Michaels – Page 28 – Ascended Master Answers

Use of psychedelics for treating illness

Question: What do the Masters think about the use of psychedelics for treating illness? There is recent research into the use of substances such as psilocybin, found in psychedelic mushrooms to treat depression. Is it possible that using these drugs in a controlled way can help people improve emotional states, or is it too dangerous in the long term?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

There are forms of depression that come from the fact that people are not aware that there are other states of consciousness than the one they are in. Again, Jesus just talked about the soul or the word “angels” being very broad context, very broad concepts. And it is the same with depression. Depression actually has reached a point in the psychological profession, where it is a dangerous word to use, because it is used for a wide variety of phenomena that really should have different names and should be diagnosed differently. There are certain forms of what is now called depression that come because people feel trapped, they have no meaning with their lives, they think that what they are experiencing right now is the only experience there can be.

There can be cases where if people experience a different form of consciousness, they suddenly see that there are different forms of consciousness, and perhaps they can change their own state of consciousness. But this is, of course, something that, first of all, should only be used in the short term and second of all, it could also be achieved in different ways.

It could be achieved through the resolution of psychology, various forms of therapy, not necessarily traditional talk therapy, but certainly various forms of therapy that are already available and could, of course, be achieved through spiritual teachings and a spiritual path. It is not the ideal way to use it but of course, in the present situation, where science is so focused on the materialistic world, and therefore sees chemicals as the only way to change the state of mind, then it cannot be said that it is completely without uses, it can help some people.

We naturally do not recommend that our students use drugs, because once you are aware of the spiritual side to life and spiritual teachings, you do not need the drugs, you need to instead work with your psychology until you start having spontaneous experiences of higher states of consciousness.

You cannot make spiritual progress by taking it by force and there is an old example of one of the early people who wrote about psychedelic drugs back in the 50s and 60s, in Alan Watts, who said about drugs that “when you get the message hang up the phone”. In other words, he saw that the only real purpose of drugs was to give people an experience that there were different states of consciousness and once you had that, you should stop using them or you would end up being addicted to them.

You cannot say that in a specific situation there could not be some people that were helped by this but this is a far cry from saying that we are approving of this or recommending drugs, because they will not promote your spiritual growth in themselves. It requires work with your psychology to really attain spiritual growth.

What is the Christ Self ?

Question: Maitreya stated that as the ego was not an original part of our beings on a natural planet, the Christ Self was given to us on these unnatural planets so as to compensate. Is in fact the Christ Self an angel within us, our guardian angel?

Answer from the Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

Well again, you have to be careful not to be too attached to certain words, we have given many teachings that there are limitations to words. You need to recognize that in the past, both in spiritual teachings, but also in religious teachings, “angels” is a word that was used in a very broad sense for almost anything that was beyond the physical realm. There were messengers of God that were seen as angels, there were guardian angels that were protecting you or guiding you.

But of course, you can have a more nuanced, more specific understanding of this, so that you can realize that there are beings in the spiritual realm that can be called angels, but not all spiritual beings or phenomena are angels. You can call the Holy Christ Self your guardian angel, but you have to be careful that you do not take these traditional, for example Christian images of angels, and transfer that to the Christ Self. The Christ Self does not fit in that conceptual language of the traditional view of angels.

We have given teachings on the Christ Self from various perspectives. The simplest teaching is to say that there is an ascended master, who decides to sponsor you, and therefore creates an extension of its being that becomes your Christ Self to give you a frame of reference, as you are open to seeing it. But other explanations can be given that can also be valid in specific contexts.

The meaning of the rose symbol

Question: The rose, especially in association with the cross is an ancient symbol. Organizations have used it to symbolize the spiritual path and the perfectioning of the soul, but we know from ascended master teachings that the soul is the ego and it cannot be immortalized. And yet Master Jesus after five years in a cave, came out spreading a scent of roses around him. Master More also speaks about his garden of roses in the etheric plane and how special is the effect of the perfume of the rose. But what is the deep meaning of the rose, symbolically speaking? Is it a symbol of the moment when a Conscious You is free from all spirits, of the ego, except the one self that was created to come to the world of form and thereby is ready to ascend? Or is it something else?

Answer from the Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

First of all, the story that I spent five years in a cave, and came out smelling like roses is not correct, it is simply a myth that has been created and it is not factual. When you look at it, historically speaking, the rose has been used as a symbol to symbolize different things by different spiritual movements. It can be used as a symbol for the spiritual path where you are unfolding your being. It can also be used as a symbol for the unfolding of the heart chakra, the petals of the heart chakra, where you open up the rose of the heart and you have that free flow of energy from your I Am Presence through the heart chakra.

In our teachings, we have given the awareness that the soul as it has traditionally been used, is the ego, the outer mind, but this is not the way it has always been seen. There are past teachings where they have pretty much seen the soul the way we now explain the Conscious You. In other words, the soul is what is growing towards a higher state and therefore, the rose, the unfolding of the rose can symbolize the soul’s journey as the soul was defined by these teachings.

I am not saying that all past teachings are wrong because we are now giving a higher teaching. It is simply that those teachings were given for a certain level of consciousness, where people were not quite ready to embrace the higher teachings we have today. Even in previous ascended master dispensations, we used the concept of the soul, that the soul is ascending.

It is only in this dispensation we have given the more advanced teaching, that there are aspects of what has traditionally been seen as the soul vehicle, the four lower bodies that will not ascend, and that there is a core of your being that can ascend and if you see the teaching we are giving now about the Conscious You and understand it as it is given, you will see that I actually foretold this teaching when I stated to Nicodemus that “only the man who descended from heaven can ascend back to heaven”. It was not of course a man, but only the being that descended from heaven can ascend back to heaven. Only that what we now call the Conscious You can ascend. But even 2000 years ago, I gave hints of this teaching.

Making peace with free will and the existence of fallen beings

Question: From the minute they fell, the fallen beings claimed about the injustice of God and pointed out a flaw in God’s plan because of free will. And the appearances seem to give some support to their claims. The fall itself means that these beings were forced to live in a new sphere in a different environment, although created with special realms where they could live. But having lost their connection with their I AM Presences it seems that they had to, since then, parasite the new beings in the succeeding spheres to steal their light in order to survive. Therefore, it would seem that God allowed them to survive, because of the law of free will, but simultaneously condemned them to prey on other beings in order to survive, and these other innocent beings were also condemned to be the prey of them.

Could the masters explain what is missing in this argument, and why there is no contradiction in the fact that God allowed these fallen beings to keep living for a long period of time, falling from the fourth to the fifth to the sixth, and now to the seventh universe. At the same time, that (he) apparently condemned them to parasite other beings in order to survive, and innocent others to be their prey?

Answer from the Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

In a sense, you could say that there is no flaw in the argument. If you look at it, from a certain perspective, the argument is reasonable enough. The fallen beings did fall and the consequence was that they could only prey on other beings in order to survive by stealing their energy. In a sense, you could say that you now had the fifth sphere, where you had innocent lifestreams that were in the same sphere as the fallen beings. However, you can also take another viewpoint of this, and say that even these innocent lifestreams could only be affected by the fallen beings through their own choices. And the fallen beings could not influence them until they had made the choices that opened them up to the fallen beings.

We have talked about before that the fallen beings are substitute teachers. Only when lifestreams have cut themselves off from being taught by the ascended masters do they become prey for the fallen beings, and this, when you cut yourself off from the ascended masters, that means you are not learning by getting this inner direction. You must learn by experiencing the consequences of your consciousness, the outplaying of it, and the fallen beings simply act in order to accelerate the consequences so that people actually in many cases learn faster by interacting with fallen beings than if they were left to themselves.

You could say that the fallen beings are acting out the same consciousness that these beings have gone into in the unascended sphere, but the fallen beings have had longer to act out this consciousness. Therefore, they have acted it out in greater extremes. When new beings see this, they have the option to say: “I do not want to go that far” and therefore, instead of having to repeat it themselves, taking a very long time to get to the point where the fallen beings are, they can actually progress much faster by having seen the fallen beings go to such extremes.

In a sense, you could say that this is all part of allowing free will to work itself out. You could also go and take this viewpoint that when you truly understand free will, you see that there is no other option. There is no other option. And this is probably if we want to talk about a flaw in the argument, this is the most common confusion that people have when they begin to understand the concept of fallen beings and many of these other concepts we have given you. As we have said before, even avatars who came to earth did not have a full understanding of free will. And certainly, the fallen beings do not have it either. It is actually quite difficult, it requires a certain maturity especially on a planet as dense as earth to fully grasp free will. Free will is free. When God gave individual beings free will God also said: “I will not interfere with that free will.”

Now, God’s emissaries, the Elohim, the ascended masters have designed planets in an unascended sphere in such a way that it can help people overcome using their free will to go into separation, so they can find their way back towards oneness and again be connected. But the reality is that as a consequence of free will you start out as a being who has some sense of connection to something greater than yourself, but then some beings need to have the experience of cutting that connection, living now as separate beings for a time.

And then after having lived as separate beings and having had enough of that experience, they can start moving back into oneness by attaining the Christ consciousness, but now they are doing it with a greater awareness than they had before. It is not that beings have to go through this process, all beings do not go through it, but some do.

As we have said before, anything you can do with free will in an unascended sphere actually helps your growth, it helps your I Am Presence have positive experiences that are stored in your causal body. Again, we have also said that in the end, the fallen beings cannot destroy an unascended sphere, even as the spheres become denser they will not be able to destroy it, there will not be a point where a sphere cannot ascend and there will not be a point where a falling being cannot ascend if it is willing to do so.

Going to the second death is really a consequence of the fallen beings’ own choices. Following fallen beings, being preyed upon by falling beings, is the result of choices made by these beings who are no longer as innocent as when they were first created. When you begin to grapple with this, the full ramifications of free will, you come to a point where you are simply at peace with it, you make peace with free will.

You make peace with free will despite the conditions you see on earth, despite the abuses of free will, the disregard for other people’s will that you see on earth. You cannot ascend until you have made that peace where you again as we have said can look at earth and there is nothing that pulls you back here, there is nothing you have to correct, nothing you have to change, nothing you cannot look at and be non-attached to, and say: ”Regardless of what people are doing with their free will, I am ascending because I am using my free will to choose to ascend.”

How to shift your attitude to money?

Question: Observing my thoughts and conversations with other people, it seems that much of the topic goes around money. Such as, how much does something cost, and how great of a price/quality (value), the trip, or restaurant or new phone has. Do people, in general, have a disproportionate focus on the money, rather than on the experiences themselves. What are the underlying illusions underneath it? And how can we adopt a more constructive approach with a balanced focus on money and enjoying life?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

The fallen beings have put forth a great effort to get people fixated on money. They have attempted to create societies that are revolving around money. Where people’s minds, the way they look at life, are revolving around money. Because people either do not have enough money, or they do not have any money. There has been created this consciousness, that the way to get what you want in life is through money. Money is the key, even to being happy, or being fulfilled and getting what you want. Many, many people have been pulled into the vortex, the beast of this lie. You will see that even people who have more money than they can spend are fixated on money. Being afraid that they could lose it, being concerned of how they can make it multiply so they do not lose it gradually by the money losing its value and so on.

You are already, in the question, beginning to see the solution. The solution is to recognize that planet earth is, as we have said, a reality simulator and experience machine. The purpose of being on earth is to have certain experiences that shift your consciousness. My beloved, money cannot buy these experiences. You can see many, many people who have all the money they could possibly spend and they still are not having experiences that shift their consciousness.

You need to recognize here that many people will say: “But I have much greater freedom when I have money, I can travel, I can do this, I can do that, and that gives me an experience, does it not?” And that is correct. But there are two types of experiences in life. There are, as we have said before, some experiences that solidify a certain state of consciousness and that therefore become a black hole that can never be filled. There are some desires that cannot be filled. No matter how many experiences you have, it is never enough. That is why you see people, it is never enough money that they have, they never have enough sex, they never have enough this or that.

