so our students simply become drawn into the age-old dualistic struggle between two opposite polarities.

Our true goal is to awaken people to the inner path, and the essence of this path is that you rise above duality and refuse to perpetuate the struggle. If our students engage in this struggle, they are not multiplying their talents, thus we have nothing to multiply and their efforts will not be successful.

Again, the key is balance, which leads to accurate discernment. As a true ascended master student you do NOT engage in society for the purpose of promoting particular changes. You do so for the purpose of demonstrating that there is an alternative to dualistic thinking. And when you do this, the results will follow in proportion to how you raise the awareness of all people. Unfortunately, many people have used the teachings given by us to create an organizational culture that actually hinders their Christhood rather than helping them attain Christhood and then giving them an environment in which to express it.

Again, balance and discernment are essential. It is acceptable to “step down” the teachings given by us through sponsored messengers by applying them to specific areas and reach a specific audience. However, our students need to be very careful in not seeking to become so popular that they actually compromise the true path and thus in essence promote the illusions of the false path. It is acceptable to step down the teachings, but you will NOT multiply your talents by watering down the true path—as some of the popular writers are doing. Thus, seek first to be right with God and don’t worry about becoming popular with men.

True changes will only happen if people internalize the path by rising above what we might call “tabloid spirituality.” If you want to look beyond ascended master students, you can indeed ask whether people of other spiritual movements have had a major impact on the world? Have the people following New Age teachings, including some of the many channeled teachings, had an impact on the world? Again, the answer is that there has not been a sufficient internalization of the teachings and thus a lack of return current from Above.

The teachings we have given on the true path to Christhood do not need to be stepped down in order to be acceptable to large numbers of people. We have already designed these teachings with the current level of humankind’s consciousness in mind. They simply need to get out to people, which means they must be promoted, and this is a task that is beyond the messengers who cannot do everything and should not do everything. For example, the new book The Art of Non-War has the potential to reach a very wide audience and shift the collective consciousness to see the need to go beyond duality in all areas of people’s personal lives and in society.

This, of course, does not mean that other people could not take these teachings and incorporate them in books or presentations for specific audiences. I am very much encouraging people to do this, but I am also cautioning you against thinking that you have to step the teachings down to people’s level. The goal is NOT to become popular by appealing to people’s current level of understanding. The goal is to take people beyond their current level of understanding, and this can ONLY be done when the teaching is higher than people’s current level and thus challenges them to raise their consciousness. Obviously, the teaching cannot be so much higher that people cannot connect to it, so that is where people have opportunities for expressing the teaching based on their personal experience. You will know how the particular groups of people in which you grew up can be presented with the teaching.

However, find the balance so that you do not compromise the teaching in order to become popular or accepted. And to find this balance, you must overcome your self-centered need to be accepted by the world or other people. Which again means that you must pursue the path of overcoming the illusions of the separate self. For only the separate self needs acceptance from the world. When you connect to your real self, you know you have oneness with God, so acceptance from the world becomes irrelevant.

Many students are truly waiting for permission, either from an organization, a messenger or from the ascended masters. Yet our goal is to make our students spiritually independent by helping them attain Christhood. As the Christ you are not waiting for permission from above or below—you act spontaneously by perceiving a need here below and knowing how God would help people transcend that need.

So what does it take to become self-sufficient? You must internalize the teachings, and how do you do that? By experimenting with expressing the teachings to help others. You cannot multiply your talents if you dare not experiment. On the other hand, if you seek to multiply the talents in order to raise up your ego, you will likewise not multiply the talents, so again balance is the key.

Again, you need to be very balanced. As I have said, a Christed being is spiritually self-sufficient, which essentially means that your personal mission and Christhood NEVER depends on anyone else. You will NEVER become the Christ as long as you maintain even a subtle belief that your Christhood depends on anyone or anything outside yourself.

Thus, you should ALWAYS focus on being who you are to the fullest without being concerned at all with what other people are doing or not doing. It simply is not true to say that “my personal mission cannot be achieved by myself.” Your personal mission is PERSONAL, meaning that it does not depend on anyone else.

The essence of your personal mission is to manifest Christhood and then demonstrate that in all situations you encounter. Your Christhood is spiritual independence, which by definition cannot depend on anyone else. Thus, there is no one and nothing that can prevent you from attaining Christhood. And when you do so, you will have fulfilled the major part of your personal mission. That being said, there are of course aspects of everyone’s divine plan that involves cooperation with others. Yet by focusing on your own Christhood first, you will gradually attract the kind of people needed to fulfill your divine plan.

This is the only way an Aquarian age movement can be successful. People must attain independence before they can truly come together in unity and form a community that is based on freedom from ego rather than on the needs of the ego.

People can help each other attain independence by helping each other see through the ego, but in the end, each person must claim his or her Christhood. No one can do this for you, and it is possible to have attained Christhood at inner levels without having claimed it with your conscious mind and will. In fact, this is one of the major reasons why our direct students have not had a greater impact on the world—yet it could change as quickly as you can make a decision. In fact, some spiritual organizations have developed a culture that prevents people from claiming their Christhood and expressing it within the organization.

It truly baffles us how we can have students who have so much knowledge and still do not allow it to become alive within them, thus being compelled from within to share it. As I said, what the heart is full of, the mouth overflows with. So if the mouth is not overflowing, there is no fullness in the heart. And this is actually a lack of love for the greater self, which can only come from an unbalanced, possessive love for the separate self. So while we fully understand the cause of this, we are still baffled that more people have not overcome this fixation of the separate self.

All you can do is to BE who you are. And sometimes that means leaving behind people who will not come up higher and who do not want you to come up higher, for it is a threat to their sense of comfortability—which makes them think they do not have to transcend their current level. Why do you think I said, “Let the dead bury their dead?” and “What is that to thee—follow thou me?”

How do you become spiritually self-sufficient? For a time it is absolutely necessary for you to follow an external teacher—a teacher who is not inside the mental box created by your ego an thus can see what you cannot see. Yet there comes a point when you have to go beyond the external teacher and trust fully in your inner direction.

Some people do this before they have attained balance and discernment, so they go off on an ego-trip, often blaming the teacher or claiming the teacher is wrong. Others are so afraid to make a mistake that they do not want to ever go beyond the external teacher. What is the problem with both? An unwillingness to accept complete and total responsibility for your own path. You simply cannot become self-sufficient until you accept that YOU and ONLY you are responsible for your own progress. Thus, you cannot lean on a teacher and you cannot blame the teacher. You must become the teacher.

It would also be wise for our students to reconsider their concept of what a Golden Age really is. Certainly, there will be outer changes compared to today. But the main change will be an awakening to a consciousness that is beyond duality and thus independent of outer conditions in this world.

When you see this, you see that the main goal for a Golden Age is NOT to build a great civilization with gold streets. The true goal is to awaken people to reality, so a Golden Age is truly about this inner awakening. Thus, it is process-oriented rather than result-oriented (at least it does not define results as outer appearances).

So stop worrying about what might have been or what should have been. Focus all your attention on developing and expressing your personal Christhood, and then take joy in participating in the grand process of awakening humanity. For if you awaken yourself, then you will be doing all anyone can do to raise up humanity. As I said, If I be raised up, I will draw all men unto me.

All is well in the sense that the experiment of awakening humankind is progressing because our students – in a broader sense – are raising their consciousness. However, we of the ascended masters certainly hope that this growth can be accelerated dramatically in the coming years and decades.

Again, it is essential to realize that your personal Christhood cannot be stopped by any force outside your real self—the Conscious You. The power elite cannot prevent the real students of the ascended masters from changing the planet, for when enough people manifest a sufficient degree of Christhood, the collective consciousness WILL shift and this WILL lead to physical changes. There is no power elite and no amount of fallen angels in or out of embodiment who can stop this process.

It is true that many false students work very hard, but they do so because they are driven by pride or fear, which drives them to want results in the physical world and to be very attached to those results. We do not want our students to engage in and thus perpetuate this dualistic struggle. We want them to go beyond the struggle and then go into the world to demonstrate their Christhood, thus demonstrating that there is a higher way than the dualistic way.

We love it when our students have excitement about the path, but we prefer to see that excitement be balanced so it can be channeled in the most constructive direction. This is attained by focusing on your own personal Christhood without being overly concerned with or attached to what other people (or the world) do or don’t do. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven in perfect. Be here below all that you are Above. Be what you are above regardless of what is temporarily appearing here below, for it is only when you transcend outer appearances that you will help the planet transcend them as well. You will be the Christ only when you accept that nothing on earth – including your own ego – can prevent you from claiming your Christhood.

 

Copyright © 2012 by Kim Michaels

TOPICS: All spiritual people are exposed to those who mock or ridicule their beliefs – how to deal with this in a constructive manner – goal is to have peace of mind – look for your attachments – the fear that you could be wrong – the Spoilers – those who seek to destroy the beliefs of others – the memory of how beings interact in the spiritual realm – projecting responsibility away from yourself – starting to remove the beam in your own eye – always thinking it is your fault – being non-attached to the reactions of others – some people are not teachable and need to learn from experience – others will not respond to your arguments the same way you would – respect the free will of others—and yourself – the desire to convince others versus non-attachment – strive to speak out without frustration – all-or-nothing response puts people in a catch-22 – inner insecurity makes it important to be right – being unable to admit mistakes makes it impossible to grow – the need to evangelize by proving others wrong – a diversionary tactic by the ego and dark forces – some people are willing to destroy you in order to prove their egos right – some people taken over by dark forces who attack you viciously –

---

Question: Jesus and other masters have talked about the need to share our beliefs and speak out to other people. But when I do so, I am often met with a very negative attitude, where people seem to feel threatened by ideas that do not conform to their beliefs. I can understand that reaction from fundamentalist Christians, but I often get it from New Age people as well. I even meet people who get angry or who very mockingly seek to put down my beliefs or the entire idea of ascended masters. I have friends who for that reason have stopped talking about their spiritual beliefs, because they simply don’t want to deal with this kind of negative energy. Does Jesus have any comments on why we get this reaction and what we can do to avoid being frustrated or feeling rejected?

Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:

This is an issue that applies to many sincere spiritual seekers. As a spiritual person in the modern western world, you will inevitably run into people who flat out reject your spiritual beliefs. You get opposition from atheists or materialists, from mainstream Christians and even from other seemingly spiritual people who think their guru, philosophy or organization is the only true one.

I see so many sincere seekers who get a negative reaction to their beliefs and lifestyle and who respond with frustration. In many cases this leads people to engage in arguments with others, and they usually lead nowhere. Perhaps both people even end up getting angry and misqualify energy in the process without ever finding any common ground or resolution.

As a sincere spiritual seeker, you need to recognize one fundamental truth about the spiritual path. The real goal is to rise above the consciousness of duality, as I explain in my ego discourses. When you do rise above the dualistic illusions of the mind of anti-christ, you will have attained what the Buddha called enlightenment, and in this state you will have complete peace of mind. Yet as the Buddha explained, the key to attaining this peace of mind is to overcome ALL attachments to anything on earth.

My point is that as a spiritual seeker, you must always be looking for any attachments you might have. As I said 2,000 years ago:

First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:5)

So when you discover any attachment, you need to look in the mirror and uncover the dualistic belief that causes the attachment. You can then reach for the truth of Christ that will set you free from the dualistic illusion, what the Buddha called Maya. Any time you realize that you are not at peace about something, you need to look for the underlying cause and remove that beam from your eye. If you feel frustrated by the reactions of certain people, you need to let go of an attachment.

