Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.
The spiritual poison for this key is called non-will and non-being. This may mean little to you at first, but I will explain it as we go along. The Buddha who is the antidote to this poison is named Vajrasattva, and his wisdom is the Wisdom of God’s Diamond Will. You might notice that a diamond is the hardest substance and thus not affected by anything on Earth. You may also notice that a diamond has many facets that shine individually but together form the beautiful whole. As you study the following teaching, focus on the Buddha and use his mantra:
OM VAJRASATTVA HUM
If you read Maitreya’s 600-page book and then step back in order to look at the big picture, you will see that the entire purpose of the book is to help people understand and overcome the psychological mechanism that caused them to be separated from their spiritual teachers—thereby condemning themselves to the learning environment of the “school of hard knocks” rather than the Divine Direction found in the Garden of Eden. Maitreya does everything possible to explain how a spiritual teacher is always and exclusively seeking to help the students grow. The concept that the teacher is seeking to point out the students’ mistakes is a projection upon the teacher, born from the fact that the students have been blinded by the ego and are thus projecting a dualistic image upon the teacher. The central feature of the ego, of course, being that it projects its dualistic images upon everything.
So let me briefly summarize the essence of the master-disciple relationship. A lifestream is created as an individualization of the Creator, but it starts out with a very limited sense of self that is naturally focused on itself and its immediate environment. As an example, go back several centuries and you will see that most people lived in a small village and had little awareness of what was going on outside a 20-mile radius around their birthplace—which would often also be the place where they died. Today, most people have an awareness that the Earth is very large and they know about, or have even traveled to, countries far away, countries that have a culture very different from their own. So we can see that humankind has moved from a localized toward a more global form of awareness. Yet how did this shift in consciousness happen? It happened because people were forced to acknowledge that there was a reality outside their mental box—there was a world outside their immediate environment. So the function of a spiritual teacher is to help a new lifestream expand its mental box by demonstrating that there is a larger reality outside the box—and thus growth is both possible and desirable. Now look at my statement:
Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3)
What is the characteristic of children that gives them entry into the kingdom? As I have attempted to explain over and over again, the kingdom of God is not a static state of “perfection.” It is an ongoing process of self-transcendence, the River of Life. And because children are open to learning, are always seeking to grow, they have access to that kingdom. Look at a small child who is learning to walk. The child often falls down, and sometimes it hurts itself. But what you do not see in the child is an overlay of guilt or blame, causing the child to blame itself for falling down. In other words, the child learns from every experience. If it falls down, it does not waste time blaming itself for not being perfect. It simply gets up and keeps experimenting. Sometimes the child makes the same mistake over and over again, but because it keeps experimenting, it will eventually get it right and learn to walk. Every single child, who is not physically impaired, eventually learns to walk. Yet the reason for this is that the child keeps experimenting without having the interference of guilt or blame.
As Maitreya explains, this was precisely the learning environment that he attempted to create in the Garden of Eden. I say attempted to create because, as he also explains, the garden was a mixed environment with lifestreams who had fallen into the duality consciousness in higher spheres. And these lifestreams found it very difficult to enter into the childlike mind, which means they projected their own dualistic state of consciousness upon the garden and the teacher. They also attempted to pull other students into their mindset, as demonstrated by the story of the Serpent. So what is that mindset?
Well, as I have explained, when a lifestream accepts the illusion of separation, it creates a separate self – the ego – which is born from duality. The ego is on an impossible quest of seeking to make itself acceptable to God, of seeking to force its way into the kingdom. It attempts to do this through the outer path, which essentially divides human actions according to a dualistic standard. Some actions are right and some are wrong. Thus, if you train yourself to avoid wrong actions and only perform right actions, the ego reasons that you are guaranteed to be saved. However, this dualistic path is based on an inescapable fear. For in dividing actions into right and wrong, there inevitably comes the fear that if you cannot avoid wrong actions, you could fail to be saved. It also introduces guilt, for if you commit a wrong action, you should feel guilty as a way to “force” yourself to avoid such actions in the future.
