Michaels – Page 7 – Ascended Master Answers

How to sense the next step of your Divine plan

Question: How can I discern that the next step in my Divine plan is opening up for me?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

There are many ways to discern this. It depends on how good your intuition is and how neutral your state of mind is. The best way is to look at whether you have any human ambitions of what you want to achieve in your life. For example, you have many people who, as they were growing up, were affected by this idea that you need to go into business and make as much money as possible. That is the goal of life, to make as much money as possible. If you are driven by that kind of a human ambition, and this is, of course, one example among many, but that kind of human ambition, this will cover over and color your inner sense of what is your Divine plan. Because I can assure you that your life plan was not to make as much money as possible. It may have been part of your Divine plan to make money if you have an unfulfilled desire from past lives. But as long as you are fixated on that outer goal, you cannot intuitively sense what the next step of your Divine plan is.

It is a matter of becoming aware of these outer human ambitions, taking a look at them, seeing if they are driven by a separate self, which they always are, of course, and then resolving that so you become more neutral. And the more neutral you are, the better you can sense that it is time to move on to a different level. You see, I am sure that the more attached you are to making money, the more it will close your mind to the possibility that there could be a step of your Divine plan that is not focused on making money but on something else. Again, I am just giving examples.

Self-worth based on money

Question: Kuan Yin said, the more you are attached to your image, the more you suffer. I had a situation where I was on a wonderful vacation with wonderful people who have bigger income, and when the time came to share my experience about this time that I have spent with those richer people, I felt a big inner pain and began to cry and felt thoughts coming to me: “I am not worthy to be here. I am not worthy to live such an affluent life.” If I have an inner pain because of low self-worth, does it mean that I am attached to low self-worth?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

No. It does not mean that you are attached to low self-worth. It means you have a subconscious self that is based on low self-worth. But you also have an opposite polarity, another subconscious self, that thinks that self-worth is tied to money. You are switching back and forth between the two selves. You are wanting to be around rich people, but then you switch into feeling unworthy to be there. And this is what selves will do, they will have you switching from one to the other to keep you trapped in the pattern, the reactionary pattern.

You simply need to use our tools from Healing Your Spiritual Traumas and other books, to uncover both of these subconscious selves, so you can realize that your self-worth or lack of it, has absolutely nothing to do with money or material possessions or any characteristic on earth. You are worthy by the fact that you are an extension of the Creator’s being. You are worthy because you have your I AM Presence. You are worthy because the Conscious You is pure awareness. Nothing can make the Conscious You unworthy. When you resolve the subconscious selves, you can reconnect to that pure awareness that is beyond these dualistic polarities of worthy or not worthy, rich or poor, this or that.

How to see our deepest traumas

Question: I feel much difficulty on my healing path. Since I was a child, I have felt burdened, traumatized, tormented. I dedicated my life to working on that with all existing approaches, be they psychological, medical, spiritual, energetic. And I have gained some progress. In addition, I have many memories of my previous lifetimes. Nevertheless, I must recognize that I still have a very long way to feeling just normal enough to live a life without spending most of my time and energy on working on myself and seeking psychological healing. It has been very frustrating because every time I work on something, even if I feel I do it with every possible effort and as deeply as I can, for example, on applying myself for almost a year on your book, Healing Your Spiritual Traumas, and receiving many revelations on my birth traumas, the same topic comes back again as if I have done nothing to transform the consciousness underneath. For example, I recently suffered the same injury at a one month’s difference at the same location. Even if I may not have dissolved entirely the related separate selves, why on earth suffer the same injury before I have had time to transcend it? How is it possible that there are things I do not see when I dedicate my life to it? I sometimes feel my work acts on the most superficial areas of my psychology. That deep inside, the primal self or whatever consciousness feels the most hurt, will not let anything in and clings to its traumas no matter what I do. What can I do to take it down and have a chance to get closer to my ascension?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

It is quite possible that you can have layers of the psyche, layers of the subconscious mind, layers of subconscious selves. It is possible that you can start at a more surface level of the subconscious mind. You can work through certain issues at that level and you are making progress because you are resolving something. But then there can be a deeper layer that comes up later. This is why you can have this situation where you thought you had resolved something, and then after some time the same thing comes up again.

It does not mean that you have not made progress. It just means that the work is not done. Now, we have at this conference given the teaching that the Conscious You can adopt a certain general view of life, and it is therefore, possible that before you even came to earth you had a certain attitude to life, a certain view of life on earth and what you could do here. And it is possible that you have a deeper trauma than the ones you have contacted so far, where you felt that your expectations for coming to earth were disappointed in such an ultimate way, that it was unbearable to look at it. And therefore, you, so to speak, sealed off the separate selves you created there, and you have not gotten down to that layer. We can say that many people who have been exposed to trauma can go into this reaction where they do not want to look at the trauma because it is too painful and overwhelming. This can apply to these deeper layers. At the deepest layer you have something that was so painful to you, so overwhelming that you are afraid to look at it.

The only thing you can do in such cases is to keep approaching it gradually so not to push it too hard so you get overwhelmed by the energy. You may also need to consider that you will need a therapist of some kind to guide you through it. But what you can also do is start working on this general attitude to life. What is the general view you have of earth, your being here, what you can do and cannot do here?

There are people of course who have some very deep traumas that they are afraid to look at. It is often because they have a certain sense that there is something hiding there, but if they saw it, they would condemn themselves for having that psychological issue. And therefore, you are afraid to look at that core.

Just to give you an example, there are over the many years and different spheres certain fallen beings who have come to a point where they are willing to walk the upward path. They are willing to work on their psychology, and they are making progress. But there is still a certain mechanism, namely the mechanism that caused them to fall, that they are afraid to look at.

This can apply both to avatars and earth inhabitants as well. Basically, you need to find, first of all, a balanced approach, so you do not push it so hard that it becomes overwhelming. But you also need to begin to ask the questions you are reluctant to ask. And you need to gradually look at this from different angles until you come to a point where you have identified the essential question in your psychology that you are afraid to ask. And then you need to build up the willingness to ask that question. And I understand that it can seem very dangerous to ask that question. But as we have said before, the original trauma, nothing could ever be as bad as that again. It is really a matter of once you look at it, you can overcome it. There is no trauma that is so bad that you cannot overcome it. There is nothing in your psychology that you cannot overcome. That is what we have said again and again at this conference and many times previously.

There are people, for example, who are afraid to ask the question: “Am I a fallen being?” But, if you are afraid to ask that question, how will you ever know? If you are a fallen being and you are afraid to ask the question, how will you resolve the psychological mechanism that caused you to fall? Whether you are a fallen being or not, you have to work towards a point where you can ask the question neutrally. And then you can realize that even if the answer is “yes”, it does not matter. Because the mechanism that caused you to fall is not different than the mechanism that caused an avatar to create the birth trauma and the primal self. It just happened a longer time ago, and therefore, it could be encapsulated in more layers of the psyche. But it is still just a decision that can be replaced by a more aware decision. But how will you make a more aware decision until you look at that original mechanism, and ask the question you are afraid to ask? Whatever it is for you individually, you can gradually work towards the recognition that there is a certain question you are reluctant to ask, and then you can work towards the point where you can ask that question.

And whatever the answer is, you know you can transcend it, because you can transcend any decision by making a more aware decision. I am not in any way saying that the person asking the question is a fallen being. I am simply using it as an example, because there are people on the spiritual path on earth today who are fallen beings, who have started the path of returning home. And therefore, once you have started the path, you are not really a fallen being anymore, but you just have not resolved that original trauma. An avatar that comes to earth creates the birth trauma, but a being who falls also creates a birth trauma. And it is still just a psychological mechanism. There is really nothing to be afraid of, but nevertheless, many people do have a certain question in their psychology they are afraid to ask. And only by making that conscious, and then gradually building up the courage to ask the question, can you get out of this kind of sense of being stuck that you are describing.

Facing danger and threats while expressing yourself

Question: I see that Kim openly shares his progressive ideas or your teachings, name specific fallen beings and other revealing information. This looks like fearlessness and as I understand he has worked on his karma and spiritual defenses and activated the will of God. You are also protecting him and apparently because of this it is safe for him and his loved ones. I know some of the ascended master students who have long wanted to start sharing their progressive ideas and they are concerned about their safety and the safety of their loved ones. I want to understand, are these concerns merely fears dictated by mortal selves and egoism and is it important to step into this experience so that the fears recede and we can be the open doors? Or is this actually a reasonable approach given the nature of the planet we live on? As I understand it, when one is an open door and fulfills their Divine plan, they align with the will of God and nothing can truly threaten them or are there certain individual cases where earthly precautions are still necessary and sharing information anonymously might be the wiser choice? If so, how can one discern these nuances and distinctions?

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

Well, it is certainly necessary to look at your individual situation. What country are you living in? What are the conditions there? What persecution might you be exposed to if you share certain ideas? You will see that Kim of course lives in a democratic country where there is freedom of speech and therefore, he is not as exposed to danger as you would be in many other countries that have a more dictatorial form of government.