***

At the beginning stages of the spiritual path, people are often very vulnerable to a negative reaction from people who question or condemn their beliefs. This is understandable, and the underlying reason is that people are still not firmly anchored in their spiritual beliefs. They feel insecure because at some level they realize that they have some contradictions in their world view, they have many questions they have not yet answered and they have not fully integrated the teachings in their everyday life.

The result of this is that such people still have an underlying fear that they could be wrong, that they could be following a false teaching or that the entire spiritual path could be an illusion. Thus, they are naturally vulnerable to people with a very judgmental attitude, and it is a sad fact that many people have been turned away from the spiritual path by negative people.

In fact, there is an entire band of dark spirits, called the Spoilers, who are constantly seeking to get people to give up on the path. These spirits often work through people who themselves did not overcome their doubts. Such people then become “nevangelists” who feel compelled to point out what they see as flaws in other people’s beliefs. If people fall for this temptation, they too become instruments for the dark spirits and start to influence others, which is how this can spread like rings in the water. Entire spiritual organizations – that were perfectly valid and in some cases sponsored by the ascended masters – have been brought down by people acting as extensions of the Spoilers.

People who survive this initial attack on their beliefs end up becoming anchored in themselves. As you mature on the path, you begin to overcome your own limitations and this naturally turns your attention to how you can help other people. However, this brings you face to face with a higher level of initiations that are related to how you react when other people respond negatively to the help you are offering them with the best of intentions.

***

In this context it is important to realize that many spiritually mature people have an inner memory of how interactions are in the spiritual realm. There was a period where certain spiritual beings turned negative and became accusatory and judgmental, as described in Revelation:

And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. (Revelation 12:10)

These beings were eventually sent to the material realm, as we have explained, partly as disembodied spirits and partly as people in embodiment. And they are still accusing people day and night. Only now they are not doing it before the real God but before a false god of their own making. The real point is that all spiritually mature people must rise above the need to judge and accuse other people. And thus, such people can have a civilized interaction without feeling that one belief system or organization has to be superior or the only right one.

***

There are certain turning points on the spiritual path. One of the important ones is that you become willing to look beyond your existing beliefs and consider new ideas. For some this means they leave the religion in which they grew up and look for new spiritual teachings and organizations. Others stay in their religion but renew the way they approach it. Either way, the beginning phases of this stage is characterized by a strong belief that there must be one true guru/teaching/organization and that all others are false.

Underlying this belief is the sense that you cannot save yourself, so you need help from the outside. There is nothing wrong with people having this belief (although the belief itself is wrong), because it is a necessary phase that all people go through. The problem is that when people are in this frame of mind, they do have a black-and-white world view. This makes them think they are absolutely right and that anyone who disagrees is wrong, is working with evil spirits or whatever the particular expression might be.

What is truly happening at this stage is that people are not ready to take full responsibility for their path and salvation. Thus, they are still projecting responsibility away from themselves. That is why they think that performing a spiritual technique can magically solve all of their problems. They are not yet capable of accepting the fact that before their outer situation will change, they have to change their inner situation.

The next big turning point comes when people become mature enough to start looking for the beam in their own eyes instead of seeing or projecting splinters in the eyes of other people. Before this point, people learn from outer teachings and from their experiences in life. This is, so to speak, the school of hard knocks. As a spiritual teacher, I look forward to the point where a lifestream becomes teachable, meaning that he or she is now ready for a direct inner contact with a spiritual teacher. This is where you enroll in the school of inner direction instead of the school of outer knocks.

The main element of this inner path is that you always look in the mirror and consider how you can improve yourself. You stop looking for faults in other people that you then use as an excuse for not improving yourself. It is the willingness to change yourself that makes you teachable, so it is a wonderful quality and I am in no way finding fault with it.

However, as you mature, you need to recognize that the tendency to always seek to improve yourself can be taken too far, and this is especially true when it comes to your relationship with other people. As a sincere seeker, you tend to think that if you have disagreements, conflicts or even a difference of opinion with other people, you need to improve yourself. And this is true up to a point, for as long as you have an attachment and is not at peace, you DO need to improve yourself.

However, what you need to improve is NOT your ability to reason with other people but your ability to discern when people are not teachable. And when you recognize that a person is not teachable, you need to let go of any desire to teach that person and be completely at peace with the fact that the person is absolutely convinced that you are wrong and that there is absolutely nothing you can do to change his or her mind. You simply need to let it go and move on.

***

I fully understand that what tricks many mature seekers is that they have developed a sincere desire to help other people. They have personally risen above the level of black-and-white thinking, so they can easily see when people are stuck in this frame of mind. They know this will only cause these people to be hurt, they know these people need to get out of it, and they would love to help them grow as quickly as possible and avoid all the suffering. Yet what you need to realize is that as long as a person is stuck in black-and-white thinking, that person is not teachable and is not open to the higher spiritual teaching that you can see.

I understand the temptation. You see the fallacy in a person’s arguments, and you can come up with an argument that you think makes complete sense and clearly shows the imperfections in the other person’s beliefs. So you think that if you present this argument to the person, he or she will respond to your argument the same way you would. Yet what you need to realize is that because the person is not at the same level of consciousness as you are, he or she will NOT respond the same way you do!

Your arguments will have no weight with the other person as long as he or she has not risen above the level of black-and-white thinking. Therefore, the best thing you can do is to accept that such people need to stay in the school of hard knocks until they have received so many knocks that they have had enough and finally say: “Who’s there? Is someone trying to tell me something by knocking?”

You need to recognize that planet earth is a schoolroom and it is wisely designed to accommodate a wide range of students. The beginning students are in the school of hard knocks, and they need to stay there until they are ready to move on. Thus, as a mature spiritual seeker, you should avoid engaging in interactions that seek to reason with these people’s state of consciousness. Instead, you should focus most of your attention on people who have climbed to the level where they are teachable.

As a help in doing this, consider my statement:

To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. (John 18:37)

This is the role of those who represent the Christ consciousness on earth, and all sincere spiritual seekers should strive to be counted among them. Yet in order to truly represent the Christ, you must strive to attain non-attachment.

***

You attain non-attachment by contemplating the law of free will. God has given all people free will. This means that when you meet a person who judges and accuses you or your beliefs, you fully accept that this person has a right to have and express this opinion. If the opinion springs from black-and-white thinking and is clearly biased or inaccurate, you fully accept that a person has the right to be at this level of consciousness.

Yet you then realize that you also have free will, meaning that you have a right to have your beliefs and to live your life while being completely unaffected by those who disagree with you. When you can truly accept your absolute right to live your life according to your beliefs, you can avoid feeling threatened by those who disagree. You can also avoid feeling that you have an obligation to save them from themselves. Thus, you can now state the highest truth that you see while being completely non-attached to how other people respond and without even having a desire that they should respond in a certain way.

Do you see my point? There is a subtle, but all-important difference, between stating a truth with an intention to convince other people and stating the same truth with complete non-attachment. In both cases, you might express the same truth, perhaps even use the same words, but your intention is different. And when your intention is completely pure, you have no attachment to the outcome. You perform right action while being non-attached to the fruits of action.

Let me make it clear that this is a goal to strive for, and you don’t need to condemn yourself for not meeting it right away. When you are in the material world, it is easy to become overwhelmed by its many pressures. I myself was not always non-attached when I walked the earth 2,000 years ago. That is why I was angry when I overturned the tables of the money-changers, why I was sometimes unnecessarily harsh with the scribes and Pharisees and why I was often irritable with my disciples. Nevertheless, it is important that mature seekers realize the importance of complete non-attachment and strive to attain it rather than thinking they have to get better at convincing other people.

***

I do not want people who read this to reason that they should never respond to people in black-and-white thinking. There are many cases where a response really is futile and will only waste your time and energy. Yet in some cases a response can be appropriate in terms of bearing witness to the higher truth you see. And when you rise above frustration, you will be free to have an intuitive sense of when to respond and when to simply move on.

I also want to make it clear that you should not use your outer mind to judge whether or not people are teachable. Do not fall for the temptation to judge after appearances. For example, the fact that people are open to new ideas does not mean they have taken full responsibility for themselves or even that they have realized that the key to changing their outer situation is to change their inner situation. There are people who go from guru to guru and from teaching to teaching without coming to the realization that makes them teachable. There are even people who have been in an ascended master teaching for decades without being teachable because they are simply not willing to look in the mirror. Thus, it is necessary to go beyond the outer mind and follow your inner direction.

***

At the lowest level of black-and-white thinking, people believe that the religion in which they grew up is the only true religion. In other words, they did not choose to enter that religion and have never questioned its validity. At this level, there is very little growth because people are not open to new ideas.

At the next level up, people become open to new ideas. They often leave their childhood religion and accept a new one. Yet they have not escaped the black-and-white thinking, so they now have to label their old religion as completely false and their new one as completely true. This is potentially a step forward because people have at least started moving. Yet there is a built-in risk that the ego can take people on a time-consuming detour. The psychological mechanism is that in order to leave one belief system and accept a new one, people have to accept that the old one was false, meaning that they have been fooled by false ideas.

In most cases, people deflect this at the conscious level by projecting all responsibility on the old religion and saying they were fooled, manipulated, coerced, brainwashed or whatever. Yet at the subconscious level, people know that if they have been fooled once, they could be fooled again. So even though they have made progress, their black-and-white thinking means that the progress was bought at a price, namely a deep inner insecurity.

In order to deal with this insecurity, it becomes very important for people that they are right. In other words, they have to be right in denouncing their old belief as absolutely false and they have to be right in presenting their new belief as absolutely right. This insecurity is used by the ego to control people and prevent them from rising to the level where they take responsibility for themselves and thus leave behind black-and-white thinking.

As I explain in the ego discourses, the modus operandi of the ego is to elevate one idea to the status of infallibility, meaning that you should never question it. So the ego now manages to convince people that they must never be proven wrong, for if they were, something terrible would happen. Thus, people enter a mindset in which they are constantly feeling threatened and they are constantly seeking to refute any idea or viewpoint that makes it seem like they are wrong. This, of course, makes it impossible for people to admit their mistakes, and if you cannot admit your mistakes, how can you learn from them and grow?

***

People now enter a mindset in which all of their mental effort is dedicated to proving that they are right. One aspect is that they feel a need to evangelize. After all, if you can convert the entire world to your belief system, the ego can feel it must be right. So people now aggressively begin to promote their current belief system, but because of the black-and-white thinking they cannot simply do this by focusing on the positive aspects of their beliefs. They also have to point out the negative aspects of other people’s beliefs. The ego’s reasoning is that if you destroy other people’s faith in their belief system, they will come to accept your belief system as the only true one.

Such people are essentially putting themselves in a state of perpetual conflict with all people who do not agree with them. They must refute anything which seems to threaten their own beliefs and they must destroy other people’s beliefs. In reality, this is driven by the ego’s philosophy that the end can justify the means. Although people often justify this by saying they are simply trying to save other people from going to hell, the reality is that they have become completely controlled by their egos and often by the dark spirits I called the Spoilers. Thus, they are willing to destroy other people’s faith in order to preserve their own.

In reality, the egos of such people are not trying to prove a certain belief system as the only right one. The ego is simply trying to divert people’s attention so they do not discover the ego and start removing the beam from their own eyes. Likewise, the dark spirits are not trying to prove the superiority of any one belief system. They are simply trying to trick people into engaging in endless conflicts over their beliefs, so that they misqualify energy that the dark spirits need in order to survive.

My point is that as a mature spiritual seeker, you need to recognize that if you engage these people and seek to convince them that their beliefs are wrong, you are threatening their fundamental approach to life. For them, never being proven wrong is a matter of life and death. One aspect of this is that if you seek to correct their statements – even if they are factually incorrect – they will immediately try to refute everything you say without actually giving it serious consideration. They are simply not evaluating your reasoning, for they have already decided that it could not be right. So they are only looking for ways to refute it, and black-and-white thinking can ALWAYS refute any argument given from a higher level of consciousness.