What is the psychological effect of this? It is that it kills the innocence of the childlike mind, and this aborts experimentation. What drives the child to learn to walk is that it has a desire to walk, but underneath it is a desire to “get it right.” The love for getting it right is what drives the child to keep experimenting. However, the dualistic mind is not driven by a love for what is right; it is driven by a fear of what is wrong. The childlike mind is seeking to get closer to what it loves, whereas the dualistic mind is seeking to get away from what it fears.
We can also say that the childlike mind is innocent because there is no fear or guilt associated with learning, there is no risk involved in learning. Everything the child does is part of the process of experimentation, and the process goes in only one direction, namely toward a positive goal of self-transcendence. There are no mistakes, for the child can learn from every experience. If it falls down, it learns that this was not how to walk, and when it does not fall down, it learns that this is how to walk. Thus, there is never a failed experiment, only experiments that did not produce the desired outcome, but since you can learn from those experiments, they still bring you closer to the goal. And when you have learned from an action, what is the point of calling it a failure and feeling guilty for it? The real purpose of life is growth, and anything that helps you grow is a success, regardless of the physical outcome.
Do you see the subtle difference? The material world is a schoolroom, a laboratory, created for the sole purpose of your growth in self-awareness. The material world is not ultimately real, so it really doesn’t matter what happens in this world. The Christ mind is exclusively focused on your growth and puts no ultimate importance or permanence on what happens in this world. The Christ is not concerned about you making a few mistakes, the Christ is exclusively concerned about bringing you closer to the ultimate goal of oneness with your Creator. In contrast, the mind of anti-christ is based on separation, so it cannot conceive of the real goal for this universe. It sees the material universe not as a means to an end but as an end in itself. Thus, it places undue importance on what happens in this world, meaning that certain actions are seen as mistakes or sins and are now given some ultimate and permanent importance.
Do you understand what I am saying here? When your conscious self is unimpaired by the filter of duality, you are in the childlike mind. Life is a continuous process of experimentation, and there are no failed experiments, for every action becomes a learning experience that expands your mental box and increases your sense of self. This is precisely what you were created to do—you were created in order to grow toward an expanded sense of self, leading to God consciousness. And you can do this in only one way, namely by experimenting and learning from your experiments. Some experiments teach you what works and some teach you what doesn’t work, but they all teach you something that brings you higher in awareness. Thus, as long as you are in this childlike mind, you are always right because you are in alignment with God’s purpose of growth! You were not created to be perfect in doing everything that can be done in this or any other world. For the only way to know how to do everything is to be in God consciousness. You were not created in God consciousness; you were created to grow toward God consciousness. And as long as you are transcending your sense of self, you are right with God.
Yet what is the one condition that must be fulfilled in order for you to grow? It is that you are willing to experiment, you are willing to act and to learn from every action. In order to do this, you must be willing to observe yourself and evaluate your actions based on the consideration, “Did it work or didn’t it work—did it take me closer to oneness with God or did it take me further into separation?”
Do you see that this is a fundamentally different equation than what you have in the duality consciousness? The ego does not ask, “Did it work or didn’t it work?” The ego asks, “Was it right or was it wrong?” The first evaluation encourages experimentation, whereas the second one kills experimentation. When you are in the childlike mind, you want to experiment, for every experiment helps you grow and this is rewarding. When you are in the dualistic mind, you do not want to experiment, for every experiment carries the risk that it could be wrong, increasing your fear and guilt. Thus, you want to only do what you know to be right according to a worldly standard, and this – of course – stops you from expressing your built-in creativity. Instead of acting like the creative spiritual being you truly are, you begin to act like a mechanized being, a kind of robot that mindlessly repeats patterns that have been programmed into it—you become a blind follower of the blind leaders. And such mechanized beings have no place in the perpetually creative world that is God’s kingdom. For they violate one of the basic creative principles, a principle I expressed this way:
Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. (John 7:24)
Do you see the point? The dualistic mind is a relative mind in that it always relates everything to a worldly standard—to the appearances of this world, which it sees as real. It is also a judgmental mind in that it always judges whether something is right (causing it to feel pride) or wrong (causing it to feel guilt). The net effect is that it kills experimentation, kills creativity. In contrast, the childlike mind – the mind of Christ – is not relative, for it has no standard and thus cannot judge based on any appearance in this world. The Christ mind does know God’s reality, but as I have said, God’s reality is the River of Life, which is constantly transcending itself—so the Christ mind does not have a fixed standard. The Christ mind does not ask whether something is right or wrong, but whether something helps you grow or impedes your growth. And what is growth? You grow when you express your God-given creativity and thus become more than you thought you were—you transcend your sense of self.