You need to recognize that these are not the experiences I am talking about. They are not shifting your consciousness, they are actually preventing your consciousness from shifting. The real experiences are the experiences that shift your consciousness. And you can have these regardless of whether you have money. I agree that for many people, it is necessary to have a certain amount of money in order to have some experiences that they need to have. But in many nations in the world, it is possible to have such desires fulfilled. For a house, for a car, for a phone, for a computer, for traveling and so forth. Many people are in the process of having these physical experiences because they have enough money to do it.

But what I am talking about here is that regardless of your outer situation, you can shift your attitude, so that you first of all go for experiences. You realize that the goal of your life is to have experiences that shift your consciousness. And then you say: “With the money I have available to me right now, how can I get these experiences?” And you therefore realize that it is not a matter of accumulating money. It is not a matter of always focusing on earning more money or always focusing on getting things as cheaply as possible.

It is a matter of focusing on which experience do I sense I need to have in order to have had enough of this so I can shift my consciousness. I am not saying that this instantly solves your money problems. But it does shift your focus, your attitude to money. And this will, for many people, mean that they will actually open up for the flow of energy that also will manifest the physical money, or in other ways manifest the physical situations where they can have the experiences they need, in order to shift and become free to move on from earth ultimately.

There is in many, many countries, this very deep poverty consciousness, it is very understandable. Many of you have grown up with parents who grew up under much poorer conditions than you have ever experienced. And you have taken on some of this consciousness from your parents and grandparents, that there is never enough money, at least not for ordinary people. You need to look at this and be willing to identify these separate selves and let them die so you can shift your attitude towards money and realize that you live in a friendly universe. You live in an abundant universe. The universe will give you the experiences you need in order to fulfill your spiritual goals.

The story of an avatar: nightmares, the birth trauma and the consciousness of hell

Question: When I found the spiritual path, and the teachings on non-duality, I started having nightmares. I sensed that there is an evil presence in my bedroom, and it wants to hurt me and I woke up terrified. When I found ascended master teachings and when I met my present husband, who is a great spiritual help for me in my spiritual path, the nightmares became even worse. I woke up in the middle of the night seeing the ugly creatures, like straight from the astral plane crawling around my bed, and I would see an ominous man standing above my bed and staring at me. And I have had one particular nightmare, which has been terrifying. So I wake up from a dream which I cannot remember, and it fades away. But I have a sense that I have forgotten about something very important. And now it is too late. I cannot fix it. And it has an effect on many, many people, and I feel completely destroyed emotionally, and I feel unbearable pain. And I always wake up from this dream crying and screaming. I did a lot of spiritual work to resolve the issue and the nightmares with the astral creatures ended. But whenever I am upset about something, especially something about my relationship, the nightmare, with the sense that I did something so bad comes back. Could the masters comment on it and give a higher perspective on this kind of nightmare or attacks of dark forces and how to deal with that.

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

You need to recognize that we have told you that when you descend to earth as an avatar, you have a higher state of consciousness before you descend to earth. But in order to descend, you need to descend to what is currently the 48th level of consciousness on earth. Which is much lower than the consciousness you have as an avatar. What does this mean? It means there is something you will forget. There is a forgetting, when you come into embodiment for the first time as an avatar, just as I said in my previous dictation, that every time you come into embodiment, you are forgetting with the outer mind what you put in your divine plan.

For all of us who have ever embodied on a dense planet like earth, there is something we have forgotten. And in many cases, we can have this, (at least when we begin to rise higher in consciousness), we can have this intuitive sense that there is something we have forgotten. Now we go to the birth trauma that you receive. You take the book My Lives, and you see how the protagonist was exposed to this birth trauma by the fallen beings, where he was made to believe that his actions caused the downfall of a civilization and the death of millions of people. Well, many, many avatars who came to earth have been exposed to something very similar. It has been projected at you by the fallen beings, that you made this terrible mistake that affected many people and that you should feel guilty about it.

How do you even deal with this? Well, for many, many embodiments, you deal with it from a state of shock. But you need to realize that as you rise higher on the path, especially when it is your last embodiment, you need to resolve this. You start having more of an intuitive sense, you now get in touch with the fact that there is something you have forgotten. You get in touch with this sense that you have done something that had terrible consequences. And you connect the two. You think the reason why I did this terrible thing is because I had forgotten this thing that I was supposed to not have forgotten.

But what have I just said? Forgetting is part of the mechanics of taking embodiment on a dense planet, you did nothing wrong by forgetting, it was inevitable. You reacted to the situation of the birth trauma with the level of consciousness you had, most likely the 48 level. And therefore, you took on that sense of guilt, that sense of blame, which the fallen beings projected at you, even though you were not actually responsible for what they blamed you for. We all have done this as avatars. You have to find a way to deal with this, to see the fallacy, to see the lies. And to come to a point where it is not so much that you need to forgive yourself. It is simply that you need to recognize that you reacted the way you did based on the consciousness you had at the time. And this created certain separate selves. And you need to keep using the tools until you uncover those selves and can let them go, finally and fully.

Now, what has this got to do with nightmares? Well, it is partly, again, that there is a period on the spiritual path where you have not resolved certain important things. There is a tension in your consciousness, in your subconscious actually. This tension makes you vulnerable to the projection and the attacks of dark forces. They, of course, as we have said, target you when you are an avatar, or when you are in your last embodiment, they will target you very aggressively.

And they can do this when you have this sense that you have done something terrible. Or even a sense that you have forgotten something you should not have forgotten. In other words, you are in effect, blaming yourself. You are blaming yourself for something that you did not do. But it does not matter because there is a self that is blaming you and that self makes you vulnerable to this very old consciousness that really is the consciousness of hell, but it is the consciousness about hell: the projections, the images of hell, where you can even see paintings from the medieval period, where you see these distorted creatures that are torturing souls in Purgatory or in hell itself.

You need to recognize if you have grown up in a culture with a particular religion that promotes this view of hell and purgatory. And you need to recognize that, combined with what you have taken on and how you are blaming yourself, there is some self, there are several selves, that are either afraid that you will go to hell because of what you did, or even feel that you deserve to go to hell, or at least be tortured. Because there is this consciousness again, that if you go into purgatory and suffer, then maybe you can be cleansed from your sins.

This is, as we have attempted to explain many times, a complete illusion, has no reality to it whatsoever. No amount of suffering and torture can compensate for what you did. You need to dissolve, transform the energy and overcome the separate selves, and then you are free. But there is this consciousness, even the entire consciousness, that Christ died on the cross for your sins, and that he had to be tortured, and his blood had to be spilled, as payment for the sins of humanity. Again, a complete lie created by the fallen beings.

But if you have these beliefs in you, then it can make you vulnerable to the astral plane and you can see these creatures. And you can see this ominous presence who is really like the judge, or the man, the death figure, that is found in so many places, that has come to collect you and take you to hell. You need to look at this, work on these selves, until you come to the point where you simply see the unreality of it. And then you can gradually let go of it, until you have let go of all of it. And you really can accept that God’s love is unconditional. And that all this judgmental attitude is a grand illusion created by the fallen beings.

Covid: What would you do as the leader of a country?

Question: A comment by the masters mentioned that it was considered that we should see the back of it by the beginning of 2021. This has proven more an issue than anticipated. Many nation governments are using various means to entice and intimidate its populace to be vaccinated. Is it still the case that those who die with COVID would have died because they would pass by the end of the year and just died sooner?

What about people’s free will not to be vaccinated, but are manipulated by government direction and are coerced into being vaccinated and pass from the screen of life on earth? In Australia, many companies are headed towards: “You will get vaccinated, else your employment is terminated”. We have seen in rare cases that being vaccinated is not a guarantee that you cannot get COVID and die. The spin here is that you might get COVID but are unlikely to die. Of course, we do not know yet what long term effects may be, via the various vaccinations. Doctors have been given indemnity. Yet, the government is saying that they are not forcing anyone to be vaccinated. Yet still, it seems to be coercing that their only current recourse is by having everyone vaccinate. We are headed towards the divide of those vaccinated and those unvaccinated, where being unvaccinated you become an outcast. What is the lesson we were and are still to learn from worldwide COVID?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

I would like you to go through a little thought experiment. Imagine that you are the leader of a country, you start getting reports that there is this new disease that is spreading, people are getting sick. Some people have to be hospitalized, some people have to go to the intensive care unit and receive oxygen and some people die. You realize that it is especially the elderly and those with respiratory problems that are dying from this disease. You are the leader of the country. So, everyone is looking to you to decide what to do. What would you do in that situation? Would you make some rash decision? Or would you seek more information, so you can make a more educated decision?

Now imagine that you decide to seek more information. Where would you get this information? Well, you have two options, two main options. You can get it from the government apparatus in your country, scientists, medical professionals, bureaucrats, people in government, politicians. You can hear what they have to say. You can hear what their recommendations are. The other option is you can take your computer and go out on the internet and see what is available out there. You will find a lot of information that is coming from either a known source or that is coming from people who claim to have some kind of authority, although there is no proof that they have that authority. You will find that for each claim made by the authorities in your government apparatus, there is a claim on the internet that denies that official claim.

What would you do? How would you make your decisions? Would you base it on these allegations that are on the internet? Or would you base it on the government apparatus that at least has some tradition, some scientific investigations, some observations from hospitals and doctors on what to base it on? They have experience with other diseases. They make their recommendation based on those experiences.

What would you choose as the foundation for your decision-making process? Realizing of course, that it is your decision and whatever the outcome is, you will be blamed for it.

Now, you might decide that, we will now imagine that you will put aside the many claims out there on the internet. You will look at what is being said from government sources or at least professional sources. Then, you will find there are two claims being made. One says we should attempt to limit the spread of the disease as much as possible. Another says we should let the disease run its course, so that we can achieve herd immunity as quickly as possible.

You might observe, for example, that the country of Sweden decided in the early stages of the pandemic, to let the country experience the full effects of the disease without going into any kind of restrictions or lockdown in order to achieve herd immunity. You will find that most other countries took the other course of seeking to limit the disease, the spread of the disease, by taking whatever measures were available. What would you decide?

Let us now imagine you decide that you will limit the spread of the disease. You decide to create a lockdown to limit contact between people. A lot of businesses will have to shut down, especially restaurants and the entertainment industry, cultural institutions and so on. Travel will be restricted. Many businesses will shut down or people will work from home, government offices the same thing, in order to prevent that there is a violent and quick spread of the disease, which you know, will lead to your hospitals being overwhelmed by patients and therefore, people dying, that would not have to die if this was more spread out.

Again, you decide to do this and see the effects. Obviously, after some time you realize that this has limited the spread of the disease, your hospital system has not been overwhelmed, even though it has been burdened, but it has not been overwhelmed. And you can even look and see that far fewer people have died in your country than in Sweden, where they did not impose the restrictions.

You can even observe that the Swedish authorities and the Swedish people are beginning to question this approach of achieving herd immunity because the cost is too high. Especially, there are many elderly people in nursing homes that are dying from the disease. You are realizing that it probably was the more pragmatic decision to go for some kind of lockdown. But obviously, you also realize that you cannot be in lockdown forever. The economy simply cannot handle it. What do you do?

Well, suddenly, there is a new development in the situation. Several vaccines are brought to the market. It is now possible to vaccinate people, so they have a much lower possibility of getting the disease. Now what do you do? Again, you can listen to the professionals in the field in your own government, or you can go out on the internet and you can find that there are many people on the internet who are making completely contrary claims to what is being said from official sources. Some claim a vaccine will not work, some claim the disease does not even exist, that it is all made up. Some claim that vaccines will harm people or that it is a violation of their freedoms, their constitutional rights, and so forth. What do you decide?

You know that if you use the vaccine to its maximum capacity, and a certain percentage of people get vaccinated, you can stop the pandemic, you can lift the restrictions and society can at least start moving back to a normal lifestyle, even if COVID will still be with you in the years to come, in a lesser form. What do you do?