Unfortunately, it is not correct to say that if you are aligned with your Divine plan that you will be protected because this is an unnatural planet where free will is what it is and there are people who can choose to do evil things towards those they feel are threatening them. Nobody can be completely safe and I am certainly not encouraging you to have this naive belief that we have seen in previous ascended master organizations basically thinking that: “If I am doing the work of the ascended masters then the ascended masters will protect me from anything bad happening.” As we have said before, we cannot protect you physically against certain people who choose to violate the law of free will.

You have to take precautions. You have to evaluate your individual situation. There are certainly some countries where you cannot speak freely about political issues. Well, perhaps you can consider speaking about non-political issues. It is not only a matter of talking about politics. You will see that most of what the messenger is sharing is about spirituality, spiritual growth—psychology. Well, that is a much safer topic to talk about even in very dictatorial countries. You can keep your talk at a more personal level that does not have political undertones.

You need to evaluate this and you can only really do this intuitively. What I would suggest is that you first evaluate the situation. Are there certain topics that is not safe to talk about? Then do not talk about those. Find some topics that are safe to talk about. Talk about them. Then get more familiar with your own reactions when you start expressing yourself. What feedback you get back, how you react to it. Use that as an opportunity to look at your subconscious selves and overcome them. As you overcome more of these selves you will have a clearer intuition and there may come a point where you see that now it is time to speak out about more dangerous topics, so to speak, or you may even sense that you can continue to speak about spiritual or psychological topics because this is really what is your highest mission. Again, start by evaluating your reaction, seek to overcome the reaction and then you will get a clearer intuition on what to do, what to speak about and what not to speak about.

Forced mobilization in Ukraine

Question: At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the ascended masters said that the exit ban for men was necessary, (that men could not leave Ukraine), as otherwise the country would have no one left to defend it. However, that resulted in further human rights violations within Ukraine itself, particularly forced mobilization. Men are abducted from the streets, subjected to torture, killed and extorted for money. Can you explain what positive outcome this has brought for Ukraine? And why do other nations remain silent about such blatant violations of citizens’ rights and freedoms?

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

What would be the alternative to leave Ukraine undefended so it would be overrun by Russia? Do you think that if Ukraine had been taken over by Russia in the first weeks of the war, as was Russia’s plan, do you think this would have resulted in no human rights violations for the Ukrainian people? There were plans by the Russians to abduct up to a million Ukrainians, take them to concentration camps in Russia for ‘re-education’. This is obviously one of these situations that from an ascended perspective we would rather have avoided but since this situation was created by Russia, forced upon Ukraine, then Ukraine has the choice of either submitting, letting itself be subjected to whatever the Russians would do or resisting.

Ukraine has chosen to resist and therefore, they need to do whatever is necessary. Somebody has to go to the front lines if Ukraine is to survive as an independent nation. It is, of course, a very non-constructive choice that the Ukrainian leaders had to make. The only alternative would have been total surrender and I can assure you that the human rights violations that would have been committed by the Russians if they had taken over Ukraine would have been far worse than what you have seen so far.

Is Trump a tool for the Ascend Masters?

Question: Do you consider Trump as a tool? Do you consider that Trump as a tool is exactly where he needs to be? He seems to have contributed to peace in the Middle East and is trying to resolve the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

Well, I cannot answer the question as it is asked because I do not consider Trump to be a tool for the ascended masters except that, as I explained, free will must be allowed to outplay itself.

Seventy million, give or take, Americans voted for Trump, voted him into office, put America in the School of Hard Knocks and you could say that if Americans can only learn from the School of Hard Knocks then Donald Trump is a very good tool for giving them that lesson because he can only make the knocks harder and harder. In terms of whether he has contributed to peace in the Middle East, I do not see it that way at all. He has only contributed to making things more confrontational by uncritically supporting Israel. You will not have peace in the Middle East as long as Israel is pursuing this extinction campaign against the Palestinian people. I am not thereby condoning Hamas’ attack. I am just saying that Israel needs to fundamentally change policy and see itself as part of the nations of the Middle East instead of seeing itself as a special privileged nation that has rights beyond others. Otherwise, there will never be peace in the Middle East.

In terms of Trump trying to solve the war between Russia and Ukraine, he is not really seriously trying to solve anything because he does not have the power to change Putin’s mind. Putin is not operating rationally. He did not have a rational reason for starting the war. He does not have rational reasons for continuing it because if he was able to think rationally, he would have stopped the war in order to avoid the consequences for Russia that are detrimental to Russia. Putin is blindly pursuing a goal and ignoring the consequences, acting as if even the destruction of Russia is worth it in order to not lose in Ukraine. But how can the destruction of Russia be a constructive outcome for Russia? And Donald Trump does not understand this. I am not saying that Donald Trump is thinking rationally about the Ukraine war. He is seeing it from his own very subjective perspective of wanting to be the hero who stopped the war. He is just as irrational in his approach as Putin is, which is why those two cannot come to an agreement and most likely will not come to any real agreement of any kind.

How can we improve the situation in the U.S?

Question: The Trump administration is seriously infringing on the rights and freedoms of both U.S. Citizens and people across the world. By pushing his selfish agenda, he appears to be escalating the risk of a third world war. Although impeachment is a legal tool in the U.S., it has failed twice in Trump’s case. Could you please advise what else U.S. Citizens, people from other countries and we students of the ascended masters can do besides making calls for action?

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

Well, there is not much you can do besides making calls and holding the vision that a critical mass of American people will awaken from this belief that Trump can do something that other presidents have not been able to do. There are many people in America who voted for Trump because they have experienced that their standard of living has been eroded and they have come to believe that this is because the system has not done enough for them.

And there is a correctness in this in the sense that the system has not done enough for working class and middle class Americans because the system has been taken over by the billionaires, by the top 10 percent who have used the system to funnel money upwards from the working people to the elite. You can see this as we have talked about before in this report from the Rand Corporation about income inequality. It is simply a known fact, or rather it could be a known fact.

What has happened is that the power elite that have created this income inequality, some of them are beginning to be aware that this cannot go on forever. Partly because it could lead to a breakdown in the economy but partly because more and more people are beginning to awaken. What they have actually done is created a diversion where they have used Trump and his approach to politics to project that it is the government that is the problem. In a sense the government is the problem because the only thing that can protect the working people from exploitation by the elite is the government and the government has not fulfilled that role because both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have been taken over by big money.

This is what needs to shift, but of course Trump’s approach is to project that it is the government that is the problem and he can fix it. There are too many people who have bought into this and therefore, it is simply a matter of letting the presidency run its course so that it will become more and more obvious to people that Trump is not the president he claims to be. That he has no special abilities beyond other people. He’s just a human being who has a very limited vision, very limited knowledge and understanding of how the economy works. When this becomes more and more clear, then this belief in Trump’s infallibility will fade away and people will be ready to see, number one, we never want another president with this kind of psychology and number two, we need an entirely different approach to politics because we need to realize that the problem is the elite, not the government. Because we, the people, need to take back the government and demand that it protects us from being exploited by the elite.That is the function of the government, the primary function of any democratic government.

You can hold the vision, you can make the calls that people will be awakened, but many people will only be awakened through the School of Hard Knocks. It is simply a matter of watching how the presidency will unfold. You can see how the release of light that we released at New Year’s has already caused Trump to become more unbalanced, more radical, more extreme and this will, of course, only push more and more people to see that he simply has created a completely unrealistic vision of his own abilities, but even the possibility of solving problems through a black and white simplistic approach.

The future of Ukraine as a nation

Question: What are Ukraine’s chances of defending its freedom, independence, and territorial integrity under Trump’s presidency? Trump humiliated Zelensky on the world stage and demonstrated his allegiance to Putin by suspending all military and financial aid to Ukraine. Recent reports suggest that the underlying motive behind Russia’s war on Ukraine may be to control Ukraine’s substantial rare earth mineral resources. President Zelensky is reportedly preparing to sign an agreement with the U.S. To provide these minerals, yet the U.S. Offers no security guarantees for the Ukrainian population in return. All of this increasingly resembles the exploitation and plundering of Ukraine, with its people being sacrificed for the benefit of the political elites in both Russia and the U.S. What are the chances of survival for ordinary Ukrainians in this situation, or are we doomed to extinction?

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

Certainly, you are not doomed to extinction. Ukraine will survive as an independent, democratic nation, but it will not necessarily survive in the same form and with the same boundaries that it had before the invasion. There will be adjustments that need to be made. But as we have said before, the Ukrainian people have taken on a certain role, which is to show the inhumanity of Russia as a state, which is what you clearly see when you look at the reality of how Russia has been conducting this war from the beginning. But now with the election of Trump as president, the United States has also been put in the School of Hard Knocks, as Russia was put into at the start of the equation. Now the Ukrainian people have a double role of also showing the inhumanity of the Trump presidency, which has already been demonstrated for many both outside the U.S. And inside the U.S. In how they treated Zelensky. Also, the whole idea of extracting minerals as a form of payment for the military aid that the previous president gave to Ukraine as an extension of America’s commitment to defending freedom and democracy.