The other aspect is that when you threaten such peoples’ beliefs, they will attack you in return. If people are truly trapped in fear, they will be willing to destroy you in order to preserve the illusion that they are right. If they are less trapped in fear, they will seek to destroy your beliefs or your faith in general. You must also realize that many of these people are not in control of themselves. Thus, you are not dealing with a human being with whom you can reason. You are dealing with the person’s ego and/or the dark spirits working through the person. That is why you will encounter very aggressive and vicious attacks. I am not trying to defend such attacks, I am merely pointing out that the people cannot control themselves. Thus, you need to be aware that if you approach a mad dog, you should not be surprised if you get bitten. And you really should not blame the person, for you should know what you get into.

***

When you are dealing with people in black-and-white thinking, you need to be aware that they will project their own state of consciousness upon you, and thus you should not be surprised when they accuse YOU of doing what they themselves are doing. I am bringing this up because when you know what to expect, you can avoid being pulled into a pointless argument of seeking to refute what simply cannot be refuted as long as these people hold on to their black-and-white approach.

This is not to say that you cannot sometimes help such people rise above their state of mind. But in order to do so, you must surprise them by not doing what they expect. Such people expect that when they accuse you, you will seek to refute their accusations and accuse them in return. If you are to have any chance of reaching the real person who is trapped behind all the defenses, you need to shock that person by not responding as expected. That is one reason why I told people not to resist evil and to turn the other cheek. Sometimes this can literally shock people into rethinking their actions and mindset.

My point is that if the more mature spiritual seekers decide to engage people who are in black-and-white thinking, you should be aware of what you are getting into. It is often a thankless task with a low probability of positive change. Thus, it is constructive that you see it primarily as a way for you to test the purity of your intentions and your level of non-attachment. See it as a learning experience and use it for your own growth. Leave the other people’s growth entirely to their free will.

NOTE: For additional teachings on the topics in this discussion, see the following section. Also see the following message.

 

 Copyright © 2009 by Kim Michaels

TOPICS: Living Word must be brought forth through a person – a true messenger must have Christ discernment – any message given for a specific level of consciousness – messenger is an example for others to follow – a messenger can have individuality – a messenger does not have to be perfect – demonstrate a willingness to overcome human consciousness – messengers not above the law – if the messenger has attachments, it can distort the message – the messenger has no ownership of the message – do not let any being take over your mind – ascended masters do not use trance channels – Christ discernment – fear of making mistakes –  only an open mind can grow – paralyzing yourself with fear of false teachings – follow the highest truth you can see and remain open – getting accurate messages – what it means to be a messenger – unconscious messengers – conscious messengers – declared messengers – millions of people are messengers in some capacity – no messenger has exclusivity  – holding a spiritual mantle is not easy – idolatry of a messenger – telling others what to do – the biggest challenge for a messenger –

---

Question from Kim: The Living Word must enter this world through a person who serves as a mediator, is that correct?

Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:

Yes, because one of the major purposes for bringing forth the Living Word is to inspire people to reach for a higher state of consciousness. The best way to accomplish that goal is to bring forth the Living Word through a person who has achieved some measure of that Christ consciousness.

Another purpose is to show people that they are the word incarnate, as I stated 2,000 years ago. In fact, everything in the world of form can be said to be the word incarnate in the sense that God uses sound to create the material world.

You can call such a person a messenger, a mediator, a seer, a sage, a prophet or even a medium or channel. The name is not important; the important thing is that the person has achieved the ability to tune in to his or her Christ self and therefore has some measure of Christ discernment.

Kim: So would you define a true messenger as a person with some degree of Christ discernment?

Jesus: As I said, we are entering an age in which it is becoming increasingly easy for people to turn the dial of consciousness and tune in to something beyond the material universe. If you do even a brief search on the Internet, you will see that there is a huge amount of material which is purported to come from sources beyond the material world.

There is so much material that it will overwhelm anyone trying to study it all. Many of the ideas contained in this material contradict each other. If you uncritically studied all of the material, you might end up being so confused or disillusioned that you would either reject the entire material or end up not knowing what to believe. As I have said many times, we of the ascended masters have no desire to see lifestreams end up in such an impasse or stalemate. We desire to see lifestreams enter a viable spiritual path that will gradually and reliably lead them to a higher state of consciousness. So you simply have to find a way to select some of the material and exclude other material.

If you are a sincere student, you would do well to adopt a standard that only material that comes from the ascended masters is worthy of your time and attention. There is a wide variety of such material available but the bottom line is that it is brought forth through a person who is able to raise his or her consciousness to the level of the Christ consciousness. You simply need to consider that some material is valid and some is not valid, no matter what claims are made by the material or the people bring forth that material.

I foresee that many people will ask how they can select the right type of material. My advice is to make a sincere effort to sharpen your inner attunement, as I explain in the Christhood Course. Then, follow your intuitive insights. If you come across material that seems interesting, study it and apply the technique for inner attunement. If you get the impulse to engage in further studies, by all means do so. If you feel an inner reluctance or doubt about the material, leave it alone for now and look for something that appeals to you.

I know some people will want me to act as a clearinghouse, telling them which material is valid and which is not. However, that would prevent people from developing personal discernment which would impede people’s spiritual progress. Obviously, that is not my intent.

Kim: What does it mean to be a messenger?

Jesus: A messenger is simply a person who receives a message from a source and delivers it to the recipient. As I use the term in this context, it means a person who raises his or her consciousness to the level of the Christ consciousness, receives a message from the ascended masters and delivers that message to people who are not yet able to raise their consciousness to that level.

Kim: Isn’t it a problem that the message is affected by the messenger’s consciousness?

Jesus: Not when you understand the true intent behind the message. The main purpose is to demonstrate to people in a lower state of consciousness that there is a spiritual reality beyond the material world, that it is possible for a human being to contact that reality and that doing so is worthwhile. When we of the ascended masters give a message, we are not trying to bring forth an infallible doctrine. It is essential that all spiritual seekers come to a full recognition of this fact.

When we give a message through a specific messenger, we always have a target audience for that message. The target audience is not so much a group of people but people who are at a specific level of consciousness. Our purpose is to help such people rise to a higher level of consciousness. We hope they will eventually discover the spiritual path and anchor themselves on that path.

When we select a messenger, we attempt to select a person who has experienced and risen above the consciousness of the target audience. This is done so that the target audience can identify with the messenger and so that the messenger can empathize with and understand the audience.

It is always our hope that the messenger will serve as an example for other people to follow. The messenger should demonstrate the path to personal Christhood. Personal Christhood means that you are expressing your God-given individuality in the material world. It is perfectly acceptable that a messenger is expressing his or her God-given individuality through the messengership. What kind of example would we give by having a messenger with no individuality or personality? Members of the ascended masters are not robots, and we want to make it clear that you do not have to turn yourself into a robot to make progress on the spiritual path. So we want our messengers to express their individuality, however, we obviously want it to be their God-given individuality and not the pseudo self, or ego.

All true spiritual teachers are expressing their God-given individuality through the message. This is their right as co-creators with God. Contrary to popular belief, I was no exception to this. My ministry described a universal spiritual path, but the path was described and demonstrated through my individuality. When I talked about the kingdom of heaven, I was describing the kingdom of heaven as seen through the mind of Jesus Christ. How could I possibly do anything else?

You must understand that when we use a messenger, we are always taking a calculated risk. We do not require that a messenger has attained full Christ consciousness. If we did, it would be difficult to find messengers. We realize that the messenger might express some of his or her pseudo identity through the messengership. In some cases, this can indeed abort or distort the entire mission. However, as long as it is not taken into the extremes, it can actually serve a purpose.

Kim: You mean, it is acceptable that a messenger isn’t perfect and is working out his or her personal limitations?

Jesus: It is not necessarily harmful that people see a messenger express certain human characteristics. This might help people identify with the messenger and also help them realize that God does not require his servants to be perfect. What is required is that people are willing to overcome the lower state of consciousness. So if the messenger demonstrates a willingness to overcome the human consciousness, it can serve to illustrate the path. It is important that people can identify with the messenger because part of the spiritual message is that even when you have human imperfections, you can still approach and interact with the spiritual realm.

Because of the relativity of the dualistic mind, people see themselves as being separated from God. When you combine this with an unwillingness to change or take responsibility for your situation, you get a very dangerous cocktail. This causes people to see any spiritual teacher as being far above themselves, and therefore they elevate the teacher to an idol instead of an example. People feel that for various reasons, such as guilt or inadequacy, they could not possibly be worthy to interact with the spiritual realm. Only a perfect person could do that.

When a messenger displays human frailties, it can potentially help prevent idolatry of the messenger. Unfortunately, some people will not let go of the idea that only a perfect person can interact with the spiritual realm, so they use the messenger’s imperfections as an excuse for rejecting the message. Did I mention that even the best spiritual teachers cannot reach everyone?

Let me make it clear that I am in no way saying that a misuse of the messenger’s position is somehow excusable or justified. The messenger will make karma for any misuse of his or her position, as will any other human being. Throughout history, numerous people have attempted to create the illusion that, for whatever reason, they are above the law. The law, however, is no respecter of persons, and therefore no one is above the law. My point is that people should not expect a messenger or spiritual leader to be perfect. They should recognize that the ascended masters can and will communicate with people who are not perfect.

A messenger’s human imperfections also have the function of sorting out people who have not understood one of the basic principles of the spiritual path, namely that in order to know spiritual truth, you must be willing to look beyond the outer appearances found in the material universe. If people focus on the outer imperfections of the messenger, and perhaps use them as an excuse for rejecting the message, they have demonstrated that they are not ready for the message.

I am not thereby saying that we want messengers to have human faults or that such faults are somehow acceptable. Obviously, we want both messengers and students to strive to overcome the lower consciousness. However, you must start somewhere, and your only option is to start at your present level of consciousness and move forward from there. How could a perfect messenger demonstrate the path towards perfection?

Kim: Isn’t there a risk that the messenger can distort or pervert the message or the entire mission?

Jesus: Yes, and this has indeed happened in certain cases. Such distortion always comes about because the messenger is attached to some aspect of the lower consciousness. For example, a messenger might be attached to an outer organization or doctrine and desire to see every aspect of the message fit within certain boundaries. This will not only limit the material we can bring forth through that messenger; it might even cause the messenger to deliberately distort the material in an attempt to make it conform to an outer doctrine. A messenger might also impose certain personal desires or idiosyncrasies that are so restrictive as to limit or distort the mission.

A person might become attached to being a messenger and having followers. Some people started out as genuine messengers but they became attached to being admired by a group of followers. When the mission was completed, the messenger was not willing to let go and wanted to continue the messengership. Such a person might fake messages or open his or her mind to lower entities that are not of the ascended masters.

One of the main challenges for any messenger is to always maintain a clear recognition that the messages come from a higher source. Therefore, the messenger has no ownership of the message. The messenger receives a message freely and must be willing to give the message freely, meaning without conditions.

I have said that there are two basic types of people, namely creators and organizers. When a creator serves as a messenger, he or she will usually be quite willing to freely give the message without attempting to control the recipients. However, if a creator becomes unbalanced, he might decide that he no longer needs the ascended masters as the source of his messages. Or she might decide that she has a right to alter the message according to her own so-called creative expression. For that reason, we often prefer to use organizers as messengers because they will be more concerned about bringing forth a pure message.