Now let’s imagine you decide to use the vaccine. After all they are developed, you have your citizens vaccinated against other diseases and you know it has been proven in the past that vaccinations have helped eradicate certain diseases that are no longer a problem. You decide to use the vaccine. In the beginning, you have a rush of people who voluntarily go to get vaccinated. But then after some time you run into a situation where now there are people who refuse to be vaccinated, even though the vaccines are available for them. Well, what do you then do?

You know that for the vaccines to be effective in eradicating disease, a certain percentage of the people have to be vaccinated. It does not seem that in your country there is enough of a percentage to be vaccinated. What do you do? Do you try to entice them? Or do you come to a point where you realize you have to use force for the greater good? What do you do?

Take note, I am not saying that you should do this or that. I am simply clarifying the options.

Now, you are, of course, not a dictator. There is a limit to what you can tell businesses to do. Here, you have many businesses who have either been locked down, or they have had their workers work from home, both of which are temporary solutions. You cannot really tell these businesses what to do. But you observe that many of these businesses are saying: “We have to get back to a normal way of doing business and the vaccination is the practical way to do this, and we cannot have an office with 100 people, where two people refuse to get vaccinated and they can then still keep the pandemic going, not so much influencing the vaccinated people, but our customers.” The company says: “Our company policy is, if you are not vaccinated, you cannot come to work.” And if you cannot work from home, you have to find another job, where they do not care about you not being vaccinated. What can you do about that when you are not a dictator?

Again, I am not telling you what you should or should not do. I am simply asking you to go through the scenario of, imagine that instead of you looking at the government and evaluating their decisions, you are now the one who has to make the decision. What would you then do in that situation, knowing that it is all going to come back to you?

Now, I am asking you to do something else, you step back from your own personal view of the situation and you observe what has been happening, what is happening in the world. I will use two countries as examples, because this messenger has lived in both of them and is fairly familiar with them and many of you will also be familiar with them. You have the country of Denmark. In the beginning of 2021, Denmark was behind the United States in terms of vaccinations. This was mainly because there were more vaccinations available in the United States because they were produced there. Denmark was behind, they started vaccinating the most vulnerable groups in the population but sometime in the early summer, Denmark actually got ahead of the United States in terms of the percentage of people vaccinated—certainly not the number because there are 5 million people in Denmark versus over 300 million in the United States, but in terms of the percentage.

This means that in Denmark today, the Danish government has lifted most of the restrictions. There are still some travel restrictions about other countries, but inside the country, most restrictions have been lifted. Why has this been possible? Why has the government decided to do this? Because, as of right now, more than two thirds of the adult population are fully vaccinated. The reason that it is not higher is that the vaccine is not approved for children. But of all of the people who have been offered the vaccine, more than 95% of them have chosen to get the vaccine.

Now, you look at the United States. As I said, first the United States was ahead of any other country in terms of the percentage of people vaccinated because many Americans rushed to voluntarily get vaccinated. Then this started to slow down, even though the current administration had set up a very efficient process for producing, distributing the vaccines and getting people vaccinated. The number of people vaccinated started going down. Why was this? Because there was a large percentage of people in the United States, who, for various reasons, would not voluntarily get vaccinated. It does not matter why. I am simply stating what anyone can observe.

You now have a situation in the United States where some states have lifted many restrictions, and you can simply look at the indisputable numbers that the number of cases is going up, the number of deaths is going up, the number of severe hospitalizations are going up, and there are states where the healthcare system is beginning to become overburdened. This is just a matter of observing facts. You can, of course, go into denial and say, “Oh, it is all fake”. But really, can you deny this? It’s just an observation you can make. What you have is a situation now where the disease is still spreading, mainly because of the Delta variant.

The United States is approaching a situation that is similar to what they had last fall, where there was not a vaccine, and the disease is spreading primarily among the unvaccinated. The United States government knows very well the enormous resistance to a government mandate; therefore, they are reluctant to do it. But there are, of course, private companies who are not limited by the government. They are beginning to say, our employees need to be vaccinated, partly because we have an obligation to society, partly because we want to go on to do business as we normally do and partly because, of course, we need to protect our customers. How can you in the American system prevent businesses from doing this? How can you even say it is wrong? There is no basis in the governmental system for restricting businesses from doing this. It is a private business; they can set the terms for employment.

What is the difference now between the country of Denmark and the country of the United States? Well, you can look at the outer situation, you can see that Denmark has a public healthcare system, the United States does not. Many Americans call this socialized medicine, but it is not. If you go back to my dictation about families, you will see that I was saying that there has, in many modern democracies, been an increase in the recognition of basic humanity. There has been an increase in social awareness.

If you look at Denmark, compared to the United States, there is a far higher sense of social awareness in Denmark than in the United States. This is one reason Denmark has a public healthcare system because the Danish people have said: We do not want people to have their lives ruined or go into bankruptcy because of medical bills. This is a burden we all need to share. Therefore, we are willing to pay more in taxes in order to have a public health care system.

The reality is that Denmark, as a country, spends a smaller percentage of the economic resources on health care than the United States does. Because in the United States, you have the middleman or private health care insurance companies who are seeking to make a profit. They have no reason to limit what companies can charge for medical treatment, because there is at least an unwritten agreement between the industry of insurance and the industry of health care providers. They have an unwritten agreement about what they can charge, so they can both make the maximum profit.

In Denmark, the social awareness has said: We cannot really allow people to make a profit off of people’s illness, therefore, we need to limit healthcare costs as much as possible within the restraints of the system. This higher social awareness is why the vast majority of Danes have voluntarily gotten vaccinated. The government has not in any way forced or coerced people to get vaccinated, private companies have not done it either because they did not have to, because of the social awareness.

In the United States, you have this lack of social awareness, which is why you do not have a public health care system, which is why you have people who have taken their issue of freedom, personal freedom, and perverted it so that it can override their social responsibility towards other people. In other words, many Americans are, as the saying goes, looking out for number one. They only care about themselves: What is in it for me? They do not have the social awareness to look at the whole. Whereas, people in Denmark look at society as a whole and say: What do I need to do to help the whole?

In America, there is, among many people, not that social awareness. Of course, some people in America have it, but many obviously, do not. You made the remark in the question, that there is a divide between the unvaccinated and the vaccinated and the unvaccinated become outcasts. Well, in the United States, there is clearly a divide between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated and the unvaccinated become dead. That is the stark reality of what you can observe right now.

Now, my beloved, this messenger has looked at this situation. And he realized, because his mind works that way, that he looks for deeper connections, that the republican party and President Trump, former President Trump, are the ones who are promoting this individual freedom, constitutional freedom among their electors. And therefore, they do not want to force them to get vaccinated. At the same time, these people hope that they can win back a majority in Congress and the Senate in the midterm election. And some, at least, hope that Donald Trump can run for president again in 2024. Do they not see, this messenger realized, that by not encouraging their electors to get vaccinated, there is a real risk that so many of their potential electors will die before the election, that they cannot win a majority? They are literally letting their own supporters die from a preventable disease, because the vaccination is there.

This messenger looks at a situation like this, cannot understand why people cannot see this. Of course, there is another part of his mind where he realizes why. Because we have given teachings on perception filters, cognitive dissonance, the fallen beings, and so on. But I am simply giving you these thoughts so that you can put yourself in a situation where you have to make the decisions: What would you do? You can observe neutrally what anybody can observe, by just looking at statistics, looking at the numbers. Of course, you can deny anything, I realize that. But can you really deny these numbers that are compiled by people from all over the world who really, most of them, just want this pandemic to end?

Again, I am not telling you what to think or not think. But I am asking you to think.

Ancestor worship and reincarnation

Question: I come from a background where people keep in touch with their ancestors. However, I wonder how someone can make contact with an ancestor who passed away hundreds or thousands of years ago, if this lifestream has been reincarnated multiple times since?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

A very logical question for these people to consider. But the question is, of course, if they believe in reincarnation, which not all who want to keep in touch with their ancestors do. Some believe that they are in touch with the spirits of their ancestors, and that these spirits live on.

Now, of course, when you know the reality of reincarnation, you know that a person will move on, take incarnation again, most likely in a different culture and a different family. And therefore, there is no real person that they can contact. What the vast majority of these people who are in contact with (or think they are in contact with) their ancestors are really contacting, are some collective entities that are simply trying to take people’s energy by getting people to give them their attention.

It is not really their ancestors they are communing with and it is certainly not their ancestors they are worshiping. They are simply giving their energies to these collective beasts that are absorbing it like a black hole absorbs light.

Should I say it or not?

Question: Sometimes I feel an impulse or a pull to say or ask something and this pull generally only disappears after I say it. Could this come from my I Am Presence? Or is it more likely to be from a separate self? How could I better distinguish where it comes from?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

You need to consider the more subtle feeling behind it. There are some times where you will be able to identify that there is almost a compulsion to say something. It is almost like you feel you have to say this. There may even be some kind of explanation for why you should say this. In that case, it comes from a separate self.

When it comes from your I Am Presence, there is no compulsion, there is no argumentation or reasoning. You can learn to recognize that there is just this inner sense of, it can be almost a peacefulness or calm or heightened awareness. And something spontaneously comes, almost like you see a bubble of water coming up to the surface from the depths of the water, and it comes to your conscious mind. And you can learn to come to a point where whenever this happens, you just say it. You are not arguing or reasoning or thinking, should I say it or not? You just say it, you just express it. And when there is this evaluation, should I say it or not? You just learn to not say it because then you know, it is from a separate self.

Spiritual experiences without drama and contrast

Question: I have an expectation that when I connect to my I Am Presence or to an ascended master, I will experience some spectacular feeling or experience. But could this be an unrealistic expectation? And that this connection is more subtle and not as different from my normal awareness. Is there any experience or general state of mind that we will feel as we let go of more and more selves? Or is it more an individual experience to everyone?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

You are perfectly correct that it is an unrealistic expectation. In a sense, we can say that all expectations are unrealistic expectations. But in this particular case, you need to recognize here that we have given some teachings about the difference between non-duality and duality. In duality, you have two opposites: black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. They are absolute opposites, there are no shades in between. That is why there is always a very big contrast between them. This consciousness of duality, has been projected upon spiritual teachings, spiritual masters, spiritual experiences, to where many people have created this awareness that if they are really spiritual, if they are having a really spiritual experience, it should be some dramatic experience that is very different from their normal state of consciousness.

And of course, you can find many people who have had dramatic experiences, but they seem dramatic, only in contrast to their normal state of awareness. Some people have forced these experiences, for example, through drugs or through unbalanced spiritual practices. Some people have had them spontaneously because it was part of their divine plan.

But nevertheless, the reality is, as you have correctly intuited, that as you raise your awareness more and more, as you begin to raise your awareness out of duality towards non-duality, you are escaping the dualistic extremes. You are escaping the “pairs” as Gautama Buddha called it and therefore, there will be less and less of a contrast between your spiritual experiences and your everyday experience, because your everyday experience will be raised up, but this happens so gradually, that you have time to get used to it. There comes a point where you have a much more peaceful state of mind than you had before, but you have gotten used to it so it is your normal state of awareness.

When you experience the presence of a master, it is much closer to what is now your normal state, whereas it is still far from what it was before. This messenger, for example, had some more dramatic experiences when he was younger. And from time to time, there are people who think that he must constantly have these dramatic experiences of interacting with us or taking a dictation. But as he has explained himself, when you raise your consciousness, there is not the contrast. And he just strives to be in a neutral state of mind, where he is not experiencing our presence as something dramatic, or something dramatically different from his normal state of mind. Of course, it is different, of course, there are some times that he has a more intense experience than others, but still, you need to recognize that the higher you go on the path, the less drama, the less contrast and the less you have these “peak” experiences, because in a sense, your normal state of consciousness becomes a peak experience.