The Christ mind is not even comparing to some divine standard, for God is infinite and you are created as an extension of the Infinite. You are meant to express the infinite creativity of God in a localized place, and when you do, the finite world is raised up toward the Infinite. Thus, there is no standard for how you should behave when you are expressing your unique, spiritual individuality. Creativity cannot be related to any standard, nor can it be judged in terms of right or wrong. It simply is what it is. Which is why God said to Moses, “I am that I am,” which is more correctly translated as, “I will be who I will be!”
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We now need to take this one step further by considering what it really means that something works or doesn’t work. As you should be beginning to realize by now, the dualistic mind can pervert anything, so it can play the game of asking whether it works rather than whether it is right or wrong. Yet what the dualistic mind cannot do is to step outside its inherent duality. Thus, the dualistic mind will define what works and doesn’t work based on a dualistic view, which means it invariably defines it as what works for the separate self in terms of elevating it toward the superior status that it invariably sees as the end goal.
So what is the real definition? Well, the Creator has created innumerable extensions of itself. God loves all of its offspring with an infinite love, which means it has no meaning to consider that God loves some beings more than others. There can be no comparisons in infinity (obviously, the dualistic mind cannot fathom infinity, other than as a theoretical, mathematical concept). As the Bible says, “God is no respecter of persons.”
So the Creator did not create the world of form for the purpose of elevating some extensions of itself to a superior status and setting them up as overlords over other extensions of itself. As Maitreya explains, there is a natural hierarchy in that some beings have transcended themselves and thus hold certain positions in hierarchy, but this does not make them better than others. It simply makes them better qualified to fill that position, as a teacher is better qualified to teach than those who have not yet learned to read. Yet by applying themselves, the students can obviously qualify to become teachers.
What the Creator wants is for all extensions of itself to engage in the River of Life, whereby they continuously transcend their sense of self until they reach full God consciousness. When you are trapped in duality, you see yourself as a separate being, and thus you believe in the illusion that you can raise yourself in comparison to others. When you see the reality of the Christ mind, you see all beings as part of the Body of God, and thus you see that the only way to truly raise yourself is to raise the All. This is what I expressed when I said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” In other words, the real definition is that what “works” is what raises up all life and what “doesn’t work” is what seeks to raise up the separate self but in reality limits all life—including the separate self.
One example is what Mother Mary explains in her book, where she says that those blinded by the ego seek to hoard the abundance that is already in the material world, whereas those who are not blinded use their God-given ability to draw spiritual energy into the material world and thereby expand the total amount of abundance available in this world. The first action seems to raise the separate self, whereas the second action truly raises the All. And this is what works for God. So what is the second action based on? It is based on creativity, the creative potential that is built into every lifestream. God is obviously the ultimate creative being, but since you are an extension of the Creator, you have the potential to express infinite creativity in a finite situation. Doing so is what works for God, for it raises all life.
When you compare this to my parable about the talents, you will see that if everyone is multiplying their talents, God will multiply their offering and the total multiplication will be exponential. In other words, if everyone is selflessly seeking to increase the abundance on Earth, God will give such a huge increase that poverty could be eradicated very quickly. The present poverty is a function of the fact that some people have sought to monopolize and hoard abundance by taking from others—and that those others have allowed the elite to get away with it. The net effect is that there is not as much for God to multiply, which is why there is not enough abundance in the material world to raise all above poverty.