If an organizer becomes unbalanced, he or she will want to control the people receiving the message. Such a person might become attached to having power over other people and set him/herself up as an intermediary between the people and the ascended masters. Obviously, that defeats the entire purpose of serving as an open door between people and the ascended masters. An unbalanced organizer is not distorting the message or making it his own; he is attempting to control what the followers do with the message or how they interpret it.

Did I happen to mention that balance is always the key to success in any spiritual endeavor?

Kim: Some of the people who are channeling say that their souls leave their bodies, and the channeled entity takes over the body. The channel is not aware of what is being said. Such channels often claim that this process ensures that the channel’s consciousness does not influence the message, and therefore the message is purer. What is your response?

Jesus: A complex question. Let me start by saying to you, Kim, that even if you were willing to let me take over your body and mind, I would not do so. I am using you as a messenger because you have always had an uncompromising commitment to not let anything or anyone take over your mind.

You need to understand that we of the ascended masters have an uncompromising respect for people’s free will. We will not violate the free will of an individual. We will not take over someone’s body or enter into their mind. If your lifestream leaves the body, and some external entity takes over your body and speaks through it, how could you possibly exercise your God-given free will? How could you exercise discernment concerning what is being said and whether it comes from the ascended masters or from a lower source?

I have talked about the four quadrants of the material realm and I have said there are many beings in the emotional and mental quadrants who are willing to speak through just about anyone. Such beings are quite willing to take over someone’s body or mind. When I walked the earth, we called it possession. We of the ascended masters do not take over someone’s body or mind. However, there are instances in which a person enters into a state of consciousness that from an outside perspective might look like trance. The person is in a state of spiritual ecstasy and is therefore not aware of what is being said. From an outer perspective, there might be no discernible difference. The inner difference is that we of the ascended masters do not enter into and take over a person’s body and mind. The person is in a higher state of consciousness in which the person’s normal waking awareness is temporarily set aside. This allows us to speak through that person or give the person a vision.

For some people it is necessary to set aside their normal waking consciousness before they can serve as messengers or visionaries. This was especially the case in the past when the energies of the material octave were denser than today. It was more difficult to make contact with the spiritual realm, and therefore the setting aside of normal consciousness was often necessary.

In today’s age, we desire to see people who can make contact with their Christ selves without having to be in a trance or an altered state of consciousness. When you walk the path of personal Christhood, you gradually learn to see through and beyond the lower self and to merge with your Christ self. One might say that you move into a new level of awareness in which contact with your Christ self and the spiritual realm becomes a part of your normal, day-to-day consciousness. When you do reach a certain level of Christhood, you have no need to be in a trance or an altered state of consciousness in order to set aside the lower self and receive accurate messages through your Christ self. You simply focus your attention and tune in to your Christ self. This allows you to receive messages from your Christ self or from a member of the ascended masters speaking through the mediator of your Christ self.

What I am saying here is that I do not want people to make black-and-white judgments and reject anything that comes through a person who is in a trance or an altered state of consciousness. However, I do want people to realize that if a person allows an outside entity to take over his body or mind, that entity is not a member of the ascended masters. I also want people to realize that we are moving into an age in which a messenger should be able to receive valid messages without having to be in a trance or even in an altered state of consciousness.

Kim: How do you avoid following a false teacher or teaching?

Jesus: By making a diligent effort to increase your inner attunement and using it to follow the highest truth you can currently grasp.

Let me again talk about creators and organizers. An unbalanced creator tends to be open to anything that seems interesting at the moment. An unbalanced organizer will cling to one particular teaching and elevate it to an infallible doctrine. These two approaches might seem diametrically opposed but they spring from the same state of consciousness, namely a refusal to exercise and sharpen your Christ discernment. Whether you accept everything or reject everything, you are refusing to discern.

You cannot take a mechanical approach to the spiritual path. You cannot define an outer rule that gives you a fail-safe way to determine what is false and what is true. Discernment can only come from within, from your Christ self.

The dream of the mechanical path is that you can find a teaching, organization or Guru that offers only truth. So you can simply follow that outer teaching without thinking, or rather without making the effort to discern. However, even the best spiritual teachings can contain erroneous or incomplete ideas. To make it on the path, you need to learn how to evaluate a single idea and discern whether the idea is valid, regardless of where it came from.

I continually see people who do not want to make an effort to build that discernment or who are so afraid of making a mistake that they would rather not make any choices. They want some kind of Guru to tell them what is true. This simply isn’t the way to walk the spiritual path. You must wrestle with the difficult decisions, and you must be willing to experiment, even if doing so causes you to make a mistake. A false Guru will gladly tell people what to believe in an attempt to make the followers co-dependent on the Guru. A true Guru will force the students to exercise their discernment because the goal of a true Guru is to make the student independent and spiritually self-sufficient.

As I have said before, anything that happens to you can be turned into a springboard for your spiritual growth. I see people who are so afraid of false teachers that they dare not open their minds to anything new. One thing is certain, namely that such people will not grow until they open their minds. What is the greater evil? To close your mind and stand still, or to open your mind and take a risk? In reality, the risk is not that great as long as you keep looking for a higher truth. It is not a disaster to follow a false teaching for a while. As long as you work on sharpening your attunement and remain open to a higher understanding, you will eventually see through that false teaching. By doing so, you will have learned a valuable lesson on your path. You will have spent your time more wisely than if you had been standing still.

Many people in orthodox or traditional religions, and even some followers of New Age teachings, paralyze themselves with a fear of false teachings. You also see this among scientifically minded people who dare not recognize their inner spirituality. My advice is to always follow your highest intuition. If you feel an inner prompting to study a certain teaching, then study the teaching without worrying about whether it is a false teaching or whether it comes through a false teacher. If you feel an inner prompting, it is because your lifestream needs to learn a lesson from studying a specific teaching. Your lifestream might need to learn how to discern a false teaching, and this must happen through direct experience.

Obviously, you should strive to avoid following false teachings. However, the real risk posed by false teachings is not that you temporarily study them because even false teachings contain elements of truth. The real risk is that you might close your mind and elevate a false teaching to an infallible doctrine. Once again, the essential key to spiritual progress is to remain open to a higher understanding.

I see some Christians who are so concerned about the diverse teachings found in the New Age movement that they cling to orthodox doctrines. Unfortunately, some of those orthodox doctrines are perversions of my true teachings, and therefore they deserve to be called false teachings. Yet out of the need for security, such people refuse to acknowledge the falsity of some orthodox doctrines.

Follow the highest truth you can see at the moment and remain open to a higher truth. If you will base your path on this simple advice, you will grow from every situation.

Once again, balance is the key. Some people go into one extreme and refuse to acknowledge the existence of dark forces. They uncritically study any teaching that tickles their fancy without ever considering that it might contain false ideas. Such people will inevitably be influenced by some false ideas. Other people go into the other extreme and become so afraid of dark forces that they cling to one doctrine and refuse to consider anything else. Such people will inevitably close their minds to some true ideas and therefore miss opportunities for growth.

The trick is to realize that the dark forces will win when you go into either extreme. The key to true spiritual progress is to find the middle way of the Christ consciousness whereby you can discern between truth and error. You can avoid error no matter which disguise it is using at the moment.

Kim: You want people to communicate with you and other members of the ascended masters. Many Christians and New Age people claim to have such communication, yet they get conflicting messages. How can you get accurate messages?

Jesus: Begin by studying my teachings about spiritual visions and how valid visions can differ. Then, make a sincere effort develop an uncompromising respect for people’s right to express their visions. Do not engage in conflicts or battles with those who have different spiritual visions. Simply promote your own truth without denouncing the truth of others. When communicating with the spiritual realm, do not seek to bring forth an absolute or infallible doctrine. Seek to bring forth the Living Word, as I defined it earlier.

Study my teachings on the dualistic consciousness and develop an understanding of how the relativity of the lower mind can affect your view of reality. Then, make a commitment to learn to see through the relativity of the lower mind so that it no longer colors your communication with the spiritual realm.

Realize that the key to accurate communication is non-attachment to anything in this world, especially to particular outer doctrines or beliefs. Attachments color your vision, and this can happen at subconscious levels. Learn to see through the subconscious manipulation of your lower self and external forces.

Examine your motives for wanting spiritual communication. They should ideally be based on love, a desire to help other people, a desire to fulfill God’s purposes and a desire to achieve and express the highest possible understanding of the spiritual truth. If you have any kind of self-centered motives, be they a desire to confirm an outer doctrine, a desire for personal attention, a decide to be thought wise among men or a desire for personal gain, you are not likely to receive accurate messages from the spiritual realm. You might receive prolific communication from a lower realm but it will not come from the ascended masters.

Remember my statement about not seeking your reward on earth. I am not saying that a messenger cannot receive monetary compensation because the workman is worth his or her hire. Yet if you are driven by a desire for personal gain, you are not likely to reach the ascended masters.

Maintain moderation in all aspects of your life, from your consciousness to your outer lifestyle. Avoid all drugs, alcohol, tobacco or any extremes of food, such as excess sugar or heavy meats. Did I mention that balance in all things is the key?

Kim: You want everyone to have inner communion, but you are not saying that everyone should be a messenger, are you?

Jesus: Yes I am, but you need to understand that there are many ways to be a messenger.

Consider the analogy of people trapped in a dark room. Some people manage to climb to the ceiling and open a hole through which the light can shine upon them. The simple fact is that anyone who attains glimpses of Christ consciousness, and therefore sees the light, will become a messenger for those who have not yet seen the light. Once you glimpse Christ consciousness, you can tell people that there is more to life than the lower consciousness.

Throughout history, millions of people have served as messengers in various capacities. Many people have served as unconscious messengers. They received intuitive insights or ideas and passed them on to others. In many cases, people presented these ideas as their own, and this is perfectly acceptable. We of the ascended masters are not attempting to take credit.

Many people have been conscious messengers in the sense that they knew their ideas and insights came from a higher realm. Some people have even been aware that their insights came from a particular spiritual being, such as myself. Most of these people have simply passed on their messages without exposing the source.

We have also had a limited number of people who openly declared that they served as messengers for beings in higher realms. In the coming age, we will need many more conscious and declared messengers. However, we are not talking about thousands of declared messengers. We are attempting to bring forth spiritual truth without overwhelming people, so we only need a limited number of people who openly declare themselves as messengers. However, we can use an unlimited number of people who attune to their Christ selves and demonstrate the spiritual path in their everyday lives!

So I want people to realize that when you walk the path of personal Christhood, you will begin to serve in the capacity of a messenger. This should not be the cause for pride or conceit, but on the other hand I do not want people to refuse playing this role. You can serve as a messenger without openly declaring this to the world. Simply live in harmony with your spiritual insights and seek to inspire others whenever you can.

Kim: I am aware of several people whom I believe were genuine messengers for the ascended masters. Yet some of them claimed to be the only messenger. How do you explain this?

Jesus: When you apply the broad definition of a messenger that I have just given, you will see that we of the ascended masters will communicate through anyone who attains even glimpses of Christ consciousness. Therefore, at any given moment there is a great number of messengers on the planet.

There is, however, a higher level of messengership in which a person is anointed as a messenger and receives a mantle as messenger. A mantle can most easily be described as a robe of spiritual energy which we lower upon and anchor in a person’s energy field. There are a number of different spiritual mantles, including mantles for different types of messengers. Only in rare cases do two people hold the same mantle. A person might claim to be the only messenger based on the fact that he or she is the only person currently holding a specific mantle as messenger.

There have also been some people who had a personal need to feel and declare themselves as the only messenger or the only true messenger. We have sometimes allowed people to make that claim because it helped the person overcome that desire. Even though the claim was not strictly correct, we of the ascended masters could still use the person as a valid and valuable messenger.