Experiencing vs. Understanding Conscious You

Question: I sense that I have a lack of spiritual understanding of the Conscious You. Can you please expand on this to help us understand what it is, what it consists of, how we are to use it, et cetera?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

Well, we have given many and extensive teachings on the Conscious You. Way too many teachings to give in an answer like this. You can obviously go on the websites and search on it, but I recommend that you also look at Guru Ma’s book Don’t drink your own Kool Aid, which talks about the Conscious You. However, be very aware here that there is this, as we have said before, very long tradition that spiritual people try to understand everything with the analytical, outer mind so that they can label it, categorize it, fit it into their database.

When we gave the concept of the Conscious You, and even the name Conscious You, it was actually given, to a certain extent, to confuse the linear, analytical mind. You have seen various people who are trying to argue against the concept. But the Conscious You is not really a concept that you can understand or argue against. The Conscious You is meant to be an experience.

The teachings, the explanations we have given is not meant to help you understand what the Conscious You is, but to give you the impetus, where you want to experience the Conscious You, which is, what we have said, pure awareness. Well, what do we mean with pure awareness?

Again, you can put concepts on it, but it really means that you are aware, but you do not have any content of your awareness, you are not thinking, you are not feeling, there is just awareness. And when you have that experience, it gives you a contrast to your normal, busy state of mind where the mind is always analyzing, categorizing, evaluating, judging, thinking, feeling, whatever. And that becomes a foundation for realizing that you are not the outer thoughts, you are not the outer feelings, you are not even the outer personality. You are not even the soul-vehicle, you are more than this.

And therefore, you are not so identified with it, you do not take everything so seriously, you do not take things so personally, because you realize that you are not the outer mind and this then is the foundation for realizing you are not all of these separate selves. It is the separate selves that have the feelings, the thoughts, the nightmares, the patterns, the reactions. You are not. The Conscious You is not reacting, is not thinking, is not feeling. You are beyond this. And that means you can then separate yourself from it, you can depersonalize your life and have a different foundation for your spiritual growth.

When you are actually trying to use the outer mind to overcome the outer mind, which is a very difficult proposition, even though some people once in a while have made it, mainly because they got themselves into such a stressed state that they could not stand it anymore and suddenly snapped out of it and experienced pure awareness.

Muscle pains after decreeing

Question: I started doing decrees at 1.02 and 7.07 in the morning, and 4.01 and 7.07, or 7.02 in the evening, for about two months. I recently have a lot of deep muscle pains in my neck, back and arms. Does it have anything to do with doing these decrees?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

Well, in a sense, it never has anything to do with doing the decrees directly. It is not the decrees that are causing physical pain or discomfort. But you can be aware, or you need to investigate, whether you are giving the decrees with a certain tension that might make you tense certain muscles. People can see or can experience from time to time that when they are giving decrees, they are straining, they are sitting in a certain strained position and this can give you muscle pains.

There can also be times where decrees start to resolve something in your three higher bodies and this can filter through to the physical body so you can have temporary pain or discomfort. But it should not become severe and it should not last for a long period of time. Then you would have to take appropriate measures, whether it would be to see a doctor or whether it would be to take a break with decrees or not give us many decrees, so that you do not get more of a release than what your body can deal with.

Studying Confucianism

Question: Is Confucianism worth learning to improve ourselves to better levels or is it evil, from a fallen being?

Answer from the Ascended Master Confucius through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

Well, I am not a fallen being, I never was and so it did not come from the fallen being. I was in embodiment at the time I gave the teaching, I had reached a reasonably high level of awareness, but by no means the highest that can be attained on earth. But I was able to receive some ideas from the ascended realm, and encapsulate them into the outer teaching of Confucianism.

However, what you have to realize is that, as all teachings must be, it was given in a certain context, for a certain culture, for certain people, for a certain time. Naturally, it has timeless elements, timeless principles, but it is not something I recommend that you study today, when you have the ascended master teachings. There may be a few people who will find that they need to study it for a time in order to familiarize themselves with it, but I will not give a general recommendation that all spiritual students should study it.

It was very much given for a certain time, and it was very much given to change outer behavior, not so much the deeper psychology because it was not possible at the time. It should also be said that it was very much given from a certain viewpoint that it explained the relationship between the state and the citizens and how the citizens should behave to uphold the state as an orderly, functioning state. But of course, what you had at that time was by no means a democracy and so it is not really applicable for a modern democracy.

You could say that, to some degree, Confucianism has been used by the fallen beings to justify a state where they are in control. And this is a valid point. But it does not mean that the teaching itself does not have timeless elements or valid elements. Anything that we can possibly give, the fallen beings will attempt to pervert it. And of course, some people will want to pervert it because it gives them an advantage. It solidifies the ruling elite’s position and makes the people subservient to the elite, for example.

Who is my master?

Question: I believe I have a master who looks after me from above. I would like to know who that master is, can you please tell me? I believe this will give me the encouragement in my spiritual learning journey.

Answer from Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

I am reading the question because I just want to explain that these are the kind of answers you need to get from within. You can ask the masters directly to reveal this to you, and you will get it if you are open to it. But you also have to be aware that the masters have explained that at any time we are working with a certain master, that is the primary master that is working with us. But it does not mean that it will be that way for the rest of our lifetimes.

We will often switch from one master to another. And therefore, it is important that you do not become rigid about these things where you think, “Oh, now I am working with this master, and it will be that way forever or for the rest of his lifetime.” That is another reason why they do not really want to give you these answers from without because people often fixate their minds on this. You need to be flexible and go within.

Nightmares after invoking spiritual protection

Question: I have recently started to do the Archangel Michael decree 1.02 from the toolbox website before bed. But that night I had a few bad dreams and on the same night, I chant the decrees nine times. One of the worst dreams I could remember is there was someone outside my living apartment front door, who was trying to get in to kill my family. I sometimes have bad dreams, but this is the worst dream I ever had. Can you help to explain to me, what does it mean and why I had such a bad dream, even though I pray for protection?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

You need to recognize that if you are not doing any spiritual practices, if you are not calling for protection, there can very well be and there will be for most people, dark forces who are trying to influence you. When you do not know what you are up against, when you have no protection, you can be influenced in various ways. This means among other things, that they can put a certain fear in you of what could happen.

When you start doing spiritual protection, there will be a certain upheaval in your four lower bodies. Many, many people find that when they either make it their first commitment to the spiritual path, or when they step their commitment up to a higher level, they can go through a turbulent period, where it almost seems like they are exposed to more attacks or more opposition than before.

Now there can be two aspects of this: one is that you can be exposed to more attacks from dark forces who want to derail you, before you have really built a momentum by invoking spiritual protection. They want to scare you into thinking “This is dangerous, and I should stop”. If they have projected a certain fear into you that someone might try to kill your family, then this can surface as a dream, because they are hoping that you will be so scared that you will stop doing it.

Now obviously, if you keep calling for spiritual protection, there will come a point where you will find there will be fewer of these dreams. But the other thing that can happen is that when you start doing spiritual protection, there can be an openness, where you suddenly begin to see something that was an attack on you all along, but you did not see it before.

Sometimes you can see this in an intuitive experience where you suddenly realize there is a dark force that is after you and the reason you see this is because now you have the contrast between that dark force and its energy and the light you have invoked through decrees and invocations. It can also be that it sometimes surfaces in a dream, because your conscious mind is not ready to deal with it so you see it in a dream instead. And it is sort of a revelation of what you have been exposed to so that you can see that you need to be diligent in invoking spiritual protection until you are so protected that it cannot impinge upon you.

This of course, does not mean that you should not also do the spiritual work of working on your psychology, resolving these separate selves because it is the separate selves that give the dark forces an inroad. But the real value in invoking spiritual protection is that it minimizes the attacks and the noise coming from the outside so you can better look at what you need to resolve in your psychology, in your subconscious mind.

Decisions behind internal spirits

Question: In our practice, we need to see the spirit we have created, and the decision behind it, so that we can transcend it. If the decision was made in a previous life a long time ago, I find it very difficult to remember a previous life, especially when a decision is hidden in my subconscious. What can help me see a decision made in a previous life? For example, I can see that a decision was made, that this earth has two types of people, those who are right and those who are wrong, and then my spirit decides it is among the “right: people. But I cannot remember clearly the circumstances in a past life that made me make that decision. When a spirit keeps coming back, is it because I could not see the decision behind it and therefore my I AM Presence has not shattered the matrix of that spirit?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

What we have given you is a set of tools and teachings that can help you uncover the decision behind a certain spirit without necessarily seeing the exact situation where this happens. I have given you tools in the book Healing Your Spiritual Traumas, the meditation where you go back through the seven gardens, go back to the theater where you see yourself on a certain stage. This can help you get at least glimpses of what the situation was like, what the dynamic was, how other people were involved, what you were exposed to, and the decision you made.

You do not need to know exactly what happened in order to uncover the decision, you just need to see that decision, see how it affects you and then decide to let it go.

If a spirit keeps coming back, it is because there is something you have not seen. It is not actually that the I AM Presence shatters the matrix, it is actually that you are using your free will to keep the spirit alive because you have not undone the decision that created the spirit. You are feeding it your energy. And when you stop feeding it your energy because you changed the decision, then the spirit simply dies and that is when you can then make the calls for the energy to be transmuted back into a higher vibration.

Questions on Afghanistan (2021)

Question:

1. Is Afghanistan similar to the Middle East and where is it headed? What might be expected in the coming years from Afghanistan?

2. Looking at the situation in Afghanistan, we saw the Taliban very quickly in less than 10 days were capturing the country after the American decision to withdraw. I thought the highest potential for the Afghan people through their army was to stand up to the Taliban and protect the country and the people but that did not happen. They were trained for 20 years during the American occupation for this purpose, but they capitulated very quickly. Can the masters comment on this situation?

3. We were led to believe that the Afghanistan government forces outnumber the Taliban forces by a considerable number. Why did this government collapse so quickly and why did Ghani the Afghan leader, not even try to hold on to power? Even though the Taliban had a lot of support from Pakistan, Ghani would have had a lot of support too from the Western allies so what’s going on?

4. It has been very difficult for me personally as an urban Western woman to watch the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the US withdrawal of forces. From what I have read under the US occupation, there was an urban, rural divide in Afghanistan, where many rural people continue traditional cultural practices, including the routine subjugation of women, while the urban population especially in Kabul, enjoyed a more liberal, tech-savvy culture. The masters have stated that no Western power can force democracy on another nation but it seems that the US presence did have an effect on some of the people there. Now there is a risk of famine and economic collapse. Given these things and the many interests and concerns of various nations in Afghanistan, what could the near future of Afghan society look like? And how can we as ascended master students help?

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Moving Toward Golden Age Relationships.

Well, my beloved, I first want to go back before the United States and Western nations invaded Afghanistan. As we have said before, we did not in any way support the invasion of Irak or Afghanistan, we did not support or inspire, or sponsor or in any way back the neoconservative movement that saw it as their duty to spread democracy and Christian values to the rest of the world by using the United States Armed Forces, and of course, their economic power as well. We have said before that democracy is a demanding form of government, and people in a nation have to be ready for it. It cannot be brought by force, how can a non-force based form of government be imposed by force, it simply is not logically possible.

It is clear that we did not back the invasion, we did not back the 20 year occupation, if you want to call it that. We did not back even the attempt at nation building, although you have to say also that once the Western powers had invaded Afghanistan, we tried to do whatever we could through the people we could work with, to at least make the best of the situation. If for no other reason, then so that the Afghan people and the Western nations would have the greatest possible opportunity to learn a lesson from the situation.

The entire occupation or involvement with Afghanistan over these 20 years is an example of what happens when people are in the ideological mindset that Gautama Buddha talked so profoundly about in the last webinar. What happened was that the United States could not really admit that it had been a mistake to go in there because they would not admit that the world does not work the way America thinks it works.

This is the essence of the ideological mindset, you have an idea of how the world should work and you only look for what validates the idea, you do not want to look at what does not validate it. In a sense, you could say that it was a mistake to stay as long as they did during the Bush administration. It was a mistake for President Obama to stay in Afghanistan, to recommit forces there, because he thought he could do something, or that America could do something that had not been done so far.