This now has an opportunity to show the inhumanity of the Trump presidency and his approach to Ukraine, where he truly does not consider the human suffering of the Ukrainian people. He just looks at them as a piece in this big international puzzle that he sees. Of course, it would have been preferable to avoid this but again, free will must be allowed to outplay itself. What you are looking at here is simply that Trump needs to outplay his consciousness on the world stage but I can assure you that things will run their course, will begin to settle down and that the U.S. Will not withdraw all support from Ukraine. Because contrary to what Trump might or might not think, even I as an ascended master have trouble determining what Donald Trump actually thinks at any given moment in time given that it could change—like they say about the weather, if you do not like it wait five minutes. Nevertheless, my point is that Putin will not be as easy to make a deal with as Trump seems to think.

And therefore, you can see that Russia’s original goals for starting the invasion have not changed. This was not about minerals. This was simply about expanding the Russian Empire, recreating the Russian Empire in order to satisfy the ambitions of one man’s ego. There is no national interest on the part of the Russian people. Most of the Russian people were shocked. Why are we invading Ukraine? It is our brother nation. They are still shocked, even though they have covered over this state of shock by focusing on their daily lives, as the Russian people are unfortunately too good at doing. Too good for their own good because it would be better that they would recognize, Why are we doing this? Why are we continuing to do this? Until a critical mass of the Russian people will recognize that this makes no sense, there will not be a shift in the equation. Which of course means that the hard knocks have to become harder and harder with a breakdown in the economy as the most likely hard knock that will awaken people to how serious the situation actually is for Russia.

We will, of course, talk more about this in our upcoming webinar for Ukraine but the Ukrainian people will survive as an independent people.

Keeping money in the bank vs. Investing it

Question: By depositing money in banks–whether in savings accounts or other forms of investment to increase personal wealth, is an individual in some way violating the free will of others, because that interest is derived from the labor of other people, and financial resources are drawn from the limited energy available in the simulator? Would it not be better for the individual’s own growth to direct accumulated wealth towards benefiting society, rather than allowing it to sit unused in the bank?

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

We have given other teachings about this, and we have, of course, explained that many of the investment schemes that people can invest in are created by the fallen beings in order to enrich themselves. They are, in many ways, a way to manipulate the economy to create these artificial financial instruments. And yes, the effect of this is, of course, that wealth is funneled upwards from the working population to the elite. And you can see how this is getting worse and worse, both in Russia, in the United States, and other nations, that the rich are becoming richer, and the general population has seen a lowering of their standard of living.

It is clear that if you participate in those kinds of investment schemes, then this is a karma-making situation. You need to make the choice. Do you want to make money, or do you want to avoid making karma? Because with these kinds of investment schemes, you cannot do both.

Now, in terms of depositing money in the bank, this is a little different, in the sense that it is valid enough to have money in the bank as a short-term protection of the money so that it is still available for use, whether it is consumption or investments. It is not necessarily a karma-making situation to have a certain amount of money stored in the bank for a certain time. But of course, it would be better to invest the money. And you can, of course, invest it in various ways, even in companies. You are not necessarily making karma by buying stocks, but it depends on whether the stock is overvalued or whether there is still a connection between the price of the stock and the dividends that the company can pay, or if it, for example, is a new startup where it benefits the company that you invest in. But what you see in the stock market is that some stocks are simply so overvalued because they are bought and sold based on speculation. And this, of course, becomes a pyramid scheme, where the stocks can only keep going up as long as there are new investors coming in who are buying into the dream that they, too, can make money. But in the long run, not everybody can make money in the stock market. And therefore, it is karma-making to invest in those kinds of stocks.

There is always a balance to be found there. Theoretically, yes, the more you reinvest money to promote growth in society, the better. But again, there is nothing problematic about having a certain amount of money in the bank to keep it there in a way that is easy to put to use, whether it is consumption or an investment in your own company, for example.

Can an avatar avoid cosmic birth trauma?

Question: Could we as avatars have fulfilled the purpose of our coming to earth to demonstrate to its inhabitants how to live without suffering, without descending into duality, and therefore, the School of Hard Knocks? Did we need to sufficiently understand and internalize what our teachers taught us during our preparation before the first embodiment? Would this have allowed us to withstand the cosmic birth trauma and prevent the birth of the primal self, instead beginning our ascent upward from the 48th level of consciousness?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

You could say that from a purely theoretical viewpoint, it could have been done, but in reality it never has been done, because the earth is simply so dense that the shock is too big. But you can also say that what is it we are here to demonstrate as avatars, not just how to live without suffering, but how to escape suffering, how to escape the state of separation and duality. If we had not gone into duality, how could the inhabitants of earth have seen us as examples that they could follow from their state to a higher state?

You look at Jesus, who has been turned into an idol to worship, rather than an example to follow by the Catholic Church, and you see how this destroyed his example. And this has happened in past ages as well, with certain avatars who were ahead of the consciousness. There is always the danger that when an avatar climbs to a higher level of consciousness, people will no longer relate to that person and will idolize it. But nevertheless, that is why there are so many avatars who have descended, who have gone below the 48th level of consciousness, and then have demonstrated how you climb up from there. There are enough examples, and there will, of course, in this age, be more and more examples that people can follow. And you can idolize one person, but you cannot idolize 10,000 people. The more people that walk that path, the more the inhabitants can accept that it is possible to rise above their level of consciousness.

Entropy on a natural planet

Question: If earth scientists, as a supposition, will go to a natural, more advanced planet than earth, they will find that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is not present there. It is my understanding that scientists believe that the whole universe operates with such a law, but you say that it is only activated when the system reduces its energetic creative intake and it induces entropy. Am I correct? This also made me think about the Shroud of Turin, the cloth used to wrap Jesus’ body after the crucifixion. Scientific debates say it is false as radiocarbon dating tests place it in medieval times in its origin. Other data dispute it in other ways. Too long to mention here. Yet I thought, considering Jesus’ energy is resurrecting, it may be transferred to the Shroud and may behave differently than the entropy that is normal in our current system. Can the masters comment on this?

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

Jesus has already commented on the Shroud of Turin, and you can find it on the ascended masters Answers website, so I will not go further into that, but I will comment on entropy. If an earth scientist were to travel to a natural planet, he would experience that there is not the kind of entropy you see on earth. In other words, take a steam locomotive that runs out of coal and it sits on the track and, over time, it rusts and breaks down. That would not happen on a natural planet. Why would it not happen? Because the collective consciousness is constantly transcending itself. We can say that entropy is really a force that is activated only when the collective consciousness is not transcending itself.

If an earth scientist were to suddenly be transported to a natural planet, he would be shocked by many things. First of all, the lower density of matter. That matter on many natural planets appears almost translucent. And many other things, of course, such as free energy, things do not break down, there is not the resistance to manifesting things like there is on earth.

But what the scientists would be most shocked by, if it was a materialistic scientist, was that on a natural planet you cannot uphold the separation between mind and matter because it is clear to you that there is a connection between mind and matter. Whereas on earth, because of the density of matter, you do not realize that everything in the physical realm is a reflection of what happens in consciousness. On a natural planet you realize, all inhabitants realized, what we have said: Consciousness comes before the physical manifestation. And you can say that entropy is a force that is activated when people fall below that realization and they start believing that matter exists independently of the mind.

What is it that entropy does? Well, it actually demonstrates that when matter does become seemingly separated from mind, in the minds of the inhabitants of a planet, then, entropy kicks in and breaks down the matter that is not transcending itself because the mind that created the state of matter is not transcending itself.

Now, you will say then, what about evolution? You could say, if you really understand or accept the Second Law of Thermodynamics, how is evolution possible? Because evolution goes toward greater states of order, and that seems to happen spontaneously. Well, that is because even on an unnatural planet, there is a certain pull from the upward movement of the entire unascended sphere. And this also, if you interpret this correctly, can demonstrate to you that there are processes on earth that are caused by something that is not entirely physical. Because when you look at the current state of entropy on earth, you would have to logically say that the process of evolution is in contradiction to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It should not have happened.

You can even, from the viewpoint of the earth, transfer this to the universe. But that is, of course, because from earth, you have a very limited view of the universe. But if you take the Big Bang Theory, you can say: “Well, how come after the initial explosion everything did not just move outward? How come that organized structures started to form in this state of entropy that existed after the Big Bang?” And this is, of course, because there are forces that are beyond the material world that are pulling up on everything in the material world. There is a conscious awareness of what the universe can become, and this is pulling on matter to form into organized structures that are, of course, working against entropy.

Basically, you could say, if you are a materialistic scientist, you have to choose: do you want to uphold the Second Law of Thermodynamics or the theory of evolution, because you cannot really keep both. Of course, you have another option, which is to realize that the materialistic paradigm has limited explanatory capability, and therefore, you need to look beyond it, as some scientists have started to do, and realize that we cannot really explain the universe without understanding the role of consciousness. And some scientists even have realized that consciousness is more fundamental than matter, and that then resolves the enigma of the second law, the theory of evolution, and the theory of the Big Bang.

Holding the overall vision for a new economy

Question: I have an extensive background in mainstream economics and finance. And I would like to contribute to the development of a new golden age economic and monetary system. Since mainstream economics is not aligned with the golden age, what emerging schools of thought or specific thinkers do you recommend I focus on as a starting point for example, our complexity economics and modern monetary theory steps in the right direction.

