Question: Beloved ascended masters, you teach that earth operates under the law of free will and that souls chose to incarnate here for accelerated growth even if they did not fully grasp the depth of duality and manipulation present. My question concerns the integrity of free will under asymmetry of awareness. Some beings understand psychological and energetic manipulation while others do not. If consent is shaped by fear, misinformation or systemic pressure, is that consent metaphysically complete? If a soul consents to incarnation without fully realizing the extent of systemic manipulation of engineered coercion that may later arise, is that original consent metaphysically complete or does incomplete awareness qualify the nature of that choice? And if those who understand the mechanics of manipulation structure choices to appear voluntary, can karmic law be bypassed through such technical loopholes? Or does a higher corrective mechanism ensure that free will cannot ultimately be exploited? How is divine justice preserved in a universe where knowledge and power are unevenly distributed? Why would primary source permit a system in which souls can be drawn into extreme suffering through traps they did not fully comprehend at the point of incarnation?
Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2026 Lithuania Conference.
You have to be careful that you do not become too linear when you consider these very subtle questions. What people throughout the ages have had a tendency to do is they look at conditions as they are right now and then they want to project from there how it was in the past. You might say for example that today many people have no awareness of for example dark forces who are manipulating them into making karma and many people are not even aware of karma so how can they make a free choice? But you see this is not where it started.
The earth as we have explained started as a natural planet. There were no fallen beings, there was no manipulation of free will, there was no deception. But what happened was that there were groups of lifestreams that descended to earth. They worked with their spiritual teachers as they do on all natural planets. At the time the earth was a natural planet of course and many of those people ascended. Then there was another group that descended. Most of those also ascended and then there came a point where the inhabitants that were left on earth decided to go into duality and the illusion of separation.
And this was not manipulated. Nobody manipulated them into doing this. It was something they decided to do to experiment with the duality consciousness. Now the spiritual teachers that were there on earth at the time attempted to help them experiment with duality without getting stuck in it and many did this. But others got trapped in duality and therefore, created what we have explained previously—that downward spiral that could have led to the planet’s destruction.
What you need to understand is that once the majority of the beings on a planet have gone into duality we cannot help them directly. They cannot contact us. They lose their sense of connection. We can give outer teachings but we cannot work with them directly. And that means they now go into what we call the School of Hard Knocks where they need to now make choices and experience the physical consequences. And you have to be careful that you do not reason that when people go into duality they no longer have free will. You could reason that before people go into duality they have free will and then when they go into duality they are blinded so therefore, they do not have a free will because they do not have a clear vision.
But you see even before they went into duality they did not have a completely free will in the sense that they had complete awareness of what they were choosing and what the consequences would be. Because you can only make choices based on your level of consciousness and what you see at that level.
If you want to look at free will as if it should be completely free then that means you would have to have complete awareness of the situation where you are making the choices. And essentially to put it a little bit on edge only the Creator has complete awareness of what happens in the world of form and the Allness and so forth. Therefore, you could say that even the ascended masters at the highest level do not have the awareness of the Creator and therefore, their will is not as free as the Creator. And of course, in an unascended sphere people have a lesser awareness of their whole and therefore, their will is not as free.
But you see free will does not mean completely free will because what is the purpose of free will? It has never been the purpose of giving free will or the law of free will that should be completely free in the sense that you can choose anything you want. The purpose of existence is that you start with a point-like sense of self and based on what you see you make choices. You can see certain options and you choose one of those options. Then you experience the outcome and then based on that you raise your awareness. When you raise your awareness you see more choices, more options. Therefore, your will is a little more free because you have more options to choose from. You also, as you raise your awareness become more aware of the consequences of your choices. But you see this is how you grow. You grow from a limited sense of self to a greater consciousness by making choices with your present level of awareness and experiencing the consequences.
Even before a being goes into duality its will is only as free as its level of awareness. While when beings go into duality and separation their will is of course less free because now, they only see the dualistic polarities. They only see the dualistic polarities. They have lost the connection. When you have a connection to something outside your own mind you also have the possibility to reason: “What if there are some options I cannot see with my current level of consciousness?” Then you can appeal to whatever you are connected to however you see it and ask for clarification. When you go into separation you cannot do that. That means you can only choose what you can see and you can only learn by experiencing the consequences. Before anyone goes into duality, they have some awareness of what duality is. It has been explained to them by their spiritual teachers that duality can become a trap because it can become a self-validating system—state of mind. In a sense people know what they are going into even if they do not fully realize what it is. They have at least some awareness and they choose to do it. They choose to react in such a way. They essentially choose to say “I want to experience what it is like to be immersed in duality.” But in order to have that experience of being immersed you have to forget that there is an alternative to duality. Otherwise, you are not fully immersed in duality. But what is the characteristic of duality?
There are always two opposite polarities. There are always two sides of the coin. But you can have people for example, beings, who decide that they want to experience duality because they want to experience the contrast. Let’s say someone desires to experience what it is like to be a warrior and the person envisions that he is this powerful skilled warrior who always wins in a duel with another warrior. His primary motivation for wanting to have this experience is that he wants to experience what it is to be the victorious warrior. That is what he has in his conscious mind. That is why he decides to go into duality where he can experience this. But what he has been told but what he has not really fathomed is that when you go into duality you cannot just experience being the victorious warrior because you need to have and you are essentially saying you want to have the full experience of duality which means you have to experience both being the victorious warrior and the defeated warrior.
You cannot have one without the other because then the experience of duality is not complete. But many people when they go into duality and are defeated and have the unpleasant experience, they decide I do not want to have that. Now they go into this state of mind where they want to deny that in duality you have to have both. They go into denying that they must be defeated in order to be victorious. You cannot be victorious without defeat because there must be the contrast. But they deny this and they try to avoid it. If they could tune into the ascended masters, we could tell them that this is impossible. But they cannot so therefore, now they become susceptible to the false teachers, the fallen beings who tell them: “Oh yes it is possible to only have the good and not have the bad. And if you just follow us, our religion, our ideology, this and that, you can have the ideal society.” You can of course step back and say: “Well how did the fallen beings come to earth?” We have explained this extensively in order to stop that downward spiral that the beings had created.
And in a sense, you could say that the uniform society that was there before the fallen beings came was also based on a denial where they were trying to create a society where there was nothing negative, no negative consequences, no conflicts, but it was forced. The point is that even when people go into duality, whatever they encounter there is still within the law of free will. Because the only way they can get out of duality in some cases is to see duality outplayed to such an extreme that they cannot stand it anymore. And that is simply what the fallen beings do. They serve as a substitute teacher because they will do things in duality that the ascended masters of course would not do. And thereby the contrast between the good and the bad in duality becomes bigger.
Now I realize this takes some contemplation. It is not an easy thing. We have said before that most avatars, part of the reason why you came to earth, (we came to earth), is to fully resolve the enigma of free will. But you see there is always a choice that leads to a consequence.
And the difference between being connected to the ascended masters and not being connected is that when you are connected you can learn about the consequences before you make a choice. Because we can show you. That is our role as teachers. When you go into separation you can only learn about the consequences by making the choice. But this is still within the law of free will. Of course, your will is not free in duality. But it is still free in the sense that you always see more than one option. And you have the freedom to choose between those two options.
Copyright © 2026 Kim Michaels