There is no question that America had to pull out at some point. You can say that Donald Trump did see the need to pull out and therefore did whatever he thought could be done to negotiate some kind of exit. President Biden also saw the need to pull out and therefore, instead of trying to renegotiate or recommit forces, which would have been a considerable expenditure, decided to simply go with a deal that was there and withdraw the US forces.

Now, you may look at the chaotic situation that happened after this Taliban started taking over these provincial capitals, and leading to the less than elegant exit from Kabul. I can assure you that whether this had happened during the Trump administration, or during the present administration, there would have been chaos in any event. There are several reasons for this. One is, of course, that the Taliban have been waiting very patiently for their opening. They have, as one of the questions mentioned, also acquired strong backing from Pakistan, but not only from Pakistan from many other Muslim nations who wanted to see the Western incursion in Afghanistan fail.

They have done whatever they could to keep some kind of pressure and tension but they realized that as long as the West and especially the United States was committed to keeping forces there, there was little they could do. They have been waiting patiently but very aggressively plotting for when the opportunity would come because they figured that it would have to come simply because of the expense of having such a large military presence in such a remote nation.

If you look back at history, you will see that going back to when the British invaded Afghanistan centuries ago, the logistics of the remoteness of Afghanistan, the roughness of the terrain, simply makes any kind of large-scale military operation impractical, whether it was a couple of hundred years ago or today. The people in the region knew this, there was an inevitable exit that had to happen. They were waiting for it, plotting whatever they could do, so they had a clear strategy.

The other element is, of course, is that the Afghan government and the Afghan security forces, even though they have been trained for 20 years and were well equipped and supposedly had sufficient numbers, they simply did not have the will. They could very clearly see the handwriting on the wall that once the American military presence was no longer there, they would face a very aggressive opposition from the Taliban and other fighting groups, and they faced the choice: Are we going to drag this out for a long period of time, which will cost lives and blood? But the end result was for them to seem inevitable. The Taliban would take over, the government would fail, so it was simply a matter of when the Taliban started making progress in terms of taking over the country. There was a domino effect that more and more of the leaders of the Afghan government and the security forces simply decided to give up instead of prolonging the inevitable.

Now, you can of course look at this and you can say, well, when they invaded Afghanistan, they ousted the Taliban from government and now the Taliban is back in government so has anything really changed? Has there been any progress over these 20 years and all of this expenditure? Of course, some Americans will try and spin it and say our goal was to get al Qaeda and other terrorist groups that were getting sanction in Afghanistan, but that is, of course, just trying to save face because the reality is that Afghanistan is not the only nation or region in the world where there is safe harbor for terrorists, as northern Pakistan is, of course where the Taliban and many other extremist groups have been given sanctuary, or at least been allowed a presence there and there are other examples around the world.

The reality of the situation here is that, as we have said before, you cannot force democracy on a population that is not ready for democracy. The reality of the situation is that a majority of the Afghan people do not want democracy. For many of them, it is not a matter of some kind of sophisticated reason. They simply do not want it because it is change. It is something they do not know and they do not want change. They basically want to keep living the same lifestyle that they have been living for their entire lifetimes and for generations, they do not want anything to change.

You may say: “Well don’t they want greater freedom?” But they believe they had all the freedom they needed. “Don’t they want greater prosperity?” But many of them believe that they had all the prosperity that they could have given the roughness of the terrain and the climate and the situation in Afghanistan. They wanted to live the kind of lifestyle they were living and that they had been living for generations. It is a mindset that is very alien to what it is in most modern democracies but it is a mindset that is very common around the planet in some of these more rural populations. They simply do not want change, whatever it is.

Now, of course, you also have a certain segment of the population, not only in Afghanistan, but in all Muslim nations, who do not want democracy because it is associated with the West, with Christianity, with Western society, with consumer culture, and all of the things that Muslim nations look at as the devil’s work in the West, as un-Muslim and they resisted for that very reason. They do not know really what they are resisting, they do not understand it, because they really have no sophisticated understanding of what a democracy is but they resist it simply because it is associated with the West.

You also have a psychology that is very common in Muslim nations, but especially common in Afghanistan, and that is that no foreigner should ever force anything upon them. As soon as an outside force comes in, and says you should have this, they resist it. It is almost what you could call the genetic resistance, because it is very deeply ingrained in the collective psyche. You have no chance of overcoming it in the short term. Of course, you can overcome it over generations.

It is correct as one of the questions mentions that there has been a divide between the outlying areas and some of the cities, especially Kabul. There is a more progressive element of the population who lived there, and who not fully embraced the changes, but at least they said from a purely practical situation: “The Americans are here now, how can we make the best of them? What is in it for us?” It was not really that most of them wanted democracy.

There were of course, a small percentage that wanted democracy, wanted change, wanted different ideas, wanted greater prosperity, a functioning economy, a functioning country for that matter which they did not have before. But it was really what you call a marriage of convenience for most people. They simply accepted: “The Americans are here now, we can’t kick them out, let’s make the best of it, let us prosper, while we have the chance.” You see that many of these people have left now. And this, of course means that there are very few progressive people left to have an impact on Afghanistan.

Now, I know this sounds dire. But there is actually a “but…”. There is actually a “but…”. There is a silver lining. Again, I want to make it clear, we of the ascended masters did not support the adventure in Afghanistan. But you look at the fact that the Western forces did go in there and they did what they did to try and build a more modern nation. It is clear that this has had an impact on the collective consciousness and on the individual consciousness of some people, which of course again, affects the collective.

There has been a shift in Afghanistan. Very, very few people in Afghanistan realize this. But there has been a shift. And it has been a shift for the better. Some people have seen that there is an alternative to the way things have been before, that there could potentially be some advantages to having a modern nation, having a functioning government, that the people could have more influence on the government, and so forth. This does not mean they have accepted the Christian religion, Western ideals or Western culture. But they have accepted that perhaps there are some changes that could be beneficial.

There has been a shift in the collective consciousness. There has also been a shift, of course, in the collective consciousness on a planetary level so even the Taliban have changed over 20 years. It cannot be any other way. How much they have changed remains to be seen. How much of a shift there has been in the Afghan collective consciousness and what that will do also remains to be seen.

What will happen in the short term is that there will be a power play. There will be a power play in the Taliban because there are some of the Taliban leaders who realize they have changed, they need to change, they need to implement a different policy than they did 20 years ago. Some of them are practical realists enough to realize that they simply cannot make the economy function by doing what they did 20 years ago because the economy clearly was not functioning back then. In fact, before the invasion, it was only a matter of time before the Taliban government would have collapsed for economic reasons.

There are some of them that are able to see that if they do what they did 20 years ago, it will only be a matter of a short time before the economy will collapse, there will be widespread famine, and people will rebel against them, and some resistance group will rise up, who will now start fighting the Taliban and there will either be a civil war or the Taliban will simply have to fold and leave the country in chaos. There is a faction within the Taliban that are saying: “What changes do we need to make so we can at least create a functioning country?” But there are also some of the fighters and some of the local commanders who do not want any change, who are resisting what the leaders of the Taliban want.

The question is, how does this play out between these two factions of the Taliban? Will some of the rural commanders split off from the Taliban and start their own Mujahideen movement as Afghans have done in the past and start fighting to start creating their own autonomous regions. You could have a situation in a matter of months or a year where the Taliban have control only over rural areas and these local resistance groups have taken control over the more outlying areas. This is one possible scenario. You do of course, have the immediate situation that there could be widespread famine, within a matter of months, that the economy is not functioning, the banking system may not be able to function at all. Of course, international aid will be withdrawn and what will be given will only be aid to prevent starvation, mass starvation.

It is clear that the Taliban are not in any way realizing what they have walked into. In fact, you could say that the former Afghan President, and the leaders of the Afghan government were the smart ones, because they got out of there and the Taliban, well, it is the old saying that men rush in where angels fear to tread. They rushed in, and only some of them are now beginning to realize what they actually face. They had a plan for taking over the country, they have no plan for running the country, and will they be able to run the country.

Then of course, you have the potential for some outside interference or help. Pakistan might attempt to do something, but it is unlikely that they will be unintelligent, I might say, enough to attempt some large scale military operation. It is also unlikely that the Russians will want to go back in militarily, although they will probably try to get something out of it. Then that leaves the Chinese, which is also unlikely that they will do some military incursion, although it cannot be ruled out completely, that they might actually think that they can do what the Western nations could not do in Afghanistan. If they do so, then it will also be a very big lesson for China, because they will not be able to achieve what they think they can achieve there. There are also different scenarios where they might attempt to give some kind of economic assistance, but they will eventually, within a matter of months, or years, realize that it is simply a black hole and they can keep pouring money into it without getting anything out of it.

Naturally, when you look at the situation in Afghanistan, there is a major concern for women and children. Children especially for starvation, women, especially for those who had accepted some greater freedoms being suppressed again, persecuted, perhaps even executed for taking a liberal stand. It is clear that in the short term, there will, no doubt, be major suppression of women. But it must also be said that if there is any hope of positive changes in Afghanistan, it will be driven by women who have accepted different values and who refused to go back into the old state where they were suppressed. This is the only realistic hope. And again, there is the question of: Will it be the progressive wing of the Taliban that will win? Or will it be the conservative that will brutally with violence put down any rebellion from women or even any attempt from women to demand better treatment.

As you can see, I am not about to make any predictions about what will happen because no predictions can be made. This is a very chaotic situation. You can say, it has been made more chaotic by the Western presence over 20 years but even if we say that there had been no Western incursion in Afghanistan, Afghanistan will still have spiraled into chaos under the rule of the Taliban. There would already have been several civil wars, several rebellions against Afghanistan, several regions declaring autonomy from the Taliban, and so forth. Basically, what you see has been going on in Afghanistan for centuries would have continued and perhaps… perhaps, there is a more realistic hope of improvement now, because of the Western incursion but it is a very big perhaps.

What can you do about this as ascended master students? Well, quite realistically, there are so many things to give invocations and decrees for in the world right now that unless you have a strong personal affinity with Afghanistan, there really is not anything I recommend that you do. You could certainly make calls that the Western nations and especially the United States would learn the lessons that they can learn from this. The lesson that the West needs to learn is actually not a simple lesson. It is not the simple lesson that we should stay out of other countries from now on or nation building is dead, or the era has ended where the United States will attempt to build nations and other countries, this is not the lesson. That is just going from one unbalanced extreme, the naivety of the neoconservatives thinking they could spread Western values, and Christianity around the world with force to the opposite dualistic extreme of saying: “America is going to be isolationists and we are not going to mess with any foreign countries.”

It is clear that as we have talked about before, as Mother Mary has talked about, there should long ago have been major improvement in the Middle East, in Africa and in other regions of the world, economic improvement especially. The Western nations should have done something to improve these situations. If the Western nations do not want to be overrun by refugees who seek a better life because they intuitively know they should have had that better life already, then the Western nations need to find a way to promote economic prosperity in these nations.

This will in many cases require some form of democracy because you look at the Western nations: Why do they have the affluence they have? Because they have had the freedom, not only the freedom of the economy, but the freedom in other ways, that leads to greater prosperity. It is a very, very delicate question. How do you help a backwards nation become a modern nation that has a functioning economy, that has a functioning political system that is not completely mired down in corruption and local fighting and tribal warfare and whatever you have. How do you do this?

How do you actually create a functioning nation in Africa, for example, when Russia and China are interfering with these nations, because they want raw materials, and they do not care whatsoever about promoting democracy and freedom or prosperity for the population, they just want to create an unstable political situation with rivaling local factions that they can take advantage of to get the minerals that they need for their industry.