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

You need to understand here that there is no particular system in the world that has all of the answers. There are many systems, including the ones you mentioned, who have some ideas that are valid. That is why I am reluctant to say: “Here is a system and there is a system”, because they have certain valid answers but not the whole.

What you need to do is use your background, your experience, and at the same time use our teachings, whatever resonates with you, to increase your intuition, your attunement with me so that you can work directly with me and I can then give you certain intuitive impulses of what to look at, which ideas to focus on, and how you can be part of developing the golden age economics.

There will be one idea here, another idea there that can be put together into a coherent whole. And there are many people that will need to be part of this because economics is such a wide-ranging field that very few people have the knowledge and experience of all facets of it. But certainly, it is also important that someone has the overall vision that there is an entirely new economy that can be developed and that might be where you could make a contribution by holding this vision and seeking to fit the different pieces together.

You see in any field of society, any field of science, for example, that there is an increasing tendency that people specialize because the field is so vast and therefore, many people are focused on a particular aspect of the field and they lose the overall view—the big picture. And that is why many of them cannot grasp that higher vision of a more natural economy and a natural monetary system. It is certainly important for people who are open to ascended master teachings to have that overall vision. This does not mean you cannot specialize in a certain field, but you can still do it from that overall viewpoint where you see that this field is just one part of the forward progression and you avoid thinking that it has to be possible to come up with one theory that has all of the answers.

Illness in the Divine plan

Question: If disease and illness is unnatural, why would any lifestream make it their Divine plan to experience being sick?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

You are not really making it your Divine plan to experience being sick, but there can be many considerations such as karmic circumstances from the past that could be balanced through a physical illness, or it could be that you are wanting to develop understanding and compassion for certain other people that suffer from a particular illness, or it may be that you are seeking to demonstrate that you can rise above an illness or that you can learn to live with an illness and still have a positive life. You will see, for example, that there are many people who have a physical illness, perhaps even an illness from childhood, and their whole lives are colored by this, are limited by this, and it is basically for some people an excuse for not seeking to transcend themselves.

There are certainly spiritual people who have taken on a certain disease to demonstrate that it is possible to transcend not necessarily the physical disease but the psychological effects of it. And instead of using it as an excuse for not transcending yourself, you can transcend yourself despite the illness and have a constructive, positive life experience, even grow spiritually.

There can be various reasons why people take on these illnesses. It can also be to help carve a trail in the collective consciousness so that it becomes easier for people to accept that it is possible to cure certain diseases. You can go back to before the discovery of penicillin. And, for example, pneumonia, which was a quite common disease at the time, was considered deadly. And most people thought that being diagnosed with pneumonia was a death sentence. And now, because of the discovery of penicillin to some degree, there is not that stigma. But the same applies to many diseases. As we have said, consciousness comes before the physical manifestation. What led to the discovery of penicillin? It was that there were people who had started shifting their attitude so they accepted that there could be a cure for certain diseases that had been considered to be incurable.

It is the same thing with cancer today, where some people have taken on cancer in order to demonstrate that you can actually be healed from it or you can learn to live with it and have a constructive life despite this so that it is not a death sentence. This is certainly a motivation that some people have for taking on a disease as part of their Divine plan.

Resisting learning through hard knocks

Question: I seem to have this feeling of being afraid of hard knocks coming to me because I seem to not yet be learning what I need to learn. What is the master habit behind it? How do I make sense of this and transcend it?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

Well, the unwillingness or the reluctance to experience hard knocks is simply because you still have a subconscious self. That was created in reaction to a very traumatic event. And we have explained before that when you received your original birth trauma, this was very shocking to you because you did not expect it, you really had no frame of reference at an experiential level of how difficult it would be on earth.

The contrast between your expectation and what actually happened was very big and that was part of why the trauma became so intense. You had, as Kuan Yin explained, a certain idea of what should or should not happen to you as an avatar coming to earth. When something happened that you thought should not have happened, it was very shocking to you. And if you have not resolved such a self, then you still carry with you that sense that this was too much, this was overwhelming for you. And you do not want to be overwhelmed again and therefore, you are reluctant to experience another situation like that. But as we have explained before, you could actually never have as severe of a trauma as your original birth trauma because now that you have been wounded once, there will not be the same contrast as there was when you were, so to speak, innocent. Of course, in order to overcome it, you need to look for the self that was wounded. You can also work on switching your approach by realizing that your fear is actually irrational because it never could be as hard of a knock as it was originally.

New avatars and the birth trauma

Question: I assume that in the present time there must be a number of avatars embodying for the first time on an unnatural planet like earth. They probably have no or only very little birth trauma, I assume. Will their personal search for a primal birth trauma be without any result? Or is this handled by taking on some part of the mass consciousness instead?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

There are not that many avatars that take embodiment on earth for the first time because many of the avatars that came along with the fallen beings are still here and holding a certain balance. There are not so many new ones. But when a new avatar comes to earth it will experience a birth trauma because it will be pursued by the fallen beings who will attempt to pull it into the dualistic struggle, we might say. There are no avatars that avoid that. That is part of taking embodiment on an unnatural planet and then taking on the birth trauma and then rising above it. You can, of course, use the expression that you are taking on some part of the mass consciousness but you do this through your birth trauma.

And it is correct that even many of the avatars who have been here for a long time, you can come to a point where you have resolved your personal birth trauma but you are volunteering to take on something from the collective consciousness and resolve that at the personal level whereby you help raise the collective consciousness. That is correct that there are many avatars that have taken on something from the collective in order to help resolve it. But it does not apply just to new avatars.

The learning process between the Conscious You and the I AM Presence

Question: Today, Mother Mary said that we as the Conscious You could teach our I AM Presence something that it does not know and vice versa. From what I understand, when we grow spiritually, we kind of integrate or manifest some of our I AM Presence through our inner being because there is a growing relationship with it. Is there really anything that could be withheld from my I AM Presence in what I learn as a Conscious You, or does it automatically learn with us as we experience anything simultaneously? So far I assumed that there existed a safety mechanism that prevented my I AM Presence to maintain any informal informational channel to what I experience down here in order to prevent destructive forces to have any inroad into my Presence.

Please clarify how is this teaching done, through the Christ Self and as an intermediary, or did Mother Mary mean that this teaching happens at the end of our embodiment when all constructive learnings are passed onto the causal body?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

You will need to carefully study my dictation again because I do explain the basic mechanism that there can be a certain disconnect between the Conscious You and the I AM Presence, even at the level of the I AM Presence where the Conscious You can withdraw and therefore, not look at everything that happens at the level of the Conscious You. That is why there can be things the Conscious You has learned that the I AM Presence has not yet integrated. There can also be things that the I AM Presence has learned that the Conscious You has not integrated. This is all part of that, the higher levels of the spiritual path where you integrate more and more with the I AM Presence.

In terms of the question of, is there a need to protect the I AM Presence from certain experiences on earth so the dark forces do not have an inroad to the I AM Presence? Well, the dark forces do not have an inroad to the Presence. That is why we say that the I AM Presence remains in the spiritual realm where it cannot be affected by anything that happens on earth. It is not so that the dark forces can project some kind of false belief into the I AM Presence. They can project this at the Conscious You which causes the Conscious You to create a subconscious self. But the I AM Presence cannot be affected by beings in duality. It can experience duality through the Conscious You, but it does not reach the I AM Presence and affects the I AM Presence.

It is like the I AM Presence is observing everything from a distance. You can say it is like watching a sporting event on a television instead of being in the stadium, on the ball field playing. The ball cannot hit you in the face and the same with the I AM Presence. This is the basic reason why the I AM Presence, in order to experience earth and learn from earth, it sends the Conscious You down to take embodiment.

How to share with others without judging

Question: On a conscious level, I understand and accept that life is one and that we are here to establish vertical contact with our I AM Presence and horizontal contact with other co-creators. And I happily share everything with others. But at the same time, there is a subtle division between us and them. Some I like, while others slightly irritate me with their stupidity, ignorance and inertia. And I look for justice and evaluate, is this person worthy? There is an expression of Jesus that the sun descends upon the just and the unjust, and there is another thing, do not throw pearls before swine. How to make the distinction? I feel that I am ready to serve people and I try to do so. But sometimes a subtle sly feeling comes, is this person worth pursuing? And how dare he desecrate shrines, especially ascended master teachings. I feel that this belief is false and that it is what prevents me from serving well. Dear teachers, please help me understand these subtleties and move on.

Answer from the Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

First of all, look at the way you formulated the question and realize that you still have some subconscious selves that are judging, using this dualistic value judgment: “Are people worthy? Are they worth pursuing?” You come to a point where you are not doing this with a particular intention other than sharing yourself. Just be yourself and share what is important for you. And then you do not evaluate whether other people are worthy. You give them an opportunity and if they are interested, you give them more. If they are not interested, you just stop or you talk about other things. Basically, you can say that any time you have a tension in you, you feel this obsessive compulsive desire to share with others, then you are at least somewhat colored by a subconscious self. Work on that self, overcome it so you can just be free to share. Do not evaluate, do not judge people on whether they are stupid or worthy or irritating or these kind of things.