You must understand that being a messenger is not an easy task. When you hold a high mantle, you will often be attacked by lower forces that oppose the mantle, as seen in the account of my life and mission. It is difficult for most people to imagine what is it is like to hold such a mantle. I hope people will understand that displaying a few personal idiosyncrasies can actually help the messenger hold the balance for his or her mantle. We do not encourage this, but we allow it as long as the person fulfills his or her role as messenger and does not compromise the mantle.

I have attempted to explain that it is quite possible to serve as a messenger or spiritual teacher without having fully overcome the lower consciousness. In some cases, a person’s lower consciousness gives him or her a desire to be the only savior. This can spring from pride and a desire to be the only one to save the planet, but it can also spring from a genuine desire to know that you have made a difference. This can cause people to attempt to set themselves up as the most important spiritual teacher or the only messenger. In many cases, such a desire will be heavily reinforced by a group of followers who have a need to feel that they belong to the most important organization and that their organization alone is saving the planet.

Once you have risen above the lower state of consciousness, all such desires and impulses fade away. We of the ascended masters have no desire to take personal credit for the saving of the planet; we simply want to see the planet saved. Whether you are a student or a messenger, you should strive to develop that same detachment and purity of motive.

Kim: I know people who elevated a messenger to an idol. How should people relate to a messenger?

Jesus: One on the main characteristics of the lower consciousness is that it creates idols. People have a tendency to elevate and idolize those who rise above the crowd. Spiritual seekers are no different, and it has happened that a spiritual leader or messenger has been turned into an idol by his or her followers. In some instances the leader did little to prevent this, and some leaders even encouraged it.

This idolatry is always unfortunate because it does not serve to further the progress of the followers. Idolatry creates the danger that the messenger or leader might begin to believe in the idolatry and therefore compromise his or her mission. Once again, the solution is that everyone strives to put on personal Christhood. The best way to overcome idolatry of others is to realize that you too have infinite value in the eyes of God. That insight will naturally come from contact with your Christ self.

Being a messenger is an important function, but it does not make you any better or more important than those who are listening to the message. If no one was listening to the message, what would be the value of the messenger? Therefore, I do not want to see anyone idolize a messenger.

A messenger should always be seen as an example of how to follow the path of personal Christhood. Don’t let the messenger become more important than the message. Don’t let the outer messenger prevent you from establishing contact to the inner messenger, namely your Christ self.

What is the ultimate success of a true spiritual teacher? It is that the followers embody the teaching and rise to the same level of consciousness as the teacher. When the teacher leaves the material world, there should be someone to carry the torch and continue the mission. If the teacher has not trained a successor, he or she has not completely fulfilled the mission. If no student has dared to rise to the same level of consciousness as the teacher, the students have not fulfilled their mission.

Kim: I see some people, especially psychics, who claim to have spiritual communion and use it to tell others what to do. What are your thoughts about this?

Jesus: When you strive for spiritual communion, you must be aware that the lower self has a need for attention, to be thought wise among men and to control others. This can be seen among all people. You frequently see people who attempt to use spiritual communication to fulfill these lower desires. Such people often claim to have received personal instructions from heavenly beings to other people. They do this in an attempt to make themselves seem important. I strongly discourage people from this approach.

Once again, let me caution against black-and-white thinking. I am not thereby saying that a messenger can never give a personal message. What I am saying is that when you are new to inner communion, you should strive to get messages that apply to yourself only. In most cases it is best to keep such information private without sharing it with others.

What I would like to see is that every spiritual seeker finds a selection of spiritual teachings that were brought forth through reliable messengers. Study such teachings to get an overall understanding of the spiritual path. Then, make a sincere effort to establish contact to your Christ self and use that contact to get specific directions related to your personal life.

In some instances it can be acceptable to seek personal advice from a spiritual teacher. However, always bear in mind that the true purpose of the path is to attain Christhood. When you do so, you can get advice from the best teacher of all, your Christ self. Many people allow themselves to become codependent on some kind of teacher, religious authority figure or even a psychic. They can no longer make decisions without consulting the oracle. This is an unhealthy reaction, and the best way to overcome it is to establish contact with your Christ self. If you can get answers from within who needs answers from without?

If you desire inner communication, make a commitment to study spiritual teachings. Remember my saying that a spiritual teacher can only multiply what the student brings to the altar.

Kim: What is the biggest challenge for a messenger or spiritual teacher?

Jesus: The biggest challenge is that the messenger might gradually develop a subtle feeling that he or she is somehow above the followers. It is very easy to think that because you are a messenger, you are special or in a separate category. This can be heavily reinforced if the followers begin to idolize the messenger.

The most devastating effect of this is that the messenger begins to set himself or herself apart from the followers. Many spiritual or religious organizations have a culture in which the leader is seen as being above any member of the organization. The leader might actually reinforce this culture and seek to increase or maintain the distance.

The true purpose of any messenger is to demonstrate the path to personal Christhood. The true success of any spiritual teacher is to take the students to the same level of consciousness as the teacher. In other words, if a messenger is successful, the followers will walk the path of personal Christhood. As they walk that path, the distance between the consciousness of the student and the consciousness of the teacher naturally becomes smaller.

This is the supreme challenge for any spiritual teacher. Will the teacher allow the student to rise to the same level, or possibly go beyond, that of the teacher? An immature or unenlightened teacher will not allow this to happen. A mature or enlightened teacher will encourage it.

Kim: What would you say to a person who wants to become a messenger?

Jesus: Don’t even try! Give up, surrender and let go of all desires to become a messenger. Instead, focus all of your attention on studying the spiritual path and manifesting your personal Christhood.

If you deliberately seek messengership, if you seek to take it by force, you will not become a messenger for the ascended masters. You might become a messenger for lower forces but not for us.

Do not seek messengership. Seek first individual Christhood, and the messengership might be added unto you if that is your role in life. Do not seek messengership; allow it to find you.

 

Copyright © 2009 by Kim Michaels

TOPICS: Using a spiritual teaching as a springboard for growth – true goal of religion is to raise people’s consciousness – no doctrine can convey the reality of God – need for inner experience – the Living Word facilitates the experience –

---

Question from Kim: You talk about a Living Church based on the Living Word. It seems like such a church has no fixed doctrine. If not, how can people know what is true? I mean, traditionally people have used religious doctrines as a stable foundation. How can people just leave that behind?

Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:

I am not suggesting that people leave it behind. As I have said many times, the lifestream cannot exist in a vacuum; it needs a foundation for its exploration of the world. There is nothing wrong with using a belief system or religious doctrine as your foundation, as long as you realize that it should be a springboard to a higher understanding and that it must never become a prison that entraps your mind. This is what most religious people have failed to understand.

The Living Church will have a body of teachings that give people a basic understanding of the spiritual side of life. This might incorporate elements from all of the world’s religions as well as newly revealed teachings. The important point is that outer teachings are seen as a foundation instead of being elevated to an infallible doctrine. A Living Church must give people basic teachings and allow them to develop their own, personal understanding without seeking to control them in any way.

The true goal of spirituality is to help people attain salvation, meaning individual Christhood. You will not enter the wedding feast by belonging to an outer religion. You will enter the feast only by wearing the wedding garment of the Christ consciousness. To put on that garment, you must increase the contact with your Christ self until your lifestream accepts itself as being one with that Christ self, as being the bride of Christ, as being the Christ in embodiment. When you attain that Christhood, you attain the ultimate standard for discerning what is true (meaning what is in harmony with God’s laws) and what is not true.

I have tried to explain that it is simply not possible to define an outer doctrine which accurately describes the reality of God. You can only know the reality of God through a direct inner experience. The true purpose of the Living Church is to give people the best possible opportunity to have such a direct experience. That experience does not automatically come about as the result of hearing a minister read and interpret an outer doctrine. The experience is much more likely to happen as the result of hearing the Living Word.

When I sent my disciples out to preach my message, I told them, “Take no thought for what ye shall say; it shall be given unto you.” They did not go out with a fixed outer doctrine. They preached the Living Word by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Living Word is not meant to be taken as an infallible or fixed doctrine. It is given to people in a specific state of consciousness, and it is given with the distinct purpose of helping these people rise to a higher level of consciousness. When they do rise to that level, they can receive an even higher understanding which might go far beyond the original delivery of the word. You must never fall into the trap of thinking that the Living Word is somehow unchangeable.

The Living Word is precisely that; it is living and ever flowing. If you turn it into a fixed doctrine, it is no longer the Living Word, and it can quickly calcify as a dogma filled with dead men’s bones.

 

 Copyright © 2009 by Kim Michaels

TOPICS: Speak from a sense of joy – you have found purpose and answers to your questions – in the past most people could be awakened only through fear – today, important to seek Christ consciousness – share that joy and peace – preach a better future –

---

Question: It seems like the ascended masters are saying that it is very important that a critical mass of people wake up to try to put on their Christ selves and I don’t know whether that is happening or not, but should we be doing something to wake people up, is it time to shout from the rooftops? And what kind of things should we be doing to wake people up if that is the case?

Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:

Surely you can be doing something to wake people up. But you must understand that what we truly desire you to be doing is to be Being who you are—to let your light shine. And so, do not go out with the intent that you have to wake people up, that you have to save the earth, that you have to avoid this or that calamity. Instead, go out with the sense of joy—that you have found answers to your questions about life. That you have found a sense of purpose and meaning, a sense of joy that you never knew before—when you thought life had no purpose or when you did not know what that purpose was.

Go out and radiate that peace and that joy. For it is indeed true that there are certain cycles, and that certain events can happen at certain times. But the best way to wake people up is to show them that there is greater joy in following the spiritual path than living a materialistic life.

In the past when the consciousness was much more dense, prophecies about world events and calamities had a different purpose than they have today. Back then, the consciousness was so dense that there literally were many people who were stuck at a certain level of consciousness—and could not be awakened unless they were shaken so badly that they literally were scared out of their minds, so to speak – scared out of their mental boxes – and therefore reevaluated their lives based on fear.

And although we have no desire to promote fear, I must tell you that we have sometimes given dire prophecies because we knew that the only way to wake up the people was to give them the bleakest possible view of the situation. Obviously, we did not create the fear—people created the fear in their own beings. We knew that this would happen. But yet we still gave the prophecy because we knew that it was better people were awakened through fear than not at all.

But in this day and age we have a desire to see those who will use prophecy without fear whatsoever. And that is why we look to the most spiritually mature people to rise above fear, and realize that a cycle is ending. And yes, there are certain world events that could take place, for as Mother Mary has said, unless people are awakened to the connection between their consciousness and the physical conditions on earth, well then they must be awakened through physical calamities that makes them feel that there is nothing on the earth they can count on to last forever.

And so, we desire those of you who are open to these teachings to first seek the kingdom of God. Seek the kingdom of joy and peace within yourself, and then go out and share that joy and peace. This does not mean you cannot give people a prophecy, if you sense that that is what they need. But you do not come from a state of fear. You come from a state of realism. And then you still show them that even though you recognize the reality of the situation, you can find peace and joy on the spiritual path, for you know that you are more than the physical body. You are a spiritual being who is free—free because you have seen beyond the outer conditions.

So yes, go and shout the message from the housetops. Learn from my disciples 2,000 years ago. For what did they go out and shout from the housetops? Well, they repeated the message that I gave many times—”The kingdom of God is at hand!” Meaning that the kingdom of God is a state of consciousness that you can experience right now. You do not have to wait till your body dies in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. You can enter it right now while you are in your physical body.

This is the true message that we have always attempted to bring across. But of course, it must be adapted to people’s state of consciousness. But in this age you can do so much more with it, in terms of raising people’s understanding to the joy and the peace of the path—rather than the fear and the suffering and the dire prophecies.