And you can say: “Isn’t the West doing the same?” Well certainly, you go back several decades and there were Western corporations doing the same but it is not done to this quite the same extent today by the West, as it is by Russia and China. But of course, it is still taking place and this is another factor that nations like the United States especially, would have to deal with, in order to move to a higher level, where they can actually start having a positive influence on these nations instead of having to go in with military might. But quite frankly, this is a very complex issue. There is no simple, clear-cut solution to it but it is an issue that not only the United States, but all other Western nations will have to grapple with in the decade and decades to come.

I will of course, do everything I can to work with the people in government and in other areas of society who are open to certain ideas. It is clear that there are things that can be done. It is simply a matter of selecting a few nations and showing that it can actually work, that you can actually increase prosperity and freedom and create a functioning nation. It is a matter of getting started. And you could say: “Well, why couldn’t it happen in Afghanistan?” Well, my beloved, if you look at the world, and say: “Which would be the most difficult nation to improve?” then certainly Afghanistan has to be at the top of list. If the West, if the neoconservatives in the United States wanted to prove something, they certainly picked the most difficult target. There are many other nations that it would be much more successful to go in and build a nation. But you also have to realize here that building a nation is not a matter of exporting Western culture and a Western mindset to these nations.

These nations need to have some form of democracy, they need to have greater prosperity but they need to have it based on where they are at in consciousness, what is their culture, what is their mindset? There is a huge difference between going into a nation and saying: “How can we work with what is there?” Instead of saying: “How can we impose our values and mindset on them, so that they can become a nation like we are?” They will be democracies, they will be affluent, but not like a miniature United States or Germany or France or England or even the Scandinavian countries. They must have their local autonomy, their own way of doing it but they just have to find a way that actually works. So that they have a sustainable nation, with certain rights and freedoms, with peace and with prosperity. Of course, many other things could be said here. I could go on and on but I have given you the most important ideas I wanted to give you at this time about this topic.

2021 United States Capitol attack

Question: How does Saint Germain interpret the events of January 6th at the Capitol building in Washington, DC?

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Ending the Era of Ideology.

Well, if you can show me something in the United States Constitution, that describes such an event as part of American democracy, then I would be willing to consider your argument. But when I read the US Constitution, I do not see any place in the constitution for this kind of an event. It is, in fact, an antithesis to everything the constitution stands for, with an orderly succession of powers based on the elections, as the elections are held and as the votes are counted.

What I see here is that Donald Trump, as we have said before, because of his narcissistic psychology, could not bear to lose the election. He became pulled into a vortex of this illusion, this fantasy that the election was stolen, and he did not really lose.

After the election when he refused to accept that he had lost, he and his followers, the people around him and the broader population who bought into this, created a downward spiral, an energetic vortex that between the election and January 6 became stronger and stronger, until it not only overpowered Donald Trump and some of his advisors, but it overpowered many of those who considered themselves followers or supporters of Trump.

This caused some of the more extreme and unbalanced people that supported Trump to go into this state of mind where they started to feel that attacking the Capitol, entering the Capitol, breaking into the Capitol, even with the intent of forcing the vice president to do what he is not constitutionally authorized to do was justified. They felt justified in doing this.

But when you look at the entire event, how can you fail to see that this was an act of violence and force? What is the entire purpose of a democratic form of government? It is peaceful conflict resolution. How do you see this as peaceful conflict resolution? I cannot see it that way.

I know that many of the people who have been pulled into the vortex see it that way but that is because they are pulled into the vortex and they are seeing through the filter of the vortex. They are taking an ideological approach to the entire issue. They are refusing to consider that they could be wrong, that they could be completely wrong, that the election was not stolen, and therefore there was no justification for Trump’s behavior after the election, nor for the January 6th event, nor for anything that followed, nor for anything that some people think will follow when some mysterious force will reinstate Trump as president whereupon he will save America.

It just is not going to happen. It is a complete fantasy. The people who are being pulled into it are simply beyond my reach. I have no desire to change them. If they need that experience let them have it. But it will be the school of hard knocks for these people.

Pure vs. perverted sexual practices

Question: The ascended master Astrea in the recent webinar for Russia mentioned that some Russian men are exploiting women through impure sexual practices. Could we know the acts that fall under ‘pure’ practices. If acts are improper to be mentioned, can the criteria to understand which practices are pure and impure be mentioned so as they can be avoided.

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Ending the Era of Ideology.

Well, there are certainly no sexual acts that are improper to be mentioned by an ascended master but of course, some ascended master students might find it improper, if we did describe them in explicit detail.

But what we can say is that the exploitation of women is a complex topic, it is not just a matter of the actual acts that are performed, also the attitude with which they are performed. First of all, what makes the sexual act impure is the attitude of the people involved, in this case, the attitude of the men who are using some kind of force, some kind of intimidation, some kind of pressure, some kind of manipulation, to get women to submit to their sexual desires.

So when men have this attitude that they have a right to force women, the sexual interaction is always impure. When they have the attitude that women are a lower form of being, they are just there for men’s sexual gratification, they should be a kind of sexual slave, they should to admit to the man’s desire, especially when they are married, then this in itself, this attitude in itself makes the sexual act impure.

There are certain sexual practices that have a particular influence on the energy flow in the chakras. This is something that is simply a matter of the energy flow, how the chakras are lined up. If a man enters a woman from behind as animals are doing, this does not create a positive upward energy flow in the chakras of either of the two. Reversing the position of the bodies, so that the chakras are reversed in their direction also influences the energy flow.

But really, in general, it is this: Is there force involved in the sexual act? Is there a derogatory, negative, humiliating attitude towards women on the part of the men? Of course, also the women can have an impure attitude, partly towards men, partly towards themselves, and this will always be a perversion of the sexual act, which does not create a positive energy flow.

You can say that a pure sexual act is one where the man or for that matter, the woman is not seeking personal gratification. There is a desire to have gratification of both parties, that both parties come to an orgasm, that both parties are emotionally satisfied by the act. This means there has to be a connection between the man and the woman, they actually need to not just strive for sexual gratification in the form of an orgasm, but strive to go beyond the physical gratification and have a deeper connection between them, a psychological, emotional, spiritual connection.

When two people can achieve this deeper oneness, then you have the maximum positive energy flow of the sexual act, which then really is not a sexual act as the world defines it. It is a spiritual act of unity, unification and harmony.

Naturally, you also need to see that when there is any kind of violence involved with the sexual act, whether it is a man forcing the woman physically, whether he is beating up the woman, or whether there is what you call sadomasochistic sex, then this also creates a non constructive energy flow. There are of course, other such what you would normally call more extreme or perverted sexual practices that people have developed or discovered over the ages, too many to mention, but you get the general idea that whenever there is force or violence involved, even psychological force and psychological violence, then it is a downward energy flow that is created.

It very much ties in, especially in the man to these beasts and entities in the collective consciousness that then causes him to be pulled into a negative spiral where his sexual desires become insatiable, become obsessive, and he becomes obsessive compulsive about having sex. This really hurts the man as much or more than it hurts the woman. So it is not just a matter of liberating women from these perverted sexual practices. It is also a matter of liberating men, because the men are, in many cases even more trapped, because the women at least realize that they are being forced, and therefore they can close themselves off emotionally. Whereas the man often opens himself up emotionally to the dark forces behind this.

The end of the royal houses on earth?

Question: Are Prince Harry and Megan supported by the masters to reform the British royal family or are they following their personal agenda?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Ending the Era of Ideology.

Well, this certainly depends on what you put into the word ‘supported’ by the ascended masters. In the long term, it is clear that in the golden age, all the royal houses found on the planet will simply disappear. It goes for the British and all the others. It has already long ago outlived its purpose and really just needs to be abandoned completely.

But given that there are some nations where the people are still very attached to maintaining this tradition, it is clear that as an interim step, there needs to be reform of these royal houses and the way they are conducting themselves. There are certain people who have been born into these royal houses and Harry is one of them and Megan has of course married into it, who has it as part of their divine plan to attempt a reform.

You can say that this is also supported by the ascended masters as an interim step. But it does not mean that we are directly sponsoring them or that they have a particular attunement to us. You can say that they do not have a personal attunement, but they have a general attunement, that there needs to be change in the royal houses.

Now, of course, it is a very big question whether this will have any effect or whether the tradition will, and the beasts behind the tradition, will continue to grind away and maintain the current state of the Royal House. This will also depend on who becomes King after Queen Elizabeth dies. Is it Prince Charles or is it William?

Therefore there are many uncertainties in this entire scenario. But it is clear that the ascended masters want all of the royal houses to disappear, which of course, in the long run will entail that some of the people who now hold a position will approach the secular government and say: “Isn’t it just time to let this go?” But it can also, of course, happen from the government or it can happen from the people and it can happen by certain dramatic events and exposures, where certain things are exposed about the conduct and state of mind of these members of the royal families, which then creates a shock effect that makes the people tip over and say: It’s just time to end this. So there really is an open question exactly how this will happen. And it will be, of course, different in different countries.

Bill Gates and the elitist mindset

Question: Can the masters comment on Bill Gates and what is happening right now where certain actions are uncovered? Is this also a result of the collective consciousness that is raised and the addressing of the ending of the era of elitism?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Ending the Era of Ideology.

Well, I do not want to comment on the personal life of Bill Gates but I will say that Bill Gates has sort of become a symbol for the power elite, the very, very rich people. Even though he was not born into the elite, but worked his way up, he is still a symbol for this aspiring new elite that has come up through the new money, through technology.

Therefore, there is a connection to the fact that many people are beginning to question the elitist state, the elitist mindset and this has an effect both on Bill Gates and others, where you see that he is not the only known person, the only celebrity, the only powerful person or rich person who has experienced these humiliating revelations about their personal lives or their state of mind, the state of their health or whatever you have. So there is a certain connection between this.

But in some cases, it is also simply the person’s personal karma, they have reached the end of their opportunity and they can no longer maintain the illusion they had created before, the almost hypnotic state that some powerful people can create around them and it therefore starts to break up. Their public image is then shattered or exposed for what it is. This will also happen, and it has been happening to some degree to certain politicians.

It is simply part of the process of breaking up that elitist mindset by exposing these things that makes the general population realize that the elite are not infallible, they are not special, they are not superior. They are in fact, human beings like everybody else and therefore, they really do not deserve the special treatment they are given and they certainly do not deserve the privileged position that they think they are entitled to. They are not entitled to a special position.

The spiritual effect of mass events

Question: Are very big gatherings where thousands and thousands of people come together natural or mostly serving some invisible destructive forces? Are personal development events with ten thousand people, huge festivals, sports games or even global meditation events constructive or serving a destructive purpose?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Ending the Era of Ideology.

Well, that depends entirely on how they are conducted, what is the intent behind it, what is the mindset of the people. You can see based on our teachings on ideology, that sometimes people will come together in an ideological mindset.

The typical example is the rallies held by Adolph Hitler in the 1930s, where you had tens of thousands of people in a stadium, being hypnotized by Hitler’s speeches, and the energy flowing through him and with one mind screaming “Seig Heil” or “Heil Hitler” and thereby producing a very inharmonious energy that had a destructive effect. Now, you could say that these people did achieve some kind of unity of mind during these events. But because it was colored by the ideological mindset and directed towards a destructive purpose, it did not actually raise the planet.

Otherwise, you can say that what is the deciding factor on mass events is actually whether people can come together in the state of unity and harmony, where they are not seeking to force other people, meaning they do not have the ideological approach. They are just perhaps, centered around some positive event or purpose. Also it can be that they are simply unified in enjoying, for example, a musical performance, a theater performance and sometimes even a sports event.

Generally, sports events do not produce a high energy, because there is always this influence of the desire for your team to win and the other team to lose. There are some sports events that can have a unifying effect, first of all, the Olympics, where it is not quite as competitive as some other sports. The one deciding factor is of course the degree of unity attained and also the degree of harmony, whether it is a positive intent.