Just come to a point where you can be free to approach others and then you will experience that other people will be much more relaxed because you are not trying to push them. And there will still be people that do not respond, there might still be people who are negative because they are simply negative, but then you just simply evaluate that they do not want more and therefore, you do not give them more.

Facing evil on the path to ascension

Question: If a Roman would have tortured a child in front of Jesus to get him to react, would he have missed his ascension had he tried to react by stopping this evil act? What about the free will of the child who does not want to be tortured? Does respecting the free will of others mean that we allow evil people to steal our free will without reacting? Why the free will from evil people has to be respected, but our free will to not accept to have a child tortured or killed will have the consequence to miss our ascension if we react and say: “No more, I have enough of these evil acts.”

Answer from the Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

Well, as we have attempted to explain many times, the central challenge for people in embodiment on an unnatural planet is free will. Free will, I cannot in an answer like this give you a really deep insight into free will and resolve all of the intricacies of free will. But let’s take the concrete question to begin with.

If somebody had tortured a child in front of me and I had reacted, would I have missed my ascension? Well, the answer is yes, if I had reacted from the human level. But there are ways to react that are not from the human level. You have the situation with Gautama Buddha sitting under the Bo tree. He’s ready to go into Nirvana, but as his final test, he has to face the demons of Mara, and the demons of Mara are trying to do anything they can to get him to react. In that situation, and they did worse things than tortured a child, I can assure you, in that situation, any reaction from the Buddha would have meant he was not ready to go into Nirvana.

When you are in that situation, you are facing the final initiation on earth. Yes, you can have no reactions. But as long as you are not at the point of your ascension, you can react. But of course, the question is, are you reacting from the Christ mind or from the human perspective? The issue here about free will, that we can at least focus on for this particular answer, again, it is not a thorough discussion about free will. You have the free will of yourself versus the free will of others. But again, this depends on from which vantage point are you looking at the issue. The question for you, as a spiritual student is, when I look at the actions of other people, and how I react to them, or how their actions override my free will, your first and primary concern should be, how free is my personal will? The more you are trapped in duality, the more you go below the 48th level of consciousness, the less free your will becomes. This will contradict what the fallen beings would tell you.

They would say, it is only by reacting against God’s will, that we claimed our free will. And therefore, the more powerful we are, the more powerful of a separate self we have built, the more freedom will we have. The more free is our will, because we are willing to do anything we want, regardless of the consequence that it has for others. That is ultimate free will. That is, of course, the lie of the fallen beings. The more you go into this state of mind, the lower you go in consciousness, the less free your will becomes, because you are reacting against something. Whether you see yourself reacting against God or against other people, the reaction against something means your will is not free. Because when your will is free, you are standing there in the situation, whatever the situation is, you have no reactionary patterns, you have no preconceived opinions about what you should or should not do. You are completely free to make a decision how to respond to a given situation.

That is free will. You do not really attain a really free will until you reach the 96th level of consciousness. But it is not completely free until you are ready to ascend. But at least at the 96th level, when you pass the initiation there, your will is, for all practical purposes, free. You still have the separate selves, but these are not really selves that limit your will in the sense that they are reactionary patterns that force you to react a certain way.

Does respecting the free will of others mean that we allow evil people to steal our free will without reacting? Well, as you approach the 96th level, you will be faced with certain initiations where you will have to allow people to do something to you and you do not react. That is the whole meaning of ‘turning the other cheek’, of not responding in kind, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. You want to break the reactionary pattern, the dualistic pattern of always fighting with other people? You have to turn the other cheek.

But what does it take to turn the other cheek? You may say other people are hitting you on one cheek and they are violating your free will. Well, yes, but if you react by hitting them back, you are not making a free choice. You are allowing a subconscious self to cause you to react. In order to actually be hit on one cheek and turn the other, your will has to be more free than the people who are reacting. And by turning the other cheek, you are making your will more and more free until there comes a point where you pass that initiation. And therefore, it is not as likely that somebody will violate your free will because you are no longer attracting that initiation to you. Now, of course, you are in the physical realm on an unnatural planet. There is always room for people violating your free will. But then if you do not react to it, as I have explained before, then their action brings about the judgment of Christ upon them so that they might be taken from the planet.

That is the whole point of why I let myself be arrested, be judged, be executed. Partly to bring the judgment of Christ, partly to demonstrate that I could allow this to happen to me, not have a reaction. And that actually demonstrated that my will had become so free that I did not need to resist anything. You see what I am trying to say? As long as you are resisting and reacting to things here on earth, you are not free to leave the earth. What does it take for you to leave the earth? That your will is so free that you can choose not to react to anything here. And like the Buddha under the Bo tree, looking at the demons of Mara without reacting and then turning around and walking through the gate into the ascended realm. That is the ultimate use of free will.

More on the ‘anti-mind’

Question: In 2005, ascended Master El Morya, now Master MORE, discoursed on the ‘anti-mind’. Is there more to share here and now?

And there is just an excerpt here from this teaching:

“I am come to speak now on the anti-mind that is truly present in many spiritual people, even among students of the ascended masters. This is a most insidious mind and it is one of the greatest dangers to a student on the spiritual path. This mind has so many disguises that it cannot be exposed in all of its facets in one discourse.

Yet those of you who consider yourself students of El Morya need to consider how the anti-mind influences your thinking, including your thinking of what it means to be a student of the will of God and a student of the ascended masters.”

Answer from the Ascended Master MORE through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

Well, we have given many, many teachings since 2005 about the anti-mind. First was the ego discourses by Jesus, then our teachings about the separate selves. But what we can also say, if we tie into Mother Mary’s discourse, is that the anti-mind can be said to be the Conscious You adopts a negative view of the world, of yourself, of your relationship to the world, what it means for you to express yourself in the world. We can say that there is an anti-mind that works against what Mother Mary said, making that shift, daring to express yourself, to be yourself and actually accepting that there are people who will want this. Because the anti-mind will tell you that nobody wants you to express yourself, you should stay within the parameters of what you were brought up to see.

You can also express it in different ways and say that the anti-mind is that which works against your daring to express your individual Christhood. There is always an anti-mind that tells you, do not do this, do not do that, do not express yourself, do not think you know something that other people do not know, and these kinds of things.

But we can go deeper and talk about how there are some ascended master students who over the years will take the teachings we have given on Christhood and Christ discernment, and they will use them to build a black and white view of what Christhood is. They will think, for example, that as you increase your Christ discernment, you become able to see what is right and wrong in every issue. And they think that when you achieve Christhood, full Christhood, you are always right. And anybody who disagrees with you is always wrong. It is like they are taking the issue of Christ discernment and superimposing the dualistic view of right and wrong upon it.

And therefore, you have seen students over the many decades we have given teachings who had applied the teachings for years, who thought they had made progress on the spiritual path, and they thought they had attained at least some degree of Christhood, but they thought this meant that they were always right based on a black and white evaluation of every issue. But as we have many, many times expressed through this dispensation, this is a simplistic view of Christhood. Christhood, Christ discernment, does not mean that you are always right, and therefore, you make other people wrong. The higher you go in Christhood, the more you see the oneness behind all opinions, especially the dualistic ones. But you even see that the unity among people is far more important than you being right by making other people wrong. And therefore, you become less and less attached to these outer opinions. You become more nuanced, you become able to see every issue from a broader perspective, where it cannot be reduced to right and wrong, black and white.

It does not mean you become a gray thinker. It means you step beyond the whole dualistic polarity and value judgment. Do you really think that in the spiritual realm, we as ascended masters go around having discussions based on this? There must be a right view and a wrong view, and I, Master MORE, have the right view, and you, Jesus, you have the wrong one. How could we ever interact like this in the ascended realm? We are not looking at life on earth, desiring our students to be ‘right’ in every issue about every opinion that you can have on earth. We are looking at how we can help people, first of all, transcend the dualistic mindset, because in a sense you could say, what is the anti-mind? It is the mind based on duality that wants to always superimpose this dualistic polarized view, the right and wrong, the value judgments. Do you want to be right among men or right with Christ? You cannot be both. You cannot serve two masters. This is another way to describe the anti-mind.

There can be others. There are many ways to describe the anti-mind. It can also be the mind that undermines your will to change, like Mother Mary described. There comes a point where you have to make a decision to dare to express yourself, and the anti-mind will come up with all kinds of reasons why you should not do that. At least not today. Postpone it to sometime in the indefinite future. You can describe it as the ego, or as what in a previous dispensation was called the dweller on the threshold that every time you are taking a step up on a path, there will be an element of this anti-mind that will seek to keep you where you are, where you feel safe, and prevent you from taking that decisive step. We have described this.