Certainly there are people who need the stick, but we are looking much more to those who do not need the stick because they realize that there is more to life. There is the joy that you can find when you are willing to look beyond the outer conditions. So find that joy in yourself and then simply share that joy with others.

And once you have the joy, you will then have the inner direction to see how you individually can help others in their individual situations and states of consciousness. For there is not one message that will fit all people. And this is what you can only know from within, based on who you are, what is your flame that you can share with others.

 

Copyright © 2007 by Kim Michaels

TOPICS: Balancing the basic forces of creation – ego seeks to pull you into mutually exclusive extremes – beyond black-and-white and gray – the eternal challenge is to discern – seeing beyond polarities – seek balanced action – witnessing to your truth is part of your divine plan – people do not reject you – people have a right to reject the Christ – they do not have the right to not encounter the Christ – get beyond your self-centeredness – depersonalize your life – do not speak from black-and-white perspective – presenting your message so it truly helps people – set other people free – you are not responsible for the salvation of others – give people an opportunity to choose; do not choose for them – give people time to grow gradually – compulsion comes from the ego – learning when to keep silent – speak from the heart – strive to be an open door – learn from your experiments – the delicate balance of Christhood – setting your priorities – do not let others take you from the path of Christhood – be undivided in yourself – when people will not change – you disturb people’s comfortability – your light disturbs people – Mother Mary’s comments –

---

Question: Dear Kim, My closest friend from school is an atheist and is currently living in a lesbian relationship. When we became friends she was neither of those things, although I don’t use that as any ‘justification’ of why I became friends with her, merely to illustrate that what I’m going to tell you isn’t an issue that has always existed. We were in the same class at school and lived close and have remained mentally (if not geographically) close for almost 30 years now.

Since finding the true, inner spiritual path with the help of the teachings for which you are the messenger, I have realised that being the Christ means quite a radical change in my world – particularly in what I take part in and how I act and think.
In years gone by, her becoming a lesbian (she wasn’t always) seemed irrelevant to me. I have always believed that homosexuality is unnatural, but not in a confrontational, accusatory way. I have simply respected people’s right to live as they choose and said nothing about it, while reserving the right to disagree with them on whether same sex unions should be viewed as normal. But I never felt the drive to explain these feelings to her, and would have considered it very rude to tell her when she’d not asked my opinion. As a result of this, I have been welcomed at my friend’s house and grown to know her partner. There are serious problems in the relationship that I have been consulted on many, many times by my friend, and I feel strongly that the relationship is a destructive one in which my friend has been mentally abused by her partner for years. My friend tells me she agrees with this assessment, yet she does not want to leave the partnership. On this point I can do very little, I feel, other than continue to be there for her, encourage her to be strong, and as someone much wiser than me would say, wait for her to make a better decision.
However, I am now in the position where I feel a drive to talk to her about the issue of homosexuality because I know that as a Christed being, I cannot let her continue blindly down this path with no idea of the consequences. It is a hard thing to do and I know it will risk the friendship – more than risk it I would imagine – yet I would rather have my friend dislike me and hear the truth, than not rock the boat and have her continue in ignorance. Of course I will always be open to friendship with her and will treat her with compassion and love, but while I maintain the vision that she will somehow accept what I say in the manner it is meant, I am not blind to the fact that this is realistically a vague hope, rather than a likelihood.
So I suppose my question is about how easy or difficult it is for someone trying to be like Christ to have normal friendships. When I assess the reaction of my mum to these teachings I can see that she simply does not want to know them. She does not want to be challenged. She would rather cling to what she believes than to hear Jesus through me, and as a consequence has dismissed the site and the books because she doesn’t like the way they’re written and doesn’t believe Jesus would use the Internet. This upset me at first but in fact ultimately served to highlight an area where I was emotionally dependent on a favourable reaction from her, in order to work on that block to my growth.
I now face the same thing with my friend and whilst I do not want to hurt her emotionally, I am more concerned about hurting her spiritually by not telling her. I am also aware that she has not confided in many people about the problems she has at home and I don’t want her to think she can’t come to me in the future because I don’t think the lifestyle she has chosen is her highest potential.
You see, while I love God in other people, I’m just not sure how much I have in common with people who deny God within themselves and other people, or see the world from a position of scientific materialism, any more. Is it possible to sustain friendship where there is little common ground? And as I write that I think ‘why would I want to?’ I get the impression that some of those people want to debate issues with me, but they don’t want to learn from me, and I won’t be caught up in dualistic arguments any more. I would much rather give them a truth and walk away. What they do with it doesn’t affect me.
I look at myself from the outside and think ‘if I was so and so, would I want to be friends with someone as challenging as me?’ and I think the answer is probably no. I don’t mean I challenge in a confrontational way, I seem to challenge people just by knowing things that other people know I know and don’t want to hear. This past year, one of my very closest male friends has stopped talking to me entirely. He is not unfriendly, he simply cannot deal with me any more. I know him too well and he cannot handle it. There have been a couple of things that happened where I predicted (accurately) how things would turn out if he took a certain course and since then he won’t talk to me. I have offered a friendly hand several times but he has never returned my call or answered the email. I suppose the very existence of me is a threat to his view that his depression is other people’s fault, and that is the root of it. People have always called me ‘difficult’ but it’s not because I am hard to get along with, quite the opposite – I am open and friendly and a good laugh – but maybe something about me doesn’t allow people to be ambivalent. I am too forthright.
In addition I have always had few friends because I’ve never been the sort of person who needed people around me or who cultivated or worked hard to maintain friendships. And right now I have no circle of friends who are at the same place, or even close, to where I am on the spiritual path. This is not an area of concern, truly I have spiritual blessings in abundance and my little cat to keep my toes warm at night. I feel blessed beyond measure to be me, knowing who I am, knowing what I know and being alive to share it! But it is not easy preparing to say something to my oldest friend which will probably end a friendship which has been a constant for three decades. So I wondered if you have any words that could help me, particularly if you have ever been in a similar situation. I wonder if you too have lost friends because of this.

Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:

An excellent question that touches upon several issues that are important for all spiritual seekers. So let me comment on them in turn.

Thought 1
As Mother Mary explains, everything is created from an interplay of two forces, namely the expanding and the contracting force. In their pure forms, these forces are complementary and when they come together in harmony and balance, something new is created, and it is MORE than what was there before. This is the abundant life. If the two forces become unbalanced, they no longer complement but work against each other. Thus, they create an imbalance that tears down what exists, making it less than it was before. This is what most people on earth currently call “Life.”

The challenge for any spiritual seeker is to learn how to balance the two basic forces so they complement each other and make every situation MORE, whereby you have the abundant life that – as I said – it is the father’s good pleasure to give you. In attaining this, you are up against the ego – both the personal and collective ego – that always seeks to pull you into one of two dualistic extremes, as I explain in my ego discourses.

My point is that many people think that being a spiritual person means taking a very black-and-white stand and avoiding people or situations that don’t live up to the standards defined by their religion or belief system. There are actually many people who think that by doing this, they are being spiritual people, but they are simply trapped in black-and-white thinking.

There are other people who think being spiritual means that you should always be loving and kind, which they interpret to mean that you never challenge anyone and thus tolerate everything. Again, they think they are being very spiritual, but in reality they are simply caught in gray thinking.

Both these forms of thinking represent stages or phases on the spiritual path, and there isn’t anything wrong with people going through the phases. Yet many people get stuck in one or the other, and they use either form of thinking as an excuse for refusing to take up the eternal challenge of Christ. What is that challenge? It is to discern between what is of God and what is not of God, what is real and what is simply an illusion created from the duality consciousness, the mind of anti-christ in which everything is relative, is an illusion, is unreal.

My point is that many people think they are truly spiritual, but in reality they have become stuck and have refused to take up the challenge to discern and thereby step up to the level of Christhood that does make you a truly spiritual person. Thus, it is essential for mature spiritual seekers to realize that there is something beyond both phases. That “something” is a form of thinking that rises above the two dualistic extremes created by an imbalance of the two basic forces.

What I am saying is that many people have come to think that being the Christ means either judging everything according to a “spiritual” standard or never judging anything. In reality, being the Christ means rising above duality, rising above both judgment (after appearances) and non-judgment.

Being the Christ means realizing that in every situation there will be two polarities. If you take an unbalanced approach to the situation, you will go into one of the two extremes that are created by the ego. Only by staying on what I called the strait and narrow way (Matthew 7:14) and what the Buddha called the Middle Way can you avoid this. The key is to always strive for balance – which is NOT a compromise between the two dualistic extremes – and to look at any situation in a way that is beyond duality. As I said:

The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. (Luke 11:34)

The meaning is that if you look at the situation through the unified vision of the Christ mind, you will take balanced action and you will make the situation MORE. If you look at the situation through the dualistic filter of the ego, you will take unbalanced action and the result will be to make the situation less. This is truly what was expressed in Hamlet’s eternal question, “To be or not to be.”

I know this can sound abstract, so let me relate it to the actual question.

 Thought 2
One of the tests of Christhood is, “To speak out or not to speak out?”

Most spiritual seekers did not grow up in an environment where spiritual – as compared to religious – topics were discussed freely. So after finding the spiritual path, most seekers face the realization that what they now believe is far beyond what the people in their circle of influence believe. The question now becomes whether to share and how to share your new understanding of life.

So the first test you face is, “Do I speak out or keep quiet?” In a way, the answer is simple. If you have found the spiritual path, it is because you came into embodiment at this crucial transition phase in the earth’s history for the specific purpose of helping to awaken humankind. Thus, you came into embodiment because you share in what I declared as my purpose:

To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. (John 18:37)

In other words, sharing your truth is an essential part of your Divine plan and if you do not speak out, you will not fulfill your Divine plan. So the first test you face is that you must overcome your inner resistance toward speaking out. Often, people fear being rejected or ridiculed, and while this is understandable, the reality behind this reaction is that you are too focused on yourself. You feel vulnerable and take things too seriously, which means you take the reactions of other people personally. You feel that if they reject what you tell them, they are rejecting YOU.

The reality is quite different. Basically, 98 percent of humanity is so wrapped up in themselves that everything they do is an effect of their own unresolved psychology. So when they reject what you say, they are not rejecting you. Their response to you has nothing to do with you or what you say; it is a product of their own unresolved psychology. As is eloquently described in the question above, many people simply do not want to change their lives and thus they do not want to hear anything they feel would require them to change. They claim to be unhappy with their lives, but they reject anything that could empower them to rise above that unhappiness—the reason being that they are not done with the experience of being unhappy victims. They are actually happy in their unhappiness and don’t want to let go of their sense that they can’t or don’t have to take responsibility for their lives.

This raises two questions for you. The first one is that you need to understand the reality of free will. All people have been given free will. This means they have a right to reject a spiritual approach to life. Yet it does NOT mean that people have a right to avoid being presented with a spiritual approach to life. People have a right to create their own little mental box, but they do NOT have a right to remain in it indefinitely without being disturbed. The consequence is that you have a right to disturb them. You have a right do do what you came here to do. You have a right to fulfill your Divine plan and bear witness to your truth.

However, in order to fulfill your Divine plan, you have to rise above the condition I just described. You have to not be like the 98 percent of humanity who are all wrapped up in themselves. You have to get beyond your self-centeredness, which truly is what the spiritual path is all about—getting beyond the ego-based self to find your spiritual self. In terms of speaking out, that means you need to examine why you have a resistance and why you feel a need for the acceptance or approval of other people. By honestly examining yourself and healing your own wounds (as Mother Mary describes in her book), LINK you can get to the point where you speak out only to help others and NOT out of a self-centered need for their approval. Thereby, you will always feel the joy of speaking out without any form of disappointment or rejection.