Now it is of course possible to create much more powerful events. If you, for example, had ten thousand people who came together to give decrees and invocations, or listen to dictations, then that would have a very powerful effect. In the Summit Lighthouse, there was sometimes three to four thousand people that would come together for a summer conference, and they would all be gathered together in the same place and they would be unified in giving the decrees and listening to the dictations that were given. This of course had a tremendous effect because the effect is multiplied by the number of people, it is actually multiplied exponentially by the number of people.

This is also why the Mother Mary 500 Vigil is important, because when you come together in a unified purpose, the effect of what you are doing individually is multiplied exponentially with the number of people present. It is also why a conference like this, where you are not physically in the same place, but you are still connected and united over the internet, and you have a common purpose and it is a positive one and this also has a tremendous effect because of the multiplication factor.

Speaking out without inner tension

Question: How to talk about ideas presented in ascended master teachings to the people who are not aware of the teachings in a way where the student doesn’t have a need to use the dualistic mindset to reason and try to use the teachings from the ascended masters as some ultimate proof point for bringing the idea or invalidate other teachings. How to stand up with ideas presented by the ascended masters through this dispensation, and not owning anything but at the same time not doubting the ideas if someone questions them, or even ignores them. I see there is a very high risk to fall into spiritual pride, feeling superior or special. I see a separate self who is afraid of talking about ideas brought by the ascended masters in the public or to new people because of fear of being ridiculed or put down. Also, if I don’t talk about ideas presented by ascended masters, it feels not right either. How to approach this constructively?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Ending the Era of Ideology.

Well, this is certainly a problem that is very universal to avatars, whether they are in ascended master teachings or not. Avatars generally feel that you came to earth to make a difference so that means that you have this urge, this drive, sometimes even an obsessive compulsion to speak out, to help other people.

Of course, when you find an ascended master teaching and accept it, you experience that this increases your own understanding tremendously and therefore you tend to assume that if you just could present the ascended masters ideas to people and get them to accept them as you have done, it would have the same effect in their minds. This, of course, is not a realistic assumption. As Gautama Buddha just explained, there are 7 billion people on the planet who have each their own individual personal ideology and perception filter. You can present people with an idea that has had a tremendous impact on you but some of them will be opposed to it, some of them will ignore it and find it not interesting at all.

This very much, for avatars, ties in with going back to when you first came to earth, you came here with a positive desire to help people make a difference. You knew that this required you to help people see what they could not see and accept new ideas and you all felt that you were rejected at some point, often forcefully put down by the fallen beings, but you often felt you were ignored and rejected by the population of earth.

This is a dynamic that in order to fully overcome it, you need to take our teachings on the primal self and the birth trauma and work with them to overcome those selves. But you also need to go a step further and look at what brought you to earth, what ideas and desires did you have, like we have used the example several times of this messenger coming to this realization, as the first step, that there was nothing he had to do on earth.

He has also later realized many other aspects of this, that he does not have to achieve any results on earth, he does not have to come up with any final understanding or proof on earth, he does not have to convince anyone on earth, he does not have to change anyone on earth, he does not have to change anything on earth.

You can see that if you can overcome these selves that go back to your first coming here, then what will actually happen is that you will be free of this sense of compulsion. You will not feel that you have to speak out or that you have to speak out in every situation, you will be able to sort of feel intuitively when it is constructive to speak out and when it is not. More importantly, you will speak out without having an inner tension about speaking out.

When you can do this, you will find that you get a different reaction from people. Still, there will be some people who cannot grasp what you are saying. There might still be a few that will oppose it, but you will not get the same reaction from people that you do when you speak out with this inner tension. Furthermore, you will not have the same reaction in yourself if people reject what you are saying, you will just allow them to have their free will, be unaffected by it and continue to speak out.

What will also happen when you overcome the selves that give you this compulsion to speak out is that you will not need to prove anything, you will not need to appeal to any kind of authority. It is very correct that a typical reaction not only from ascended master students, but from really anybody who has been convinced about a certain belief system is that you have come to see the ascended master teachings as some kind of authority.

Here you are hoping you can convince another person, and you are hoping that the other person will also accept the teachings as an authority. But again, this is not a realistic expectation, because people are in a different state of mind. When you transcend that need to prove anything, to have some kind of authority, you are not putting pressure on people, and when you do not put pressure on people, they do not react as strongly as they do when you are subconsciously trying to pressure them, which they always sense.

What happens then is that you can adopt a new approach. Instead of trying to convince them, instead of coming with the approach of: “They should react a certain way, they should accept what you are saying, they should be converted by it”, you are simply sharing what happened to you. You are sharing how you found these particular viewpoints very helpful, how they changed your outlook on life, how they changed the way you experience life, how they gave you a greater sense of peace and enjoyment and fulfillment.

You are just sharing your experience with the teachings. That is a fundamentally different approach than when you have these selves left that give you this compulsion to speak out and that also give you this fear of being rejected. You can strive to come to that point where you are neutral. This also involves, as the teachings have been given, overcoming this ideological approach.

Also when you get rid of these separate selves, that is when you can follow the call of all religions: “Do unto others as you want them to do unto you, (do not do unto others what you do not want others to do to you).” You do not want other people to force you, so you do not want to force other people.

Basically, what we can say is that when you take Gautama’s teachings about the ideological mindset, and how many people in the world have realized that it does not help to force, it does not create a better society to force, you can see that it does not create a better society to force certain ideas upon other people. What you can even say is that if you take the admonishment ‘to do unto others’ to its logical fulfillment, or extreme point, it is that you may have a desire to change society. If you look at all the ideologies that have been given on earth, you could say that one of the things they have in common is that they are all based on this idea that in order to change society, you have to change other people.

There is, as Gautama Buddha explained, the division into those who are promoting the ideology and seeking to change and those who are resisting it and those who are promoting the ideology always believe that the way to change society is to change other people. But when you take the teachings of the mystical path, as given by the Buddha, by Jesus, by many other teachers, you see that the reality is that the way to change society is to change yourself.

When you have changed yourself, then you can share that process with others and that might inspire others, at least some people will understand. And this then, when it builds critical mass will change society. But again, the key is to recognize that whenever you have a tension in you, whenever you feel a compulsion to change other people, a tension about approaching other people, this comes from separate selves.

The way to get free of it is to come to see those selves, flush them out in the open, separate yourself from them, see the belief behind it, dismiss the belief and just let the self die instead of trying to solve the problem by forcing and convincing other people.

How to resolve the division in the soul?

Question: Is it possible that the Conscious You of a person will withdraw from the body and go to higher planes in cases of severe trauma or mental illness, or where a demon or other entities come inside to take its place? While what is left to animate the body is the life force of the physical body or the soul? I am asking because I personally seem to live in two worlds. The first world is the regular physical world, where I seem to have no connection to spirit and the second is the world of sleep where I dream and have wonderful spiritual experiences, where it seems my Conscious You or I Am Presence is present. And I ask because I seem to have no spiritual growing transcendence presence in my daily life. And I was exposed to severe traumas and substance abuse. So it seems my Conscious You left the vehicle. What do we do in this case to bring back the Conscious You to its rightful place?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Ending the Era of Ideology

We are running up against the limitations of words here. It just depends on how you want to use these words to describe a very subtle phenomenon. What we said in a previous dispensation was that there was a phenomenon of soul division, where the soul could split into several divisions. And this could especially happen as a result of trauma.

So if you say that the contents of your four lower bodies make up your soul, then we can apply this concept of soul division. You are exposed to a severe trauma. It is so severe, that there is a part of your being that does not want to experience this. And therefore, that part of your being withdraws from the physical body, attempts to withdraw from having anything to do with the physical body. So it does not need to experience life through the physical body, and the outer consciousness and the senses.

What is really happening here is that you have a split in your four lower bodies, there is a division, there is a barrier created, where you created an impenetrable wall between the division and your physical waking consciousness—this is a division that you have.

Now, in terms of the Conscious You, well, the Conscious You is what makes you conscious. You are not asleep when you are asking this question. So the very fact that you are able to formulate a question about the role of the Conscious You can only be done because you are conscious, you are self-aware. And what makes you self-aware is the Conscious You. As you are awake and experiencing your normal everyday life, the Conscious You is then in, (centered in) the physical body, and your outer mind.

Now at night, when you are asleep, it is possible that the Conscious You can enter into this division in your four lower bodies, and now experience life from that vantage point, through that filter. And so what you can do is, recognize that such a division, such a dramatic split in the soul, is really still what we have talked about in the teachings about the separate selves that are the result of trauma. And the split goes back, whether it was caused by your birth trauma or not, but it goes back to that initial birth trauma and the creation of the primal self.

What you can do is, you can use the tools and teachings we have given on the separate selves to come to see that the division in your being is actually a conglomerate of separate selves that can be dissolved and allowed to die one by one. But in order to do this, you need to make some kind of deliberate conscious changes where you decide that you want to resolve this, you want to overcome the division in your soul. You want to be fully present in your daily outer life, instead of always longing to withdraw from daily outer life, feeling it as a burden.

And then you have to be willing to go through the work that needs to be done and experience the pain that you will experience when you begin to get in touch with these separate selves that you normally do not want to experience. What you actually need to realize here is that when you have a division, like what you are describing, what you are experiencing when you are dreaming is not actually what this division is going through, because there are separate selves in this division going on that are constantly in pain from the trauma.

But you have decided that you do not want to experience that pain and that is essentially why the split happened. So you have created a self in the division that thinks it is very spiritual and you are having spiritual experiences. It is in order to avoid the pain. So you have to decide that you are willing to reconnect to the pain as is necessary in order to see these selves.

Now we have given teachings and tools that when you use our decrees, you can transform the energy that intensifies the pain. There will still be some pain but it will not be as overwhelming when you use the appropriate decrees to dissolve the energy. For some people this can be a very intricate process, a long process, it can take years, maybe even a decade or two and it can be a painful and difficult process.

But you can consider this: Is your current situation pleasant to you? Would you like to change it? Would you like to change it in this lifetime, or would you like to postpone it so that you come back in your next lifetime with the same division and have to go through in that lifetime what you have gone through in this lifetime? Or would you rather do the work now, make the effort now to resolve that division so that you can possibly ascend, or at least come into your next embodiment with a much higher level of consciousness and without this split in your four lower bodies, your soul vehicle?

Evolution of the humanoid bodies

Question: We know we are not evolved from the apes. But was the evolution of the primates necessary for the development of the physical bodies of human beings?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Ending the Era of Ideology

Well, I have given a previous answer where I talked about both myself and Maitreya giving some teachings about evolution. That there is a certain evolutionary process that was started in the physical octave and that was jump started at several levels to go to a higher level. And then after it was taken to a higher level, it was left to evolve from there. This was taken all the way up to the development of primates and this did lead to development of bodies that were human-like.

And the purpose for this was actually to serve as a kind of safety mechanism so that if the self-aware beings who embodied in the three higher levels, fell or descended to a lower state of consciousness, they would have bodies in the physical realm that they could embody in. You will see that in the higher realms, you can manifest a body in that vibrational spectrum. But that cannot be done in the physical realm when people are in a lower state of consciousness.

So therefore, there had to be an evolutionary process that gradually brought forth these humanoid bodies. I will not call them human bodies, because they were not really human bodies until self-aware beings embodied in them. Before that they did not have self-awareness. They did not have what you would call a human consciousness just as you today see in the other primates, in the apes.

Ataturk, Islam, secularism and democracy

Question: Do countries with a Muslim majority like Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania and Turkey, have a future in the EU or in Europe’s Golden Age? Should secularism be imposed there forcefully like Kamal Ataturk did in Turkey? Was he in touch with the Masters, or was he part of Dönmeh as alleged and a fallen being?

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Ending the Era of Ideology

Ataturk was in tune with the ascended masters to some degree and he realized that in order to create a fully functioning democracy, it has to be a secular nation, there has to be freedom of religion. And there has to be a situation where the religious authorities cannot dominate the secular government, the civil government.

It is clear that what you see in many Middle East countries, and what you in fact see in Turkey at the moment, is that there is, what we have called a desperate attempt by the dark forces and by Islamic fundamentalists to maintain their grip on society. They know they are losing it, it is a losing battle for them, but they are trying to extend the time where they can influence society with their fundamentalist interpretations and the Sharia law.