And you can again look at the whole teaching about the separate selves. There is always a separate self, a specific separate self at a specific level of consciousness. But of course, you can say that all of these separate selves, they are part of the anti-mind. And the anti-mind also extends to what has been created by the fallen beings that are projecting, as we have said before, this standard. You have to evaluate everything based on a standard. And that is why, as I said in the beginning, some students have taken this concept of Christhood. They have superimposed the fallen beings and their standard upon it, thinking Christhood means you are always right, and anyone who disagrees with you is always wrong. That is the ego’s ultimate dream, to set itself up: “Nobody can gainsay me. I am the highest authority.” And there are people who think that that is what it means to be the Christ, but it is not. What did Jesus say? “He who would be greatest among you, let him be the servant of all.” You are not serving other people by going around making them wrong all the time based on your personal dualistic standard. That is not the Christ, that is the anti-mind.

Direct democracy in Korea

Question: Nowadays I am thinking about how to get out of the mental box created by capitalism and the monetary system. So I look at the teachings you gave in the United States and to get out of this mental box I feel that we need to go to direct democracy. I would like to hear about the change of consciousness required to advance direct democracy in Korea and the use of blockchain technology and mobile phone voting.

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 Holland Conference.

There are very few countries right now that are ready to go to direct democracy. It requires a quite deep change in the collective consciousness and that is why the first form of democracy that was instituted was representative democracy because people could conceive of voting for candidates that would then make the decisions that they themselves were not really ready to make. You have certain of the older democracies, for example Switzerland who has already implemented direct democracy to a high degree. There are certain other countries who could do this but in Korea, it is more of a long-term perspective.

It would take quite a deep change in the collective consciousness where many people are not ready for direct democracy because they are not really ready to educate themselves about issues and to take responsibility for educating themselves.

Obviously in order to have direct democracy people must be able to vote over the internet, whether through phone or computers and this will require some technological innovation but it is not beyond what can be done. But in terms of Korea right now, by the time the collective consciousness will be ready for direct democracy, the technological solutions will also be there and can fairly quickly be implemented. But really this is something we will talk more about during our conference in Korea. There is a deep shift that needs to happen in many Asian nations where the people realize that it is not enough just to vote every four years. It is not enough just to talk about politics from this simplified, simplistic view.

They need to educate themselves in a deeper way to really understand the issues and the complexity of the issues. You can say that people need to move away from black and white thinking but without going into gray thinking so they have the realization that you need to make more of an effort to educate yourself about the complexities of an issue before you can actually make a constructive determination about how to vote on an issue, even if you had direct democracy.

How to see through the mental level teachings

Question: How can one distinguish between mental realm teachings and those from the ascended masters? Is simulation theory aligned with the ascended masters’ teachings?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 New Year Webinar.

Let’s begin by looking at teachings that come from the emotional realm. No, let’s step back. Let’s begin by looking at teachings that come from the physical realm. Somebody has decided to create a certain teaching centered around the physical body, the needs of the body, the desires of the body.

What kind of people are attracted to such a teaching? Well, people whose main focus is the physical body, the desires or pleasures of the physical body. This could be a teaching, for example, that says it is okay to fulfill whatever desires the physical body has. At that physical level of awareness, you cannot reason your way out of this teaching. You cannot recognize the limitations of that teaching. Now we step up. There are beings in the emotional realm that are seeking to release various teachings, even through some channelers. And what kind of people are attracted to those teachings? Well, it is people who are focused at the emotional level. Well, you cannot use the emotions to see that these teachings are limited, or that they come from the emotional level. You cannot, so to speak, recognize an emotional teaching through the emotional body. Likewise, there are teachings that come from the mental level. There are beings in the mental realm that are creating these very elaborate intellectual teachings, putting them out there.

You cannot set up a process for reasoning with the intellectual mind, with a linear analytical mind, to expose these teachings. What can you do? Well, you can use the Christ consciousness, which many people see as intuition. In other words, in order to see a physical teaching, you need to reach beyond the physical level. In order to see an emotional teaching, you need to reach beyond the emotional level. In order to see a mental teaching, you need to reach beyond the mental level. In order to see a teaching coming from the lower identity realm, you need to reach beyond that. And when you have the frame of reference of the higher vibration, then you can see that this teaching is mental. It is a mental level teaching. And therefore, it is not an ascended master teaching, even if the being channeling the teaching claims to be an ascended master and is using an ascended master name. There are, as we have said, false hierarchy impostors who use ascended master names, claiming to be this or that master. And the only way to really distinguish this is to read the vibration.

I understand this is difficult for many people. But why is it difficult? Well, if you are at the level where you are primarily focused on the mental level and understanding spiritual teachings at the mental level, yes, of course, it will be difficult for you to reach beyond. You will tend to want to have something you can grasp with the mental mind. You see what I am saying here? When you are asking the question, how can one distinguish between mental realm teachings and those from the ascended masters? If you are focused at the mental level, you will want me to give you an explanation that the mental mind can grasp. But what I am saying is, this will not allow you to tell the difference. The only way to tell the difference is to reach beyond the mental level, use the Christ mind, your intuition, to have an experience of the ascended master consciousness, and then use that as a frame of reference to sense that the vibration in the mental level is lower than the ascended level.

It is the only real way to do it. Of course, you can set up certain criteria that might help you, but what happens to most people is when they try to set up mental criteria, they get lost in intellectualizing, arguing, reasoning, and as we have said before, the analytical mind can argue for or against any viewpoint and convince itself that this is right or the opposite is right. It is not a fail-safe method. It is only reading vibration. Of course, you can learn to recognize that some teachings are very, very complicated, very intellectual, reasoning about things. You can, for example, read philosophers, and certain philosophers are very mental, very intellectual in coming up with these very sophisticated arguments that are actually very hard to understand. And you can see that there are some teachings that come from the mental level that seem to be very advanced to people at the mental level because they are so complicated. And the mental mind tends to want to believe that the more complicated something is, the more advanced it is. But this is just at the mental level. At the mental level, if you look at what intellectual people have done, philosophers have done on earth, you can see that there is this clear tendency to believe at the mental level that the more complicated it is, the more advanced it is. And there is no end to the complications that the mental level can create by arguing back and forth. You cannot ascend through a mental process.

You cannot reason your way into heaven. You have to at some point leave behind the desire to mentally understand everything. It is essentially the same as this question I just answered about what happens to the Conscious You when you ascend. The mental mind has a desire to mentally grasp what happens to the Conscious You when you ascend. But you cannot grasp it from the mental mind because the experience is higher than the mental mind. It is a higher vibration. One of the big limitations that you see in human history is that people have used the mental mind to try to reason about what things are like in the spiritual realm.

You are projecting mentally created ideas upwards: This is how the ascended masters are. This is how God is. This is how the world really works. But you see, the mental level, the mental mind can only grasp what exists in the mental realm on earth. And the mental realm on earth is quite vast because so many people have added to it over millennia and created all kinds of ideas in the mental realm. It seems like a very vast realm that has many, many sophisticated ideas. But they all come from the mental realm. And they are all based on observations of how things are on earth right now. And as we have said, earth is an unnatural planet. Here you have people on an unnatural planet who are using their mental minds to reason about what things are like in the ascended realm. But the ascended realm is nothing like an unnatural planet. You cannot reason backwards. That is why progressive revelation is needed. No matter how sophisticated humankind has become in this age of science and reason, you cannot use the mental mind to reason about what things are like in the ascended realm. You can only know this through direct revelation that comes from above. You cannot reason backwards. You cannot project upwards. All you do with this is tie yourself into a blind alley in the mental realm. And you will not get beyond it until you reach higher, for a higher vibration.

Now there are spiritual people on earth who are very fascinated by these mental level teachings. And that is fine, as long as they decide to have that experience, which for many people is the experience of being intellectually superior to others. As you see, many scientists and philosophers, even many religious people, even the Scribes and the Pharisees, could not handle Jesus because he cut through all their mental reasoning by giving a direct teaching from above, by being the open door for that direct teaching. And they hated him for it, because he exposed the limitations of their mental approach. Over the years, we have seen spiritual students who have a potential to go higher, but they get trapped in the mental mind because they want to understand everything. And they take our teachings and they are processing it with a mental mind, trying to understand it with a linear mind, instead of using the teachings as a springboard for reaching for a direct experience of our Presence. You experience our higher vibration beyond any kind of reasoning.

If you are in a dark cave, you can come up with all kinds of theories about what the sun is like, but they will be based on what you see in the darkness. How will you know the sun? Leave the cave and experience. It is the same with an ascended master. You cannot know us through the intellectual mind. You can know us by experiencing our Presence directly, as you have had the opportunity to experience it right now, through my words and the vibration behind them.

Overcoming desires

Question: Dear Masters, how can I let go of a desire? I feel I have some desires that pull my attention during the day. I find myself thinking of them, whether it is about playing video games, sex or doing other things. I have tried a mix of doing them in moderation since often they do not offer the pleasure or satisfaction they promise, and doing invocations and journaling to try to demystify them. And I wonder if there is not a faster way. I sometimes feel I cannot let go of a desire until I fulfill it, but I do not have enough time to do them all until the experience is exhausted. Can you give me some pointers on this?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 New Year Webinar.