Thought 3.
In order to help you get to that stage, let me describe what typically happens to people as they find the spiritual path. Most people become very excited as they find the path, and they naturally want to share it with everyone. Yet because they still have a need for approval, they speak out in an unbalanced manner, and when other people reject them, they become very disappointed.

This is understandable, but as long as you have any attachment to the reactions of other people, it shows that there is something you have not resolved in yourself. I am not saying this to make you feel bad, but to simply point out that as a sincere spiritual seeker, you need to make a conscious decision to depersonalize your life. You need to make it clear that your goal is to rise to a higher state of consciousness, and in order to do that, you are willing to leave behind anything that holds you back.

So when you discover that in some situations you respond in a way that takes away your inner peace, you take that as an opportunity to look for what robs you of your peace and then rise above it. In other words, as a sincere seeker you need to decide that you are always willing to look for the beam in your own eye. Once you have made that decision consciously, your ego will have far less hold on you and it cannot as easily make you believe in its excuses for why you should NOT look in the mirror.

You can then admit that most people who are new to the spiritual path tend to speak out from a black-and-white perspective. They find a spiritual teaching and think it is the only true one or the highest possible one. They then think that everyone else should believe everything the teaching says and follow all of its outer rules. So when they speak out, they are seeking to force the teaching upon others. And regardless of the fact that many people are unwilling to change, all people have a legitimate resistance toward being forced. So when you speak out in a black-and-white manner, you have very little chance of actually convincing people to accept your viewpoints.

Take note that I am not saying you should not speak out. You have a right to speak out with your present level of awareness. You do not have to be perfect in order to speak out, but you should be willing to look at it as an experiment that can teach you a lesson. So when you get a negative response from others, you look for the beam in your own eye and make an effort to go beyond black-and-white thinking. In other words, the first test is that you must be willing to speak out. The second test is that you must be willing to learn from the response and refine your ability to speak out.

Many spiritual people have gone through the black-and-white phase I just described and have reasoned that there is no point in confronting people all the time or that speaking out in a black-and-white manner is non-constructive. And this leads them to a crucial point. Some reason that they should never speak out in a way that provokes or disturbs people, so they think being a spiritual person means beings soft-spoken and gentle. This is the gray thinking, which often becomes the next phase, during which people either say very little or only say what they think people want to hear.

It is understandable that people go into this phase, but it truly is going from one extreme to the other, namely from speaking out in order to force people to not wanting to disturb them at all. As I said, you have a right to disturb other people – and they have a right to be disturbed – and you cannot fulfill your Divine plan by remaining silent.

Thought 4
Not all people go into gray thinking. They move beyond being concerned about being rejected, so they dare to speak out without being concerned about other people’s reactions. And at this point, people will face the second test. The first test is to speak out and the second test is to NOT speak out. Or one might say the first test is about overcoming your self-centered focus on other people’s rejection of you. The second test is to learn how to present your message in such a way that it has the maximum potential for helping the other person.

In other words, you no longer speak from a self-centered need to be right or to convince others. You speak from a pure desire to help others, so the attention is not on you but on them. It is not a matter of what you feel you have to say but a matter of what has the best chance of helping a specific person rise to the next level of his or her individual path.

In order to learn this, you must deal with the temptation to become attached to “saving” or “converting” other people. Instead of being concerned about people rejecting them, many people become concerned about people rejecting the message, feeling that various calamities will happen to people if they don’t accept the message. This causes people to present the message in a way that is called “over-selling,” where you give people so much information or present it in such a dire manner that they simply shut down and shut out both you and your message.

And although it is understandable that people become concerned about helping others, it is non-constructive in that it rarely convinces other people and usually ruins your relationship with them, preventing you from ever saying anything again. We might say that there is somewhat of a catch-22. If you were not concerned about helping other people, you wouldn’t say anything at all. So you need something that drives you to speak out, but if your concern is unbalanced, it will prevent you from actually helping others, so you have to find the Middle Way. In order to do this, you need to understand that being overly concerned is a remnant of black-and-white thinking, and it can be overcome by understanding free will.

Let me make this as clear as possible: You are NOT responsible for the salvation of other people! God has made YOU responsible ONLY for your own salvation. So when you approach other people, you should never do so with the attitude that you have to save them. Instead, you must make it very clear in your mind that your ONLY job is to present them with the best possible opportunity to make a better choice. You do NOT choose for people, you give them the best possible opportunity to choose for themselves.

By setting people free – in your own mind – you can avoid overselling, and you can generally avoid the reaction that people subconsciously shut down and shut out your message. Thus, you have a far better chance at reaching them, but you still need to be aware of their situation. In other words, feeling compelled to save other people is truly a self-centered drive. And when you rise above it – when you set both yourself and others free – you can approach people without feeling compelled. Thus, you are free to look at their situation in a neutral manner and consider how you can best help them. You can also overcome the temptation to think you have to take them to some ultimate point of being saved. Instead, you can see that you need to look at each person as an individual and help them follow a gradual path. It is not a matter of taking a person to some ultimate state of being saved but a matter of helping that person take the very next step on his or her path. Let me give a few examples.

Many spiritual people have taken years or decades to reach their current level of understanding, meaning that they have gone through a gradual process. Yet in talking to other people, they often want these people to go through the process in five minutes and step up to their own level of understanding in one giant leap. This simply isn’t realistic, and you must give people time to gradually expand their understanding as they are able. Otherwise they simply shut down and you can no longer reach them.

You should also make it clear in your mind that your goal should be to help other people—not to convert them to a particular belief system. For example, it is NOT my goal to get everyone to accept this website. Not everyone is ready to accept that the real Jesus could direct a person to create a website. So you do not need to seek to make people accept this website in order to give them an idea from the site that might benefit them. If you sense people are not ready, simply give them the ideas they need without mentioning the site. In other words, your primary goal should be to help people, NOT to promote this website—or any other specific teaching, guru or organization.

In too many cases, people push a spiritual teaching on others in order to give their words an aura of authority. Yet this is a self-centered need that springs from fear of rejection or a compulsive desire to save others.

Let us look at the situation described in the question above. It is NOT your role to save your friend from her homosexuality. As I explain in my teachings on homosexuality, she has made her choices in past lives and she is the only one who can undo them. In her specific situation, her immediate problem is that she is in an abusive relationship, so I recommend focusing on helping her overcome that. That means to not talk about homosexuality if that would end your friendship and your opportunity to help her.

Obviously, you need to be aware that you can sometimes enable people to stay in a bad situation, so you need to seek to help your friend move forward. This entails helping her see that she has a codependent personality which makes it difficult for her to break free of the abusive relationship. This comes from an inner emptiness that makes her prefer an abusive relationship over no relationship. If you can help her heal this psychological wound, she will become more self-sufficient and perhaps this will eventually take her to a point where she is ready to reconsider her homosexuality. At that point, you might be able to present her with the teachings on it, but you will know when the time comes.

Thought 5
The bottom line is this. The essence of the ego is that it resists the flow of life, but this can manifest in various ways. As mentioned above, some people are afraid to speak out, and the reason is resistance from the ego. In the opposite extreme, some people feel compelled to speak out, but this is also resistance from the ego, only reversed as a compulsion. My point is that the compulsion to speak out and the compulsion NOT to speak out both come from the ego’s resistance.

To overcome the compulsion NOT to speak out, you need to make a decision to speak out despite the resistance. To overcome the compulsion to speak out, you need to make a decision to remain silent when you feel the compulsion. In other words, you need to strive for a state of innocence where you simply speak out spontaneously and speak from the heart. When you still face the fear of speaking out, you often speak from fear, which is in the solar plexus. When you face the compulsion to save others, you often speak from the head and go over in your head what you should say and how.

As long as you feel a compulsion and an intellectual “obsession” with the issue – going over it again and again in your mind – simply remain silent. Work on setting yourself free from the compulsion until you become neutral and have no attachments to either speaking out or not speaking out. Strive to become the open door that no man can shut, meaning that neither the fear of other people’s reactions or the compulsion to save others will make it impossible for your higher self to speak through you. When you become a clear pane of glass, your higher self will indeed start to speak through you and it will happen spontaneously. You can then “speak from the heart” and this has the maximum chance of reaching beyond the other person’s defenses and actually helping him or her see beyond the dualistic illusions that keep the person trapped.

In relation to the actual question, the very fact that you feel compelled to speak out but don’t feel at peace about it shows that you have not yet attained balance and non-attachment. So don’t speak out now but work on yourself. When you overcome the compulsion, concern and doubt and feel completely at peace about the situation, an opportunity to speak out will effortlessly present itself. In your patience possess ye your soul.

This is what I expressed in these sayings:

I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. (John 5:30)

Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. (John 14:10)

But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. (John 5:17)

The point is that you need to strive for reaching the state of Christhood where you are above the dualistic compulsions to speak or not speak. You are open and non-attached enough to be an instrument for your higher self, and when you reach that stage, your higher self WILL indeed speak through you.

Yet how do you get to that point? Only by experimenting and learning from your experiments. In other words, do not take my teachings to mean that you should remain silent until you are perfect or that you should take everything so seriously that you hardly dare say anything. Simply strive to become free of any compilation to speak or not to speak. Speak out with the innocence of a child, speak from the heart. It is not so much the actual words you say that will help other people but the fact that you radiate a vibration of love. Seek inspiration in the words I inspired Paul to write (partly because he truly needed them):

1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become [as] sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

2 And though I have [the gift of] prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed [the poor], and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

4 Charity suffereth long, [and] is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

8 Charity never faileth: but whether [there be] prophecies, they shall fail; whether [there be] tongues, they shall cease; whether [there be] knowledge, it shall vanish away.

9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these [is] charity. (1Corinthians, Chapter 13)

Thought 6
When I walked the earth, I gave some seemingly radical teachings on family and friendship. For example:

32Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.
33But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.
34Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
35For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
36And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.
37He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
38And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. (Matthew, Chapter 10)

Based on a literal interpretation of these statements one could easily conclude that friendship is not an option for spiritual people and that family relations are likely to fall by the wayside. Yet the picture is not that black-and-white.

One might say that the above statements could only have been made by a complete ego-maniac who wants his followers to set him above anything else. In reality, the vast majority of statements in which I used the word “I’ were not made by or about me as a historical person appearing on earth. There were made from a state of oneness with the universal Christ mind, and thus the Christ mind was speaking through me. You can only understand these statements by looking beyond the outer words, and this is one of the basic tests of Christhood—to not judge after appearances (John 7:24).

For example, take the statement, “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father.” Now rewrite it as follows, “Whosoever therefore shall confess the Christ consciousness before men, him will the Christ consciousness confess also before the Father.” Now compare this latter statement to the following: No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. (Matthew 11:27). Then replace Son with Christ consciousness, “No man knoweth the Christ consciousness, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Christ consciousness, and he to whomsoever the Christ consciousness will reveal him”

The Christ consciousness is the ONLY factor that can reconcile you with God. It is the open door that no man can shut and you WILL NOT be saved in any other way than by uniting with the Christ consciousness by following the Path of Oneness that I demonstrated. So if you are a spiritual seeker, you can play around for a long time with spiritual teachings and techniques, but there will come a point where you need to get serious and realize that your true goal must be to not simply appear spiritual but to BE spiritual. Thus, your primary – even your only – goal must be to rise above duality and become one with the Christ mind.