So what is the function of the spiritual teacher? The teacher has escaped the illusions of duality and is no longer seeking to raise the separate self. The teacher has seen through the illusions of duality and can see that what truly raises up the individual being is actions that serve to raise up all life. Thus, the function of the teacher is to give the student a standard, a measuring rod, whereby the student can see which actions work for the greater good and which actions don’t. The function of the teacher is to give the student a glimpse of what his or her actions look like when they are not seen through the filter of duality, when they are not seen from inside the student’s own mental box.
You can now see the essential problem between student and teacher. When students have become blinded by duality, they are seeking to raise the separate self to a standard of perfection defined by some system in this world. They think they are well on their way toward or have already achieved this goal, yet it is all an illusion. Seeing this, the teacher can help these students only by helping them see that they are living a lie and that they will not go to the real heaven—and not even to the imagined heaven they have created. Yet the students – blinded by the duality of their egos – will see this as a threat and will see the teacher as an unwelcome intruder. The ego might even conjure up the belief that the teacher is a threat to their religion, and since that religion is the only true one, the teacher is a threat to God’s plan for salvation—and thus must be an agent of the devil. Which is precisely why the scribes and Pharisees rejected me and called me a tool of the devil.
As I said, “I have come that all might have life,” and the reality is that “life” means that you are in the River of Life, in the childlike mind where you are experimenting and transcending your sense of self. You are being, which means that you are living a spontaneously joyful life—as the child who expresses spontaneous joy. Going around putting yourself down through fear or guilt or raising yourself up through pride (to cover over the fear) is no way to live—it is not life. When you have stopped experimenting, or when you are experimenting only to raise the separate self, you are in a state of consciousness that is spiritual death. Yet since you think you are guaranteed to be saved, this could also be called an extreme form of ignorance or a state of non-being. You are not being who you were created to be, you are being less than you were created to be.
What will it take for people to escape this state of non-being? Well, somehow their sense that they know everything, or know everything they need to know, must be shattered. This can happen the hard way—for example by people pounding their heads against a concrete wall until they finally realize they cannot break down the wall. Or it can happen through the divine direction of the teacher, which the student uses to trigger an “Aha-experience.” When people are completely blinded by duality, they can only awaken the hard way. As a side note, this awakening happens because duality always has or creates two opposing forces. Thus, people can never attain complete peace in the consciousness of death, since the contradicting dualistic forces will always threaten their peace. And this conflict is precisely what gives people opportunities to awaken from the illusion, thereby sensing that there must be something outside duality, there must be a better way to live.
When a person begins to awaken from duality, that person becomes open to direction from a spiritual teacher. This often starts with openness to an outer teaching, but will eventually lead to an openness to inner direction, both from the student’s Christ self and from the Ascended Host. Obviously, you have already come to this point, so why this long discourse? Because I need you to see that the illusions of the ego are subtle. And although you have so far been willing to grow, it is virtually inevitable – having incarnated on Earth a number of times – that there are still remnants of the ego’s resistance toward the teacher left in your subconscious mind.
As long as these elements of willful, or sophisticated, ignorance remain in your being, you will resist the teacher when he comes to point out that you are still repeating patterns of beliefs or actions that “don’t work” because they do not raise the All but seek to raise the separate self. Obviously, this resistance will slow down your progress, but more importantly, it will actually prevent you from going beyond a certain level of the path to Christhood.
Specifically, it will prevent you from going beyond the level demonstrated by Peter, who recognized the Living Christ but would not let the Living Christ take him beyond his mental box, thus seeking to force the Christ into his box. As I have said, this is what mainstream Christianity – building on the foundation of the Catholic Church – has been doing for 2,000 years. But – as I trust is obvious to you – you cannot become a disciple of the Living Christ by repeating this pattern. Thus, it is an absolute, inescapable requirement that you free yourself from the last elements of resistance toward the teacher. You cannot BE my disciple as long as you are trapped in non-being.
NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book: Master Keys to Personal Christhoood.
Copyright © 2008 Kim Michaels