Well, to give you a relatively short answer, you can look at two kinds of desire. You can look at a desire that springs from the outer personality, the human personality, even the physical body, and is driven by subconscious selves. And this can be a desire that has any kind of object in the world. The subconscious selves do not have a desire for spiritual growth, but they have a desire for worldly pleasures, worldly possessions, worldly experiences, worldly accomplishments. And what is the characteristics of these desires is they can never be filled. You can never have enough of it. You can always have more sex, more video games, more money, more power. And you see many people who are, their entire lives eaten up by this quest to get more and more and more, and it is never enough. So, as a spiritual student, obviously you want to identify such desires and overcome them. And you do this partly by making the calls to Astrea, Archangel Michael, for your protection, to be cut free, for the Violet Flame to consume the energies in your desire body, your emotional body, that pull you into the desire. But on a long-term perspective, you need to look at the subconscious selves that you have, that the desire is centered in, and you need to resolve it by looking at why you created that self in the first place.

Now beyond this, there are certain desires that come from the I AM Presence, where the I AM Presence sent the Conscious You into embodiment on earth because it desired to experience certain conditions. It is not only that an avatar came here to help hold the balance and bring the planet forward. The original inhabitants of the earth, their I AM Presences, have desires for experiencing what can be experienced on earth, whether it is this or that or the next thing. This is not to say that the I AM Presence desires to experience everything that can be experienced on earth. The I AM Presence does not desire to experience clearly perverted desires that are harmful to others or harmful to yourself. But it can have legitimate desires. And there can be people whose I AM Presence has a certain desire for experiences on earth, and the I AM Presence has not fulfilled that desire. And therefore, you need to pursue that desire. And you need to be careful you do not, with the outer mind—because you find the spiritual teaching—decide to override the desire of your I AM Presence. You need to tune into this intuitively. But we can say that most desires, especially most unbalanced desires, come from these subconscious selves. And if you are sincere about making your ascension, then of course you need to transcend these desires. You can do this by using our tools and teachings. You will of course also at some point have to make a decision to let the self die, to let the desire go, and to simply decide: “I have had enough of this experience. I do not need this anymore. I do not want this anymore.”

But you have to be careful here. There are many, many people who have come to look at a certain desire as wrong, something that should not be there. But they feel the pull. So, they are trying to force themselves to stop the desire, to obliterate the desire, to cover over the desire, to restrain the behavior. But this is not the highest approach, even though it can be necessary sometimes. But the highest approach is that your Conscious You seeks to resolve the subconscious selves related to the desire, and then you use your intuition to tune in to your Divine plan and see that there is actually something else you want to do.

In other words, instead of trying to eradicate a certain desire, you replace it with a desire for something else, something higher. There is something you desire more. And you realize, of course, the limitations of the physical octave are that you cannot do everything, because you cannot be in two places at once. You can gradually then raise your desires up, so they become more and more spiritualized, if it is in your Divine plan that you make a certain spiritual progress in this lifetime, or that you qualify for your ascension in this lifetime.

The spiritual use of money vs. The financial elite

Question: Please help me ascend in consciousness regarding the spiritual use of money. Specifically, please explain the difference between a financial elite giving and receiving money as a result of investing in various financial instruments versus an ascended master student giving and receiving money as a result of investing in God’s kingdom, such as Ascended Master Resources Network. Do both of these approaches violate the definition that money is to be used for the exchange of products and services and for the short-term storage of value? Are the financial elite and the ascended master student both getting something for nothing?

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 New Year Webinar.

What exactly do you mean with a student investing in the Ascended Master Resources Network and giving and receiving money? What do you get back from it in a direct way? Of course there is a difference.

We are not asking you to invest in ascended master teachings in any way. But what I have said many times is that the financial elite is seeking to get something for nothing because they are not willing to provide a service or a product and they want to get something out of other people’s labor. And that is why they have created all of these financial instruments that are giving some people something for nothing in the sense that when people reach a certain amount of money they have to invest, then they do not need to work, they do not need to provide a service, they can just live off the money. And this is not multiplying the talents, it is burying them in the ground even though it seems like the money is accumulating. But it is really artificially created money. This is a karma-making situation. That is why we are not encouraging our students to invest in these financial schemes that are cooked up by the financial elite because you make yourself part of the karmic spiral they have created.

What happens to the Conscious You when we ascend?

Question: What happens to the Conscious You when we ascend? Does it merge with the I AM Presence and become the Christ Self?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 New Year Webinar.

No, the Conscious You does not become the Christ Self, because the Christ Self is an extension of the mind of an ascended master who is extending a part of its being for you personally so that however low you go into the duality consciousness you can still contact the Christ mind and therefore, rise step by step. When you ascend, the Conscious You merges with the I AM Presence. We have given quite extensive teachings on this in other contexts and you simply need to look for those. But it is difficult to describe in words exactly what the process is. It is difficult to describe it in words that can be grasped here on earth, which is a low planet, because most people are still affected by the collective consciousness that have these separate selves in their outer minds.

You see, the dilemma here for a spiritual student is, you have a sense that you are a continuous being and the reason you have this is that the Conscious You is a continuous being, an immortal being, because it is out of the I AM Presence. Well, it is not technically immortal until you ascend but nevertheless you are a continuous being compared to one lifetime on earth for example. On the other hand, you have the ego which dreams of attaining immortality as a separate being. When you first hear the teachings about the Conscious You, what do you do?

Well, you interpret these partly through the outer mind and therefore you think that, well, the ego has the desire to become immortal but as a distinct being, and so the Conscious You, therefore, when it ascends – when you ascend – you become a distinct being as the Conscious You. But you do not, because the way you see yourself right now is through your identity body. And as we have said, you have illusions created at the 144th level,143rd and so on down. And you cannot give up these illusions, the last illusion, until you are at the 144th level. We are not expecting you to. But this means that until you are at the 144th level, you cannot really grasp what happens to the Conscious You when you ascend. And you do not need to grasp it because you do not need to understand it with the outer mind. You will experience it when it happens. Now I could give you words and say the Conscious You merges back into oneness with the I AM Presence. But how is your outer mind going to interpret that? What exactly does that mean? The outer mind will ask. And you can keep asking indefinitely.

But the Conscious You is an extension of the I AM Presence. When a Conscious You and the I AM Presence ascend, the Conscious You does not need to be an extension of the Presence. It becomes the Presence. It merges back into the Presence. It is absorbed into the Presence. It becomes indistinguishable from the Presence. It becomes the totality of the Presence instead of being an extension. These are just words. If the words are difficult for you to grasp, then do not try to define it with the outer mind. Either look at: do you have a particular self that is very attached to maintaining a separate existence and have you transferred this to the Conscious You? Then you can work on that self. Or you can simply say: “Well, I do not need to understand with the outer mind, with a linear analytical mind, what happens to the Conscious You when I ascend. I can wait for the experience.”

Although I sound stern, I am not trying to find fault with people being curious and asking questions. I am just trying to point out to you that any words we put on this are inadequate to describe the actual experience. And I am trying to raise the question: Does it really matter? And if it really matters, is it the Conscious You or is it a separate self that it matters to?

Is it necessary to wait three days before the cremation?

Question: The ascended masters recommend that deceased bodies are cremated. Is it necessary to wait three days and three nights before the cremation? What is the reason for this delay?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 New Year Webinar.

Well, there were teachings given in previous dispensations about this in order to give the soul time to leave the body behind, but really it is not an absolute that it has to be three days and three nights. You can feel free to decide on your own based on practical considerations.

As we are moving higher, as the collective consciousness is raised, in most cases it takes less time for the soul to separate from the body. Let me just put it this way, use your intuition and do not try to decide on some rigid number with the outer mind.

Ascension: Letting go of the separate self vs. Integrating illusion

Question: There are several messengers that are providing ascended master teachings. But there is a major difference between some of them. The teachings provided via Kim and Ascended Master Light emphasize the need to let our separate selves die, while other teachings from other messengers say that we should work to integrate all of our aspect selves with love. Will any of the masters address this and provide clarification?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 New Year Webinar.

Well, not all messengers who claim to be providing ascended master teachings are providing teachings from the ascended masters. There are many of these so-called messengers who are providing teachings from beings in the mental and lower identity realm. And some of these beings may be taking the names of ascended masters, but they are not ascended masters. And if they use our names, they are in fact what we have called impostors, and this is dishonest. These beings are not seeking to help their students ascend as we are. They are seeking to keep their students dependent on them so they get their energy. When you say that you should work to integrate all of your separate selves with love, this is just a false teaching.

What is the ascension? It is a process of accelerating yourself beyond anything on earth. You are ascending from earth. You are leaving everything on earth behind. What is it that has happened to most people on earth? They have gone into the illusion of separation, created all these separate selves that are based on an illusion. You cannot integrate an illusion. You cannot love an illusion. You cannot love a false self. You cannot love the ego and integrate it. This is not the way that we have ascended. You ascend by attaining oneness with the Christ mind, the One mind, the undivided mind, the Buddha Nature. This allows you to discern what is real, meaning it comes from the One mind, what is unreal, meaning it comes from the separate mind. Yes, you can say everything was created out of the Christ consciousness, therefore, even the separate mind is created out of the Christ consciousness. But it is not created in oneness with the whole, with the Christ mind. It is an illusion that is allowed because of free will.