When you understand this, you see that the passages above are truly about establishing your priorities. “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword” truly means that the Christ consciousness is all about making a choice. If you want the Christ consciousness, you must set it above anything on earth. For if you do not, you are a house divided against itself and thus you will always have an inner conflict that prevents you from reaching your goal because, “A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” Your own inner divisions will be your worst enemy—in a sense your ONLY enemy.

To set your priorities straight, you must overcome the tendency to follow the crowd, to follow the mass consciousness in both your family and your society, even the mass consciousness of humankind. This mass consciousness is not currently open to the path of Christhood but is focused on the opposite, namely a definition of life and salvation that springs from the mind of duality. It is what I called the broad way that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13).

Therefore, “He that loveth father or mother more than the Christ consciousness is not capable of becoming one with the Christ consciousness.” You simply cannot become one with the Christ consciousness as long as you see anything on earth as being more important than your spiritual goal.

Take note that this does NOT mean that you cannot love your family. It means you must not allow them to take you away from the path to Christhood, for if you let anything on earth take you away from that path, you obviously cannot complete the path and put on your Christhood. You will be stopped before you reach your goal. That is why “he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after the Christ consciousness, is not worthy of oneness with the Christ consciousness.” The cross symbolizes the blocks in your four lower bodies that prevent you from rising above duality. And currently the mass consciousness is not on this path but denies the need to follow in my footsteps, even denying that anyone can do the works that I did (John 14:12).

As long as you have not set your priorities straight, your family and friends will pull you away from the path to Christhood and this will create a conflict in your mind. Once you do set your priorities straight, you will no longer be vulnerable to this pull. And this will set both you and your family and friends free to establish a new relationship that is based on the fact that you will not be deterred from the path. Some of them will not be willing to acknowledge that you have changed, so you will lose them. Yet others will sense that you have changed, will accept it and will actually be happy to relate to you in a new way. Yet for this to happen, you must be undivided in yourself, whereby you become non-attached to their reactions.

In terms of family, I recommend striving to maintain a relationship with them so that you can at least communicate. Some people say you don’t choose your family, but it is not true. Most people do choose their family before coming into embodiment because interacting with them is part of your Divine plan. You often have karma to balance, and you often have something you can teach them. Both tasks require communication, so you should go out of your way to maintain communication and strive to make it as open as possible. Sometimes you need only give a person one key insight in a lifetime, but if you have lost communication, how can you do so?

In terms of friends, you will have friendships that are on a superficial level, and some of them will fall by the wayside as you climb the path. You cannot make serious progress if you are into the party lifestyle and go to bars or discotheques. So the kind of friends that only want to do that will simply have to do so without you. Yet there are some friends that you have a deeper connection with – such as the person described in the letter above – and those you need to maintain communication with as with family.

As you climb the spiritual path, you will find new friends that are at your spiritual level. Sometimes you have to make an effort to find them, and in many cases such people are found only within spiritual organizations. Many of them might be in organizations that you are not attracted to or that you think are not the highest possible, but that should not keep you from making friends with people. By getting to know them, you can eventually impart to them a more universal understanding of the spiritual path.

My point here is that I have no desire to see people who study this website adopt and exclusivist approach and think they can only associate with people who accept this website.  I do not want this website to divide people but to unite them in a non-dualistic approach to spirituality. That is why I am open to letting people from many spiritual backgrounds or organizations use the teachings I give here without conditions. I do not want you to use this website to set yourself apart from other people. I desire to see you become better at relating to other people and helping them see through the veil of duality.

Thought 7
Let me comment on the following remarks from the question:

I look at myself from the outside and think ‘if I was so and so, would I want to be friends with someone as challenging as me?’ and I think the answer is probably no. I don’t mean I challenge in a confrontational way, I seem to challenge people just by knowing things that other people know I know and don’t want to hear. … I suppose the very existence of me is a threat to his view that his depression is other people’s fault, and that is the root of it. People have always called me ‘difficult’ but it’s not because I am hard to get along with, quite the opposite – I am open and friendly and a good laugh – but maybe something about me doesn’t allow people to be ambivalent. I am too forthright.

These remarks are quite typical for what many mature spiritual seekers experience in their relationships. Part of the reason is, as I have explained above, that people can be a bit unbalanced toward black-and-white thinking. So there is good reason to heed my remarks and become more balanced. Yet you must also acknowledge that this phenomenon is not only created by your own imbalance but very much by other people’s unwillingness to change.

You see, as a sincere spiritual seeker, you have moved toward the point of depersonalizing your life and being willing to change your life when you see what needs to change. In other words, you are willing to look for the beam in your own eye and pull it when you see it. Yet the majority of human beings are not willing to look for the beam, let alone pull it. Instead, they have enveloped themselves in a veil of dualistic excuses for why they don’t have to look in the mirror. So when they are around you, they sense that because you do not make up excuses for yourself, you can either see through theirs or you don’t accept them.

This makes them uncomfortable, for if you can change, then they can too. As the old saying goes, “Misery wants company,” and the reason is that people reinforce each other’s beliefs that they can’t or don’t have to change, that they don’t need to take full responsibility for their lives. When they see that you have taken responsibility for your growth, they realize – often without being consciously aware of it or able to verbalize it – that their own excuses are hollow. If everyone around them was in the same state of consciousness, they could feel comfortable, but you disturb their comfortability by challenging status quo.

Another aspect of this is that many spiritual seekers have more spiritual light than most non-spiritual people. Because you have purified your energy field, you radiate this light, and it can make other people uncomfortable. Some are simply disturbed by it while others are so provoked that they become angry. Others are jealous and want light, but they are not willing to make the life changes necessary, so they either want to steal it from you or they want you to go away so they can forget about the need to change.

Again, it is an integral part of your divine plan to let other people feel that you have light so they can see that it is possible for everyone to rise higher in consciousness. That is indeed why I said:

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 5:16)

As I said, your job is to present people with a choice, and one way to do this is to show them that you have spiritual light that comes from God. By experiencing your light they can at least see that it is possible for a person like them to rise higher and this gives them a choice they did not have before.

Once you are aware of the fact that your light can disturb other people, you can avoid being disturbed by it yourself. If some people do not want to change – like the person described above – simply let them go. Yet if you are completely balanced, you will begin to find that your light often will have the effect of inspiring people – at least some people – instead of disturbing them. They will sense that you have light and they will be curious. You can then help them understand their own potential so they can find it in themselves. As I say throughout my website, I did not come to earth to be put on a pedestal as being above all other people. I came to demonstrate the age-old truth that what one has done, all can do—if they are willing to transcend their current level of consciousness.

Comment from Mother Mary:

My beloved, consider my teachings in my books about holding the immaculate concept for other people. We so often see people who awaken to the spiritual path become judgmental and think that if other people do not accept your new beliefs, they are not spiritual and you should not waste your time on them. Yet consider that each person has a conscious self that is simply trapped in a mortal, dualistic, limited sense of identity. Thus, instead of putting a permanent label on people, you see that the conscious self has the potential to awaken and find the spiritual path.

Your outer mind simply cannot know how close or far away a particular person is to the awakening point. And if you attempt to force another person to awaken before he or she is ready for it, you will not help the person but will likely ruin the relationship. So you do not want to set up an all-or-nothing situation in which you force people to either accept what you say or lose your friendship. You want to maintain a relationship with them so that in the future you might be used as an instrument for imparting to them the insight they need when they are ready for it.

Obviously, I recognize that you only have so much time and attention, so you need to be realistic and not spend time just maintaining a superficial relationship. What I am saying is to not cut off your relationship with other people. If they cut off the relationship, then accept their choice but remain open to them if their attitude changes.

I realize you can look at Jesus and see that he was sometimes very confrontational and did demand that people make a choice to accept or reject him and his teachings. There are indeed times when the best way you can help another person is to help them face a choice and come up higher on the path. Yet what I am saying here is that Jesus had overcome all self-centeredness and did not demand that other people accept or reject him personally. Therefore, I encourage you to not seek out such situations and to not decide with the mind to confront others.

Strive for the non-attachment that Jesus describes and then let it come spontaneously. When you neither resist confronting others nor feel compelled to do you, things will unfold by what seems to human beings like magic, but which is truly Divine direction that knows when a person is ready to be awakened.

Your task is to always be ready to serve as an instrument for the awakening of others. To do that, let go of all resistance by holding the immaculate concept for yourself, thereby becoming one of the pure in heart who shall see God. When you see God in yourself, you will be able to see God in others, and that is when you can serve to awaken them to see God in themselves—which is our desire for all.

 

Copyright © 2007 by Kim Michaels

TOPICS: Share what has helped you – don’t reject or accept everything out there – balance of not giving people too little or too much – listen to your intuition – overcome your expectations –

---

Question: There is a lot of material on websites on universal salvation. I used to be a Christian and I have had a lot of help to find my way out of fundamentalist Christianity because I read certain writings. My question is, can I give this material to other Christian people so they have help to overcome traditional Christianity, because when I talk about the masters, they don’t want to know about it.

Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:

One of the best ways to help other people is to share with them what has helped you. And therefore, certainly, if something has helped you rise to a higher level of understanding of the spiritual path, you can share that with them, if you feel it will help them.

It is important not to be black-and-white or to be fearful about spiritual teachings, going into the consciousness that anything that is beyond our religion is a false teaching or is the work of the devil. On the other hand, it is important not to go into the opposite extreme of saying that any teaching out there is good or saying that anything that helps you is okay. I have given teachings on false teachers that I encourage you to study.

So what I am saying here is that as you grow on the path, you will want to be careful how you recommend certain teachings to others. In other words, you do not necessarily need to recommend a certain teaching to others if you have come to realize that it is not the highest possible teaching. But on the other hand you can recommend a teaching by describing how it helped you rise higher and then letting people know that you have also come to realize that there is a higher teaching beyond the teaching you are talking about. And that they might want to keep that in mind as they grow on their own path.

I will also say that you need to be careful of not going into the state of consciousness of saying that if people do not want to hear about the ascended masters, you should not talk about it, or you should look for some teaching that is more palatable to them. It is acceptable to describe for other people the stages you have gone through. So it is acceptable to tell them that at a certain point of my personal path, I was helped by this particular teaching. But it is also important for you not to go and preach below the level of consciousness you are at right now.

What I am saying is that there is a delicate balance between not giving people too much and falling into the other extreme of giving people too little. Your role is not to make people comfortable but to call them – to challenge them – to come up higher. So again, there is a middle way that can be found. And there are, again, the two extremes, where we often see those who are new to the path become so enthusiastic that they give people more information than they can handle, seeking to force people to come up many steps on the path all at once. But we also see the opposite extreme of people who are so concerned about not disturbing or provoking other people that they give them too little. And therefore do not give them the balanced opportunity that they need to come up higher.

So again, this is an individual path—for you and for the person. You need to tune in to the other person. When you come to the right point on the path, you can know intuitively what to give to another person. But in order to come to that point, you have to follow the advice given of overcoming your expectations and conditions—so that you do not have a preconceived opinion about what other people can handle and cannot handle. And you do not have a pre-conceived condition that says, “Oh, I do not want to tell them something they don’t want to hear. Or I don’t want to disturb or provoke them.”

You need to come to the point where you are at peace within, no matter how the other people respond. And where you are not acting on a condition you have decided on with your outer mind, but you are flowing with the Spirit and saying whatever you are being prompted to say in the actual situation. For truly, your Christ self knows what another person needs to hear in order to take the next step. And when you can get your outer mind out of the way, and overcome the conditions of the outer mind, then you can be a clearer instrument for giving people exactly what they need to take that next step.

For my beloved, what is the point of telling people about the spiritual path if you leave them at the same level of consciousness at which you met them? Truly, the purpose is to give them something that empowers them to come up higher.

 

Copyright © 2007 by Kim Michaels