It is inevitable that as we move closer and more into the golden age, this will have to fall, this will have to change, the same in Turkey, the same in European countries with a Muslim majority. These countries cannot be fully functioning democracies if there is a majority in the country, who want to impose a Muslim ideology really, a Muslim worldview upon the country, and upon the non-Muslims in the country.

You understand what we have said about democracy. It is a form of government that seeks to overcome divisions in society that seeks to overcome conflict and force. If you have one group of people who are willing to use violence, or at least force, to force their view upon the rest of the population, whether it is a majority are not, then this cannot be a fully functioning democracy. You have then a division in that democratic nation. A house divided against itself cannot stand as Jesus said, and therefore it cannot function at its highest potential.

You see this right now in the United States, where there is this minority of Christian fundamentalists who are seeking to impose their Christian worldview upon America. And they are joined by some very conservative people who are seeking to force a conservative view. And this creates enormous division that prevents the American democracy or the nation of America from functioning to its highest potential. And I have said before that this actually is holding back the manifestation of the golden age in the United States.

The same, of course, applies to other nations. Turkey, under Erdoğan, has gone into a blind alley that has set back the growth of Turkey towards the golden age, quite dramatically. And some of the nations such as Kosovo, and Bosnia, Albania, have not really even gotten as far as Turkey had gone before Erdoğan came to power.

So there are certainly some of these nations that have a ways to go before they can become functioning members of the EU, and before they can enter the golden age mindset. And so you could say that it would be constructive to have secularism established as a foundational principle in these nations. I am not thereby saying it should be forced upon these nations. And you could argue that Ataturk went too far in forcing it. But it certainly is something that needs to happen before these countries can really move into the golden age.

Organ transplantation vs. new forms of healing

Question: As the Golden Age is approaching, would you be releasing soon, technologies of effectively creating artificial human organs and tissues, as well as transplants efficiently? Hopefully this might reduce the human trafficking, kidnapping or killing for organs, trade and harvesting, etc.

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Ending the Era of Ideology.

I understand that currently harvesting of organs and human trafficking is a major issue, a major problem. But it is not something that would be solved by releasing technology for creating new organs that can be transplanted instead of taking organs from other human bodies.

The reality is that the current science of medicine is very primitive. Quite frankly, cutting the body open with a sharp instrument is a primitive form of healing that will not be necessary in the golden age. Transplanting an organ from one body to another is not only a very violent procedure, but of course it also, has a great risk in terms of the new body rejecting the organ and in terms of the transfer of some of the consciousness from the other person to the recipient of the organ.

So, this is primitive technology, it will not be replaced by a way to create artificial organs, it will be replaced by different healing methods that make organ transplant unnecessary. And this is something that I do plan to release and have started to set the foundation for. But it is again dependent on the need for people with medical knowledge, who do not have an ideological approach, a materialistic approach and therefore are open to receiving these ideas.

I can say that it very much has to do with a previous topic that we touched on in terms of vibrational medicine. It is possible to create certain technologies that send vibrations at damaged organs. Of course, in the longer run, you will also see that people will have more knowledge of how to have a healthy lifestyle so that they avoid damaging their organs.

In a sense, you could say that if a person drinks excessive amounts of alcohol and damages their liver, having a liver transplant really does not help the person change his or her consciousness. It may be necessary for that person to die, have the body die, in order to begin to question the consciousness behind the alcohol abuse. And the same thing with many other diseases. Sometimes people need to die of a certain disease in order to be willing to shift their consciousness so they do not manifest that same disease but adopt a different lifestyle.

About the obsessive-compulsive attachment to the previous teaching

Question: I have a great frustration in my life. The Masters tell me that we can change gender from life to life. This is according to the truth given through the messenger, Johanne Agerskov in Towards the Light, 1920. Towards the Light is the only message to mankind that is approved by God. If we are changing gender, this will cause enormous pain, and it is normally not allowed. Why do the Masters tell us different truths?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Ending the Era of Ideology.

Well, we generally do not comment on specific teachings. And one of the reasons is that we prefer to have people exercise their own discernment. Another reason is that if you look at many, many countries on earth, you will see that in most countries, there is one, or maybe a few people who, especially back in the late 1800s, or 1900s, claim to have received some kind of message from a higher realm.

You will see that this was a period where spiritualism was quite common in many countries, there was a growing spiritual awareness, but it was still at a lower level than it is today. There were some people who were able to tune in, in many cases they tuned in to the mental realm and they brought forth a teaching. In many cases, you will actually see that this teaching makes some kind of claim to have some kind of authority. And this was done, of course, in order to attract people who especially at that time, needed that sense of authority for a teaching.

Now, if you look at this specific claim that this teaching is the only teaching approved by God, then I will comment on that claim, because this is not a claim that will come from God, or from the ascended masters. God, of course, is while not technically part of the ascended masters, certainly, the ascended masters are in alignment with God, because we form this hierarchical pyramidal structure where the Creator is at the top of the pyramid. Everything we do is of course in alignment with it.

The very concept that there is only one teaching that is approved by God is not realistic. This is not something the ascended masters would ever say. We realize that there are many different evolutions on earth, many different groups of people from many different backgrounds, and they need different teachings. We would not say this, there may be some times where a messenger can distort this in his or her mind and make some kind of elaborate claim to some ultimate thing, but it is not something we say. You can evaluate the teaching based on this.

What I want to point out here is that we do see a certain amount of students that find an ascended master teaching, and they have studied a spiritual teaching or several spiritual teachings before finding the ascended master teaching. In a sense, this applies to all of you. But there are some students that have become very attached to the previous teaching. They have, to use the terminology we have used during this webinar, they have gone into an ideological mindset about this particular teaching.

When they come to an ascended master teaching, they sense that it is part of their growth, it is part of their divine plan to find the ascended master teaching, but in their outer minds they are seeking for the ascended master teaching to validate the previous teaching. They are obsessed with getting, they are compulsive about getting this validation from the ascended masters. And that is why they are greatly disturbed and frustrated when there is a discrepancy between the previous teaching and the teachings of the ascended masters. This can also happen to students who see a discrepancy between one ascended master dispensation and a previous or later ascended master dispensation.

The reality here, as we have explained many times now, is that you are not as a spiritual being male or female, you were not created male or female, and you are fully capable of switching between male and female bodies in different embodiments. We have explained previously at this conference that there are some people who have become so identified with a particular sex, that it can be difficult or painful for them to switch. But they are sometimes forcing themselves to do it precisely in order to move on.

The teaching that it can only be a great disturbance and a great pain, to switch sex in different embodiments simply does not apply to the vast majority of people. The vast majority of people do not find it particularly difficult to switch, it may take some adjustment. But it is not that it creates enormous trauma and enormous frustration for them.

What you can do, when you experience this kind of frustration, or what you see as a discrepancy or contradiction between different teachings is that you can recognize that whenever there is frustration, the frustration does not come from you and it certainly does not come from the other teaching. It comes from a separate self.

The question simply is, are you willing to look at that separate self, until you separate yourself from it and let it die? Are you willing to look at a previous teaching and whether you have become attached to it, obsessive compulsive about it? Are you willing to consider that it might actually be part of your divine plan to find the ascended master teachings, because this is the teaching that can take you to a higher level of your spiritual growth, and in order to get to that higher level, you have to be willing to let go of the old teaching and embrace the new, and if you do not let go of the old teaching, it will hold back your growth, perhaps for the rest of this embodiment.

Are you willing to consider these questions, look in the mirror, assess where you are at and what is the best for your own growth. I am not here telling you what to do, I am just telling you what you can do. First of all, recognize that whenever there is a frustration, it can only come from a separate self because the conscious you does not feel frustrated, your I Am Presence does not feel frustrated.

Pure awareness meditation vs. attunement to the masters

Do the ascended masters consider that meditation, especially bare awareness meditation, is an effective tool for attunement to the I AM Presence and ascended masters? Should students who are new to both ascended master teachings and meditation, learn meditation as a tool for attunement? Should students who are already experiencing meditation use it as a tool for attunement?

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Ending the Era of Ideology.

Well, there are many different forms of meditation. And there are some meditations that are aimed at giving you what you can call bare awareness or pure awareness, where you go into a state of mind where you experience what we talked about when we say that the Conscious You can step out of its normal perception filter and just experience itself as pure awareness. And this is a valuable tool for most people. There are some people who should not do this because they are not ready for it. But for many people, it can be a valuable tool.

I am not thereby saying that all ascended master students should do this. But however as the question is formulated, I would not say that this kind of meditation is suited for attunement. The purpose of this kind of meditation is to help you experience pure awareness, naked awareness, awareness without thoughts, without any structure. And this is valuable for you realizing there is an alternative to your normal awareness that is so full of thoughts and feelings and structures.

But in order to attune to the ascended masters, you do not need naked awareness, empty awareness, you need to attune to the vibration of the ascended masters. And for that, I would more recommend that you use our decrees and invocations especially for new people.

You will often find that many people who are new to the teachings need to go through a period where they establish spiritual protection, they transform the inharmonious energies in their four lower bodies and they use Astrea to be cut free from any ties to the collective consciousness or lower beings. During this period, it can be difficult to attune, it can also be difficult to experience pure awareness.

But when you get beyond this period, you can still use invocations and decrees. But once in a while, be still. Just sit and try to be in an open and neutral frame of mind. This does not necessarily mean that you do not have any thoughts and you certainly do not need to go into straining to suppress thoughts, but you can strive to be as open and neutral as possible. After you have given decrees, after you have listened to a dictation, just spend a few minutes just sitting there and attuning to the presence of the master.

You can of course also give a novena, we have a novena to the Great Divine Director where you take the decree to the Divine Director you give it nine times a day and then after you have given the decrees you have a notepad and you write down without judging, without analyzing, whatever comes to you. You can do the same with any master for whom there is a decree. You can also, if you prefer this, do this after listening to a dictation, you can practice this exercise of just sitting with a notebook, writing whatever comes to you without judging or analyzing.

To translate or not to translate

How do the ascended masters see the potential of the Vietnamese people for receiving their teachings? I am considering to translate as much teaching materials as possible into Vietnamese so that they can benefit and would like advice on whether it would be a worthwhile exercise.

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Ending the Era of Ideology.

Well, there are people in every nation who, before coming into the current lifetime, had reached the level of consciousness where they were ready, and able to receive and benefit from ascended master teachings. Many of these people in various nations do speak English. But there are of course many, in other nations, where English is not as prominently taught that cannot bridge the gap and receive the teaching in English.

There is always a value to translating the teachings. But again, you need to go with your intuitive insight, not force yourself with the outer mind. And we are certainly not forcing you to do a certain thing. You need to spend a little time with your intuition, feel not only is it worthwhile for the sake of others, but is this part of your divine plan. And if you feel that it is then certainly it will be of service to the people who cannot receive the teaching in English. And it will also be a benefit to yourself because you come to understand the teaching in a deeper way. And you of course in many cases, also will balance karma and do something that is part of your divine plan in terms of helping others.

It is a highly individual matter whether you will spend the considerable amount of time that is necessary to translate just a certain portion of the teaching. There are some countries where almost all if not all of the teachings have been translated. And this is of course, a tremendous amount of work that requires a strong commitment and also requires that you have a life situation where you have the time to do this, or it requires that there are many people doing it, as for example, you see in Russia.

Often it takes that there is one person that starts, and then others can join in. And this is, of course, the best way to do it. You see in Korea, where one person found the teachings, then discovered other people, a few other people that had found the teachings. But then one person decided to come to a conference, and really start translating and creating study groups, and then gradually attracted more and more people that participated in the work. And you now have this huge student community in Korea, that are publishing the teachings, creating their websites, holding meetings, giving invocations and so on. And it has to start somewhere by one person breaking through and bringing it into the physical so that there is something for others to join.