But you cannot be in a state of separation and a state of oneness at the same time. This is the reality of an unascended sphere. There are conditions that are mutually exclusive. When you go into separation you are creating false selves. You cannot integrate them by loving them. You can use the One mind to see the illusion, choose to transcend the illusion, to let it go, to let the self die, and then it disintegrates, it disappears. You might say it goes back into the Christ mind. But it does not become part of your being because you do not want to incorporate something unreal into your being. It is simply a false, unrealistic teaching that will cause people to go into a blind alley. You are not going to transform the devil by loving the devil. You are only going to give the devil energy that gives him more power over you. And the same thing with a subconscious self. You just need to let it go and leave it behind. That is what the Buddha demonstrated when he sat under the Bo tree and faced the demons of Mara.

That is what Jesus demonstrated on the cross by giving up the ghost. That is what every being who has ascended from the first sphere to this one has demonstrated. In order to go to a fundamentally higher state than you have now, you have to let go of the sense of self you have now. There is no other way to self-transcendence. Everything else becomes a detour where you just keep reinforcing the separate self. It may morph into a different form of ego that is supposedly spiritual and loving and kind and wonderful, but it is still an ego. You need to understand here that the duality consciousness has two opposite polarities. One is obviously evil. Another appears to be good. Many, many people, spiritual people, religious people throughout the ages have thought that if you strive to be good as defined by your religion, then you will get into the kingdom of heaven. But if you are striving for a dualistic view of goodness, then the goodness will keep you out of heaven as effectively as the evil, because it is duality, it is illusion.

You cannot fool the Christ consciousness. It does not matter how spiritual, how loving, how kind you think you are. You cannot cheat your way into heaven, because the Christ consciousness sees all. It sees itself and the whole that has come out of all who are connected to the whole, and it sees what is outside of the whole, what has come out of the separate mind. There is no appearance of being good that you can take on that will allow you to cheat your way into the spiritual realm. You ascend by giving up both the evil and the good and what is in between, because it is all out of duality.

Do antidepressant medicines inhibit spiritual growth?

Question: Do antidepressant medicines inhibit spiritual growth? Are dark forces behind anxiety and depression? Or is this sometimes from imbalances in our lower bodies?

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 New Year Webinar.

Well, everything is somewhat individual when it comes to these psychological conditions. There are people who have depression and anxiety because of unbalanced conditions in their physical bodies. The release of hormones, enzymes, various things. There can be a physical component to anxiety and depression. If people have this, then certain medicines can minimize the symptoms. But, of course, in most cases, what people have is a lack of balance in their emotional, mental, and identity bodies. And if the imbalance is severe, then it opens them up to dark forces.

And once they are open to dark forces, they will, of course, magnify the depression and the anxiety. What is the cause of it? Well, you can always debate. It starts with the imbalance in the psychology. But once the dark forces are given an inroad, well, they are certainly also part of the cause. But what can you do about it? Well, you can seek to overcome the imbalance in the psychology, meaning the subconscious selves.

Can antidepressants inhibit spiritual growth? Well, yes, of course they can. Many of these medicines basically shut down the mind. They shut down your intuition, your higher faculties. They make you less aware. I am not thereby diagnosing individual people and telling them to not take medicines. There can be people who have such severe imbalances that you can say from a long-term perspective, it is better than they take the medicines until they might in some future reach a state where they can deal with these psychological conditions. In the long-term, this is not necessarily inhibiting spiritual growth.

But it is certainly inhibiting spiritual growth in the sense that it decreases your awareness, your intuition. And if you cannot tune in to your higher self, to your Christ Self, the I AM Presence, to the masters, it is definitely inhibiting your spiritual growth. You have to realize that many of these medicines are based on this idea that there is an imbalance in the brain. And therefore, they seek to basically decrease the activity of the brain, even shut down the activity of the brain, so that people are numb. And then they think this is progress because people are not exhibiting the symptoms. But they have just become numb. And if you are paralyzed, if you are numb, you are not growing spiritually, because spiritual growth means you are consciously seeing things in your psychology and overcoming them. Now again, I am not telling people with severe depression and anxiety to stop taking medicine. I am simply answering the question as it was stated here.

How to hold a balance

Question: If we are in embodiment at this time to hold the balance for Saint Germain, as the masters have said we are, then why is everything so unbalanced? Why is there so much chaos and upheaval?

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 New Year Webinar.

Well, we have actually explained this in many different dictations, partly because of the imbalances in the collective consciousness, partly because we are going through this transition.

But now what you will see with this release of light is that the balances will become more and more extreme, as we have said, so that people can see them, can see that this is not sustainable. But you really need to step back and look at why you are asking this question. First of all, how do you know what things would be like if you were not here holding the balance? Do you think they would be better? Or do you think they would be worse? I can assure you they would be much worse. But the other thing is, you can look at why are you focusing on the imbalance, the unbalanced conditions? Why is that the focus of your attention? If you take what we have said during this conference, you will see that we are telling you to focus on the positive, especially for the next 12 years. Why are you focused on the lack of balance? In other words, if your attention is focused on all of the things that are unbalanced, are you actually helping to hold the balance? Or are you misqualifying energy that increases the lack of balance?

These are questions to ask yourself and recognize that this comes from separate selves. And if you really want to step up, if you want to accelerate and help hold a balance, then you need to dissolve those separate selves. And you have the tools and the knowledge to do this, if you are willing.

Collective imbalance and Argentina’s economy

Question: Dear Masters, will Argentina find, during 2025, a solid path to economic growth under the guidance of Xavier Millet despite his unbalanced psychology?

Answer from the Ascended Master Saint Germain through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 New Year Webinar.

Well, it is not that likely. And it is not just because of the unbalanced psychology of the President. For why has the country attracted a President with unbalanced psychology? Well, because the collective consciousness is unbalanced. And there are many unbalances in the collective consciousness. This is not, of course, unique to Argentina. You will find it in just about every country, but in some countries, of course, more than others. And when you see the upheaval, economic chaos in society, you know there is an underlying imbalance in the psychology. And it has something to do with the whole dynamic between the power elite and the broader population, where the population has not reached a level of consciousness, where they have become aware that they are suppressed by a power elite, and that this suppression actually starts with the Catholic Church.

And as you saw in the Middle Ages with the feudal societies, you have a modern version of that in many South American countries and other Catholic countries, where the suppression starts there. And people will not object to the worldly power elite because they are afraid to rebel against the Church and be punished by going to hell. But it is not just the Catholic Church. It is also that the people are not, in general, willing to take responsibility for themselves. And therefore, they are seeking someone who can make everything right for them, as you see in many countries around the world, including the United States, I must say.

Embracing Christhood in motherhood

Question: Thank you, ascended masters, for the insight you continue to provide to add our self-transcendence. I felt especially loved by archangel Gabriel in his release. How can expressing Christhood be incorporated into motherhood? I have two young children and do believe it part of my Divine plan to bring forth more, but I am unsure how I can help raise the whole, and I will be focused on raising my children at home for at least the next 10-15 years. I am seeing separate selves that I have through my reactions to them and so I do believe it will help me grow a lot spiritually, but I often feel as if I am not doing enough in relation to how to help others. Should I be volunteering as well as raising my children, or is it enough to focus on my children in this stage of my life? Any insight you can give will be very helpful.

Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2025 New Year Webinar.

Well, you have to be aware that there is always a tendency among ascended master students to feel that you are not doing enough, and this is, of course, a double-edged sword because the ego always wants to make you think that you should not be doing more, you are already doing enough, it makes no difference, and all of these things.

The ego will try to discourage you from doing more, but on the other hand, we see many people over the years who have gone into this unbalanced reaction of wanting to do as much as possible, and so they end up stretching themselves so thin that perhaps they break down, perhaps they neglect other parts of life. What I am saying here is that when you have small children, then you need to focus on that, you need to do other things only to the extent that it is possible while not neglecting your children. You can look at any separate selves you have that make you feel that you are not doing enough, and why you have that feeling. And then you can decide that by constantly working to raise your consciousness, by seeking to help your children raise their consciousness, you know, resolving psychology, you are doing enough, and can you do decreasing invocations besides that without stretching yourself too thin, then that is fine, but you need to recognize here that you are doing something to raise the whole by raising your own consciousness and by raising your children. You are doing something to raise the whole.

Perhaps in a little more long term, you can find ways to raise the whole either by volunteering or by looking into how to raise children, the psychology around it, maybe helping other mothers with it. There can be many ways individually. But first of all, look at this: Why do you always feel you have to do more? Because we see many students who get into this spiral where it is just never enough. And that obviously comes from a separate self. And it is understandable that you have these separate selves. We have all had it in a sense as avatars because you come to earth to make a difference. You are hammered down by the fallen beings. You feel like you are not making a difference. And then you think that, oh, if only I do more, then it will make a difference. But this becomes a never-ending spiral. Look at the dysfunctional psychology, the separate selves that cause you to feel that way, and then tune in to your Divine Plan, to your I AM Presence, and see what comes to you from within that you can do.

So many times we see students who decide with the outer mind that I have to do all of these decrees, for example. And it will never be enough. You could always do more. But it is enough when you find a balanced approach that comes from the Christ mind.